[Buddha-l] Bangladesh Muslim lovefest

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Op 3-10-2012 7:52, Dan Lusthaus schreef:
>>> Vasubandhu's Vimsika propounds collective karma.
>>
>> I have read that text ten or twelve times and have never seen the
>> passage to which you refer. Could you supply the reference?
>
>
> Second, there is no Buddhist literature or discourse that fails to
> deal with persons and groups, esp. in the context of karma. Not only
> is the sangha a group -- which includes bhikkhus (one type of group)
> and bhikkhunis (another group), and according some male laypeople and
> female laypeople (two more groups), each of which have many
> subdivisions into additional groups.
My problem with this is that groups are not real things, but concepts, 
ways of dealing with phenomena, or do you want to return to Medieval 
conceptual realism? The letters with an enclosed area in this text form 
a group, people who pick their noses at Halloween form a group, you can 
make as much groups as you want.
>
> That said, let's turn to the Vimsika. As mentioned, collective karma
> is one of its major underlying themes of Vimsika, so laying out a
> comprehensive exposition would go far beyond what is reasonable for an
> email message, so I will give some basic examples, and trust that the
> rest will be obvious to anyone reading the text for themselves afterward.
>
> Shifted to more paramarthic discourse, this is explained by
> Vasubandhu, in part, by seed theory (those are his causally
> efficacious dharmas), which he distinguishes as own-seeds and
> seeds-from-others. The root of communal karma is intersubjective
> influence -- Buddha's discourse, e.g., providing positive influences
> (cf. Asanga's notion of sruta-vasana undoing the alaya-vijnana in the
> first ch. of Mahayanasamgraha), while we each influence, and thus
> share in the karma of each other, and help formulate others' karma as
> well as our own. Racists reinforce each other, as do Quakers,
> Buddhists, and Muslims. The means each takes to disrupt interference
> with that reinforcement also differs from group to group, e.g., on
> tolerating free speech.(*)
The problem here is that karma always has the meaning of some kind of 
action with consequences. So if I receive passively influences from 
others, I cannot be blamed unless I have chosen to be part of that 
group. Group karma is just individual karma that comes from chosing to 
join a group or not leaving the group. If group karma would exist there 
would have to be karmavipāka by the group as a whole and not by the 
individual members. I did not see the term 'seeds of others' in the 
Vimsika, but it is a ridiculous idea that anyone can receive just any 
seed from anybody. This would totally deny the efficaciousness of karma.

Erik