[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[Lidewij Niezink]

How nice to see Buddha-l up and running again! You people help me digest my
daily life so much more comfortable. ;-)

Richard wrote: I read recently that in Nederlands a law was passed that no
animals may be killed without first being stunned. I'm not sure what exactly
that means. Perhaps Erik can amplify. What I read was that some Jews and
some Muslims were unhappy with the new Dutch law, since it would render
illegal the ritual killing required in kosher and halal (if that's the right
word) meat preparation. I suppose the Dutch Mahāyānins were also unhappy
with the law, since it did not ban ALL killing of animals. Those Dutch
people are so hard to please, eh?

It has been a hot topic here in the Netherlands over the past few weeks.
Unfortunately, animal welfare was not so much the aim of the game...
political scoring was. The dutch Party for the Animals tried to score some
points before the summerrecess in getting ritual slaughter forbidden. it
would cause more suffering to slice their throat unstunned than to shoot a
pin through their head before slaughter. No conclusive research seems to be
done and stunning goes wrong in (don't pin me on the exact numbers plse) 5%
of the cases. Now our Halal and Jewish friends have to import their meat
from elsewhere or pass the German border and kill the cows/sheep/goats
there. Unless (we are in Holland after all, compromise is our way of life,
nothing gets ever done) those who wish to slaughter their animals ritually
can scientifically prove that this way of slaughter does not cause more harm
than the usual way. In that case they'll get stamped governmental document
that they can go about their business as usual. One by one. The discussion
turned around animal rights and religious freedom. No mention was made of
the suffering the animals would have to go through in the years before their
5 minutes lasting end of life.

So far for compassion.

cheers,
Lidewij


On 8 July 2011 07:32, JKirkpatrick <jkirk at spro.net> wrote:

>
>
>
> 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
>
>
>
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>
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-- 
Dr. Lidewij Niezink
 <http://www.linkedin.com/in/lniezink>http://nl.linkedin.com/in/lniezink
Charter for Compassion:
http://tinyurl.com/24xxacb
Empathy:
http://tinyurl.com/2a8qbsz