AN ANALYSIS OF EDUCATIONAL AND ETHICAL VALUES OF BUDDHISM

Abstract

Buddhist Education System is one of the prominent among ancient Indian education systems. Buddhism in India came into existence as a means to reform the deteriorating form of Hinduism. The philosophy of Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who later on comes to be known as Buddha (the awakened one). The Buddhist philosophy is considered as one of the most valuable ancient Indian philosophies of India that inscribe a lot of values like spiritual, social, ethical, educational ,political, economic values that have their significant importance for welfare of human race. Among these manifold sets of values of Buddhism, paramount importance is given on Educational and Ethical values. Educational values in Buddhism implies those ideals that are practiced by Buddhist System of Education in their teaching- learning process while ethical values implies moral ideals uphold by Buddhist philosophy for regulating man‟s thought and conduct. The present paper is an attempt to deal with axiological aspect of Buddhistic philosophy with respect to Educational and Ethical values. The purpose of this study is to extract the educational and ethical values enshrined in Buddhism. In this regard, the researcher has opted for qualitative technique study and has undertaken a content analysis based on primary and secondary sources of information to ascertain those values. After a detailed study, the researcher was able to deduce various educational and ethical values from the Buddhist Education System and Buddhism as a whole and focused insight into their significant relevance in present system of education and society as a whole.