dylanj wrote: ↑Mon Dec 03, 2018 6:23 am
seeker242 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 02, 2018 12:37 pm
dylanj wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 5:51 am
that is killing & against the first precept.
Then so is driving a car since many insects are killed doing that too.
that is unintentional. killing lice because one wants to remove them from one's head is intentional.
It would only be unintentional if you would not be mindful enough to know that exactly this mass killing is the *unavoidable* result of your action.
Else it would be a valid excuse that you 'did not know' or 'did not intend' that the lice would die after casting them off from your hair.
As I said, somebody at the time of the Buddha could have pleaded innocence that living pathogens are responsible for the spread of sickness. A modern, educated person does not have that excuse, so both the options of "living" and even "not living" includes constant, calculated, intentional breakage of the First Precept to varying degrees.
Calculated, because it is up to your state of Right Mindfulness to be able to think about the results of your actions, and which of those are less unwholesome and harmful. Depending on the state of your knowledge of the law of Kamma and the Dhamma, the resulting decisions might differ (eg does it create more harm to kill insects or is it more harmful to potentially kill the people around me), but for sure you should have thought about it at length, so any resulting action would be intentional.
Saying: "I did not intend to kill insects when driving a car" or "I did not intend to spread illness while intentionally carrying the disease vector" only means that you were acting without the necessary Right Mindfulness and/or Right Knowledge. Not being mindful precludes from reaching higher attainments, so being careless about the results of your actions is not something one should do lightly.
As was, at least, the opinion of Ajahn Chah:
https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/617-stillness-flowing
p. 146:
Mindfulness was his main emphasis: making mindfulness constant and smooth, without interruptions – not allowing it to be broken. Whether standing, walking, sitting, lying down or eating you had to be mindful, because if you lose your mindfulness it’s the same as losing your life – that’s what he’d say. If there was a work project going on for instance and we complained that we didn’t have the opportunity to practise, he would ask us if our breath stopped while we were eating or lying down.
How could you be too exhausted to meditate when your breath is so immediate and ordinary? There’s nothing more to it than the breath. If you practise and you’re mindful, it’s nothing more than being with this ordinary breath. That was all he taught. Mindfulness was the main part of it.
“If you lose your mindfulness, what kind of meditation technique are you going to use? What sort of concentration are you going to develop? What purification is going to take place? You won’t know how to achieve any of those things. It’s mindfulness that is important. Coolness and tranquillity arise in the presence of mindfulness. Internal and external well-being come with mindfulness. Dhamma, Vinaya, every one of the monastic regulations depends on mindfulness. Without mindfulness, what are you going to make your object of awareness? That’s how he taught the fundamental principles.
p. 739:
"Luang Por emphasized that being mindful did not refer simply to dwelling in the present moment. The Buddhist practice of sati was distinguished by its moral and ethical dimension.
"Some meditation groups hold the view that it’s not necessary to practise sīla or samādhi, that mindfulness in all postures is enough. That’s good in a way, but it’s not the Buddha’s way. A cat has mindfulness, goats and sheep have mindfulness. But it’s wrong mindfulness, not sammāsati, Right Mindfulness. On the Buddhist path, you can’t take that as a working principle. Buddhism teaches that being mindful and aware means being aware of right and wrong. Having become aware of the right and the wrong, then practice to abandon whatever is wrong and cultivate whatever is good."
The teaching is a lake with shores of ethics, unclouded, praised by the fine to the good.
There the knowledgeable go to bathe, and cross to the far shore without getting wet.
[SN 7.21]