I'm in a field, enjoying nature. I lay down. I crush hundreds of sentient beings. I look up in the sky. I relax. I stand up. I get in my car. I aid pollution.
The next day, I go to work. I make money. I could have used that time to help people and live with less. I need to relax. I get frustrated. I need to calm down. A fly annoys me for 5minutes straight. I smash it. I destroy another sentient being. I need to relax. I return to the field. I see that I will crush hundreds more of sentient beings. I do not care, I need to relax. Their death will be a sacrifice for my peace. I do not exist.
Vishnu killed them. Not me.
ReX wrote: I return to the field. I see that I will crush hundreds more of sentient beings. I do not care, I need to relax. Their death will be a sacrifice for my peace. I do not exist.
Vishnu killed them. Not me.
I see a murderer about to kill some children. I have a gun in my hand. I kill the murderer. Walking down the street further, I see someone I do not like the looks of. I kill them just out of general principle.
Did I kill them, or Vishnu? Perhaps we were accomplices?
Remember that literialism is not appropriate here. Vishnu and Shiva are only metaphors for the forces of construction and destruction which comprise all change. If those metaphors symbolize anything real, it might be the motivations you have for killing.
My post was still typed in the train of thought that all sentient beings are equal. My mistake.
Could it be said that an entity lacking sentiency cannot suffer death?
(Death) Depends on your definition of life. For simplicity's sake, let's exclude a virus.
A buddhist view would be that all life (in all dimensions) is sentient ( I'll simplify once more: consciouss). Therefor, if it's alive, some day it will die.
So your statement could very well be said using these definitions although continuing on the buddhist view, the word suffer might not me associated with death. Death could be release. I admit, the transition can be troublesome.
Could it be there are too many 'human' descriptions of a physical ceasing to exist and no terminology suficent in describing spiritual or 'sentient' death?
Yes, Gelisgesti, our death is best described as a "ceasing to exist" as an experiencing "being." This suggests what I've repeated many times here that it is unreasonble, indeed, downright meaningless, to conceive of our ever being in a state of oblivion, a state of death. If there is no being, there can be no state for "it" to be in. Our "ceasing to exist" guarantees, paradoxically, our never being in a state of death. But from the Buddhist point of view we, as ego-selves, do not exist now; experiences do, and as far as I can tell THEY will cease upon "my death."
If there should be a kind of mindfulness after my death, it will not be "mine." It will be a cosmic phenomenon. But, then, as far as I am concerned that is the case with our mindfulness right now. In the Hindu and Buddhist sense, I am one of the zillions of eyes of God, Brahma, Allah, Cosmos, etc..
'Passing on' is a phrase that can indicate 'death' or, continuation. If a seed or root or other means of propagation remains of a flower .... can that flower, suffer a death, cease to exist, become no more? Neither can it be seen in any of the thousands of our feeble attempts to describe the perpetuation of that part of us that is known as, the soul.
Are we less than the flower that extends beyond and before us?
Perhaps we also err in our description of sentient.
I guess there is a kind of immortality for us, not a very satisfactory one. Once something has existed, the fact of its existence can never be denied. It can end in a sense, with "death," but it cannot be UNDONE as a historical fact.
Sentience means awareness/consciousness, and plants and lower animals such as worms and insects simply do not have the brain structures required. Sure they can react to stimuli, but so can robotic insects.
Of course flowers can cease to exist. Individual blooms can decay into constituent atoms and whole species can go extinct without a single seed or root to perpetuate them. Dodos exist in our culture if not in reality, but what of the thousands of species which vanished off the face of the earth without leaving any trace?
What are the historical facts concerning the millions of hominids who left no known physical trace of their passage on earth and whose bloodlines died out a hundred thousand years ago? It is virtually all conjecture, so in that sense you could say that the reality of those alleged hominids is nothing but a social construction. Does someone have to observe evidence of your existence in order for it to be a fact of reality?
Terry, like the falling tree in the forest, my existence AS I UNDERSTAND THAT PHRASE is a social--relatlively shared subjective-construction, but the existence of that construction has an objective reality...I think.
Do you honestly think that someone or something did not exist, just because there no "none" evidence of their existence? If something truly existed, there is no denying it's existence.
DRN, I don't uinderstand. How does this question differ from "If something truly does not exist, there is no need to deny its non-existence"?
Terry
Quote: And the belief that all is a dream/illusion may be an illusion itself. I'll go with the most logical explanation: the universe exists and is the source of my perceptions, not something I dreamed up.
Do you maintain that the world exists as it is observed when it's not observed?
Here's a quote by Kant:
"As the senses... never and in no single instance enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, and as these are mere representations...all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be held to be nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere else than merely in our thought. Now is this not manifest idealism?"
Quote: The properties of consciousness can and have been observed, and many books and journal articles have been written on the subject.
What properties are you talking about Terry?
Quote:The biochemical processes which give rise to consciousness can and have been observed.
Consciousness gives rise to the biological processes when those processes are being observed. I.e. the processes are ideas that are being observed.
Quote:We can easily determine whether any given individual is conscious or unconscious.
Yes we tend to say, as you do above, but that's using the word consciousness with a different meaning.
Great to have you back, Twyvel. I'll respond to your comments after I've had a chance to digest them.
