A Study of Buddhist Rituals and Environmental Ethics in Ladakh's Leh District

Abstract

Man's contact with his environment has been changing and adapting for ages. Today, the rising scope and velocity of change, whether unintentional or intentional, threatens to overwhelm many cultures' current adaptive capacity, particularly in vulnerable high-altitude places, as well as the entire biosphere, by changing natural and socio-cultural systems. In this context, the current article examines environmental issues in the agricultural social setting of villages led by Buddhist rituals and customs in Leh district, Ladakh area, Jammu and Kashmir, India, where Buddhism is practised by 66.40 percent of the district population. The ethnography approach was designed and carried out as part of field work leading to a PhD degree to investigate the complicated interaction between Buddhist rituals and environmental ethics on an empirical level. The purpose of this study is to look at how Buddhist rituals and practises might help solve environmental concerns, which is in line with Buddhism's goal of relieving misery from all sentient beings. This indicates that building ethical standards and action plans based on Buddhist practises among Leh's Buddhist community may not only help to alleviate environmental concerns, but may also help to fulfil Buddhism's overall goal. The comprehension of socio-cultural events at three distinct levels (a) at the monastic institution level, (b) at the village community level, and (c) at the family or home level, as well as the social importance of rituals, was aided by qualitative data acquired on the ground.