Insaf said: Well, you do know that there are many instances when a fight is justified. Let me give you an example on a micro level, a father cant watch his daughter being raped, he needs to stand up and fight for her protection. Mere protesting is not enough. Similarly, on macro level example, if a country is invaded by crusaders who are massacaring everybody; someone needs to stands up and fight and protect the life of the innocents.
I think that Budhism is also not fond of capital punishments. I think it believes that under the principle of 'karma', the punishment of a murderer would automatically be there in some way, may be in his future re-incarnated life. Is there any "punishment given by people" of any crime in Budhism? Sarai, I think you need to educate me in this area.
Sarai, thanks for answering my previous questions. It has been quite educational for me. ************************************************************************ 11-14-06, 08:47 PM Sarai Insaf-
I am researching the answer to this question, and I'm finding it to be a very complex one. I'm not sure I can answer it well at the moment.
Here is what I understand, but I am not sure that my understanding is correct. I think that Buddhism teaches that killing in general is wrong, making no distinction between murder, war, capital punishment or self-defense. Killing another accrues very bad karma.
However, Buddhism also teaches that karma is accrued through the combination of intention and action, not through action alone. For example, if you had a car accident and killed someone with no intention of doing so, then karma is not accrued. It was not your intention to kill, and therefore it can't be called an immoral action.
Therefore, I think the Buddhist answer to your question would be that it would depend upon your motivation. If you kill out of a desire to punish, hurt, get revenge or to benefit from the suffering of another, this would be immoral and would have awful karmic results. However, if you kill out of compassion, the karmic effect would be different. For example, if you see a man trying to kill a woman and the only way to stop him from killing her is through violence, then the right thing to do would be to use violence, even if it kills him. The moral response would be to stop him because what he is doing not only hurts the woman, but will bring about suffering for him, since Buddhists believe that "what goes around comes around." Stopping him from murder will save him from the bad karma accrued and will save the woman. However, if you do so in anger or out of a desire to hurt him or get revenge for what he is doing to the woman, you will accrue bad karma.
I think it is very difficult, if not impossible, to fight a war without feelings of hatred, revenge, punishment, or the desire to profit from the defeat of the enemy (and thus from his suffering). However, I think that if it were possible to fight a war with the sole compassionate intention of stopping the "enemy" from harming others and himself, that would be permissible. As I said, though, I think that is probably impossible. One particularly morally skillful soldier might be able to fight and kill again and again compassionately and without negative intentions, but I must admit that is very hard for me to imagine. I sincerely doubt that an entire army could maintain such moral rigor.
As for capital punishment, again, I think the motivation would be the major factor. If you use capital punishment to punish, to hurt, or get revenge, it is immoral. If you use it with compassion because you truly believe that if he continues to live, this person will hurt others and therefore, hurt himself, then I think it would be acceptable. Personally, I wonder how legal actions can be dealt with in a compassionate way since the law is generally pretty cold. I would always vote against the legalization of capital punishment as long as another alternative is possible that will keep people safe from a dangerous individual.
Generally speaking, Buddhists are pretty clear that they are generally opposed to killing of any kind. I think it is very, very difficult to kill without the negative intentions described above.
I'm not sure that this answer accurately reflects Buddhist thought. I will keep searching, but this is what I understand at this time. Please take it with a grain of salt, and remember that I am still learning about Buddhism and certainly am not an expert.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sarai, 11-14-06 08:04 PM
11-14-06, 09:24 PM Insaf Sarai,
That is a good answer. The principle of intention based karma is very similar to Islamic concepts of Justice, which says that "Your actions shall be judged based on your intentions". I have a few follow up questions: 1) If a killer against whom bad karma is accrued is himself killed, will this negate the bad karma accrued. 2) Under most relegions if the sinner truly repents and the victim forgives him, the bad karma accrued will be cancelled. Does it work similarly in Budhism? 3) How does Budhism look at desparate actions such as sucide? 4) If a capital punishment to one, serves as a crime detterant to many others,will the capital punishment considered as morally good. 5) I think you earlier clarified me earlier that the laws in Budhism are not made by anyone(God) but is based on natural laws of cause and effect. I still find it hard to understand as how can Buddha(a normal human) discover the complex laws (e.g concept of re-incarnation,nirvana) by himself. These are not very natural ones that can be logically deduced.
11-14-06, 09:37 PM juanruiz This brings up a cunundrum discussed by the Jewish sages:
Is a good act which results in evil good?
Is an evil act which results in good evil?
11-14-06, 09:47 PM Sarai You know, Insaf, one of these days a real Buddhist is going to come on board and read me the riot act for answering questions as if I'm some expert! Big Grin The process of thinking these things through is really beneficial to me, though, and you seem to be enjoying it, so I will try to answer these questions as well. But remember that grain of salt!
quote: Originally posted by Insaf: I have a few follow up questions: 1) If a killer against whom bad karma is accrued is himself killed, will this negate the bad karma accrued.
I don't think so. I understand karma to be something that eventually burns out, sort like a candle. A tremendously terrible action might take many lifetimes to "burn out", while a small misdeed might "burn out" in less than one lifetime. I think that executing a killer would only accrue more bad karma in the world, in this case, for the executioner.
quote: 2) Under most relegions if the sinner truly repents and the victim forgives him, the bad karma accrued will be cancelled. Does it work similarly in Budhism?
I'm not sure about this. Let me research it and come back to you. My suspicion is that it will, if only because the act of repenting and being forgiven will release a person from attachment to his own misdeed.
quote: 3) How does Budhism look at desparate actions such as sucide?
Again, let me research this and come back to you. My suspicion is that suicide is not distinguished from murder.
quote: 4) If a capital punishment to one, serves as a crime detterant to many others,will the capital punishment considered as morally good.
I don't agree that capital punishment can act as a deterrent to others, but this is a political question and not a moral one. I think that again, it comes down to intention. If there is any intention to punish or get revenge in capital punishment, then it is wrong. If the intention is entirely compassionate, then I think Buddhists might accept it, but again, I think in the modern world there are other, better solutions.
quote: 5) I think you earlier clarified me earlier that the laws in Budhism are not made by anyone(God) but is based on natural laws of cause and effect. I still find it hard to understand as how can Buddha(a normal human) discover the complex laws (e.g concept of re-incarnation,nirvana) by himself. These are not very natural ones that can be logically deduced.
Buddhists teach that they can be logically deduced, if one follows the 8-fold path. If one follows that path, eventually he will come to understand it as the Buddha did. Remember my analogy to the guy trying to teach string theory? To me, string theory is not immediately obvious. However, a scientist might say that he can prove it to me. It will take years of study, but eventually I can find the same answers that scientists before have found by following the scientific method. The Buddha teaches something similar, but it deals with spirituality. If we follow the Buddhist method, wewill eventually find the same answers that enlightened beings have found before us.
11-14-06, 09:53 PM DorianGreyed 3) How does Budhism look at desparate actions such as sucide?
The view that suicide is regarded equivocally in the canon goes back at least to the 1920s. In his 1922 entry on suicide in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, de La Vallee Poussin wrote:
We have therefore good reason to believe (1) that suicide is not an ascetic act leading to spiritual progress and to nirvāṇa, and (2) that no saint or arhat-- a spiritually perfect being-- will kill himself. But we are confronted with a number of stories which prove beyond dispute that we are mistaken in these two important conclusions.[3]
In the same year FḶ.Woodward expressed a similar opinion.
There are, however, passages in the Nikāyas where the Buddha approves of the suicide of bhikkhus: but in these cases they were Arahants, and we are to suppose that such beings who have mastered self, can do what they please as regards the life and death of their carcase.[4]
Views of this kind have influenced Western scholarship over the past seventy years.[5] In recent times Becker-- going beyond the evidence of the texts-- has spoken of the Buddha's "praise" of the suicides of Vakkali and Channa (1993:136) and claimed that there is a "consistent Buddhist position" (1993: 137) on suicide (a permissive one).
Various attempts, for the most part along similar lines, have been made to explain why suicide is prohibited for the unenlightened but permitted for the enlightened. In 1965 Lamotte wrote:
The desperate person who takes his own life obviously aspires to annihilation: his suicide, instigated by desire, will not omit him from fruition, and he will have to partake of the fruit of his action. In the case of the ordinary man, suicide is a folly and does not achieve the intended aim.
This situation is compared with the suicide of an enlightened person:
In contrast, suicide is justified in the persons of the Noble Ones who have already cut off desire and by so doing neutralised their actions by making them incapable of producing further fruit. From the point of view of early Buddhism, suicide is a normal matter in the case of the Noble Ones who, having completed their work, sever their last link with the world and voluntarily pass into Nirvāṇa, thus definitively escaping from the world of rebirths (1965:106f).
The significant distinction for Lamotte, then, is that the Arhat acts without desire whereas the unenlightened person does not. Wiltshire shares this view, commenting that "suicide is salvifically fatal in most cases, but not for the arahant, since he cannot be motivated by taṇhā (S.I.121).[6] Becker, too, sees the morality of suicide as turning entirely on motivation, although he highlights the role of the second of the three "roots of evil" (akusalamūla) rather than the first. "There is nothing intrinsically wrong with taking one's own life," he writes, "if not done in hate, anger or fear" (1993:137).
Conclusion
Where does all this leave us with respect to the seventy-year consensus that suicide is permitted for Arhats? I think it gives us a number of reasons to question it. First, there is no reason to think that the exoneration of Channa establishes a normative position on suicide. This is because to exonerate from blame is not the same as to condone.
Second, there are textual reasons for thinking that the Buddha's apparent exoneration may not be an exoneration after all. The textual issues are complex and it would not be safe to draw any firm conclusions. It might be observed in passing that the textual evidence that suicide may be permissible in Christianity is much greater than in Buddhism. There are many examples of suicide in the Old Testament: this has not, however, prevented the Christian tradition from teaching consistently[54] that suicide is gravely wrong. By comparison, Theravāda sources are a model of consistency in their refusal to countenance the intentional destruction of life.
Third, the commentarial tradition finds the idea that an Arhat would take his own life in the way Channa did completely unacceptable. Fourth, there is a logical point which, although somewhat obvious, seems to have been overlooked in previous discussions. If we assume, along with the commentary and secondary literature, that Channa was not an Arhat prior to his suicide attempt, then to extrapolate a rule from this case such that suicide is permissible for Arhats is fallacious. The reason for this is that Channa's suicide was-- in all significant respects-- the suicide of an unenlightened person. The motivation, deliberation and intention which preceded his suicide-- everything down to the act of picking up the razor-- all this was done by an unenlightened person. Channa's suicide thus cannot be taken as setting a precedent for Arhats for the simple reason that he was not one himself until after he had performed the suicidal act.
Fifth and finally, suicide is repeatedly condemned in canonical and non-canonical sources and goes directly "against the stream" of Buddhist moral teachings. A number of reasons why suicide is wrong are found in the sources[55] but no single underlying objection to suicide is articulated. This is not an easy thing to do, and Schopenhauer was not altogether wrong in his statement that the moral arguments against suicide "lie very deep and are not touched by ordinary ethics."[56] Earlier I suggested that the "roots of evil" critique of suicide-- that suicide was wrong because of the presence of desire or aversion-- was unsatisfactory in that it led in the direction of subjectivism. The underlying objection to suicide, it seems to me, is to be found not in the emotional state of the agent but in some intrinsic feature of the suicidal act which renders it morally flawed. I believe, however, there is a way in whi! ch the two approaches can be reconciled. To do this we must locate the wrongness of suicide in delusion (moha) rather in the affective "roots" of desire and hatred.
On this basis suicide will be wrong because it is an irrational act. By this I do not mean that it is performed while the balance of the mind is disturbed, but that it is incoherent in the context of Buddhist teachings. This is because suicide is contrary to basic Buddhist values. What Buddhism values is not death, but life.[57] Buddhism sees death as an imperfection, a flaw in the human condition, something to be overcome rather than affirmed. Death is mentioned in the First Noble Truth as one of the most basic aspects of suffering (dukkha-dukkha). A person who opts for death believing it to be a solution to suffering has fundamentally misunderstood the First Noble Truth. The First Noble Truth teaches that death is the problem, not the solution. The fact that the person who commits suicide will be reborn and live again is not important. What is significant is that through the affirmation of death he has, in his heart, embraced Māra! . From a Buddhist perspective, thi s is clearly irrational. If suicide is irrational in this sense it can be claimed there are objective grounds for regarding it as morally wrong. - Journal of Buddhist Ethics
11-14-06, 10:00 PM Sarai That makes sense, Dorian. Thanks for posting that. For the vast majority of us, suicide would be a terrible idea from a Buddhist perspective. 1) It won't release you from suffering, because you'll just be born again. 2) It might accrue bad karma and 3) it will hurt those you love.
Just as murder is generally wrong, so is suicide. However, intention can change that. Intention is everything, but it is pretty hard for us unenlightened folks to kill anyone -ourselves included - out of anything but negative desires.
I'd say that in 99% of the situations, for 99% of us, it's best to just not kill. Not in war, not in anger, not in sadness, not oneself and not others. I think we'd all agree with that!
11-14-06, 10:08 PM DorianGreyed Then again, you have the George Sanders viewpoint. His suicide note -
Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.
11-14-06, 10:11 PM Sarai Well, from a Buddhist perspetive, he didn't leave anything. He was born again and is likely still bored, and will continue to be until whatever karma caused such horrible boredom burns out or until he takes the reigns and changes his own attitude. He probably hurt loved ones, too, in his desire to end his own life.
11-15-06, 09:01 PM Sarai
quote: Under most relegions if the sinner truly repents and the victim forgives him, the bad karma accrued will be cancelled. Does it work similarly in Budhism?
This is the best answer I could find to your question, from This site:
quote: If, however, a person has performed an evil action, it is necessary to realise where wrong has been done and make an effort not to repeat the mistake. This is the true meaning of repentence, and in this way only will a person progress along the noble path to emancipation. Praying for forgiveness is meaningless if, after the prayer is made, a person repeats the evil action again and again. Who is there to ‘wash away a person’s sins’ except oneself? This has to begin with realisation, the wonderful cleansing agent. First, one realises the nature of the deed and the extent of the harm incurred. Next, one realises that this deed is unwholesome, learns from it, and makes the resolution not to repeat it. Then, one performs many good deeds to benefit the affected party as well as others, as much as possible. In this way, the effect of a bad deed is overcome with a shower of good deeds.
No wrong doer, according to Buddhism, is beyond redemption or rehabilitation, especially with realisation and Right Effort. To be seduced into believing that a person can ‘wash away’ his or her bad deeds through some other ‘miraculous’ way is not only a mere superstition, but worse, it is also not useful particularly to the spiritual development of the person. It will only cause one to continue to remain ignorant and morally complacent. This misplaced belief can, in fact, do a person much more harm than the effects of the wrong deed which is feared so much.
I am also still convinced that one of the important things about this kind of repentance (versus just feeling guilty, which is a start but maybe is not quite productive enough) is that eventually it releases one from attachment to the deed, but I can't find scripture or sources to support it. I'll keep looking, but I am pretty sure that I have read that before.
11-16-06, 07:35 PM Insaf
quote: Originally posted by Sarai: I don't agree that capital punishment can act as a deterrent to others, but this is a political question and not a moral one. I think that again, it comes down to intention. If there is any intention to punish or get revenge in capital punishment, then it is wrong. If the intention is entirely compassionate, then I think Buddhists might accept it, but again, I think in the modern world there are other, better solutions.
Insaf: I think capital punishment has been one of the most effective deterrents in many cases. It has worked in many countries. Countries where the punishment of rape is death, have significantly fewer rapes in comparision. Coutries where punishment of selling Narcotics is death have fewer cases of this crime. So Capital punishment not only stop the oppressor permenantly but also gives a clear message to all the other as what will happen if a certain crime is committed.
Buddhists teach that they can be logically deduced, if one follows the 8-fold path. If one follows that path, eventually he will come to understand it as the Buddha did. Remember my analogy to the guy trying to teach string theory? To me, string theory is not immediately obvious. However, a scientist might say that he can prove it to me. It will take years of study, but eventually I can find the same answers that scientists before have found by following the scientific method. The Buddha teaches something similar, but it deals with spirituality. If we follow the Buddhist method, wewill eventually find the same answers that enlightened beings have found before us.
Insaf: I dont understand the logic. To me it still appears that Budhism apparently requires believe in the unseen things such as accrued karma, nirvana, re-incarnation etc. Is there any concrete scientific evidence that these things exist?
11-16-06, 08:22 PM Sarai
quote: Originally posted by Insaf: Insaf: I think capital punishment has been one of the most effective deterrents in many cases. It has worked in many countries. Countries where the punishment of rape is death, have significantly fewer rapes in comparision. Coutries where punishment of selling Narcotics is death have fewer cases of this crime. So Capital punishment not only stop the oppressor permenantly but also gives a clear message to all the other as what will happen if a certain crime is committed.
Hi, Insaf. This is a very difficult subject to discuss. Statistics can be interpreted in many different ways, and if we begin to discuss the issue of capital punishment as a political reality, we will end up in a debate that will go on for pages, and that will probably do nothing to change your mind or mine.
This article explains why the statistics are so difficult to interpret, but ultimately argues that capital punishment is not a significant deterrent to murder:
quote: The consensus is international in scope. In recent years Great Britain (1973), Canada (1976), France (1981), Australia (1985), Italy (1994) and Spain (1995), among others, have eliminated capital punishment for murder after extensive study and debate. South Africa abolished capital punishment in 1995 after its transition to democracy. This trend toward abolition has not been observed to cause increases in homicide. In Canada, the 1993 homicide rate was some 25% below the rate at the time of abolition. Other nations such as Great Britain have experienced increases in murder--but even greater increases in other violent crimes which were never subject to death sentences. Some years ago this passage from a United Nations study summed it up: "It is generally agreed that the data which now exist show no correlation between the existence of capital punishment and lower rates of capital crime." The conclusion still holds.
I agree with this article's conclusion, but I have no doubt that you can find evidence to the contrary. Ultimately, though, I think this question is more political than religious, although our religious beliefs probably affect our political views on it. It might be interesting to see what people have to say if you ask about the effectiveness of Capital Punishment in the Civics and Government forum.
But to get back to Buddhism, as I said, I think that Buddhism teaches that capital punishment is acceptable if it is done with the right intention. Personally, I have a hard time believing that it is possible for most people in most situations to kill anyone for the right intention, but that is just my suspicion.
quote:
Insaf: I dont understand the logic. To me it still appears that Budhism apparently requires believe in the unseen things such as accrued karma, nirvana, re-incarnation etc. Is there any concrete scientific evidence that these things exist?
No, I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. There is no concrete scientific evidence of the things you mention. I didn't mean that Buddhism is a science. I meant that it is something that requires a certain amount of study and work in a certain method before one comes to see the truth in these ideas. I compared it to science, but Buddhism is certainly not the same thing as science, since it is dealing with things of a spiritual and not a tangible nature.
I still don't fully understand the ideas you mentioned, so I certainly can't prove them to you. I'm not even 100% I believe in them myself yet! However, I am trying to follow the Buddhist path for a while to see if eventually I come to see. The fact that I don't understand all of its ideas or see evidence for all of its ideas doesn't mean the ideas are wrong. I think it is worthwhile to follow this path as long as I see no reason not to believe it. Why not keep an open mind? But if at some point I find evidence or logic that goes against it, I would reject Buddhism. This attitude is actually encouraged in Buddhism.
Buddhism teaches that through the 8-fold path, the reality of these things eventually becomes clear to the meditator. But as I said, I don't think anyone can prove it to another unless they also go through the same process. It is a bit of a catch-22, because you can't see if Buddhist teachings are correct unless you follow Buddhist teachings. If the ideas in Buddhism don't seem right to you, then, there is no reason to follow Buddhism. Even if Buddhist teachings are correct, you are not in any great danger by choosing to follow another path that fits your understanding of the world better, as long as that path leads you to try your best to be a good person and to avoid harming others.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sarai, 11-16-06 07:37 PM
11-16-06, 09:57 PM Insaf
quote: Originally posted by Sarai: The fact that I don't understand all of its ideas or see evidence for all of its ideas doesn't mean the ideas are wrong. I think it is worthwhile to follow this path as long as I see no reason not to believe it. Why not keep an open mind? .
I like those statements. However, while you say that you would like to keep an open mind, you seem to have shut the doors of all other religions as you have focused only on Buddhism for the past couple of years. Anyways, Sarai, do you consider Buddhism as a belief system/relegion? Does it requires a person to be a theist or atheist in order to be a buddhist?
11-16-06, 10:10 PM Sarai Insaf, you ask the most interesting questions!
quote: I like those statements. However, while you say that you would like to keep an open mind, you seem to have shut the doors of all other religions as you have focused only on Buddhism for the past couple of years.
That's true, but I don't think it is because I have had blinders on. I really have done a lot of thinking about this. Once I realized that monotheistic religious did not make moral logical sense to me, I began thinking about other major world religions outside of the Jewish-Christian-Muslim family of religions. I know there are many, many religions in the world, but I have admittedly focused most of my attention on the big 5. I have really liked Hinduism and Buddhism for years. I think Hinduism is a bit like Judaism - it is very difficult for a person who wasn't born a Hindu to become a Hindu, and I think I'd always feel a bit like a phony if I were to become a Hindu because of my outsider status. Plus, Hinduism is so filled with stories of Gods and Goddesses that even if I considered the deeper meaning of the stories, I think it would be hard for me to keep from feeling that I was just studying mythology. So that left Buddhism. Since Buddhism so far hasn't struck me as illogical, I see no need to look further at this point. At some point, that could change, though.
quote: Anyways, Sarai, do you consider Buddhism as a belief system/relegion?
I think it is a belief system, because in some sense, it requires faith. It doesn't require faith in the same way that some other religions do, since Buddhism allows for doubt and uncertainty. However, to continue the Buddhist path, one has to have some faith (however weak) that at some point, there might be something worthwile to be learned from it. Also, as you mentioned, there are many ideas in Buddhism that cannot be proven scientifically. However, I don't know whether we should call Buddhism a religious belief system or a philosophical belief system. I don't know if it matters much, ultimately, although I liked the question.
quote: Does it requires a person to be a theist or atheist in order to be a buddhist?
I don't think you have to be either one. Buddhism is usually described as atheistic, but some Buddhists have told me that this idea comes because Buddhism has rejected the idea of a creator God who is a person with desires and dislikes and feelings and all of that, like the God in Western religions. If you broaden the definition of God outside of the idea of a kind of person or creator and considered God to be a kind of ultimate truth or ultimate mystery, then perhaps it might not be quite accurate to say Buddhism is atheistic. I think that Buddhism is probably ultimately agnostic. I also think that Buddhism is very reverent toward the ultimate truth or mystery, even though it is unknown. I think the ultimate is not something an unenlightened person can know or even really begin to think about or comprehend.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sarai, 11-16-06 09:29 PM
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