[Buddha-l] more tibetan self-immolations

[L.S. Cousins]

I don't think this will work. It is simply the standard view for all 
kinds of kamma that if you assent to an action, before or after, you 
will receive the kammic consequences.

I am open to the possibility that the Theosophists obtained their view 
from Tibetan sources, but I have not seen clear evidence to that effect.

Lance Cousins


On 12/01/2012 19:39, Richard Nance wrote:
> Maybe so -- I don't feel qualified to dispute Halbfass on much of
> anything -- but there are arguably antecedents in the classical
> literature. Consider, for example, Abhidharmakośa IV.72cd (senādiṣv
> ekakāryatvāt sarve kartṛvadanvitā) and the bhāṣya thereon. Pruden's
> translation of the relevant section (from a French translation of a
> Chinese translation of the Sanskrit) reads:
>
> ***
> "When many persons are united with the intention to kill, either in
> war, or in the hunt, or in banditry, who is guilty of murder, if only one of
> them kills?
>
> 72c-d As soldiers, etc., concur in the realization of the same
> effect, all are as guilty as the one who kills.
>
> Having a common goal, all are guilty exactly as he who among them
> kills, for all mutually incite one another, not through speech, but by the
> very fact that they are united together in order to kill.
>
> But is the person who has been constrained through force to join the
> army also guilty?
>
> Evidently so, unless he has formed the resolution, "Even in order to
> save my life, I shall not kill a living being."
>
> ***
>
> A quick pass over the extant Sanskrit suggests that the translation is
> generally reliable (though one might, of course, quibble over points
> of detail). As I recall, the position isn't explicitly thematized as a
> notion of "collective karma" in the ADKbh, but it does look like a
> possible antecedent to at least some of the views that Halbfass is
> tracing to Theosophists.