[Buddha-l] Buddhists taking a stand against Islamophobia

[Franz Metcalf]

Dear Tim et al.,

Tim, you wrote,

> Paul Dundas notes that an  enlightened Jain may still walk, preach and meditate, but no new karma 
> results --and it's impossible for such a person to do violence, even involuntarily.  (Some might see that last part as dogma!)

Ah, that is fascinating and it strikes me as just what I read about arahants. You corrected me that it is karma, not suffering, that arahants don't make. You're right, thank you. I guess I'm reacting against the distinction. In fact, in your own sentence, you yourself slide from describing Jains not generating karma to them not doing violence. And I think that's fine. One who does not make new karma can hardly avoid not doing violence. I also recall that arahants cannot break the precepts, even involuntarily, just like enlightened Jains.

You also wrote,

> I think the primary intention of desisting completely from harming others is mukti.  The fact that other living beings benefit from this is  great --surely a very noble secondary!


I guess I have to agree that the Jain and Buddhist traditions run parallel here and that the primary intention on both sides is mukti/panna/nibbana. But another part of me wants to rejoice in the inseparability of the personal mukti and the inter-relational ahimsa. Can we, alternately, view this from the perspective of all living things, the collective liberative matrix? Sort of a Jeremy Bentham meets Siddhatha Gotama thing? From that perspective, what might matter most is the benefit for all; the individual intention is just the proximate cause. (But why oh why I am dragging myself into these murky philosophical depths? I don't even have my water wings!)

Oh, as for "de jure" vs "de facto" in these matters, I'm usuing de jure to mean something like "according to dogma." I think all these conjectures are almost entirely in the realm of de jure. By contrast, the de facto situation is almost never asserted to obtain (except in the Canons). The happy benefit of this for dogmatic types is that we never have to face evidence that might prove the de jure assertions counter-factual.

Cheers,

Franz