Re: I guess this is where I end up............

Advaita Bob wrote:

brian mitchell wrote:

Advaita Bob wrote:

brian mitchell wrote:

Advaita Bob wrote:

want2believe wrote:
why [do] bad things happen to good people[?]
Because they *happen*.
Etymology: Middle English, from hap
1 : to occur by chance

This loads the argument somewhat by insisting on chance rather than
agency, causation, intention, etc. If you dump those in a wholesale way
you're left with a mechanical determinism, which probably won't satisfy
want2believe's thirst for justice. The same applies to the
excrement-flinging monkey.

There are different ways to satisfy thirst for justice. One is to feed
one's thirst (so to speak) and the other would be to let it drop, to let
go of the idea of justice. Nothing is right and fair in life, not
because of life but because of our expectations of it.

There's a dubious reductionism in saying that all the qualities and
ideals of mind are nothing but erroneous projection.

Prove me wrong. :-)

The proof is in our absolute reliance on the notion of truth and our
ability to be aware of it. Without such a fundamentally ineradicable
concept nothing in our existence would make sense, and certainly not
this spiritual seeking/practice. We may argue to the death about *what*
is true, but there seems to be pretty solid agreement that *something*
is true. If the ideal of truth is necessary, others may be too.

That being said, I also think it is impossible (note the reductionism)
to live a satisfying human life without indulging in projections.
Satisfaction being itself erroneous, it needs some erroneous ingredients.

You know, don't you, that if you hadn't decided to be a Lama you'd have
made an excellent Jesuit? My favourite instance of Jesuitical
path-smoothing concerns the problem of smoking during prayer retreats.
The advice was that though of course one should never smoke while
praying, it is quite acceptable --even laudable-- to pray while smoking.

Human culture is
based on the sense that we have capabilities and aspirations beyond the
instinctive necessities of nature. Notions of justice and fairness seem
to be so basic to our minds that children latch onto them very early.

Jonathan explained why. Children copy and learn what they see.

I respect Jonathan because he seems to have been prepared to explore his
own mentality directly without just following given maps, but I find I
don't always agree with his conclusions, so to say "Jonathan has
explained..." is not for me the 'Truth which stops the mouth of
thought.'

Children do, indeed, absorb a great deal through empathic observation,
but one can only absorb into a framework, into some pre-existing
capacity, as with the learning of language. Notions of truth, honour,
and fairness exist in every culture and are exhibited early in children
and this suggests to me that they are a part of the evolution of mind,
not late plug-ins.

Expecting the whole universe to be organised on the principle of justice
may be a magical displacement for something in our own mind, but that
doesn't mean justice is a worthless concept that should be thrown away,
surely?

It can't be thrown away so the question about should it be thrown away
doesn't even apply. Justice is ultimately about keeping the peace in a
society. Justice doesn't care for individuals as individuals. Fairness
only interests it in sofar the peace in a society claims it.

Reductionist again. You're speaking about the judicial arm of the state.
Justice as a basic felt concept is about truth, its discovery and
establishment. The desire embedded in notions of karma and sowers
reaping is that the universe be intrinsically ordered, not random. Are
you arguing for a totally random universe?

I also find that this issue in general suffers from a conflation between
natural and human events, and your monkey analogy does this. Natural
disasters are truly accidental, without motive or intent, but the great
proportion of "bad" things that happen to people can be traced back to
other people, which complicates things.

Yes but those who sow don't reap. That's wishful thinking. That's where
the common notion of karma goes terribly wrong in my opinion.

It is wishful thinking, but a wish that comes from so deep a place that
we've based not just our judicial ordering of society on it, but even
our religions. I'm not sure we can meaningfully talk about things,
truths, which have no relation at all to our own minds. We couldn't
experience them, just the way our ears aren't built to hear above a
certain frequency. So it may be that our universe, the only one we're
constituted to be able to encounter, does self-correct in a way that we
dimly grasp at in our theories of karma.

That last bit sounded fanciful to me even as I wrote it, but then I
pondered it some more. James Lovelock's Gaia theory, proposing that the
earth is a self-correcting bio-system is now the accepted model, I
understand. And really it is logical that any system, in order to remain
coherent, must self-correct. The question then remains: is there a moral
component to how the universe is ordered (if it is)? All I'm saying here
is that we shouldn't dismiss possibilities merely because they offend a
latterday rationality, which is what I think I see a lot of modern
Buddhists doing.

. . . Then there's the question of whether one is
oneself an excrement-flinging monkey to any degree.

Undeniably. Every step I make, every breath I take can be and probably
is the cause of flinging excrement onto someone. I can't stop it and I
can't help it.

Why are you so helpless? Is it intentional, a conscious path? "Touch
nothing, leave everything as you found it," makes you free?


I experience dissatisfaction with all my objections to what's put
forward on this subject, which should (and does) tell me something. But
I experience equal dissatisfaction at everything that's put forward.

:-) It's put forward, that's all. It isn't mine, it isn't yours (i.e. I
don't you lock up in what you put forward) and it is dissatisfying. We
fling excrements in response to excrements that are flung onto us. Most
dissatisfying.

I would so much like something better.


brian mitchell
.

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