The Dharma

Someone recently brought Buddhism up with me in a discussion (the individual claimed erroneously that it is a religion), and I decided to put up some quotes of the Tathagata.  Here they are, in no particular order.

"You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger."

"No one saves us but ourselves.  No one can and no one may.  We ourselves must walk the path."

"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

"The mind is everything.  What you think, you become."

I've never read anything remotely so valuable come out of any monotheistic "prophet" or "deity."  Of course, that doesn't mean that there are no gods, it only means that the Tathagata is greater than them all, which we already knew. 

Here's one of those parables those bible-types are so keen on.

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well groomed, nicely dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: "Hi! I'm John, and this is Mary."

Mary: "Hi! We're here to invite you to come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me:   "Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who's Hank, and why would I want to kiss His ass?"

John: "If you kiss Hank's ass, He'll give you a million dollars; and if you don't, He'll kick the shit out of you."

Me:   "What? Is this some sort of bizarre mob shake-down?"

John: "Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank owns this town. He can do whatever He wants, and what He wants is to give you a million dollars, but He can't until you kiss His ass."

Me:   "That doesn't make any sense. Why..."

Mary: "Who are you to question Hank's gift? Don't you want a million dollars? Isn't it worth a little kiss on the ass?"

Me:   "Well maybe, if it's legit, but..."

John: "Then come kiss Hank's ass with us."

Me:   "Do you kiss Hank's ass often?"

Mary: "Oh yes, all the time..."

Me:   "And has He given you a million dollars?"

John: "Well no. You don't actually get the money until you leave town."

Me:   "So why don't you just leave town now?"

Mary: "You can't leave until Hank tells you to, or you don't get the money, and He kicks the shit out of you."

Me:   "Do you know anyone who kissed Hank's ass, left town, and got the million dollars?"

John: "My mother kissed Hank's ass for years. She left town last year, and I'm sure she got the money."

Me:   "Haven't you talked to her since then?"

John: "Of course not, Hank doesn't allow it."

Me:   "So what makes you think He'll actually give you the money if you've never talked to anyone who got the money?"

Mary: "Well, He gives you a little bit before you leave. Maybe you'll get a raise, maybe you'll win a small lotto, maybe you'll just find a twenty-dollar bill on the street."

Me:   "What's that got to do with Hank?"

John: "Hank has certain 'connections.'"

Me:   "I'm sorry, but this sounds like some sort of bizarre con game."

John: "But it's a million dollars, can you really take the chance? And remember, if you don't kiss Hank's ass He'll kick the shit out of you."

Me:   "Maybe if I could see Hank, talk to Him, get the details straight from Him..."

Mary: "No one sees Hank, no one talks to Hank."

Me:   "Then how do you kiss His ass?"

John: "Sometimes we just blow Him a kiss, and think of His ass. Other times we kiss Karl's ass, and he passes it on."

Me:   "Who's Karl?"

Mary: "A friend of ours. He's the one who taught us all about kissing Hank's ass. All we had to do was take him out to dinner a few times."

Me:   "And you just took his word for it when he said there was a Hank, that Hank wanted you to kiss His ass, and that Hank would reward you?"

John: "Oh no! Karl has a letter he got from Hank years ago explaining the whole thing. Here's a copy; see for yourself."

From the Desk of Karl

1. Kiss Hank's ass and He'll give you a million dollars when you leave town.
2. Use alcohol in moderation.
3. Kick the shit out of people who aren't like you.
4. Eat right.
5. Hank dictated this list Himself.
6. The moon is made of green cheese.
7. Everything Hank says is right.
8. Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.
9. Don't use alcohol.
10. Eat your wieners on buns, no condiments.
11. Kiss Hank's ass or He'll kick the shit out of you.

Me:   "This appears to be written on Karl's letterhead."

Mary: "Hank didn't have any paper."

Me:   "I have a hunch that if we checked we'd find this is Karl's handwriting."

John: "Of course, Hank dictated it."

Me:   "I thought you said no one gets to see Hank?"

Mary: "Not now, but years ago He would talk to some people."

Me:   "I thought you said He was a philanthropist. What sort of philanthropist kicks the shit out of people just because they're different?"

Mary: "It's what Hank wants, and Hank's always right."

Me:   "How do you figure that?"

Mary: "Item 7 says 'Everything Hank says is right.' That's good enough for me!"

Me:   "Maybe your friend Karl just made the whole thing up."

John: "No way! Item 5 says 'Hank dictated this list himself.' Besides, item 2 says 'Use alcohol in moderation,' Item 4 says 'Eat right,' and item 8 says 'Wash your hands after going to the bathroom.' Everyone knows those things are right, so the rest must be true, too."

Me:   "But 9 says 'Don't use alcohol.' which doesn't quite go with item 2, and 6 says 'The moon is made of green cheese,' which is just plain wrong."

John: "There's no contradiction between 9 and 2, 9 just clarifies 2. As far as 6 goes, you've never been to the moon, so you can't say for sure."

Me:   "Scientists have pretty firmly established that the moon is made of rock..."

Mary: "But they don't know if the rock came from the Earth, or from out of space, so it could just as easily be green cheese."

Me:   "I'm not really an expert, but I think the theory that the Moon was somehow 'captured' by the Earth has been discounted*. Besides, not knowing where the rock came from doesn't make it cheese."

John: "Ha! You just admitted that scientists make mistakes, but we know Hank is always right!"

Me:   "We do?"

Mary: "Of course we do, Item 7 says so."

Me:   "You're saying Hank's always right because the list says so, the list is right because Hank dictated it, and we know that Hank dictated it because the list says so. That's circular logic, no different than saying 'Hank's right because He says He's right.'"

John: "Now you're getting it! It's so rewarding to see someone come around to Hank's way of thinking."

Me:   "But...oh, never mind. What's the deal with wieners?"

Mary: She blushes.

John: "Wieners, in buns, no condiments. It's Hank's way. Anything else is wrong."

Me:   "What if I don't have a bun?"

John: "No bun, no wiener. A wiener without a bun is wrong."

Me:   "No relish? No Mustard?"

Mary: She looks positively stricken.

John: He's shouting. "There's no need for such language! Condiments of any kind are wrong!"

Me:   "So a big pile of sauerkraut with some wieners chopped up in it would be out of the question?"

Mary: Sticks her fingers in her ears."I am not listening to this. La la la, la la, la la la."

John: "That's disgusting. Only some sort of evil deviant would eat that..."

Me:   "It's good! I eat it all the time."

Mary: She faints.

John: He catches Mary. "Well, if I'd known you were one of those I wouldn't have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you I'll be there, counting my money and laughing. I'll kiss Hank's ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater."

With this, John dragged Mary to their waiting car, and sped off.

One of the other sites that I frequent is ArgumentsfromtheRight.  Recently we have been having a discussion about the nature of morality.  Is it Subjective/Relative, or is it Objective?  Now, I've decided to bring the argument to this page, mainly because the maintainer of the ArgumentsFromtheRight site is (possibly intentionally, since three of us have informed him time and again that his representation is inaccurate) grossly and profoundly misrepresenting the Moral Relativist's position.  That being the case, I have decided to post the actual Moral Relativist position here, and open up my page to the discussion.  The position is as follows.

We can clearly see through our own experiences that moral views differ, often radically, from person to person and througout time, so the initial assumption must be that morality is a subjective phenomenon unless sufficient evidence can be presented such that it outweighs the combined subjective opinions of everyone that has ever existed. "Murder is wrong" is like saying "popcorn is tasty," however,  it is not a claim of equal value in the subjective framework.  There is a lot more riding on whether murder is right or wrong in your subjective opinion than there is on your opinion on popcorn's tastiness.  Both are opinions, but some opinions are just more important than others (to the individual; I'm not suggesting some people's opinions are more important than other people's opinions). 

Now, certainly non-physical universal truths exist, but it is the job of the objective moralist to  show that morality is one of them.  The nonphysical objective truths are things like "a triangle is a closed plane figure having three sides."  This is a nonphysical objective truth because we need not examine the outside world to verify it, and because there can be no objection to it, like there can be to the claim "If X borrowed money from Y, then X ought to pay Y back."  Similarly, 2+2=4 is a nonphysical objective truth because we need not examine the outside world to verify it, and because there can be no objective to it, like there can be to the claim "popcorn is tasty."  When I state the claim "popcorn is tasty," I am stating a fact, just as when John claims, "murder is wrong," he is stating a fact.  But,  the fact is not that "popcorn is tasty," or that "murder is wrong,"  the fact is that I believe popcorn is tasty, and John believes that murder is wrong.  You cannot be wrong in your own subjective beliefs, however you can be wrong in trying to universalize them (that is, to claim that they are obective, simply because you believe them), and this is the error that the objective moralist makes. 

What we emphatically do not claim is that facts of all shades are relative.  There really are non-physical universal truths like the ones that I have outlined above, but opinions are not amongst them, and moral claims are fundamentally opinions.

The following is rather graphic, so I apologize in advance to those of you who may be squeamish, but I think that there is a question in here that is worth asking.   Recently a man was arrested in Germany after having killed an eaten a man.  The twist is that the man who was killed agreed to the killing.  Here is more on the situation:  "Armin Miewes, 42, placed adverts on the internet seeking a man willing to be killed and eaten. Astonishingly he received more than 400 replies.  An engineer, identified only as Bernd Juergen B, responded, the court in Kassel, Germany, heard. He arrived at Miewes's home in the in the town of Rotenburg in March 2001, saying: "Now you can see my body. I hope you'll find me tasty," according to Miewes. The court gasped as a video shot by Miewes was shown, describing in detail how he cut off the engineer's penis - at the victim's request - and cooked it in red wine before eating it.  "It was important to him that his member be cut off and that he witness it," said Meiwes. "It gave him pleasure."  Ten hours later, Miewes killed him with a knife and cut up the body.  He buried the innards of the corpse and kept the skull and plastic bags of flesh in his freezer. He ate about 20 kg (44 pounds) of the flesh, defrosting it bit by bit.  "With every piece of flesh I ate I remembered him," said Meiwes. "It was like taking communion." He continued: "He told me he had had the desire since he was a child to be slaughtered and eaten. He was very intelligent and I didn't see any sign that he was disturbed."

Now, what I find very interesting about this case is that Mr. Miewes clearly is not a psychopath or a sociopath.  In fact, before he finally killed and ate Bernd Juergen B, he had 3 other men come to his home with the intent to be slaughtered and eaten by him, but each of them backed out, and Miewes made no attempt to kill them against their wishes.  In fact, one man was actually bound to the slaughtering table when he decided that he didn't want to die, and Miewes unbound him and freed him to leave without trying to so much as dissuade him.  Now, both men seem to have been lucid and rational, so was anything "evil" or "wrong" done here?