Buddhism Moral Teachings in Lay-follower Archetypes

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to: 1) study the history of Buddhist lay-women named as being the ‘foremost’ and 2) analyze and propose the moral teachings of those lay-women.

It was clearly found that in Buddhist scriptures that the Lord Buddha’s sets of moral teachings also include stories about men, events and places such as the stories of the four assembly concerning Buddhist monks, women priests, lay-women and men. Retrospectively, ten archetype lay-women were selected, praised, and named as the ‘foremost’. In Buddhism, those who were given the foremost rank must live their life through the moral ways according to the Lord Buddha’s teachings and self-realization and self-controlled are the crucial elements of it. The lay-women were encouraged to show their religious support by practicing and propagating Buddhism. Suffice it to say that those Buddhist lay-women provided exceptional meaningful roles of moral teachings and should be admired for it.