[Buddha-l] Nalanda's library destruction

[Richard Hayes]

On May 16, 2013, at 9:53, "Jo" <ugg-5 at spro.net> wrote:

> But I am still
> interested in opinions on the Nirvana Sutra citation.  Does this actually
> suggest that lethal force is impunible?

No. The usual scenario in these texts is that the bodhisattva intervenes to prevent others from doing actions that would result in severe consequences. The bodhisattva's intervention may take the form of harming the people whose actions he interrupts, but the harm he does to them is less than the harm they would do to themselves by doing something heinous. The bodhisattva then experiences the consequences of his or her own harmful action. There is nothing akarmic about it. Rather, the bodhisattva says, in effect, "rather than letting you go to hell for aeons as a consequence of doing something really wicked, I'll kill you, give you a get out of hell free card, and I'll go to hell for killing you. But my stay in hell will be shorter than yours would have been, because I have lots of merit, whereas you're a vicious miscreant." It's not much different from the substitution theory of atonement that one finds in religions found in rural Arkansas.

Richard