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Posted by josef on 4/10/2010, 12:44 pm, in reply to "Re: Luther and wu wei"
24.32.223.x
--Previous Message-
: rat & friends,
:
: It is a sin what has been said about sin
: here. No absolutes indeed. What a cop out.
: Absolute and relative are relative terms.
: Absolute relativity. Word games. Pure and
: simple. Word games.
:
: If one wants to really say something then
: one must either get past word games or use
: them instead of being used by them.
:
: You and others say there is no right or
: wrong as though right and wrong must be
: absolute in order for there to be right or
: wrong. Such a high standard is useful for
: the hedonist I suppose. But it is not the
: middle way. Not by a long shot. It is an
: extreme. No sin indeed. No good either. No
: bad. Just this... Then why bother to use
: words at all?
:
: If we are going to use words we might as
: well try to have some integrity rather than
: simply using them as an escape hatch. As a
: means to our own selfish ends.
:
: The next thing you are going to say is that
: it doesn't matter what we do. That causation
: is an illusion. Right. Silly monkeys. Purist
: Advaita balderdash.
:
: From now on I will give you three wrongs in
: the morning and four rights in the
: afternoon.
:
: Butcho
Butcho, I was speaking of sin, not the morals and ethics of right and wrong. They really aren't the same. Sin is defined by the reigning religious culture. Ours is Judeo-Christian, Muslims have an entirely different one, a native tribe in Borneo another.
Right and wrong are studied by ethicists. Situation Ethics recognizes right & wrong to be not absolute, but situational. It's wrong to steal, we know that, wrong to steal bread for your starving child? So many examples.
To follow what we consider the most right not out of fear of punishment or desire for reward is Integrity. Virtue. Te. But, of course what's good for me, an antibiotic, is not good for the bacteria it kills. That's why Zhuang Tzu speaks or no right or wrong in the absolute universal sense. It only determines on the micro, subjective level.
I like Isabeau's "missing the mark". Even doing the best we can with what we know, we can miss the mark. No sin involved.
imo, of course.
josef
342
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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