[Buddha-l] A question for Jewish Buddhists

[Dan Lusthaus]

Lance,

Yes, I've run through a number of the well-known touchy subjects.

> >  Theravada monks avoid eating meat "intended" for them by
> > passing their plate one to the left, so the plate now in front of them
would
> > not be considered "intended" for them. Absurd!
> Well, this is a new one for me. I have never met such a practice.

I have both read about and personally observed it. Any Theravadin monks on
the list care to weigh in? I can't speak for how prevalent a practice it is,
or its history or justifications, but it does go on.

> I certainly don't believe there
> would be any way this could be valid.

The idea is that the restriction against meat is strictly about meat killed
specifically for you (Buddha does prohibit that in the vinaya, for karmic
reasons), so eating meat not specifically killed for you is ok (as long as
the meat-type is not on the prohibited list, which was compiled more for
political and PR reasons, than for concern over the welfare of animals, as
the vinaya makes abundantly clear). So by taking the plate of the monk next
to you, the meat couldn't possibly have been killed for you, hence you are
karmically blameless while consuming it. That's the rationale as it was
explained to me. I agree with you -- its "validity" is far-fetched. In fact,
if I remember correctly, this was the procedure for eating eggs.

>> In the account as we have it in DN II, the Buddha became ill a year or
> more before his death which has nothing to do with his last meal. There
> is no other evidence and the suggestion that his last meal was the cause
> of death is explicitly denied.

Yes, a lot of effort -- back in the olden days and in more recent times -- 
has gone into sanitizing Buddha's death. It wasn't pork, it was a mushroom,
goes one alibi. How much nicer that the canonical accounts end up blaming it
on poor unenlightened Ananda for failing to ask Buddha to hang around a
little longer -- Buddha can do anything, including extending his own life.
It seems pretty clear, however, that while subsequent embarrassment over the
manner of Buddha's death led the codifiers to modify the story, they left
enough in that it pretty clearly stemmed from his bad meal. The Pali texts
also make it clear (if one doesn't let certain other strata lead one to
overlook it) that Buddha had a number of chronic health problems (bad back,
indigestion, etc.) which were getting worse in his old age. How much more
comforting to imagine Buddha leaving this life reclining on his side, head
propped on his hand, with a happy smile on his lips... (and of course
Mahayana again sidesteps the whole thing by demoting that Sakyamuni fellow
and instead embracing a cosmic eternal Buddha who never dies ... somebody
forgot to tell them that it's confusing for an eternal Buddha to be
preaching impermanence... but this new myth was largely driven, I believe,
by the increasing difficulty Buddhists were having reconciling Buddha's
death and manner of death, even centuries later.)


> >  Connected with the assumption in the
> > previous query about insight and belief translating into observable
> > behavior, Arhats are supposed to be beyond kle"sa, etc. (otherwise what
> > benefit would arise from attaining arhatship?), but, as the Buddhist
sources
> > themselves well document, Arhats got themselves embroiled in all sorts
of
> > scandalous behavior, leading to controversies within Buddhist groups as
to
> > the status of Arhats (nicely side-stepped by Mahayana by cleaning off a
new
> > label, Bodhisattva).
> Can you prove that there are any such stories which were not invented by
> story writers long after the event ?

Which event? The controversies are well known, covered in detail in several
sectarian literatures, and led to major debates about the nature and degree
of accomplishment of Arhats. Lamotte in his Indian Buddhism gives some of
the sources. But we can find the repercussions of these debates
reverberating for centuries in Buddhist literature. It was at the core of
the schisms even within certain sects (e.g., the four branches of
vatsiputriyas split off from each other precisely over disagreements over
the nature of arhats). Sarvastivadin literature also deals with this. Do you
have doubts that this became a major issue amongst Buddhists?

Dan