I think you got me wrong. I say that our personal dilemmas (and that are those we're really dealing with, aren't they?) are imaginary and can be overcome. And actually that's the way of Dhamma, the way to arahantship. I think one can see it that way. If you're talking about an imagined holocaust scenario then you're not dealing with a personal problem that's part of your personal experience.danieLion wrote:The Holocaust was not an imaginary dilemma.perkele wrote:Well said. I agree.Zom wrote:For an arahant there are no dilemmas and "hard cases" - for example, no, he would not lie to Nazis (since he doesn't speak lie). I think, he would just keep silence. We see different situations as "dilemmas" because of our greed-hatred-delusion. So, actually, sila is "cut and dry". The problem is that for ignorant people it seems "not cut and dry".
It's not helpful to make up imaginary dilemmas and tie us up in knots with that. Rather we should face with the most possible clarity and courage the dilemmas that we actually encounter in our lives and try to see that they really are imaginary. Most of those dilemmas we can't even describe and talk about very much if we really want to solve and overcome them.
Goodwill.
Daniel
(And now don't accuse me of denying the holocaust or something, please. Try to not get me wrong.)
Now I don't want to undermine any good intentions in solving real problems which can of course entail talking about them. But one should not get lost too much in the theoretical and ask if sila is or is not absolute or things like that. It doesn't help. The point is to try as hard as possible to stick to sila in every circumstance. And I am sure that an arahant can really do that without difficulty and without causing harm, because he has solved his personal dilemmas once and for all. If we generalize such personal dilemmas it's only solidifying them. The popular lying to nazis about hiding jews example is not an example from reality. It's an abstraction. Many individual persons had to deal with this sort of dilemma but it was different in all cases, their personal dilemma was different in all cases. I hope this clarifies my point.