Do people who get murdered deserve it?

A discussion on all aspects of Theravāda Buddhism
Dr. Dukkha
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Dr. Dukkha »

Wow. I'm not giving out names, but a lot of you people are really aggressive and mean... I don't appreciate it. I was only asking a question. But thanks to the some of you who were courteous enough to answer my question without panicking or retorting inappropriately.
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
Dr. Dukkha
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Dr. Dukkha »

purple planet wrote:Great question dr i wondered about it myself - here is a good video on your question - in short it says there is good and bad kamma (vipaka) but its only part of the stuff that happen and that you can experience bad experiences without any connection to kamma

Seems like an interesting video. I'll check it out. PM me. I'm very curious about religious freedom in Israel.
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting."
chownah
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by chownah »

It seems that there is an assumption being made here that dieing is a punishment......or that dieing is something to be avoided. In the descriptions of arahants dieing that I have seen in the Canon it seems that they are pretty much blasé about it and don't act as if it is negative on any way much less a punishment. Seems like only those people who are attached to life view death as a punishment. Could this topic actually be asking whether the dukkha which arises from attachment is deserved?

And again.....we really need a definition of "deserved"........and deserved by whom?

chownah
pegembara
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by pegembara »

This is how I see it. Things don't happen without a cause.
The cause can be as simple as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or one can be a gangster being caught in the cycle of violence.
Or a soldier in the time of war. Or being killed in an act of revenge.

It is not a question of "deserving" it but just cause and effect.

Say there is a group of hostages being held by terrorist. Why is one person chosen for execution instead of another? Perhaps because of what he/she represents
in the eyes of the terrorist.

If one believes in past lives, the cause can be due to what happened in a previous existence but there is no longer any memory of the past.

Take this example for instance. A cruel and evil person got injured and goes into coma. He recovers with no memory of his previous "existence" but he is still not free from its consequences.
He might be perplexed as to why there are people out to kill him. To his knowledge, he has never hurt anyone in his present "existence". Does he "deserve" to die in the hands of another?

Bottom line is nothing happens without a cause.
And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter: This is called right speech.
Sylvester
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Sylvester »

Thanks for all the interesting thoughts on SN 36.21 (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .nypo.html) versus AN 3.33 (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... .than.html).

Perhaps there is a slight difference in the way the suttas are phrased in the Pali that might shed some light on the apparent inconsistency.

In AN 3.33, we have -
lobho nidānaṃ kammānaṃ samudayāya, doso nidānaṃ kammānaṃ samudayāya, moho nidānaṃ kammānaṃ samudayāya.

Greed is a cause for the origination of actions. Aversion is a cause for the origination of actions. Delusion is a cause for the origination of actions.
If I were strict in enforcing the distinction between "cause" and "condition", I would render the word nidāna above as "condition", instead of "cause", following the standard understanding DA.

In SN 36.21, we have a slightly different choice of word -
yaṃ kiñcāyaṃ purisapuggalo paṭisaṃvedeti sukhaṃ vā dukkhaṃ vā adukkhamasukhaṃ vā sabbaṃ taṃ pubbekatahetū

Whatever a person experiences, be it pleasure, pain or neither-pain-nor-pleasure, all that is caused by previous action
There is a further problem with the translation of AN 3.33 -
Yaṃ bhikkhave lobhapakataṃ kammaṃ lobhajaṃ lobhanidānaṃ lobhasamudayaṃ, yatthassa attabhāvo nibbattati, tattha taṃ kammaṃ vipaccati. Yattha taṃ kammaṃ vipaccati, tattha tassa kammassa vipākaṃ paṭisaṃvedeti diṭṭhe vā dhamme, upapajje vā, apare vā pariyāye.

Any action performed with greed — born of greed, caused by greed, originating from greed: wherever one's selfhood turns up, there that action will ripen. Where that action ripens, there one will experience its fruit, either in this very life that has arisen or further along in the sequence.
Vipaccati is in the present tense (arises), and does not necessarily connote the certainty that is given to it in the translation. It's one of those "eternal truths" type of statements. I'd say it points to a high probability of occurrence, rather than of fixed determination. Other suttas qualify the performance of kamma with bahulīkata/frequently, to bring about the fruit.

In this respect, perhaps the way to reconcile the apparent disagreement between the 2 suttas is to say that SN 36.21 is denying that kamma is the effective cause of every type of feeling. On the other hand, AN 3.33 speaks of the 3 roots of kamma as a necessary condition for kamma, which in turn is the condition for future experience. This reading of kamma in AN 3.33 does seem to mirror AN 3.76, where the conjunction of 3 factors (kamma, establishment of consciousness in a particular dhātu, and craving) are needed for any of the 3 types of bhava/existence. The same set of similes are also employed (field, seed, moisture).

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purple planet
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by purple planet »

Seems like an interesting video. I'll check it out. PM me. I'm very curious about religious freedom in Israel
(will answer in the pm)

Just want to say a short thing so please no one replys to this - just to clarify for people who read that - (dont want people to think bad about my great country) - there are rules in israel against missionary and stuff like that - but that dosnt prevent me from getting many flyers to convert to Christianity and receiving books about jesus life - might be other religos laws i dont know of but in reality they are non-existing - there are many buddhists in israel from all traditions
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BubbaBuddhist
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by BubbaBuddhist »

When the conditions are right, we are told, the seeds will bear fruit. The thing is over the course of unfathomable time, there are so many uncountable interactions of kamma-vipaka, both wholesome and unwholesome, we cannot begin to comprehend, predict, understand, unravel, trace back to the beginning the seeds of these fruits. No reward, no punishment, just the process. Do we deserve happiness? Do we deserve misery? Do we deserve beauty or ugliness? Wrong questions. How do we jump off the ride? Right question. :lol:

BB
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Sanjay PS
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Sanjay PS »

BubbaBuddhist wrote:When the conditions are right, we are told, the seeds will bear fruit. The thing is over the course of unfathomable time, there are so many uncountable interactions of kamma-vipaka, both wholesome and unwholesome, we cannot begin to comprehend, predict, understand, unravel, trace back to the beginning the seeds of these fruits. No reward, no punishment, just the process. Do we deserve happiness? Do we deserve misery? Do we deserve beauty or ugliness? Wrong questions. How do we jump off the ride? Right question. :lol:

BB

Excellent .

Sums up this post so well. Thank you.

sanjay
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purple planet
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by purple planet »

I liked to think that everything that happened to me was 100% my kamma - that eases my mind a lot -

this guy was rude to me ? - i probably acted the same way to someone else

waited long in traffic ? - probably cut someone in line in the past

so i would have liked to think its all 100% kamma and no other thing

just read this :
First they enable us to understand that we are fully responsible for what we are. We can't blame our troubles on our environment, on our heredity, on fate or on our upbringing. All these factors have made us what we are, but the reason we have met these circumstances is because of our past kamma. This might seem to be at first a pessimistic doctrine. It seems to imply that we are the prisoners of our past kammas, that we have to submit to their effects. This is a distortion.


and from this i get the idea that it is 100% kamma - did i read this wrong ?

link to bikkhu bodhi article about kamma : http://www.beyondthenet.net/dhamma/prisoners.htm
Last edited by purple planet on Tue Nov 12, 2013 5:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Bhikkhu Pesala
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Four Points to Bear in Mind
The fourth aspect of Dependent Origination is the one- to-one correspondence between cause and effect (evaṃ dhammatā). Every cause leads only to the relevant effect; it has nothing to do with any irrelevant effects. In other words, every cause is the sufficient and necessary condition for the corresponding effect. This leaves no room for chance or moral impotency (akiriya-diṭṭhi). However, as the Visuddhimagga says, for those who misunderstand it, it provides the basis for rigid determinism (niyatavāda). Meditators clearly see the relationship of each effect to its cause, so they have no doubt about their one-to-one correspondence and the truth of moral responsibility.
When someone is rude to us, that may well be the result (vipāka) of a previous kamma, but how we react to that determines to a great extent how we experience it. If we are really practising mindfulness intensively, we will hear the harsh sound only, we won't even perceive that someone is being rude to us. Certainly, we won't become unhappy or angry, wishing to retort. We will be able to just let go and respond rather than reacting.
Failure to Meditate on Sounds While Hearing
“Having heard a sound, one loses mindfulness. Getting involved in the attraction of it, one feels the onset of desire that tries to imbibe it.”
Kamma is not fatalism or determinism. Properly understood, it is both the cause of our suffering, and the means to gain freedom from suffering.

I recall once waiting in the meal queue at Mahāsi Yeikthā, being so mindful that I had failed to notice that the queue had started moving forwards in front of me. A Korean bhikkhu shoved me hard from behind. Had I been unmindful at that time, I might have reacted angrily, but I was just amused. I just didn't perceive it as a rude behaviour, though of course it is really quite rude for a junior monk to shove a senior monk from behind.
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Anagarika
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Re: Do people who get murdered deserve it?

Post by Anagarika »

I recall once waiting in the meal queue at Mahāsi Yeikthā, being so mindful that I had failed to notice that the queue had started moving forwards in front of me. A Korean bhikkhu shoved me hard from behind. Had I been unmindful at that time, I might have reacted angrily, but I was just amused. I just didn't perceive it as a rude behaviour, though of course it is really quite rude for a junior monk to shove a senior monk from behind.

It might have been useful training for that novice bhikkhu to have been told by his abbot he'd wait until dawn of the next day to eat, in order to cultivate mindfulness of hunger, and gratitude.
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