[Buddha-l] Mindfulness in the marketplace

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Sun, 2005-04-03 at 11:40 +0200, Erik Hoogcarspel wrote:

> Is meditation ethically neutral? TM is in my opinion, but Buddhist 
> meditation cannot be, because right from the beginning the Buddha ruled 
> hedonism out because it is 'unworthy and mean'. Eudemonism is also 
> rejected in most Buddhist traditions because it is a dead end and 
> doesn't lead to wisdom. Utilism is restricted to marginal questions 
> because nirvaaNa is not useful and, well you know Richard and I have a 
> different view in this, but I would say that the Buddha would agree more 
> with Aristotle than Kant or Habermas.

You have never understood my position, Eric, so you cannot make a
coherent claim that you disagree with me. I agree with you completely
that the Buddha's ethic is pretty much like Aristotle's in many
respects, which, incidentally, makes it eudaemonian. So eudaemonianism
cannot be ruled out if you want to say that Buddhist ethics is similar
to Aristotle's. The only thing I have wanted to add to that is that
there are ALSO definite elements of utilitarian and deontological ethics
in Buddhism, so one cannot easily get away with dogmatically asserting
that Buddhism is ONLY a virtue ethic. 

In fact, I think Buddhist ethical theory is very difficult to put into
any of the categories offered in standard Ethics 101 textbooks. I would
add that any ethical system that is usable to human beings is going to
be sufficiently complex and nuanced that it resists being easily
categorized by the simplistic models offered in ethics textbooks. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico