[Buddha-l] Re: Greetings from Oviedo

[Joy Vriens]

Dan Lusthaus wrote:

> It seems there has never been a year in recorded history in which some armed
> conflict wasn't occurring someplace. It sometimes looks like there are mere
> periods of relative calm between major conflicts, and those periods we call
> peace. That would be to view things through a very pessimistic cast.

But quite realistic I think, especially considering that wars can be
teleported and remote-controlled on selected battlefield areas.

>>Violence and ultraviolence can end an open conflict, but not the
>>causes that led up to it.

> That's still better than doing nothing at all.

I don't know. Sometimes things need time and often military intervention
creates other problems that aren't apparent straight away. In order to
play God (in his punishing role) or Super righter of wrongs one needs to 
have the omniscience of
a God. There also is the alternative of a more multilateral approach,
where one admits one hasn't the monopoly on right view and action.

>>by destroying many lives, isn't that ironic? Apart from considering how
>>"saved" a traumatised person or country is.

> My wife is Japanese, and neither she nor her family nor her friends seem
> very traumatized. Japan today is more traumatized by fifteen years of
> recession than by any lingering WW II vestiges. The only remaining trauma of
> WW II seems to be by Westerners who are guilty for winning, and
> concentration camp survivors for surviving. The latter is unavoidable, the
> former is absurd.

Absurd? There is a reason for everything that happens. If it happens,
there is a reason for it. If one thinks something is absurd, it is
perhaps that one's point of view needs to be readjusted.

>>There are desperate situations in which people do desperate things.
>>Those actions should not be a guideline or a justification for actions
>>of a democracy.

> The issue is not to judge, but which actions brought that desparate
> situation to an end. Interminable negotions about conditions of surrender
> would have doomed many additional people.

Lance and Stephen brought up another opinion about it, different from
yours. I will need to look into this to form my own opinion.

>>The bomb dropped on Hiroshima contained Uranium, the one used on
>>Nagasaki contained Plutonium. Part of the reason for dropping two bombs
>>was because the Americans wanted to see the effect of both designs."
>>http://www.banthebomb.org/archives/magazine/hiroshim.htm (it's the first
>>link I found, this is the information I was looking for, I don't know
>>about the rest of this site).

> I addressed this confused accusation of calculated sadism in a previous
> message.

Everybody seems to be lost in darkness, except the USA, who President
after President, generation after generation seem to be doing exactly
the right thing for the good of all. Any different opinion on this seems
to be qualified by you as confused, fallacious etc.

>>Dan, you tell me I am too simplistic and reductive, but read what you
>>just wrote here: "Violence ultimately is *just* another form of
>>impermanence". That is acceptable for a practising Buddhist, on a very
>>personal practice level when confronted with it, but we can't use this
>>reasoning to condone violence.

> Eating is violence (even by vegans); breathing is violence (every inhale bri
> ngs in thousands of microbes that die the moment the hit the lining of your
> lungs); plowing the earth is violence; surgery is violence; heating food is
> violence; even this relatively civilized discussion is violent. That's why
> Buddha said *all* is suffering. So one tries to turn poison into medicine.
> Medicine basically consists of toxic materials that one would not take if
> one were not ill. It is poison judiciously applied. Sadly, the same can be
> said for violence.

One moment I accept that eating is violence and the next I am throwing
atom bombs on crowded towns, with no difference between the former and
the latter. Whether one kills or lets oneself kill, one is a killer.
Someone eating a salad as guilty of violence as someone conceiving,
producing and throwing an atom bomb. This sort of reasoning banalizes
killing and violence. It tells us that whatever we do is violence. The
positive side of this reasoning is that it removes counterproductive
righteousness, the negative side is that there is no incentive to
refrain from killing and greater violence.

>>But, when the life of individuals is at stake, they should never become
>>abstractions, simple equations like if X < Y than X is acceptable.

> On the contrary, that's precisely what ethics is. In the messy real world of
> better/worse (not absolute good/bad) we have no alternative.

The reign of quantity. That should make ethics a whole lot easier.

We still have the alternative of not playing the game, do we? Where does 
renunciation
come in?

If ethics are necessarily messy -because the world is messy (not 
absolute good/bad)- why do we
need ethics, when we already have the law of the survival of the fittest 
(better/worse)
and why should we then intervene at all? On the basis of what ethics, that
isn't of this world, if the world already has its own ethics that leaves no
alternative as you suggest?

> An example from _Jewish Literacy_ by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, pp. 557-58:
> 
> "The rabbis of the Talmud, for example, raise the following hypothetical
> question: Two men are in the desert, and only one of them has water. If he
> shares the water with his companion, he and his companion will both die; if
> he keeps the water for himself, he will live and only his companion will die.
> What should he do?
> 
> "One rabbi, Bar Petura, rules that the man should split the water, even if
> he dies as a result. Rabbi Akiva teaches, however, that the man with the
> water has the right to drink it.
> 
> "The debate had long struck me as interesting but remote, until I hear Elie
> Wiesel, the noted writer and Holocaust survivor, refer to it in a lecture he
> delivered on Rabbi Akiva. 'Rabbi Akiva,' Wiesel said in reference to Akiva's
> statement that the man with the water had the right to drink it, 'was very
> hard, very hard on the survivor.'"

I agree. But I think Rabbi Petura was right because love (including self
respect as self love) is the only thing worth living for. Survival is
not a value for me since I am mortal anyway. I can live in Bar Petura's 
world, I can only survive in Rabbi Akiva's world.