Mukunda wrote:Ben wrote:Mukunda wrote:If you already have the gun, that speaks quite a bit of your mind set.
I don't think so. There are many people who have guns, and in my case - bows, who use them for target shooting.
As there are many collectors of weapons who never take them out of their climate controlled environment to fire them at sentient beings.
The primary of purpose of weapons is to harm or kill other beings.
I would say it depends on the intention of the person using the implement.
Mukunda wrote:I fail to see the logic of one committed to not harming other beings being attracted to implements of death for any purpose.
Its your baggage, not mine.
Go into any kitchen and you will find a myriad of implements of death - you'll find them in the knife draw. And I'm sure you can use any number of daily objects as implements of death. How many people get killed each year from being belted by a hammer, or a wrench, or intentionally run over by a car. They are also objects that are used as weapons. Should we stop using them too? Or is it just the big bad target shooters who have questionable ethics, kammic load and poor judgement??
Mukunda wrote: Target practice can be practiced using darts, bean bags, etc, and collecting is wide open to almost anything.
Quite so, but one cannot hit a 120cm target from 90 metres with a bean bag or a dart. Not only that, they are not olympic sports.
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725
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