[Buddha-l] Buddhist pacifism

[Joy Vriens]

curt wrote:

> Saying exactly what caused what in history is always speculative. But 
> there is plenty of evidence that slave resistance played a significant 
> role in the end of African Slavery.

I better drop this subject, you are much more knowledgable than me (and
I am not excluding that you aren't also for the other subjects we are
discussing). Buddha-L has become much better than the news for me lately ;-)

>> Yes, I just read the other day that Plotinus (Plotin?) dreamed of 
>> going to the Orient (like Pyrrhon and others) for that reason, which 
>> proves it must have really been a hype.

> In fact he made it part way - but the expedition he joined up with met 
> with disaster, and Plotinus almost lost his life. I think he actually 
> was enslaved for a while, while we're still on the subject of slavery. 
> And Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, spent his youth as a slave.

I often tend to think that romanticism and fanatical identification with
real or fictional heroes are relatively recent phenomena, but I have no
problem imagining Plotinus as a sickly dreamy boy imagining traveling to
far off India like his  beloved philosphers from the past. And then I
think of the Buddha and can imagine him too as a young man that was
wildly enthusiastic about becoming a Fully Enlightened One, perfect in
knowledge and conduct, the Happy One, the knower of the world, the
paramount trainer of beings, the teacher of gods and men, the
Enlightened One, the Blessed One,  etc. everything that was the dream of
the day of young immature Indians inclined to ascetism. Is nobody safe 
from fiction?

> And I would also say that even in cases where one decides that violence 
> may be "necessary" - that one still has to bear the karmic burden of 
> one's actions.

Or simply without bringing in karma, every action has consequences and
side effects that we aren't even aware of.

> I would never say that violence is simply "OK". It is 
> always wrong to hurt someone else - but things aren't always so simple, 
> as in the case of what to do with an individual who has committed 
> multiple violent crimes and intends to commit more. Whatever is done to 
> that person is not "free" of karma - but I still think it has to be 
> done.

Which is kind of strange, because karma is already linked to specific
sets of ethics, discovered/repertoriated/invented by renunciants, further
edited by Buddhists and then there seems to be nother sets of ethics
that are even "more" ethical than karma (e.g. the bodhisattva ideal) and
can somehow override it.

> Nor do I think that a slave is free of karma when he or she slits 
> the Master's throat, and those of his family, while they sleep in their 
> beds - but I would much rather have that happen than have to live in a 
> world in which slave masters sleep peacefully. And since I feel that 
> way, then in order to be consistent (which is not always a high priority 
> for me, but in this case I think its a good idea), then I would have to 
> say that I would be willing to take on that karmic debt as well.

Willing or not, there is no choice anyway.