Of gods and language.

[Peter]

Of course Buddhism has many values in common with Christianity and I know leaders of both religions have been keen to discuss these issues with each other. You certainly have a diverse range of friends Aeolianharp - ever thought of a dinner party with the atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic and Buddhist, and presumably you know someone Jewish as well!?

[Peter]

The Buddhist precepts, before the bible said pretty much the same things:


The Five Precepts:

1. Panatipata veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.
2. Adinnadana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not given.
3. Kamesu micchacara veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from sexual misconduct.
4. Musavada veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from incorrect speech.
5. Suramerayamajja pamadatthana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami
I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicating drinks and drugs which lead to carelessness.

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/d...pancasila.html

Moral laws existed before Christianity.

I shall put your questions to Lama tonight- he always asks us to ask him questions ( and mostly we just sit there and say nothing!)- he will be happy I asked him something.

The 10 commandments pre date Buddhism.

[Peter]

All we do determines where we will be, what we will become- we are our own creators in that sense.

So our actions have consequences? Who decides those? Are you saying they just happen and we have no say, in which case something else does have power over you.

[AeolianHarp]

Of course Buddhism has many values in common with Christianity and I know leaders of both religions have been keen to discuss these issues with each other.

All spiritual/religious paths have values in common- we have a Christian Church here that has an interfaith project and they let the local hippies use the church for a peace festival every summer.

You certainly have a diverse range of friends Aeolianharp - ever thought of a dinner party with the atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic and Buddhist, and presumably you know someone Jewish as well!?

LOL that would be like The Immortal Dinner!
Well I know atheists, Buddhists, a Hindu, Christians, a Muslim ( one of my best friends) Pagans/Druids but no Jews.

[AeolianHarp]

The 10 commandments pre date Buddhism.

Buddhism arose before Christianity.

[Peter]

Buddhism arose before Christianity.

The 10 commandments are Jewish not Christian in origin!

[AeolianHarp]

Prove to me that moral laws existed before God and the Bible.

They didn't; your "moral laws" again, whether you want to admit it or not, come from God and the Bible.

Buddhist moral precepts come from Buddhism as they had not encountered Christianity as it came about before Christianity arose.


Buddhism started in in the 6th century BCE, Christianity started in the early first century; The four Christian gospels date from around 70-90 AD, the Pauline Epistles having been written before them around 50-60 AD.

The History of Buddhism spans the 6th century BCE to the present, starting with the birth of Buddha Siddhartha Gautama in Lumbini, Nepal. This makes it one of the oldest religions practiced today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Buddhism

Though for many people it is a spiritual, philosophical path rather than a religion. Zen Buddhists refer to it as "practise".

Hinduism is even older than Buddhism and they too have moral teachings.

Ethics can be described as the science of morality, and morality as the living of a virtuous life. Hindus place greater emphasis on the attitude of the mind rather than on postulation of the elaborate theories of what is right and what is wrong. Accordingly, the Hindu vision of morality and ethics is characterized by the following considerations:

Morality proceeds from the inner spirit of man. In Hindu view, one's motive is as important in the performance of an action as the action itself. When the heart is pure and free from lust and greed, whatever one does to perform one's duties has a high moral value.
Harmlessness to all creatures is the highest morality.
There are four sources of right conduct: Vedas, the Smriti (secondary scriptures), the conduct of wise persons, and the individual's own judgment. 8
In times of confusion and crisis regarding what is right and what is wrong, one's own conscience is the sole guide. "In times of doubt, O, son of Kunti [Arjuna], one must decide using one's own good sense." 9
An individual is ultimately responsible for his own actions, i.e. the Law of Karma. He is also responsible for the actions of others if he induces or forces them to perform such actions.
Hindus declare that loyalty to one's moral values is the highest loyalty, and of all the losses, loss of one's character and loss of judgment are the worse


http://koausa.org/hindudharma/8.html


The oldest known law code is that of King Menes of Egypt. It is called the Law of Tehut and dates to about 5200 years ago. Menes made Memphis the capital of a united Egypt and administered justice and issued edicts which were designed to improve food production and distribution, guard the rights of ruling families, improve education and enhance knowledge of the natural world through geometry and astronomy.

http://college-ethics.blogspot.co.uk...ral-codes.html

It is also useful to acknowlege that many societies didn't have writing materials so their moral codes/laws would be orally passed down- to suggest otherwise would be to see tribal peoples as immoral "savages" which they are not.

Anthroplogists have found that whenever they encountered tribes they would not be living in a debauched free for all.

Acknowledging that all spiritual paths/religions have ethical codes and moral teachings doesn't negate Christian ethics and morals Rocco.

We are all human.

[Rocco]

Aeolian - You didn't prove anything because you can't. Did I say "prove that moral laws existed before Christianity", or did I say "prove that moral laws existed before God and the Bible"?

[AeolianHarp]

Aeolian - You didn't prove anything because you can't. Did I say "prove that moral laws existed before Christianity", or did I say "prove that moral laws existed before God and the Bible"?

Rocco, people have always had moral laws before the bible was written. Not all of us believe in god/gods.

Anyway I am off to Lama meditation group. I shall pose to him the question where morality comes from.

[Rocco]

Rocco, people have always had moral laws before the bible was written. Not all of us believe in god/gods.

Anyway I am off to Lama meditation group. I shall pose to him the question where morality comes from.

So your answer is that not everyone believes in God.. Well, whether you believe in God or not, the reality is that God exists, and that He is the one who set the 10 commandments in the beginning. Choosing not to believe in something doesn't automatically negate that it's real. For example, if I went to bed at night and said that "I don't believe that the sun will come up tomorrow" it's still going to come up.

Sorry, but that answer still doesn't work. You can't prove that there were moral laws before God and the Bible just because you don't believe in God. God was there before he created any of us, and He gave us the 10 Commandments long before anyone else copied some of them and said them again.

[Chris]

You Europeans! I post something and then go to bed, and when I wake up an entire conversation has taken place without me!

Well, there are a lot of different conversation threads going on here now, so I'll focus my remarks.

People have gone over this theme for centuries and they will do centuries to come. It is not that difficult really what is good or bad- good brings happiness, seeks to bring happiness, kindness and so on, bad causes physical pain, seeks to bring hurt and upset to others, likes to make others suffer.

This cannot be right - the emotional effects produced by our actions cannot be the basis for the moral law. What if killing makes me happy? Sure, getting killed might not make my victims happy. But what if I did it in such a way that it was so fast that they never felt any pain and never knew it was coming? That's a net gain in happiness in the world.

We don't need gods to tell us what is good and bad. And the god of the old testament is not exactly moral- people are told to kill and this god is angry.

I did not say we need gods to tell us what is good and bad. I said we need to determine from the natures of things what is good and bad in order to have a true moral law.

But a brief comment on the descriptions of God in the Old Testament - things that describe him as getting angry or changing his mind are mere anthropomorphisms, descriptions that try to cast things in human terms so that we can have some understanding of them. But the Old Testament makes it clear that God has no actual emotions and in fact does not change at all (indeed, is incapable of change).

You are looking for absolutes- and that is a mistake- there are no absolutes- there are only relatives. If Bob pushes Jim over for no reason he is being mean, if Bob pushes Jim over to stop a car running him over then he is being helpful. Intent is important.

People took the "moral" commandment do not steal to the absolute which meant hanging starving children for stealing a loaf of bread. Children even a mere 150 years ago were thrown in prison for stealing food due to abject poverty. See how absolutes can lead to wicked acts? Relativism allows for us to see things in a wider way.

Of course specific circumstances matter in determining the morality of an act. What must be absolute are the principles applied to the judgement of any moral act. Relativism does not mean simply taking circumstances into account (that is common sense); it denies the possibility of absolute principles we can apply to specific situations entirely. There can be no true morality there. It is only through the application of absolute moral principles that we can construct a sensible argument as to why someone can take food that does not strictly belong to him to avoid starving, but NOT take whatever food he pleases if he does not need it to keep himself alive.

If one enjoys a sunset, a concert, creates art and so forth that gives someone's life meaning. I would argue that someone who is as extremely disabled as you describe cannot enjoy life the same- I have worked with such people are they often show distress. Life for life's sake doesn't always lead to happiness for such individuals.

Oh, I have no doubt they can be quite unhappy indeed. But this is my point - is their emotional state the criteria for determining whether their lives have any meaning? It seems quite callous to say that an unhappy person's life has no meaning. One might even reason from that that we can do with their lives as we please, since they have no meaning anyway. No, I think the meaning of a life is derived from its nature. Otherwise I would have to conclude that the meaning of my life is greater than the meaning of the life of the badly crippled man. But I say the meaning of our lives is the same, for we are the same kind of creature and share the same nature.

People have! An elephant was publically hung in the USA about 150 years ago for a "crime." We kill a a dog or bear who has killed a child, we beat animals when they don't submit to our will- so we do decide if their behaviour is good or not.

We decide if their behavior is good for us or not. An animal that has proven itself dangerous might be killed, but this is a practical matter - to prevent it from hurting anyone again. There is no component of justice here. It is not a punishment for some perceived moral fault of the animal.

[Harvey]

As I said before, God wrote the law in man's heart. While the clarity of that information was damaged by the fall into sin, it is still there and thus man has an innate sense that murder is wrong. It is there and a person senses it (even totally apart from knowledge of God and the Bible), but they cannot explain it unless they know the true God and creator, Jesus Christ:

John 1: 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not....14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth....29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

[Peter]

As I said before, God wrote the law in man's heart. While the clarity of that information was damaged by the fall into sin, it is still there and thus man has an innate sense that murder is wrong. It is there and a person senses it (even totally apart from knowledge of God and the Bible), but they cannot explain it unless they know the true God and creator, Jesus Christ:

Thanks for the quote Harvey - such a beautiful passage from my favourite book in the Bible, the Gospel according to John. Since this thread was originally about God and language, well this Gospel is full of such wonderfully poetic imagery.

[AeolianHarp]

Well Lama group was very interesting. I told him I had a question for him later. We meditated and he spoke to us from his Tibetan sutra book and the subject was compassion and doing good deeds! His English is not fluent but he uses imagery to get across what he wants to say. I asked him about morality and where it comes from. He said it is within us- our eternal selves; he likened the ego and confusion to the sun being obscured by clouds and behind is the sun. It is difficult to describe the concept of Buddha nature to theists but to put it simply -our true, eternal, selves.

The Tibetan teacher Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche described Buddha Nature this way:

"... our fundamental nature of mind is a luminous expanse of awareness that is beyond all conceptual fabrication and completely free from the movement of thoughts. It is the union of emptiness and clarity, of space and radiant awareness that is endowed with supreme and immeasurable qualities. From this basic nature of emptiness everything is expressed; from this everything arises and manifests."

Another way of putting this is to say that Buddha Nature is "something" -- perhaps not the right word, but I don't think there is a right word -- that you are, together with all beings. And this "something" is already enlightened. Because beings cling to a false idea of a finite self, set apart from everything else, they do not experience themselves as Buddhas. But when beings clarify the nature of their existence they experience the Buddha Nature that was always there.

http://buddhism.about.com/od/mahayan...dha-Nature.htm

I asked him how to explain to Christians about morality without god/s. He said all human beings can be moral and good; the intent is important- being compassionate- that is the important thing. When we look within, meditate and transform our minds and develop compassion there is less chance of us harming others. We examine our actions and the effects they will have.

Those who hurt and abuse sentient beings are never happy- these actions are signs of a disturbed mind and they are not at peace. Many serial killers take their own lives.

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Buddha


To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue
will naturally come to him.

Buddha

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Buddha

[AeolianHarp]

You Europeans! I post something and then go to bed, and when I wake up an entire conversation has taken place without me!

Keeping you busy Chris! I hope you had a good sleep. It's night here now!

This cannot be right - the emotional effects produced by our actions cannot be the basis for the moral law. What if killing makes me happy? Sure, getting killed might not make my victims happy. But what if I did it in such a way that it was so fast that they never felt any pain and never knew it was coming? That's a net gain in happiness in the world.

Well I didn't say that is the basis, but it is one basis. All sentient beings want to be happy and free from harm. Those who murder and abuse are disturbed individuals and not at peace with themselves. Your hypothetical situation still is about wrong doing- as that individual took a life that is not theirs to take.

But a brief comment on the descriptions of God in the Old Testament - things that describe him as getting angry or changing his mind are mere anthropomorphisms, descriptions that try to cast things in human terms so that we can have some understanding of them. But the Old Testament makes it clear that God has no actual emotions and in fact does not change at all (indeed, is incapable of change).

That was never clear to me, but thanks for the clarification.

Of course specific circumstances matter in determining the morality of an act. What must be absolute are the principles applied to the judgement of any moral act. Relativism does not mean simply taking circumstances into account (that is common sense); it denies the possibility of absolute principles we can apply to specific situations entirely. There can be no true morality there. It is only through the application of absolute moral principles that we can construct a sensible argument as to why someone can take food that does not strictly belong to him to avoid starving, but NOT take whatever food he pleases if he does not need it to keep himself alive.

In the case of the starving child stealing food we can apply realtive moral principles as in this case the child not having enough is an injustice. Those who steal when they don't need it we can then look at why they have done so- which is why we have law courts.

Oh, I have no doubt they can be quite unhappy indeed. But this is my point - is their emotional state the criteria for determining whether their lives have any meaning? It seems quite callous to say that an unhappy person's life has no meaning. One might even reason from that that we can do with their lives as we please, since they have no meaning anyway.

No, I didn't mean that, I was pointing out that some people have medical conditions that cause them a life of suffering. In fact this came up in Lama's discussion and he was not in favour of euthanesia- he talked about being invited to be present at a friend's dying dog and was surprised when he got there to see a vet ready to euthanise the dog. He examined the situation and said even though killing in Buddhism is not considered right, he could see that the intention to end the dog's life was an act of compassion, as the poor animal was dying and suffering.We told him this is currently being debated regarding humans- whether the laws will one day allow humans to decide to have euthanesia in the case of a severe terminal painful illness.

No, I think the meaning of a life is derived from its nature. Otherwise I would have to conclude that the meaning of my life is greater than the meaning of the life of the badly crippled man. But I say the meaning of our lives is the same, for we are the same kind of creature and share the same nature.

Sure- we all have equal value. I was talking about how each individual will find meaning in life in different ways.

We decide if their behavior is good for us or not. An animal that has proven itself dangerous might be killed, but this is a practical matter - to prevent it from hurting anyone again. There is no component of justice here. It is not a punishment for some perceived moral fault of the animal.

There have been cases when people have murdered animals for a slight transgression or it is seen as a nusciance.