@Meaningness The primary importance of all systems of ethics is as a point of leverage to enforce group norms.- @Meaningness And yes, impurity is a major metaphor for this, *especially* in India!
- @Meaningness And more broadly the norms of the liberal left in Europe too.
- @Meaningness well... Buddhist ethics *do* have a definite content - e.g. pañcasīla, dasakusalakammapatha etc.
- @Meaningness And a definite rationale (or two)
- @Meaningness The main rationale of Buddhist ethics is to obtain a better rebirth. That is at the forefront especially for laypeople.
- @Meaningness For full-time meditators it helps to make the mind amenable to concentrated states, culminating in the experience of cessation.
- @Meaningness The main rationale of Buddhist ethics is to obtain a better rebirth. That is at the forefront especially for laypeople.
- @Meaningness you may have seen me distinguish between sīla (ethics) and saṃvara (discipline) recently? Quite different.
@jonathanglick @Jayarava I’m actually critiquing a critique of the secularists (but not defending the secularists). Plague on both houses!- @jonathanglick @Jayarava http://www.existentialbuddhist.com/2013/12/in-defense-of-mindfulness/ … is a fairly decent statement of the secularist side of the argument
- @jonathanglick @Jayarava The locus classicus for the Buddhist side is http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ron-purser/beyond-mcmindfulness_b_3519289.html … one of the most incoherent rambles I’ve ever
- @Meaningness @jonathanglick yeah. I can't even read this kind of drivel. skimmed the other one.
- @Meaningness Interpreting the 3rd precept for a Western context is interesting. Westerners are *very* naive. So have to be treated like kids
- @Meaningness Groups must have norms however, or they don't cohere and bestow the advantages inherent in groups.
- @Meaningness It's an ideal, though, conveyed in myth and legend. It's not clear that *anyone* did or does it. Buddhists hate this :-)
- Address
Storify Inc.
149 9th St., Suite 404
San Francisco, CA 94103 - Email: info@storify.com
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/Storify
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/Storify