[Buddha-l] Buddhas Meditation

[Dan Lusthaus]

Hi Andy,

>> >> Same question as to Timothy: Is this "suffering" in the animal or in 
>> >> the
>> >> persons abstaining or indulging?
>> >
>> > Um,  both?  [...]
>> 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.

The question mark through me.

>I am interested in the
> Buddhist perspective on violence,

As discussions in the past on this list illustrated, that is not something 
in the singular; there are numerous perspectives, and each has further 
caveats and qualifications. In general pretty much every religion says it is 
against murder, war, etc. Then comes the details, exceptions, actual 
histories, etc. Buddhists fare well in such comparisons, but they don't 
remain squeaky clean.

> The importance of death is a universalist question.

That is one approach, not the only one. Death is the most existentially 
impinging reminder of impermanence, loss, i.e., suffering. As such it is 
also painfully particular and individual.

According to the early Buddhist texts, Buddha discovers pratitya-samutpada 
on the final night under the Bodhi tree by beginning his meditation with the 
question: "Why is there death?" He had previously that night traced out how 
his current circumstance was the result of actions, attitudes, activities 
engaged in at a previous moment, which themselves were consequent on prior 
actions, which were consequent on prior actions -- noting the causal 
connections -- and tracing these chains back through his life, into his 
previous life, and into the life before that, and on and on. That gets 
expressed as a "principle" of karma, but the recovery was of specific, 
individual actions. In the second watch of the night, he then does the same 
for other sentient beings, tracing back their past (and potentially future) 
lives, based on their actions (karma). So he has the "principle of karma", 
one might even say its apparent "universal" extension, but culled and 
grounded in particulars, not universalistic reasoning.

In the third and final watch of the night, he asks: "Why is there death?" He 
is not asking about a specific universal value, but about the *fact* that 
everything is impermanent. And that certainly includes concern with the 
attendant emotional disruptions that death bring -- both thoughts of one's 
own death as well as the death of dear ones, even sometimes strangers or 
redwoods. If he wanted to ask a "universalistic" question, he would have 
asked: "Why is there impermanence?" instead, but he asks "Why is there 
Death?" because the issue is not the valueless or value-drained factoid of 
impermanence, but the actual, deep and unavoidable impact that such 
impermanence has on every particular thing. Even thoughts. "Death" = loss = 
pain = impermanence. Hence the formula in Pali texts: all is impermanent, 
all is dukkha.

There might be a presumption somewhere in there that eternal life -- which 
lots of naive people appear to crave -- would be preferable, but no 
indication that Buddha is specifically concerned with that, aside from its 
being one of the numerous implications of the actuality and ineluctability 
of death.

The answer he lights on: There is death because there is birth. In other 
words, whatever arises, must cease. Whatever is put together, must come 
apart. So the next question becomes: "Why is there birth?" By the end of the 
night, he had figured out pratitya-samutpada, which is the content of 
Buddha's enlightenment.

(Since he is working backwards from consequents to their causes, does that 
make him a reverse consequentialist?)

>Suffering is not universal, it is a fact, and
> so not the basis for absolute ethics.

Since death and suffering are synonymous (see above), each is as universal 
or non-universal as the other. They can both be taken either way. The 
Buddhist foundational observation, sabbam dukkham (all is suffering; First 
Noble Truth), is easy to take as a universal proposition, though I would 
caution against that. It is properly understood in concrete, distinct, 
particular circumstances, not as a general, bloodless factoid. That, because 
of impermanence (= death) "everything" (sabba) undergoes suffering, makes it 
universally applicable, found everywhere and anywhere, but not itself a 
universal.


>> 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.

Not necessarily. Emptiness is such a misunderstood, misapplied term, I don't 
see why bringing in the conceptual anarchy associated with that will clarify 
this discussion. It's not necessary.

>All I am suggesting is that from a Buddhist
> perspective, death is not an absolute tragedy.

And I am suggesting that from standard Buddhist perspectives, death both is 
and isn't an absolute tragedy. Forgetting about the other side of the 
equation creates a lop-sided, untenable Buddhism.

>And the
> suffering of the trees has little to do with the environemtal implications 
> of
> their survival.

It's as relevant a factor as any of the others one might consider, 
especially in the context of their survival. That's why some people prefer 
to understand pratitya-samutpada as "relationality". Have you read Frank 
Cook's book on Huayan, _The Jewel Net of Indra_? My students love that book 
because it makes the case for environmentalism using Buddhist causal 
theories, esp. pratitya-samutpada and the multi-relational mutualities of 
Huayan thinking. If Huayan stands for anything, it is that adequate 
attention to individuals is never isolationism. Nothing can be properly 
understood apart from the multiple webs of relations that engender and 
contextualize it. A redwood divorced from its environment is no longer a 
living thing, but a mere item for more or less idle speculation.

> 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

The tree does not care what formulation someone leans on to find a reason to 
leave it alone. The tree is a consequentialist. It just wants those who 
might destroy it to desist.

(and if you want a virtue-ethics version of that, check out Spinoza's 
conatus, or Nietzsche's will-to-overcome. The labels obscure, pidgeon-hole; 
we're better off without them; the tree is also a Spinozist and Neitzschean, 
etc., but without having to read them or argue about such labels).

Dan