Should the Monks be treated any differently?

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=Jaochai]
Because being a monk demands a higher degree of personal virtue than, say, having a kid. If you can’t cut being a monk, you drop out. The monkhood is designed to encourage positive human qualities. A person who has been a monk for a sustained period of time has a necessarily proven moral quality that, while other people may also have, isn’t always verified.

There’s a reason why killing a monk is one of the four biggies. Why would you hurt a monk? By their very definition, all they do is hang out, collect alms, and give the occasional sermon. At the very least, they’re on the same level as people who just get in trouble for political speech, and then you add in the monk’s discipline.
[/QUOTE]
I too disagree that becoming a monk requires a higher degree of virtue; I don’t think it requires any degree of virtue. I think that becoming a good, selfless monk requires a great degree of committment; becoming a mediocre monk presumable requires nothing more than having parents pressure you into it. I strongly suspect that you can be a monk indefinitely without doing any good that you’re not explicitly told to, which would seem to a way of going about monkhood that requires no virtue at all.

Being a mother requires more committment, perseverence, and self-motivation than a monk, if for no other reason that they have less support from their community, and are not part of a brotherhood to do the work of setting a standard for them.

(Lest I forget to mention it; just because I don’t think monks are automatically more awesomer than everbody else, doesn’t mean it ain’t reprehensible to kill them. It’s just not more reprehensible on the basis of the “value” of the victim.)

22

[QUOTE=mswas]
There is no need to speak ill of Buddhists monks being murdered for speaking out politically just because some Christians beat you up in High School.
[/QUOTE]
And I haven’t. Unless you are the sort who thinks that saying it’s just as bad to kill others as it is to kill them qualifies as “speaking ill” of them for being murdered. I made a point of saying that killing them wasn’t justified, because I knew someone would come along like you have and try to claim that not considering them special means I want them dead.

And I was never stupid enough to admit being an atheist in high school.

23

[QUOTE=Marley23]
Yup, pretty crazy. I don’t think religious figures are better than anybody else, but I don’t think they’re worse either.
[/QUOTE]

That’s what I think, too. At the end, they’re humans, like all of us. And after all, should it matter that someone is a good or bad person? A victim is a victim. If we get into a pissing match out of who is more deserving of sympathy, where does it end?

24

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And I haven’t. Unless you are the sort who thinks that saying it’s just as bad to kill others as it is to kill them qualifies as “speaking ill” of them for being murdered. I made a point of saying that killing them wasn’t justified, because I knew someone would come along like you have and try to claim that not considering them special means I want them dead.
[/QUOTE]

Right, and you are bringing up this hatred in this thread for what reason? What does it have to do with the topic? What do charlatan faith healers have to do with Buddhist Monks being slaughtered by the government?

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
The point, obviously, is that people give religious figures an undeserved pass on all sorts of behavior that would be contemptible or criminal if someone else did it. If I faked being a doctor and people died, I’d end up in jail. If I claim to be a faith healer I can do the same thing, and get away with it. I can even claim the people who criticize me are bigots and oppressors, and many people will actually buy it !
[/QUOTE]

25

[QUOTE=mswas]
Right, and you are bringing up this hatred in this thread for what reason? What does it have to do with the topic? What do charlatan faith healers have to do with Buddhist Monks being slaughtered by the government?
[/QUOTE]
They have to do with the fact that religious figures get more consideration than other people. The Burmese government’s been killing people for a long time. The attitude that the lives of monks being killed now count, rather implies that the other people the government’s killed don’t.

26

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
That is highly debatable. From my viewpoint they are essentially parasites, at best. I regard them or any other religious figure as less virtuous.

And my point about having a kid is that the kid will be bereft of his mother.
[/quote]

Yeah, but you don’t have to feed them if you don’t want to. That’s the point of the whole deal - they take nothing that isn’t offered to them. By their very nature, they don’t impact society unless people specifically want them to. That’s not parasitism, that’s commensalism.

And if the mom did get shot, then in most Theravada societies it’d be the monks and nuns who take care of the kid. Their institution provides enormous social services that simply don’t exist in some places.

And if you want to know why those services don’t exist there, then read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Suffice to say, it has nothing to do with the monks.

Hoo boy. What would the Buddha do? He’d throw some devastating rhetoric, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, some vagrant stole my car and my whole collection of holy texts, so I’ve gotta do this in my own words.

Yes, I admit that the cultural baggage that has sprouted up around the monks over the millenia has shielded them from the criticism that they sometimes deserve. But considering the unprecedented services that they provide to society at large - education, counseling, orphanages, free sanctuary from inclement weather, and an untouchable critical perspective on society, as well as, you know, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and all that - and I think it balances out.

Not all doctors are good people, but I think it’s generally agreed that from a utilitarian perspective, it’s worse to kill a doctor than it is a migrant laborer. That’s a shitty thing to think about, isn’t it? But if everybody truly is of equal moral value, then it follows that the people with the greatest effect on the lives of others are of more practical value.

Plus, again, the monks don’t take anything that isn’t given to them. They aren’t even allowed to ask for things. I’ve seen this all the time - they simply stand, bowl in hand, relying on the charity of passers-by. And if that charity doesn’t come, they go elsewhere or go hungry.

27

[QUOTE=begbert2]
I too disagree that becoming a monk requires a higher degree of virtue; I don’t think it requires any degree of virtue. I think that becoming a good, selfless monk requires a great degree of committment; becoming a mediocre monk presumable requires nothing more than having parents pressure you into it. I strongly suspect that you can be a monk indefinitely without doing any good that you’re not explicitly told to, which would seem to a way of going about monkhood that requires no virtue at all.

Being a mother requires more committment, perseverence, and self-motivation than a monk, if for no other reason that they have less support from their community, and are not part of a brotherhood to do the work of setting a standard for them.

(Lest I forget to mention it; just because I don’t think monks are automatically more awesomer than everbody else, doesn’t mean it ain’t reprehensible to kill them. It’s just not more reprehensible on the basis of the “value” of the victim.)
[/QUOTE]

Being wrapped as I am in English translations of Sanskrit ideas, I’d use the terms interchangably. That’s my fault. “A monk’s virtue” is just the standard shorthand for his ability to adhere to the monk’s rules.

But you hit the nail on the head. Being a monk is easy - it’s defined more by not-doing than by doing. Succeeding as a monk, assuming you subscribe to the notion that Buddhist Enlightenment exists, is more difficult than anything else a human being can do. I would wager that the percentage of children who reach adulthood (successful mothering, among other things) is higher than those monks who go from a cold stop to becoming arahants.

And don’t worry; I don’t think anyone in this thread is saying it’s okay to kill monks. (I certainly hope not; even thinking that will earn you an awful lot of infernal boiling.)

28

[QUOTE=mswas]
If a country is religious, then their morality centers around their religious life. If you start killing those that are supposed to be upholding a higher moral standard, then in essence killing them is a symbolic act of killing the moral center of your culture, therefore it is more atrocious in that regard. It’s not really like a capitalistic exchange rate sort of deal, it’s more of an existential cultural thing.
[/QUOTE]

This needs a second vis, I wanted to say something along those lines on my first post but I´m supposed to be working here…
It´s spot on. I have no experience living in Burma, but the particular flavour of budhism there is the same as here, and if the social make up and order is similar, attacking the monks it´s stab to the society´s fabric.
Anyone with a minimum grasp of this culture could understand the abject revulsion of targeting the monks causes. It´s like shooting aid workers, religious symbols and moral figures all rolled into one; a direct attack on their culture.

Oh, DerThris, you´re flying of the handle here “And spread their religion, which I regard as a delusion”, this is budhism we are talking about; I´ve toured my atheistic carcass through an awful lot of monasteries since I´ve been here and not once I´ve been approached missionary style by a monk or anyone else.

29

[QUOTE=Ale]
Oh, DerThris, you´re flying of the handle here “And spread their religion, which I regard as a delusion”
[/QUOTE]
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

30

Isn’t Burma one of those countries where at some point, most males take up the saffron robes for a while, and only some stick with it lifelong? Quite a lot of the monks I’ve seen look fairly young - late teens, early 20s.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly holy or special about that kind of monk (not that I have much time for any of the other sort since I quit Zen).

31

[QUOTE=Ale]
Oh, DerThris, you´re flying of the handle here “And spread their religion, which I regard as a delusion”, this is budhism we are talking about; I´ve toured my atheistic carcass through an awful lot of monasteries since I´ve been here and not once I´ve been approached missionary style by a monk or anyone else.
[/QUOTE]
And do they ever teach their beliefs to anybody else ? Then they are spreading it. And yes, it’s better that they usually don’t go around forcing those beliefs on others, which is a major reason I don’t mention Buddhism much.

And I’m hardly “flying off the handle”; Jaochai said why he/she thinks monks have a “higher degree of personal virtue” than mothers; I explained why I didn’t think they were especially good people in reply.

32

In before Der Trihs takes a giant dump on the thread…

damn, he’s fast.

Yes, targetting monks specifically during a Demoracy demonstration is worse than simple tyranical indiscriminant murder, for the same reason that targetting children as a serial killer is worse than targetting professional boxers. It’s the same reason that the Hollocaust was more despicable than the V2 rockets shot at London or the Allied firestorm bombings. Killing innocent people is an inhuman, horrible thing no matter how it happens, but there are definitely degrees of inhumanity here.

33

[QUOTE=Mosier]
In before Der Trihs takes a giant dump on the thread…

damn, he’s fast.
[/QUOTE]
My apologies for having an opinion. :rolleyes:

34

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
My apologies for having an opinion. :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

Are you even allowed to call people “parasites, at best” here? Isn’t there another forum where you can rant and rave about people who’ve taken oaths of nonviolence?

I don’t think they’re any more likely to be “right” regarding their religion than the Norse or Mormons, but people are more than just their religion. You wouldn’t want to be remembered or judged based on the most mistaken belief you ever held, would you?

The bottom line is that these monks have taken oaths to do what they think is right, and to cause no harm. Targetting them is like targetting puppies. They aren’t necessarily better people, just like the Jews weren’t necessarily better people than the citizens of London, but murdering them was much more despicable.

35

A government which suppresses violent opposition among its citizens by use of deadly force is pretty ordinary. It’s repressive, but every government does it. A government which suppresses avowedly pacifistic opposition among its citizens most respected members by use of deadly force has demonstrated a relentless intolerance for any sort of influence by its own citizens.

The matter of religion is not why Buddhist activism is so widely respected. Courage is respected. The depth of commitment that makes a man stand up to a beating, and probable murder is respected, and when the man stays true to his philosophy even unto death, without responding with force, it demonstrates a commitment to principle obviously beyond that of the government willing to kill simply to avoid criticism. Non violent opposition to the thugs running Myanmar has been going on for decades. And for decades, great men and women have refused to use violence, and simultaneously refused to passively accept criminal government.

But, no one really cares about that. If anyone really cared about it, surely the world would have done something about it thirty years ago, before monks and civil leaders found it necessary to stand in front of guns, and batons.

Tris

36

I look at the monks (in this particular case) as freedom fighters who are the tip of the iceberg and who are taking the heat so that those after them might enjoy greater freedoms. The fact that they’re monks is really secondary to what’s going on. They just happened to be an organized group who desired to try bring about change. It could have been anyone else fighting for basic human rights. They just happen to be wearing a uniform.

I look at Martin Luther King and Gandhi in the same way. So does most of the world.

37

Der Trihs I think the thing you miss about religious belief is that it is a strict adherence to an ethical code. Now you can argue with that ethical code all you want, that is your prerogative, the problem is you don’t seem to really know anything about the specific moral codes, or at least your knowledge is superficial at best. You attack all religion as if the ethical constraints were precisely the same.

You argue a moral equivalency, all the time, but it’s not equal. A person who does not dedicate themselves to the discipline it requires to hold an ethical position is not as ethical as someone who does. The whole aristocratic notion of valuation of people doesn’t factor in. If you as an atheist wanted to adopt some sort of moral code and adhere strictly to its discipline then you would be the ethical equivalent of a Buddhist monk. Buddhism is an atheist religion. If you liked you could take Marcus Aurelius as your equivalent of Buddha, or set down your ethical code yourself. That’s all well and good, it is the discipline that is required that creates the value. As Jesus said, “You will know me by my works.”, if a monk has the cojones to stand up in front of a machinegun and not fight back, that proves that he’s adhering to his principles. These monks are strict pacifists, they would rather die than kill. In an absolute sense their lives are not any more valuable than yours, but the reason people care is because they are dedicating every aspect of their lives toward the pursuit of moral perfection. They may be stumbling along like toddlers, judge them as you will. Can you say that you are so dedicated to moral perfection?

38

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
And I haven’t. Unless you are the sort who thinks that saying it’s just as bad to kill others as it is to kill them qualifies as “speaking ill” of them for being murdered. I made a point of saying that killing them wasn’t justified, because I knew someone would come along like you have and try to claim that not considering them special means I want them dead.

And I was never stupid enough to admit being an atheist in high school.
[/QUOTE]

We are maybe getting to the root of your problem. Why would it have been stupid of him to admitting being an atheist at high school?

39

[QUOTE=mswas]
Der Trihs I think the thing you miss about religious belief is that it is a strict adherence to an ethical code.
[/quote]
No, it’s not. Religion is one of the worst enemies of ethics there is.

[QUOTE=mswas]
In an absolute sense their lives are not any more valuable than yours, but the reason people care is because they are dedicating every aspect of their lives toward the pursuit of moral perfection.
[/QUOTE]
According to YOU. I simply regard them as another parasite class of religious frauds, with a sprinkling of people deluded enough to buy into the lies.

[QUOTE=blinkingblinking]
We are maybe getting to the root of your problem. Why would it have been stupid of him to admitting being an atheist at high school?
[/QUOTE]
< Looks at location > Ah, Australia. In America, atheists are just barely above child molestors in popularity. Plenty have been disowned by their families, much less how non-familiy members treat them.

40

I have a lot less respect for monks than the average citizen.
They, as all religious proponents, claim some self-appointed authority over others.
And I think that is bogus maximus.