Alexis was obviously causing rather than relieving suffering, Seems to me clear cut any secular Buddhists duty would have been to stop him ASAP therefore proving Alexis was not acting in any Buddhist capacity. "The first of the Five Precepts is “I undertake the precept to refrain from destroying living creatures.” I’ve been told that the Buddhists view precepts as guidelines, not as commandments in the Judeo-Christian sense. But still, I think it’s clear that Buddhists take this guideline pretty seriously. ...with regard to war, there is little pretense that the wounded and the dying do so without suffering. There is also the mourning of the survivors to take into account. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the celebrated Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh goes too far in preferring, in the hypothetical case, nonviolent submission to genocide to employing violence in self-defense. It seems to me that the goal should be to minimize suffering and the loss of life overall, not to minimize the number of lives you yourself have ended. Thich Nhat Hanh’s view is not necessarily mainstream even within Buddhism, as there is a traditional tale that the Buddha himself, in a previous life, killed a pirate to prevent mass murder. In sum, there simply is no reliable rule, such as “Never kill a sentient being” that is guaranteed to be consistent with the goal of minimizing suffering for all sentient beings. Such rules can certainly be cultivated as practices that through repeated attention become habits. But the goal of being kind requires us to use our intelligence and mindfulness to recognize exceptions to the general rule." secularbuddhism.org/2013/02/17/metta-and-the-ethics-of-killing/ Posted by TyH
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 16:52:15 +0000
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