The article touches the questions of the relation Buddhism and ecological ethics. It offers a survey of current writing within the area of Buddhist environmental ethics and examines the possibility of establishing an authentic Buddhist response to contemporary environmental problems.
The earliest specifically Mahayana Literature consists of sutras of the Prajnaparamita (The perfection of insight). This literature is large and repetitive. This paper examines the circumstances of its origin. The problem is that according to the archeological and epigraphic evidence these sutras originated in Northen of India or in Khotan but according to the texts in Central or Southern India. There is a hypothesis to see in the emergence of Mahayana two originally separate traditions, i.e. „philosophical“ and „religious“, the first originated in South the second in North.
The literature of Prajñāpāramitā was vast, deep and vital to understanding of the the Mahāyāna Buddhism. The composition of these texts extended over about 1,000 years. Roughly speaking, four phases can be distinguished:
1. The elaboration of a basic text (ca. 100 B.C. to 100 A.D.). 2. The expansion of that text (ca. 100 A.D. to 300 A.D.). 3. The restatement of the doctrine in short sūtras and in versified summaries (ca. 300 A.D. to 500 A.D.). 4. The period of Tantric influence and magical elements in the sūtras (ca. 600 A.D. to 1200 A.D.). This article provides the fundamentals about these interesting texts. There are also the basic informations about the development of this literature outside of India in China and Tibet.
The term “prajñā” is the pricipal concern of the Prajñāpāramitāsūtras. It means in the Indo-Tibetan Buddhism a state of consciousness which results from analysis. Prajñā understands conceptually or non-conceptually emptiness (śūnyatā), the absence of self or intrinsic nature (svabhāva) in all entities. This article discuss the meaning of this very important term and some problems concerning of its translation.