Buddhist ethical teachings on environmental ethics: HSC Studies of Religion

What this dot point is asking

The ethics component of each depth study asks you to describe and explain the ethical teachings of the tradition in ONE area: bioethics, environmental ethics or sexual ethics. This page covers Buddhist environmental ethics: the teachings that guide how Buddhists relate to the natural world, other species and the resources of the planet, and how those teachings are applied today.

Environmental ethics is examined in several ways, so prepare for all of them:

• Short answers on teachings: "Describe ONE ethical teaching" (2022), "Outline ONE ethical teaching" then "Explain how [it] is reflected" in your chosen area (2024), "Explain TWO ethical teachings" (2025).
• Short answers with a stimulus: "Set your heart on doing good" (2023).
• The 20-mark extended response (Section III): in 2025, "analyse how the ethical teachings of Buddhism guide adherents to navigate the world today", with a stimulus about "sacred texts or lived experience". NESA's guidelines for that question cited the Vanaropa Sutta (SN 1.47) and dependent arising.

Treat Buddhism accurately. Buddhist ethics does not rest on the commands of a creator God but on insight into how things are (dependent arising, impermanence, suffering and its causes) and on the intention to reduce suffering. Buddhists of the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions share these teachings but apply them differently.

The answer

How Buddhist ethics works

• Sila, samadhi, prajna. The Eightfold Path is often grouped into three trainings: ethical conduct (sila: right speech, action and livelihood), meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (prajna). NESA's 2025 guidelines describe the Buddhist ethical response to environmental issues in these terms: wisdom and meditation shape ethical behaviour.
• Intention. "It is intention that I call deeds" (AN 6.63). An act is judged by the intention (cetana) behind it and by whether it increases or reduces suffering.
• Training rules, not commandments. The Five Precepts are undertaken voluntarily as training rules: to abstain from taking life, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, false speech and intoxicants.
• No creator's command. Environmental care is not obedience to a creator who owns the earth (as in the Abrahamic idea of stewardship) but follows from seeing how things are interconnected and from compassion for all who suffer.

Teaching 1: dependent arising and interdependence

The Buddha's formula for dependent arising (paticcasamuppada) is: "when this exists, this comes to be; due to the arising of this, this arises. When this doesn't exist, this doesn't come to be; due to the cessation of this, this ceases" (SN 12.21). Nothing, including a human being, exists independently of the conditions that sustain it: air, water, food, other beings.

NESA's 2025 guidelines put it simply: "Nothing exists entirely alone, everything is in relation to everything else", so the Buddha "guides adherents to treat the environment with compassion and careful consideration of implications", since "exploitation could lead to a lack of balance in the world with serious consequences".

Application. Deforestation, pollution and climate change are not "out there": they condition the lives of all beings, including the humans who cause them. Seeing this, Buddhists are guided to consider the long-term and indirect effects of their actions, which is why the guidelines describe a Buddhist approach based on "balance, harmony in the world, where all species depend on each other".

Teaching 2: ahimsa, the First Precept and right livelihood

• The First Precept is the undertaking to abstain from taking life. Its positive side is ahimsa (non-harm) and compassion for all sentient beings, not only humans.
• Monastic rules on plants. The Vinaya goes further for monks and nuns. When monks cut down trees for building, people complained: "They are hurting life with one sense." The Buddha laid down: "If a monk destroys a plant, he commits an offense entailing confession" (Pacittiya 11). Monks are also trained not to "defecate, urinate, or spit on cultivated plants" (Sekhiya 74).
• Right livelihood for lay people: "a lay follower should not engage in these five trades ... Trade in weapons, living creatures, meat, intoxicants, and poisons" (AN 5.177).

Application. Many Buddhists are vegetarian (especially in Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean Mahayana monasticism, supported by Mahayana texts such as the Lankavatara Sutra); others eat meat but avoid killing. Buddhists campaign against cruelty to animals, protect habitats and avoid livelihoods that destroy life. NESA's 2024 sample answer called the Five Precepts "the five fundamental ethical guidelines" for Buddhists, and the first of them applies directly.

Teaching 3: metta and karuna for all beings

The Karaniya Metta Sutta, often chanted in Theravada monasteries and homes, asks for goodwill to "whatever living creatures there are, with not a one left out ... those who have been born and those about to be born", and says: "Even as a mother would protect with her life her child, her only child, so too for all creatures unfold a boundless heart" (Snp 1.8).

Application. Compassion (karuna) and loving-kindness (metta) extend to animals and to future generations ("those about to be born"), which grounds concern for sustainability. In the Mahayana, the bodhisattva vows to liberate all beings, which many teachers apply to the protection of the living world.

Teaching 4: craving, the Middle Way and sufficiency

• The Second Noble Truth teaches that suffering arises from craving (tanha). Environmental destruction is, in Buddhist analysis, craving on a global scale: the endless desire for more consumption and profit.
• The Middle Way rejects "indulgence in sensual pleasures" as well as self-mortification (SN 56.11).
• Sufficiency and contentment with little are monastic ideals; NESA's 2025 guidelines list "sufficiency" among Buddhist environmental teachings.
• The Dhammapada gives an image of harmless living: "A bee takes the nectar and moves on, doing no damage to the flower's beauty and fragrance; and that's how a sage should walk in the village" (verse 49).

Application. Simple living, reducing waste, mindful consumption and questioning economic growth pursued for its own sake. Asteya (not taking what is not given, the Second Precept), which NESA also listed, can be applied to taking more than a fair share of the earth's resources from others and from future generations.

Teaching 5: karma, merit and the Vanaropa Sutta

• Karma. Intentional actions have consequences in this life and future lives; harmful actions towards other beings produce suffering.
• Merit. "Giving, ethical conduct, and meditation are all grounds for making merit" (AN 8.36).
• The Vanaropa Sutta (SN 1.47), cited by NESA in 2025, links merit to caring for the environment and the community. A deity asks, "Whose merit always grows by day and by night?" The Buddha answers: "Planters of parks or groves, those who build a bridge, a drinking place and well, and those who give monastic quarters. Their merit always grows by day and by night. Those people ... are going to heaven" (trans. Sujato). NESA's guidelines quote another translation: "The merit of those people who plant groves, parks, build bridges, make ponds, dwelling places, grows day and night and such religious persons go to heaven."

Application. Tree planting, reforestation and providing clean water are acts of merit for many Buddhists. Karma also underlines responsibility: those who knowingly destroy habitats create harmful karma.

Teaching 6: impermanence and not-self

• Anicca. All conditioned things are impermanent. Clinging to possessions, and to the idea that nature exists for our permanent use, leads to suffering.
• Anatta. There is no fixed, separate self. The sharp line between "me" and "the environment" is, in Buddhist analysis, a mental construction; seeing through it weakens the self-centred craving that drives exploitation.

Nature as teacher

NESA's 2025 guidelines note that "Buddhists believe that the environment can assist an adherent in finding enlightenment", and describe nature "as teacher" and "as spiritual force". The Buddha was born in a grove at Lumbini, attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree and died between two sal trees at Kusinara; the early Sangha lived in forests; and the Thai Forest Tradition continues to value wilderness as a place of meditation. Meditation on the elements and on impermanence often uses nature as its object.

Differences between schools

Navigating environmental issues today

Evaluating Buddhist environmental ethics

• Strengths. Dependent arising gives a coherent reason to care about ecosystems, not only individual animals; compassion extends to future generations; the diagnosis of craving targets root causes, not only symptoms.
• Debates. Some scholars caution that the early texts were concerned with liberation from suffering rather than ecology, and that "eco-Buddhism" partly reads modern concerns back into them. Others reply that the principles (non-harm, interdependence, restraint) apply naturally to modern problems, as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh show.
• Practice versus ideal. Buddhist-majority countries face the same pressures of development, pollution and deforestation as others; the teachings guide committed adherents strongly but do not automatically change national economies.
• Judgement. The teachings are a strong guide for individual choices and increasingly for collective action, which is what the 2025 question meant by teachings that help adherents "navigate the world today".

In one sentence

Buddhist environmental ethics rests on dependent arising, which places humans within an interdependent web, and on ahimsa, metta, sufficiency, karma and merit drawn from sources such as SN 12.21, the Metta Sutta, the Vinaya's rules on plants, AN 5.177, Dhammapada 49 and the Vanaropa Sutta (SN 1.47), and it guides Buddhists of every school to reduce harm, craving and consumption and to protect the living world, from Thai tree ordinations to the Dalai Lama's call for universal responsibility.

Try this

Q1. Outline the Buddhist teaching of dependent arising. (2 marks)

• What the marker wants. All phenomena arise in dependence on conditions; nothing exists independently; a source (SN 12.21) or an example.

Q2. Explain how the Vanaropa Sutta (SN 1.47) guides Buddhist environmental practice. (4 marks)

• What the marker wants. The content of the sutta (planters of groves and builders of wells and bridges make merit that grows day and night), the teaching of karma and merit, and a contemporary application (tree planting, reforestation).

Q3. Explain TWO Buddhist ethical teachings relevant to environmental ethics. (5 marks)

• What the marker wants. Two distinct teachings (for example dependent arising and ahimsa), each explained with a source and an application, with accurate terminology.