[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[andy]

Dan wrote:
> 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.
>

We are getting off the topic.  Yes, I aim at informing.  I am interested in the 
Buddhist perspective on violence, as we have discussed several times.  I am 
quite happy that we are down to severed digits as opposed to splitting heads 
into eight pieces. Now if the aforementioned digits fell into a monk's begging 
bowl . . . 

> >> 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.

The importance of death is a universalist question. It is putting life up 
there as an absolute value, the one that is the basis of all others, and so 
inviolate.  That is universalism. Suffering is not universal, it is a fact, and 
so not the basis for absolute ethics.  

> 
> > 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.

Yes, absolutely.  But this is the point.  Violence is not justified in itself, 
but  by some other value, say "law and order"  or the maintenance of the 
castes.  The ahimisic traditions are radical in challenging the necessity of 
this order.  If pushed, you might find me claiming that Buddhism is anarchist, 
and a major part of that is denying the necessity of violence. 

> 
> > 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.

But we can't, Dan! First because I did, and secondly because it is pertinent. 
The attachment to the idea of atman is the source of suffering, and the 
attachment to the svabhava of an individual redwood is the cause of our 
suffering at its demise. All I am suggesting is that from a Buddhist 
perspective, death is not an absolute tragedy.  Of course, this is not the 
same thing as maintaining it is justified.  The denial of atman no more 
justifies violence than it justifies ahimsa. This is my only point.

 > 
> 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.

Yes, again, and that was my point.  But prudence is a consequentialist theory, 
and I don'think we are talking about redwoods in the coalmine.  And the 
suffering of the trees has little to do with the environemtal implications of 
their survival.
> 
>  >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.

Paternalism: we should not be kindly and compassionate because redwoods prefer 
it, especially since I suspect that they do not prefer it when it comes to 
competing species or lumberjacks, but because it is the right thing to do

-- 
 Andy Stroble,