[Buddha-l] Buddhist ethics in a contemporary world

[jkirk]

> person A is about to kill someone/thing
> person B (a Buddhist) says "don't kill it"
> person A asks "why?"
> person B replies with 'that would cause suffering in you and others,
> it will harm the world'
> person A replies 'tough, suffering happens, I can live with that'
>
> ... at that point the Buddhist has no answer.  The Buddha didn't
> convert people who didn't want to follow his path.  If people were
> unconvinced that suffering was something they didn't want to end,
> Buddhism doesn't supply any arguments to stop the killing.
>
> I'd love to hear someone come up with clear arguments against this,
> but I haven't seen any of the Buddha's teachings that go so far.
>
> Mike
===============
First, there are always exceptions to every general observation. That said,
IMO, this is an interesting conundrum for our world, but I can't imagine
anyone thinkng this way in the Buddha's time because people then were not as
individualist as we are today. I can't imagie most people being capable of
saying "tough, suffering happens, I can live with that."  Even quasi royal
Devadatta deluded himself that he was doing the right thing by trying to
kill his enemy, the Buddha. Most ordinary people's identity, and therefore
their concepts of duty or obligation and notions of what's right and wrong,
were deeply bound up with their kin memberships, and also with the fact that
most people needed one another to survive economically.
Royals, in that period, however, were less dependent economically in that
they controlled power and the weapons of power, so they could force people
to work for them, fight for them, kill for them. They easily did these
things themselves, as with Ajatashatru who killed the king, his father, in
order to be king himself.  This sort of raises the question as to what
extent the Buddha's teachings were inspired by the elite social milieu that
he came from, a milieu where he saw rampant individualism and sensual excess
obviously not available to ordinary people. In such a socio-cultural milieu
cynicism would be entirely possible.
Ordinary people according to some of the sutra and jataka stories were very
capable of perceiving suffering in selves and in others. But we actually
know nothing, far as I know, of the levels of crime among ordinary people in
those times. We also know very little about crime and mayhem among the
elites, except for war stories and an occasional parricide. My guesses about
the nature of society in those days are extrapolations from the agricultural
societies we know of from the 19th c in India (or before) and elsewhere in
Asia.

So maybe the Buddha did not succeed in converting anyone who did not care to
follow his path for the eradication of suffering. But everybody, presumably,
Buddha or no Buddha, still can understand that birth, sickness, old age and
death cause suffering, to self and to others. Even the legendary Angulimala,
a serial killer, finally saw the error of his ways and converted. So he
seems to have been a criminal for whatever reasons, but not a sociopath.
Thus, anyone who says "tough, that's the way it is, I can live with that"
has to be some kind of sociopath, and that is precisely what, IMO, our kind
of capitalist social system engenders. No time to go into why--read Theodore
Adorno, et al.

Ethics has no power or influence over sociopaths because ethics is based on
the ability to identify with another. Sociopaths lack that ability.

Joanna