[Buddha-l] Buddhists taking a stand against Islamaphobia

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 4-8-2012 16:48, Richard Hayes schreef:
> On Aug 3, 2012, at 00:57 , Franz Metcalf <franz at mind2mind.net> wrote:
>
>> We live on the suffering of others.
> That is the fate of all heterophagic life forms. So one could well say that our very survival depends on the death of others, which is the occasion for what some psychologists call existential guilt. Still, it does not follow from that that our every action causes suffering to others, unless you want to push the point that our very survival is a requisite to any action, and therefore every action, being the product of a heterophagic survivor, prerequires the death of others.
This is only true if:

 1. you eat beings with any kind of self awareness
 2. you kill them before they die a natural death
 3. these beings have a drive of self preservation and don't want to be
    eaten

>
> There are philosophers (Jack Meiland comes to mind) who have made the point quite convincingly that if one intentionally performs act A and knows that act A will have, or will increase the likelihood of having, consequence C, then one intends C. The stock example is driving while intoxicated. One's primary intention in driving while intoxicated is to transport oneself from one place to another, but if one know that driving in that state is more likely to involve an accident, then in effect one intends to have the accident. This line of reasoning can be applied very widely. In eating, one's primary intention is to dispel hunger and survive, but if one knows that eating entails the death of a living being, then every act of eating is the intentional destruction of life. And desisting from eating, which entails one's own death, is also the intentional destruction of life. There is no getting out of it.
>
This has one big flaw: human beings are not rational and are not aware
of what they are doing most of the time, even if they are sober. The
problem with all these modern philosophers is that they only can deal
with people that fit into their musings and not the ones they meet, hate
and love.


Erik