i didn't appreciate the scarasm either so thanks for saying so. But I didn't appreciate it because it didn't honor animals and was making fun of someone talking about women by using animals inappropriately.Dhammakid wrote: Bhante,
I don't appreciate the sarcasm at all, mostly because it's not even applicable. No one here in their right mind would speculate on the Buddhahood of animals. Completely unnecessary. Furthermore, I find it likely that at least a few monks could have been influenced by their biases, just as those in any other religion are, or any other social group or community or chess club or whatever. I'm an African American - the entire western world conspired against us. So your words are so poorly placed.
Dhammakid
As Peter mentioned, there is a legitimate discussion about the nature of "Buddhahood" regarding all beings in the entire universe including animals. I'm not suggesting that dogs "awaken" to become Buddhas, because it is difficult to say that dogs are deluded in the human sense. However, if one accepts the scheme of the Wheel of Life with six realms including hell, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, titans, and heavenly beings, then, to my knowledge it has always been theoretically possible for a being in any of the six realms to awaken to bodhi. It has only been limited to humans as a practical matter not as a dogmatic matter. Because of the distractions, heavenly beings are too attached to pleasures and hell beings too tormented to awaken. Because animals are considered too dull they are not prone to awakening. Being born a human is the best birth in terms of the balances between pleasure and pain, self-consciousness and samadhi, etc. But, again, at least theoretically animals could be awakened and realize nirvana, because any being can theoretically awaken from any where in the Wheel of Life.
One should also remember that the past lives of Gotama Buddha included animal lives in which his conscious bodhisattva acts led to his eventual awakening. So animals should never be denigrated as not being on the path to buddhahood.
There is a legitimate question about the issue of women's awakening. and it does include the question of the development of the Theravada canon and control of the early sangha by the patriarchal society of monks. However, is this the right forum to go into those issues?