[Buddha-l] Buddha's Meditation

[Dan Lusthaus]

>I didn't, even for a cosmological minute, think he was saying it was ok for 
>things to be exterminated.
Timothy Smith


Timothy, I never said he did. I indicated that it was unavoidable 
consequence of that line of thinking, and can only be contravened by 
bringing in a different line of thinking, which I presume Richard and most 
folks would do in most cases -- though when I've asked the vegetarians among 
us to raise their hands, there are lots of cutsey alibis for why chewing on 
the flesh of exterminated beings is not a practice to be given up.

> Rather, it seemed clear enough to me that he was admonishing the assembly 
> to act as they saw fit
> concerning the redwoods, but to act with non-attachment, thus lessening 
> their suffering ...

Who is the "their" in that last phrase? The redwood's suffering, or the 
"assembly's"?

Kill with non-attachment. You've made my point.

In an earlier thread some while back, Richard said as much about 
vegetarianism, up to the point of saying that eating meat with 
non-attachment is preferable to being attached to vegetarianism... showing a 
good deal of self-centered concern for one's own narcissistic attitudes for 
which flesh-and-blood animals -- or redwoods -- are only conceptual props... 
Sorry, Timothy, that's immoral and dishonest in my book, especially when 
trussed up as a superior moral stance.

Dan