Ethics gets in the way: A Reply to David Bastow

Classical presentations of the Buddhist path prescribe the cultivation of various good qualities that are necessary for spiritual progress, from mindfulness (sati) and loving-kindness (metta) to faith (saddhā) and wisdom (paññā). Examining the way in which such qualities are described and classified in early Buddhism—with special reference to their treatment in the Visuddhimagga (Path of Purification) by the fifth-century Buddhist thinker Buddhaghosa—the present article employs a comparative method in order to identify the Buddhist catalog of virtues. The first part sketches the characteristics of virtue as analyzed by neo-Aristotelian theories. Relying on these accounts, the second part considers three lists from early Buddhism as possible catalogs of virtue: (1) the components of ethical conduct (sīla), (2) the 37 factors that contribute to awakening (bodhipakkhiyā dhammā), and (3) the wholesome (kusala) or beautiful (sobhana) mental factors (cetasika). I then raise the question of why the Buddhist tradition developed several classifications of virtue, whereas the Western tradition of virtue ethics used a single category. Appealing to the connection between the virtues and living well (eudaimonia) in the eudaimonistic version of virtue ethics, I propose that one of the reasons why Buddhism developed multiple lists of virtues is its pluralistic acceptance of different modalities of living well and associated practices, in MacIntyre’s sense of the term. These modalities and practices are not equal, but are ordered hierarchically. Accordingly, I conclude that Buddhist ethics ought to be seen as a pluralist-gradualist system rather than a universalist theory.

The book is based primarily on the source material available in the Pali Canon, studied historically and philosophically in the light of the contemporary, earlier and later literary evidence related to the subject. The antiquity and authenticity of the material is vouchsafed by the literary, lingustic, ideological, sociological and historical evidence existing in the Pali Canon itself. The book traces the origin of the theory of knowledge and its development in early Buddhism - the Hinayana Buddhism of Pali Canon.

This article is the result of a research dedicated to the analysis of the term loka (“world”) in the Pāli canon. This work consists mainly of a translation and analysis of the Pāli suttas concerning loka and related terms. What this study reveals is a peculiar conception of the world as a cognitive construct, with a close relationship to the philosophy of mind and language. The “end of the world” (lokanta) corresponds to the state of full consciousness necessary to become a Buddha. The figure of the world ender (lokantagū) is also fundamental as a metaphor for the Buddha as an otherworldly being (lokuttara), a concept we also find in the Abhidhamma and which will form a significant part of this study. Instead of an apocalyptic vision, the idea of the end of the world seems to be the main goal of meditation in Early Buddhism and part of the Buddhist epistemological panorama.

Contents: Preface Buddhism as philosophy? Early Buddhism: basic teachings Non-self: empty persons Buddhist ethics A Nyaya interlude Abhidharma: the metaphysics of empty persons The rise of Mahayana Yogacara: impressions-only and the denial of physical objects Madhyamaka: the doctrine of emptiness The school of Dinnaga: Buddhist epistemology. Index.

Buddhism is well known for its belief in karma and rebirth and its teachings on nonviolence ( ahiṃsā ) ( see Nonviolence in Religions) and compassion ( karuṇā ). However, there has been little critical or systematic study of its ethics, and scholarship in this field is still at an early stage. A few scholars have proposed tentative theoretical models adapted from Western typologies in an attempt to classify Buddhist ethics but so far none commands universal assent. Other scholars doubt whether Western classifications are appropriate for an Asian tradition and fear that imposing them too rigidly may produce a distorted picture of Buddhist teachings. This essay has three main objectives. The first is to inform the reader about the major Buddhist moral teachings; the second is to offer some preliminary reflections in terms of ethical theory; and the third is to give a brief introduction to contemporary Buddhist activism. The first section, therefore, is mainly descriptive and summarizes the teachings found in Buddhist scriptures. It makes reference to foundational concepts such as dharma and karma, the most important precepts, and the key virtues Buddhists seek to cultivate. The second section is more analytical, and examines Buddhist moral teachings from a Western perspective drawing on the concepts, categories, and terminology familiar to students of Western ethics. The third describes the contemporary phenomenon of “engaged Buddhism” as a force for social change. It should be borne in mind that Buddhism is a diverse tradition encompassing many schools and geographical regions, and that while this essay endeavors to focus on common elements, students will almost certainly encounter variations in interpretation, belief, and practice at a local level.

Human consciousness is characterized by constant transitions in time. On the other hand, what is consciously experienced always possesses the temporal feature of “now.” In consciousness, “now” constantly holds different contents, yet it remains “now” no matter how far it goes. This duality is thematized in Husserlian phenomenology as “the standing-streaming now.” Although this phrase appears contradictory in everyday language, it has a structure that can be clearly understood and formalized. In this paper, we show that this structure can be described as a monoid in category theory. Furthermore, monoids can be transformed into the coslice category, which corresponds to the way of perceiving present moments as juxtaposed in succession. The seemingly contradictory nature of the “now” as both flowing and standing can be precisely structured and comprehended through the monoid, while the perspective of the “now” as discrete points on a timeline can be effectively formalized using the coslice category. This framework helps us more precisely understand the differences between ordinary consciousness and meditative consciousness, specifically the experience of the “eternal now.” We illustrate how the meditative states of consciousness presented in the early Buddhist scriptures (Pali Canon) and Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō remarkably reflect a monoid structure.

Several scholars have claimed that vedanā should not be confused with emotion and that it does not include emotions among its members. I argue this is misleading and mistaken. From the perspective of the Pāli discourses at least, the categories of vedanā and emotion overlap. Happiness and sadness, which modern psychology and society call emotions, fall under the rubric of vedanā—specifically “secondary vedanā.” The confusion I point out may stem from misusing a modern concept (emotion) to understand early Buddhist maps of experience that lack an equivalent notion. This distorts how and on what criteria Buddhism set up those maps and their categories. These should be understood with reference to Buddhist ethics and soteriology, not parameters such as intensity, duration, or cognitive complexity. Thus, Buddhist models of the inner life are closer to Christian models than to modern scientific ones. This perspective underscores the ethical component of cittānupassanā.

Buddhist scholars like Kenneth Ch'en have argued that the teaching of filial piety was a special feature of Chinese Buddhism as a response to the Chinese culture. Others, among them John Strong and Gregory Schopen, have shown that filial piety was also important in Indian Buddhism, but Strong does not consider it integral to the belief system and Schopen did not find evidence of it in early writings he examined. In this article, through an analysis of early Buddhist resources, the Nikāyas and Āgamas, I demonstrate that the practice of filial piety has been the chief good karma in the Buddhist moral teaching since its inception, although it is not as foundational for Buddhist ethics as it is for Confucian ethics. The Buddha advised people to honor parents as the Brahmā, the supreme god and the creator of human beings in Hinduism, as parents have done much for their children. Hence, Buddhism teaches its followers to pay their debts to parents by supporting and respecting them, actions that are considered the first of all meritorious deeds, or good karma, in Buddhist moral teachings. Moreover, according to the Buddhist teaching of karma, matricide and patricide are considered two of the five gravest bad deeds, and the consequence is immediate rebirth in hell. Mahāyāna Buddhism developed the idea of filial piety further and formulated the four debts to four groups of people—parents, sentient beings, rulers, and Buddhism—a teaching that became very popular in Chinese Buddhism and spread to other East Asian countries.

Takamurayama Chikurinji engi emaki is a two-scroll emaki preserved at Chikurinji, a Shingon temple in Nyuno, Hiroshima prefecture, and dated to the Muromachi period. The first scroll of Chikurinji engi begins with the story of the founding of the temple by Gyoki; Ono no Takamura's mysterious birth; and the early stages of Takamura's life as a courtier. This paper focuses on the second of the two scrolls, which recounts the death of Takamura's father-inlaw, his tour through hell, and his encounter there with Takamura, identified as the third of the Ten Kings of Hell. In particular, the paper looks into the development of Takamura's hell-legend, as well as the juxtaposition in the second Chikurinji engi scroll of early medieval motifs of hell with the cult of the Ten Kings. My comparison of the scroll with other medieval Japanese visual and literary sources, such as setsuwa, hell paintings, and sculptures of the Ten Kings and Enma, reveals that the emaki illustrates a representation of the afterworld that is typical of images from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. keywords: Takamurayama Chikurinji engi emaki-Chikurinji-Ten Kings of Hell- Ono no Takamura-Enma-Hell Paintings (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Takamurayama Chikurinji engi emaki ... (hereafter Chikurinji engi) is a two-scroll emaki preserved at Chikurinji, a Shingon temple in ..., Hiroshima prefecture, a place traditionally known as the birthplace of Ono no Takamura ?...1 The temple's main hall, which was completed in 1543, is designated today as an Important Cultural Property.2 The scrolls have been dated by scholars to the Muromachi period. A copy made in 1638 has also been preserved at Chikurinji; furthermore, the temple owns a set of three hanging scrolls dating from the mid- to late-Edo period, while a mid-Edo period copy of the text is presently in the possession of Hiroshima University. Chikurinji engi opens with the founding of the temple by ..., but much of it deals with the life of Ono no Takamura, who, according to the engi, was born mysteriously from a virgin who was a devotee of the temple. Though renowned as a courtier and scholar of the Heian period, Takamura is also famed for having been an at the Court of Enma in hell, and for having traveled freely between this world and the afterworld. In Chikurinji engi, he is identified as ..., the third of the Ten Kings of Hell who preside at the entrance of the afterworld assigning souls to one or another of the six realms of existence. This paper focuses on the second of the two Chikurinji engi scrolls in order to examine the evolution of Ono no Takamura's legend and images of hell in the late medieval period. In particular, I wish to look into the rather awkward juxtaposition of early medieval motifs with the cult of the Ten Kings as revealed in the scroll: in the earlier part, Enma ...? is presented in his court without the Ten Kings, but this is followed thereafter by an abrupt introduction of Takamura as the third official (...) with an emphasis on the Ten Kings. It is only through a close examination of the scrolls within the context of contemporary images of hell and the Ten Kings that this enigma can be explained. Chikurinji engi and the Medieval Narratives of Ono no Takamura Ono no Takamura (802-852) was a scholar, poet, and courtier of the early Heian period. He is known as the leading poet of his time, renowned particularly for his erudition in Chinese. Most interestingly, he appears in Heian- and Kamakuraperiod setsuwa ?... as an of Enma's court (Asano 1987; Matsumoto 1987; Tanaka 2002). Chikurinji engi reveals interesting developments that the Takamura legends pertaining to Enma and the Ten Kings had undergone by the late medieval period. The first Chikurinji engi scroll begins by telling of the founding of the temple by Gyoki. It then goes on to tell of the life of Ono no Takamura, beginning with his mysterious birth, his successful marriage to the daughter of the regent Ono no Yoshisuke (a. …

There is little doubt that conceptions and developments in late medieval logic affected much of the content of fourteenth-century philosophy. But logic's mark is even more apparent and prevalent in the attitudes and approaches fourteenth-century philosophers assumed in systematizing doctrines and solv ing problems. These were the attitudes and approaches that were later to form a substantial part of what so disturbed certain fifteenth-century literary humanists. Although we now know that these humanists did not have a proper appreciation of what they criticized, their impatience with the sofismi and sottigliezze of the remotissimi and barban Britanni did have some basis in the very major role that logic and considerations of language actually did play in fourteenth-century philosophy, science, and even theology, especially when these enterprises were English or under the spell of English influence.1 Yet these fifteenth-century critics did not realize that in the earlier part of' the fourteenth century it made sense (historical as well as philosophical sense) for those particular intellectual elements to play the important role that they did.

Business process modelling is an important part of system design. When designing or redesigning a business process, stakeholders specify, negotiate, and agree on business requirements to be satisfied, including non-functional requirements that concern the quality of the business process. This thesis addresses the question of how to specify and compute the quality of a business process, given the model that stakeholders use. The motivation for this thesis is the increasing importance of the quality of business processes. Knowing the quality of specific business processes enables stakeholders to judge if these processes need improvement. Knowing the quality of the constructs of those processes (viz., events, inputs, activities, and outputs) and the way they are structured enables a more detailed analysis of their shortcomings and provides a basis for the design of improvements. The research challenge of this thesis is grounded in the assumption that: “Organisations need an appropriate means to effectively compute achievement of their goals and objectives by their business processes.” Given this challenge, the main research question on which this thesis focuses is: “Can the quality of a business process be computed quantitatively at different levels of granularity?” The research objective is: “To develop frameworks, factors, and metrics for computing non-functional requirements (quality) of business processes quantitatively at different levels of granularity.” The outcomes of this thesis are: 1) BPIMM, a language-independent business process integrating meta-model, based on the concepts of seven mainstream business process modelling languages: BPMN, EPC, RAD, UML AD, SADT, IDEF0, and IDEF3. 2) BPC-QC (Business Process Concept - Quality Computation), an approach to quality computation at the lowest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BPC-QEF (Business Process Concept - Quality Evaluation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of the constructs of a business process: event, input, activity, and output. ii. A set of business process quality dimensions and factors. The following quality dimensions are distinguished: performance, efficiency, reliability, recoverability, permissibility, and availability. Each dimension categorises different quality aspects in terms of factors. A non-exhaustive set of sixteen quantitative factors is provided. iii. Quality metrics for each of the quality factors, to facilitate a quantitative computation of the quality of a specific construct of a business process. 3) BP-QC (Business Process - Quality Computation), an approach to compute the quality at the highest level of granularity of a business process. The approach consists of: i. BP-CQCF (Business Process - Compositional Quality Computation Framework), a language-independent generic framework and algorithm to compute the quality of a business process as a whole, given the quality of its constructs. ii. A set of generic business process modelling patterns to decompose a business process into more succinct parts, namely: sequential, parallel with synchronisation, exclusive, inclusive, simple loop, and complex loop. iii. A set of over one hundred computational formulae. For each combination of modelling pattern and a quality factor, there is a formula to compute the quality. 4) AAV (Approach to Application and Validation), an evaluation plan to evaluate BPIMM, BPC-QC and BP-QC in practice, together with expert stakeholders. The plan consists of the units of measure, a measurement model, and a case study procedure. To evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis to real world business needs, four case studies have been conducted in different environments: a Dutch educational institution, a global financial institution, an international financial service provider, and a Dutch research project on crisis management. Each of these case studies concerns a different, single business process. This thesis shows that: 1) A quality computation approach can be adopted independent of a business process modelling language. 2) Quantitative quality factors can be introduced specifically for the constructs of a business process. 3) Quantitative metrics and computational formulae can be developed for specific quality factors, allowing the computation of different aspects of the quality of a business process quantitatively at different levels of granularity. 4) An evaluation plan can be developed to evaluate the applicability of the contributions of this thesis (viz., BPIMM, BPC-QC, and BP-QC). The contributions of this thesis are designed to be beneficial to the areas of business and management, requirements engineering, software engineering, and business process modelling. In the areas of requirements engineering and software engineering, these contributions are intended to help practitioners to consider non-functional requirements at the earliest stage. In the area of business process modelling, information systems, service computing, and cloud computing, the contributions can be used for quality-driven modelling, design, and redesign. To conclude, knowing the quality value of a business process at different levels of granularity provides a basis for its improvement.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how RT-PCR (real time–polymerase-chain-reaction) and chest High-Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) can detect COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) disease in the early, progressive and severe stages, as well as patient’s outcome. Method: We perform a prospective study with chest HRCT on 206 patients with positive RT-PCR test. The patients were divided into three groups; early stage (100 patients), progressive stage (70 patients) and severe stage (36 patients). Results: The early stage involved typical category (COVID-19 Reporting and Data System, CO-RADS 5, 34 cases - 34%), indeterminate category (CORADS 3, six cases - 6%), atypical category (CO-RADS 4, ten cases - 10%) and normal chest HRCT imaging (CO-RADS 1, 50 cases - 50%). The progressive stage involved a typical category (CO-RADS 5, 70 cases, 100%), The severe stage involved a typical category (CO-RADS 5, 36 cases, 100%). Conclusion: RT-PCR is the gold standard and specific tool for confirming COVID-19 infection. Combination of RT-PCR and chest HRCT is used for the early diagnosis of COVID-19 pneumonia. Chest HRCT is positive in 50% of patients in the early stage of COVID-19. Chest HRCT is not only detecting pulmonary parenchymal changes but also determining patient’s outcome in the progressive and severe stages of COVID-19 (CO-RADS 5). Patients with progressive stage will not need ventilator and patients with severe stage should receive ventilator.

A coherent lithostratigraphic unit in the coesite–eclogite complex of Dabie Shan, China: geologic and petrologic evidence

In human species, circadian rhythmic expression differs among individuals and may be classified with the concept of Circadian Typology (CT), which consists of three chronotypes: i) Morning-type (M-types), subjects that go to bed early and wake up early and achieve their peak of mental and physical performance in the early part of the day; ii) Evening-type (E-types), subjects that go to bed and wake up late, and perform at their best toward the end of the day, during evening hours; iii) Neither-type (N-types), subjects that show intermediate characteristics between the previous samples. Circadian preferences may change during the life span and can influence academic and sport performance and job activities [1]. We collected data considering 427 students, 294 males and 133 females (age 18-25 years), attending the School of Sport Science, University of Milan. All participants compiled the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) for the assessment of chronotype; subsequently they have been evaluated taking into consideration their anatomy test marks. The chronotype distribution of the students was: 44 M-types, 280 N-types and 103 E-types. For M-types, the result in Anatomy exam was significantly higher compared to Evening-types (p< .01). Even the comparison between M-types and N-types showed a significant difference (p< .01). Instead, the performance for E- and N-types was similar. The present results provide a clear indication of a better academic performance for M-types students compared to E-types referring to Anatomy exam. In this way, the italian academic organization seems to be less favorable for E-types.

Contents Specific scope 410 1. Introduction 411 2. Identity 411 3. Detection 411 4. Identification 412 4.1. Morphological identification 412 4.1.1. Eggs 412 4.1.2. Larvae 412 4.1.2.1. Introduction 412 4.1.2.2. General description Spodoptera larvae 413 4.1.2.3. Spodoptera littoralis and S. litura 414 4.1.2.4. Spodoptera eridania 417 4.1.2.5. Spodoptera frugiperda 419 4.1.2.6. Possible confusion with Spodoptera exigua 421 4.1.3. Pupae 422 4.1.3.1. General description 422 4.1.3.2. Possible confusion with Spodoptera exigua 422 4.1.4. Adults 422 4.1.4.1. Introduction 422 4.1.4.2. Spodoptera littoralis 424 4.1.4.3. Spodoptera litura 425 4.1.4.4. Spodoptera eridania 427 4.1.4.5. Spodoptera frugiperda 429 4.2. Molecular methods 430 5. Reference material 430 6. Reporting and documentation 430 7. Performance criteria 430 8. Further information 431 9. Feedback on this diagnostic protocol 431 10. Protocol revision 431 11. Acknowledgements 431 12. References 431 Appendix 1: Features of Lepidoptera larvae 433 Appendix 2: Keys to adults based on external morphology 434 Appendix 3: Information on genitalia 435 Appendix 4: Identification of Spodoptera eridania and S. frugiperda using real‐time PCR 441 Appendix 5: Identification of Spodoptera littoralis and S. litura using real‐time PCR 442 Specific scopeThis Standard provides guidance for the identification of S. littoralis, S. litura, S. frugiperda and S. eridania.Specific approval and amendmentThis Standard was approved in 2015‐09.