[Buddha-l] Bangladesh Muslim lovefest

[Richard Hayes]

On Oct 1, 2012, at 10:58 , "Dan Lusthaus" <vasubandhu at earthlink.net> wrote:

>> It's interesting to to note that the Buddha advised pretty strongly against blaming people.
> 
> On the contrary, unlike the attempts to make the specifics of the situation dissolve into generalized abstraction, for Buddha there was no such thing as disembodied generalities that did anything or that incurred any karma. Karma belongs to the people who do the action, and it is they to whom responsibility and consequences were assigned.

Karma is an applied instance of causality, and causality works only at the level of particular and specific dharmas. Conceptual fictions, such as the notion of individual people, have no causal efficacy. And so such abstractions as responsibility really play no role in conventional Buddhism. There are, of course, consequences to specific mental actions. A specific instance of harboring a hateful thought has the consequence of duḥkha in the uninterrupted continuum of thoughts (citta-saṃtāna) that serves as a basis for the designation of a person.

If individuals are conceptual fictions that have no causal efficacy, it is even more true that collections of individuals are conceptual fictions that have no causal efficacy. It make no sense in conventional Buddhism to talk about something like Islām, or the body of one billion individual Muslims, or the entire state of Israel as a cause of duḥkha. It is precisely that sort of thinking, the thinking wherein one completely misidentifies what kinds of things can be causes of what, that the Buddha called ayoniso manasikāra (groundless thinking). It is groundless thinking that serves as a condition for delusion, and delusion that gives rise to greed and hatred.

Dharmakīrti began a tradition of looking at the whole idea of causality rather carefully. According to him it would be reckless thinking to say that X is a cause of Y unless there is an invariable connection (sambandha) between the putative cause and the putative effect. So if one were to say, for example, that Republicans cause deficits in the budget, one would have to show that budget deficits occur always and only when Republicans have control of budgetary policies. To make such an assertion in the absence of the "always and only" condition constitutes ayoniśo manaskāra (if I may be forgiven from switching from Pali to Sanskrit).

The sort of Mosaic Buddhism to which we are occasionally subjected on buddha-l is a serious distortion of the principal principles of Buddhism. The attempt to identify one particular group of people as especially dangerous is simply bad Buddhism. (It is also fallacious by Western canons of reasoning.)

It might not be a bad idea to contemplate what this sutta means:

"A person who associates himself with certain views, considering them as best and making them supreme in the world, he says, because of that, that all other views are inferior; therefore he is not free from contention (with others). In what is seen, heard, cognized and in ritual observances performed, he sees a profit for himself. Just by laying hold of that view he regards every other view as worthless. Those skilled (in judgment) say that (a view becomes) a bond if, relying on it, one regards everything else as inferior. Therefore a bhikkhu should not depend on what is seen, heard or cognized, nor upon ritual observances. He should not present himself as equal to, nor imagine himself to be inferior, nor better than, another. Abandoning (the views) he had (previously) held and not taking up (another), he does not seek a support even in knowledge. Among those who dispute he is certainly not one to take sides. He does not [have] recourse to a view at all. In whom there is no inclination to either extreme, for becoming or non-becoming, here or in another existence, for him there does not exist a fixed viewpoint on investigating the doctrines assumed (by others). Concerning the seen, the heard and the cognized he does not form the least notion. That brahmana who does not grasp at a view, with what could he be identified in the world?

"They do not speculate nor pursue (any notion); doctrines are not accepted by them. A (true) brahmana is beyond, does not fall back on views."

Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico