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But the author's mother tongue isn't English and I suspect what he means to say is that if we deliberately act in a pestiferous manner, calculated to cause annoyance and distress to others (for example, by indulging in divisive speech), then the kammas will be of a sort that are conducive to rebirth in hell (assuming that these are the ones that ripen at the time of our death). It doesn't, however, mean that we will be headed for hell merely because others happen to find us annoying.Stefan wrote:On page 79 of this book: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/allexistence.pdf , it says that being annoying to others can lead to hell.
I think all those elected to the American presidency (except perhaps Calvin Coolidge) would thereby have greatly boosted their chances of an unfortunate rebirth. But this has nothing to do with how many people loved them or hated them. Rather, it's the result of all the evil compromises that practical politics will impose upon even the wisest and most well-meaning president.Now, since George W. Bush is hated by many many people, would that mean he is more likely to go to hell?
or not.thornbush wrote:May he avoid more shoes, slippers, sandals, boots.....
Why the exception for Coolidge?Dhammanando wrote:I think all those elected to the American presidency (except perhaps Calvin Coolidge) would thereby have greatly boosted their chances of an unfortunate rebirth. But this has nothing to do with how many people loved them or hated them. Rather, it's the result of all the evil compromises that practical politics will impose upon even the wisest and most well-meaning president.
jcsuperstar wrote:off hand not counting the anti-asian stuff i dont see too much wrong with him
In the following read "not evil" for "sane."by jcsuperstar » Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:20 am
i had a talk similar to this once with a friend and i sugested to him that maybe all the people we on the left "hate" really arent evil, maybe they really think theyre doing the right thing... i have a hard time seeing bush as evil, a buffoon yes, but evil probably not. chainey and rush on the other hand...
from Raids on the Unspeakable by Thomas Merton
A devout memory of Adolf Eichmann
One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.
If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, "well-balanced," unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder. He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound respect for system, for law and order. He was obedient, loyal, a faithful officer of a great state. He served his government very well.
He was not bothered much by guilt. I have not heard that he developed any psychosomatic illnesses. Apparently he slept well. He had a good appetite, or so it seems. True, when he visited Auschwitz, the Camp Commandant, Hoess, in a spirit of sly deviltry, tried to tease the big boss and scare him with some of the sight, Eichmann was disturbed, yes. He was disturbed. Even Himmler had been disturbed, and had gone weak at the knees. Perhaps, in the same way, the general manager of a big steel mill might be disturbed if an accident took place while he happened to be somewhere in the plant. But of course what happened at Auschwitz was not an accident: just the routine unpleasantness of the daily task. One must shoulder the burden of daily monotonous work for the Fatherland. Yes, one must suffer discomfort and even nausea from unpleasant sights and sounds. It all comes under the heading of duty, self-sacrifice, and obedience. Eichmann was devoted to duty. and proud of his job.
The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous.
It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missile, and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will he suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from the button. No one suspecys the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will he obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missles take off, then, it will be no mistake. We can no longer assume that because a man is "sane" he is therefore in his "right mind." The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless. A man can be "sane" in the limited sense that he is not impeded by disordered emotions from acting in a cool, orderly tier, according to the needs and dictates of the social situation in which he finds himself. He can be perfectly "adjusted." God knows, perhaps such people can be perfectly adjusted even in hell itself.
And so I ask myself: what is the meaning of a concept of sanity that excludes love, considers it irrelevant, and destrtoys our capacity to love other human beings, to respond to their needs and their sufferings, to recognize them also as persons, to apprehend their pain as one's own? Evidently this is not necessary for "sanity" at all. It is a religious notion, a spiritual notion, a Christian notion What business have we to equate "sanity" with "Christianity"? None at all, obviously. The worst error is to imagine that a Christian must try to be "sane" like everybody else, that we belong in our kind of society. That we must be "realistic" about it. We must develop a sane Christianity: and there have been plenty of sane Christians in the past. Torture is nothing new, is it? We ought to be able to rationalize a little brainwashing, and genocide, and find a place for nuclear war, or at least for napalm bombs, in our moral theology. Certainly some of us are doing our best along those lines already. There are hopes! Even Christians can shake off their sentimental prejudices about charity, and become sane like Eichmann. They can even cling to a certain set of Christian formulas, and fit them into a Totalist Ideology. Let them talk about justice, charity, love, and the rest. These words have not stopped some sane men from acting very sanely and cleverly in the past.... No, Eichmann was sane. The generals and fighters on both sides, in World War II, the ones who carried out the total destruction of entire cities, these were the sane ones. Those who have invented and developed atomic bombs, thermonuclear bombs, missiles; who have planned the strategy of the next war; who have evaluated the various possibilities of using bacterial and chemical agents: these are not the crazy people, they are the sane people. The ones who coolly estimate how many millions of victims can he considered expendable in a nuclear war, I presume they do all right with the Rorschach ink blots too. On the other hand, you will probably find that the pacifists and the ban-the-bomb people are, quite seriously, just as we read in Time, a little crazy. I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. The "sanity" of modern man is about as useful to him as the huge bulk and muscles of the dinosaur. If he were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of his absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be a possibility of his survival. But if he is sane, too sane ... perhaps we must say that in a society like ours the worst insanity is to be totally without anxiety, totally "sane."
Thank you Bhante.Dhammanando wrote:Hi Stefan,
But the author's mother tongue isn't English and I suspect what he means to say is that if we deliberately act in a pestiferous manner, calculated to cause annoyance and distress to others (for example, by indulging in divisive speech), then the kammas will be of a sort that are conducive to rebirth in hell (assuming that these are the ones that ripen at the time of our death). It doesn't, however, mean that we will be headed for hell merely because others happen to find us annoying.Stefan wrote:On page 79 of this book: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/allexistence.pdf , it says that being annoying to others can lead to hell.
I think all those elected to the American presidency (except perhaps Calvin Coolidge) would thereby have greatly boosted their chances of an unfortunate rebirth. But this has nothing to do with how many people loved them or hated them. Rather, it's the result of all the evil compromises that practical politics will impose upon even the wisest and most well-meaning president.Now, since George W. Bush is hated by many many people, would that mean he is more likely to go to hell?
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
That is indeed a relief.Dhammanando wrote:It doesn't, however, mean that we will be headed for hell merely because others happen to find us annoying.
Because Coolidge displayed a degree of inactivity and a dexterity for snoring that seems to be unmatched by any other US president. At night he slept even longer hours than Reagan, and in the daytime he took lengthy siestas, and preferred lounging in his rocking-chair to any other activity. Obviously the more time a president spends sleeping and lounging in his rocking-chair, the less time he will have to devote to belligerence, criminality and the like.MMK23 wrote:Why the exception for Coolidge?