[Buddha-l] Nalanda's library destruction

[Christopher Fynn]

This is probably relevant:

The Skill in Means (Upayakausalya) Sitra. Translated by Mark Tatz.
Delhi: MOTILAL BANARSIDASS, 1994.



On 17/05/2013, Richard Hayes <richard.hayes.unm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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