[Buddha-l] "Nature" and "Natural"

[Jim Peavler]

On Oct 25, 2005, at 6:28 AM, curt wrote:

>
> In Buddhist terms I would take "nature" to be everything that is 
> subject to change - (which doesn't really leave much else, does it?).

Being the one guilt of bringing "nature" and "natural" into the 
discussion of meat eating, I must confess that the discussion has 
convinced me that bringing these concepts into a discussion of buddhist 
thought may be similar to claiming Christ is a bodhisattva. It is a 
part of western mythology that doesn't mix well with eastern mythology 
(eastern and western and also parts of western mythology probably).

Anyhow, of importance to Buddhism, I think are the noble truths and the 
8-fold path and ideas derived from them. I doubt that Buddhists n the 
formative years (which years haven't been formative I wonder) ever had 
the concept "nature" or "natural" and did not prohibit meat eating 
because it was "unnatural" but because is was a cause of unpleasantness 
to a fellow sentient being. About all the discussion of "Nature" with a 
capital "N" that I can think of in Buddhism is that all sentient beings 
suffer discomfort and pain and death. That is pretty much an empirical 
fact.  The other major principle is that all things are conditioned, 
which, clearly makes no distinction between humans or angels or beasts 
or inanimate objects, of universes.

The idea of "Nature" as "all that out there in the universe that isn't 
a product of man" seems not to have occurred in Buddhism.

If somebody knows different, then I will be proud to read about it.