[Buddha-l] on eating meat

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 23:11 +0800, Wong Weng Fai wrote:

> Isn't reading Buddha-L during your office hour stealing? 

Studies have shown that people who read buddha-l regularly go cheerfully
into the world with almost superhuman energy. The average worker who
spends ten minutes reading buddha-l can then do an hour's worth of work
in the ten minutes immediately after reading buddha-l. So actually
reading buddha-l on the boss's nickel is a way of giving daana back to
the company. If this were not so, it would surely result in a law being
passed in Singapore specifying the punishment of caning to anyone caught
reading buddha-l on company time.

> Wait, isn't thinking about your lunch while your boss pile up your work also stealing? 

Perhaps, but I make up for it by lying awake at night thinking about
work. Now if the boss would just install a time clock in my bedroom....

> I think we have to recall the Buddha's advice in the Dhammacakkapavatana
> Sutta: "avoid the two extremes (of self-indulgence and
> self-mortification)" one should find one's "middle path".

Probably so, and in so doing we might be mindful of the fact that the
"middle" has shifted considerably toward the extreme of self-indulgence
during the past 2500 years.

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico