Early Buddhism excluded cripples, women, and debtors and reinforced existing hierarchies

Evidence

UNICEF MICS data for countries with significant Mahāyāna Buddhist populations documents rates of corporal punishment in child-rearing that are not substantially different from global averages. The Mahāyāna tradition’s doctrinal resources — upāya-kauśalya, the bodhisattva ideal, the Plum Village mindfulness-of-children framework — have not yet produced measurable population-level change in parenting practice. That gap between doctrine and practice is, as this series has established in every tradition it has examined, the characteristic condition of the ethical history of childhood. — , The Rod and the Child, 3956 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The classical Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions both interpreted the precepts primarily as commitments to individual moral conduct: the practitioner undertakes, in her own person, to refrain from causing harm. The precept is a description of what she will and will not do. Sulak’s structural reading asks a different question: what institutional conditions make the violation of the precept possible, and what does the committed practitioner owe to dismantling those conditions? On this reading, a Buddhist practitioner who personally refrains from striking children but does nothing to address the cultural and institutional norms that make such striking routine has not fully honored the first precept. — , The Rod and the Child, 3984 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Early rights theory denied humanity to those viewed as lacking rights; Buddhist precepts were classically individual commitments, not structural demands — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 3984; Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Early rights theory denied humanity to those viewed as lacking rights #expands (0.80)
• Buddhist doctrine has not measurably reduced corporal punishment in Mahāyāna countries #corroborates (0.80) — , The Rod and the Child, 3956
• Buddhist precepts were classically individual commitments, not structural demands #complicates (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 3984
• Christian doctrine institutionalized women’s subordination despite early egalitarian impulses #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 204