[Buddha-l] Natural Evil

[Shiangtai Tuan]

Dear Buddha-l-owner:

         You wrote:

"Your message seems to be incomplete, stopping in the middle of a
sentence. Do you wish to send a completed version?"

         I checked and made modification to the ending.  I hope it is 
less confusing now.

         Thank you for running this list and I do enjoy your 
postings.  I feel I have learn a lot from them.
Thank you.

Yours, Shiangtai

===================================

>...
>....  Here, though, the notion is counterintuitive for most people 
>who haven't studied various philosophies.

Hi,
         I am in this category.  So, ignore the following if you wish.

         The universe is there.  We can only understand it with our 
ability of recognize or interpret it.  Since the lowest level of 
understanding is to assign a yes/no answer (binary, if you want a 
fancy term) people start to evaluate things by up/down, white/black, 
forward/back, right/wrong, good/evil, big/small, 
family-size/economy-size, full/empty, yin/yang ...  The next step is 
to associate those on one side of the "/" sign together.  So, up, 
forward, big, full ... are good and right.

         The real universe is not two dimensional.  Black is not the 
opposite of white.  The lack of black is not white and the lack of 
white is not black either.  (In Chinese opera, you put white powder 
on to make the face white, you put black on to make face black.  You 
put other color on for other color or pattern.)
         There are time one needs to go forward and there are times 
for going back.  There should be no value judgement.
         Yin and yang are the two different tendencies neither is to 
be rejected.  To fine tune the situation one can go to the division 
of 4, 8, 64, 128 ... combinations.

         A break: There are two kinds of people: one kind divide 
people in two kinds and the other kind do not.

         Of those many ways of making division, I think there are 
mainly three big category.
         There are those objective divisions like color, direction ...
         There are those by convention.  Let's put right and wrong in here.
         In my understanding it is easy to illustrate the definition 
of right vs wrong: Go forth at green light is right; go at red is wrong.
         There are those by subjective feelings:    (You may argue 
that right and wrong is in this category.  It is only a matter of definition.)
         In my understanding it is easy to illustrate the definition 
of good vs evil:  Whatever "I" (first person singular of the person 
making the statement) like is good, whatever I do not like is 
evil.  Here, "I" can be replaced by "we".  When a group of people 
making these statements will be more convincing, either by the 
increase volume of the sound they make or by the added strength of 
weapon they carry.  When the Church (that is, the leaders and the 
blind followers) like some body, they say "good" so they can bless 
people,  grant kings power...  When they do no like somebody, they 
say "evil" and they can burn people alive as witches.  When they 
dislike some at one time and then like the same person later they can 
burn Joan d'Arc and then Saint her.  I have met many divorced 
people.  I thought I was lucky I never met the evil one.  Finally I 
realized no matter which of the two I met, the other one is, by 
definition, the "evil" one.

         When people are so used to the concept of assigning others 
as good and evil, the even would go so far as calling anything, 
including nature phenomenon as good or evil by the standard of 
whether they like it or not.  If a rain benefit the farmers it is 
good.  If it rains on their leaking roof it is evil.  When the 
wall-like wave comes in through Chien Tong river month it is the 
rear, once per year scene of beauty to be enjoyed.  When it comes 
without warning to a populated area so as to drawn thousands it is 
evil.  Tsunami has been in existence for millions of years.  Only 
when it comes to modern era when there are many people to kill it 
became evil.  One could very well attribute the evilness to the high 
population instead of to the waves.  Earth quake is one of the 
natural phenomenon which people have hard time to find benefit.  So, 
every one calls it evil because no one likes it.  Well, it is lucky 
that the earth crest moves in small amount with little quakes here 
and there.  If it does not have such quakes and wait, it is going to 
move a huge amount per shift.  Say, if S Andrea's fault did not move 
a little a time but wait to move two feet at one shot, it might send 
SF completely off into the ocean. In this sense, little quakes can 
release the pressure and therefore avoid a huge quake.  It benefit 
humanity.   If you really have to assign some moral value to a 
natural phenomenon, it can be call "good", not evil, after all.

Best Regards, Shiangtai