[Buddha-l] Re: on eating meat

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 03:12 +0100, Mike Austin wrote:

> I find it hard to accept that one being reaps the result of another being's action.

Ordering (or asking) someone to do something is an action. So when one
asks another to do something, one gets the effects of the action as if
one did the action oneself, and the person who carries out the order
also gets the consequences of the action. The example in the AbhK is
person A asking person B to kill A's mother. Killing one's own mother,
of course, is one of the five grave sins. So if A gets B to kill A's
mother, it would seem as though neither one is killing his own mother.
But since A gives the order, A gets the karma of killing his own mother,
and B gets the karma of killing someone. So A gets the heavier karmic
burden, even though B does the deed.

I think there is a discussion of this whole thing in a paper I wrote
many years ago. It's on my download page, I think. That's at
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes/download.html. 

>  The unwitting cat owner whose cat brings home a gift of a mouse or a bird is 
> in for a shock.

Yes, if one orders a cat to go kill a bird, one can look forward to
being a canary in the next life. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico