[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[Franz Metcalf]

Dan et al.,

Dan suggested to me,

> Now go do something productive.


Thank you, I promise I will. But just a quick work, first, since one  
of Dan's points really disturbed me. I had previously written that  
calming the suffering in the mind of the oppressor/harmer/animal  
killer was a desideratum. A lesser one that ending the oppression/ 
harming/killing, but still a desideratum. But then Dan asked

> Which is preferable?
>
> (1) That a deranged, angry, greedy, "attached" individual
> refrains from killing your family?
>
> OR
>
> (2) Someone with cool, non-attached precision, wipes out
> your family and moves on...

Naturally, the former is preferable, at least to me (since I am  
hideously attached, especially to my daughter). But Dan's question  
sparked a harder (at least to me) question:

Which is preferable?

(1) That a suffering, “attached” individual kills your family?

OR

(2) That a non-suffering, "non-attached" individual kills your family?

This questions threatens to upend my previous view. It seems to me  
that that view was based on appreciating, as Joanna noted, a both/and  
view of suffering: that the killer suffers as well as those killed.  
The seemingly Buddhist implication here would be that it would be  
better that the killer did *not* suffer. Then at least that small  
amount of dukkha would not have to be experienced. That sounds all  
well and good until one is put (sheesh, thanks alot, Dan!) in the  
position of the massacred family. In *that* case, at least for myself,  
I'm certain I *want* the killer to be suffering as he kills. And let  
me quickly stress that this is not because I want revenge or  
punishment to befall him. Rather, it is because I feel it is only  
through suffering as he kills that the killer might eventually realize  
that this action is deeply wrong, motivated as it is by one or more of  
the three poisons and resulting in a great deal of unnecessary harm.

We recognize this in our legal systems, as Dan has noted, and Dan also  
reminds us that general Buddhist ethics recognizes this in its central  
tenet that intention matters. This is what separates Buddhists from  
Jains and possibly other, more modern, materialist ethical thinks  
following various kriyāvādas. We can err in focusing too much on the  
inner state of the actor (this is what Dan is warning us against); we  
can err in focusing too much on the result of the act (this is what  
Timothy's quoted teacher [note: NOT Timothy] warned against). We need  
some balance here, but Buddhist texts and the very existence of the  
Vinaya as one of the three jewels testify to a balance overwhelmingly  
favoring focusing on the act.

Surely we all agree on that, yes? The now unresolved question in my  
mind is: Is the suffering a person doing harm experiences kusala or at  
least useful? If so--and it does seem so in the family-killing  
illustration--then we might want more it, not less.

Franz