[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[Dan Lusthaus]

Andy,

>> Same question as to Timothy: Is this "suffering" in the animal or in the
>> persons abstaining or indulging?
>
> Um,  both?  What, from a Buddhist perspective, is the cause of the 
> redwood's
> suffering?

You are asking, or informing? What is the "cause"? Let me hack a few of your 
fingers off and then we will discuss that further.

>> It is very disheartening to see so many supposed compassionate Buddhists
>> (except Lidewij) eager to dismiss this issue as goat-herding when 
>> literally
>> the issue is life and death, plain, simple and stark.
>>
>
> Well, there it is.  Samsara.  Universal value.  So every redwood is 
> special,
> and thus its destruction is wrong?  Life and death are not so simple.

In fact, they are. This has nothing to do with "universal" values. It has to 
do with each and every individual life. Don't move that into the universal 
plane, or you'll start thinking that asking about what causes 'suffering' to 
a tree being chopped down is a meaningful question.


> Well, if I had to choose. . . .   This is why I brought up the Gita.  Are 
> we
> supposed to think that Arjuna can war away at his relatives without doing
> wrong as long as he is not attached to the fruit if his actions?  I don't
> think that conclusion follows for Buddhism.

It doesn't, and in Arjuna's case, it is not just that he kills without 
attachment to the fruit of action, but that it is his DHARMA to do so, being 
born a Ksatriya, into that particular disfunctional family, rightfully 
promised the kingship, etc. To not do his Dharma would be adharma, social 
disorder, according to Krsna, and Krsna informs Arjuna that he has taken 
incarnation this time precisely to battle adharma. The Gita, in fact, is 
largely designed as a rebuke to the ahimsa (non-harming) notions being 
promulgated by Buddhists and Jains at that time, which apparently were 
finding a sufficient audience to require this sort of dramatic Hindu reply. 
Even the Samkhyans eschewed 'sacrifice' as barbaric.

> So the redwood is delusional, if it suffers, because it is attached to its 
> own
> existence, when actually it is empty of self.

Suffering is delusional by nature, but it is still suffering, and one 
doesn't cure suffering (the injunction and promise of the 4 noble truths) by 
calling one's victims delusional as one violently annihilates them. To yell, 
"I am not killing you because you don't exist," while killing someone (or 
something) is more delusional.

>So it doesn't really matter
> what the attachment status of the sawyers is.

Never really does, actually. Not to the tree, anyway.

> But you are right, the good intentions don't matter, since the redwood 
> would
> suffer nonetheless. So how does one go about enlightening redwoods?  My 
> point
> would be that the imposition of a universalist position of sunyata is
> violence, and a form of attachment to non-attachment, or in other words,
> nihilism.

You are the first to bring up sunyata in this discussion, so, since we agree 
it has no place here, let's pretend you didn't say that.

Again, it is not about a universalistic position about essentialized 
redwoods, or anything else traipsing around in the rarified atmosphere of a 
"universal" plane, it's about actual, concrete, bark-and-sap, really old 
redwoods being hacked to death by assassins who attempt to rationalize their 
carnage by eclipsing, in some fashion, the bark-and-sap existence of the 
tree in front of them (e.g., by imagining a time when they might not be, 
though here they are).

> But the flip-side doesn't follow either.  Redwoods die.  The species 
> itself may
> well be headed to extinction.  Trying to save them, to preserve being, is 
> the
> other form of universalism, eternalism.

This is not something we have been discussing, i.e., preserving redwoods by 
'extraodinary means.' They are not 'fated' to disappear, and have already 
demonstrated an ability to outlive most other life-forms on the planet. If 
conditions become such that THEY -- with their proven longevity -- are 
endangered, it would seem prudent to take that as a warning sign that the 
rest of us are next, with our less robust constitutions, and deal with the 
conditions. To simply resign oneself to the ultimate demise of everything is 
annihilationalism, an extreme explicitly rejected by the Buddha and 
Buddhists.


 >So do trees have standing?  Yes,
> because they can suffer.  Not because they have a right to life or 
> existence.

The trees don't care which 'reason' you prefer to reach the conclusion they 
prefer, namely:

> And so the attitude of the actor should be kindly and compassionate.
> James Andy Stroble, PhD

Dan