[Buddha-l] more tibetan self-immolations

[Jo]

I think you meant to write Halbfass, not Haldfass.
Thanks for the citation.

JK
_____________

On Behalf Of Richard Hayes
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2012 9:39 AM


On Jan 12, 2012, at 8:37 AM, Franz Metcalf <franz at mind2mind.net> wrote:

> If the idea of an individual's karmic stream (as in, "Who or what is reborn?") is difficult to grasp, even paradoxical, surely the idea of collective karma is much more so. So difficult to grasp, in fact, that it might not be worth the effort, at least to me. Has anyone done serious work on this topic?

In his excellent article on the history of the doctrine of karma, in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wilhelm Haldfass wrote that the doctrine of collective karma, national karma, racial karma und so weiter dates back to the 19th century and has a Theosophical provenience. Once the idea was brought up, it found favor among various stripes of nationalists and social reformers. I guess if anyone can believe in nations and ethnicity as ontological realities, it's not too much of a stretch to believe that those entities can be agents and that their actions have consequences that the agents are somehow affected by. Hell, the US Supreme Court seems to have decided that corporations are legally entitled to at least some of the rights of individuals. Perhaps we should let Justices Roberts, Scalia, Allito and Thomas decide whether Exxon-Mobile has karma. They are surely as qualified as any svm or bla-ma to weigh in on such weighty matters. 

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
The University of New Mexico