HASS Talk: Meat is Murder: Southeast Asia’s Oldest Ethical Code

In this talk, Alastair Gornall will introduce his team’s MOE-funded research on pre-colonial, Southeast Asian natural philosophy and ecological thought. He will present the first detailed analysis and overview of a neglected, unedited, and untranslated Buddhist text, the Light on the Six Realms Commentary. Likely composed in Pagan, Myanmar, around the twelfth century, this work on karma and rebirth represents Southeast Asia’s oldest surviving ethical treatise. The work provides a vivid tour of the Buddhist cosmos — comparable in some ways to Dante’s Divine Comedy — and describes the moral actions or karma that condition our rebirth as hell beings, ghosts, animals, humans, and gods.

Alastair Gornall gained his Ph.D. in Asian Studies from the University of Cambridge in 2013. He is an Associate Professor in History and Religion at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. His work focuses on Buddhism’s intellectual and cultural history in South and Southeast Asia and experiments with computing and digital methodologies.