[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[JKirkpatrick]

On Jul 7, 2011, at 17:28, "JKirkpatrick" <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

> Come on, you philosophes--------------kindly explain why this
phrase
> makes no sense, or viprysasa-wise, how it does make
> sense(????)
>
> "eating meat with non-attachment is preferable to being
attached to
> vegetarianism.."

Richard wrote:

It makes perfect sense as a statement of relative values. The
word "preferable" is a value judgment.

What the statement means is that the person making it values
flexibility and latitude to moral absolutism. It means one
prefers moral latitudinarianism to moral perfectionism (if I may
be permitted to use the standard terminology from the field of
religious ethics).
-------------------

OK . But as a statement it elides the empirical fact that not all
vegetarians are "attached" to being vegetarian, just as all meat
eaters are "not non-attached" when they are eating it.  Thus, I
don't see it as a valid empirical statement, even if it is a
relative statement value-wise. I considered the statement humbug
from an empirical viewpoint. 

However, no person or practice was denigrated as inferior.
Instead, a statement was characterised as nonsense. Nothing
foolish or (name your negative descriptor) was attributed either
to a person or to a practice. 

Seems that I switched from the universalist/relativist frame of
the discussion to an empirical frame.  But then, we do wander on
occasion, don't we.

Joanna