Legal suit

Buddhist ethical conduct including the Five Precepts (Pañcasikkhāpada), and Eightfold Ethical Conduct (Aṭṭhasīla).
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Sam Vara
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Re: Legal suit

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Radix wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 7:48 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 7:08 pm No, I'm not mixing any systems. I'm asking how the pursuit of legal redress leads to hell. In pursuing legal redress, where is the wrong view?
First ask yourself why do you want to pursue legal redress. Because clearly, you're not satisfied merely with "kammic justice".
Personally, I wouldn't be satisfied with "kammic justice" because I don't know what it is. Did the Buddha talk about it, or is it a more recent thing?

I can think of many reasons why one might want to pursue legal redress, and it's not clear why they would all necessarily spring from or be evidence of wrong view.
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Re: Legal suit

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Sam Vara wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 8:06 pmPersonally, I wouldn't be satisfied with "kammic justice" because I don't know what it is. Did the Buddha talk about it, or is it a more recent thing?
Well, one either believes that people are subject to kamma, or one doesn't.
I can think of many reasons why one might want to pursue legal redress, and it's not clear why they would all necessarily spring from or be evidence of wrong view.
To pursue "legal redress" is to hire someone more powerful than yourself to carry out revenge on your part.

It's not like the legal system is somehow a reflection of Objective Truth/Objective Morality/Absolute Truth/Absolute Morality, much less Absolute Justice.
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Re: Legal suit

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Radix wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:23 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Mon Jan 09, 2023 8:06 pmPersonally, I wouldn't be satisfied with "kammic justice" because I don't know what it is. Did the Buddha talk about it, or is it a more recent thing?
Well, one either believes that people are subject to kamma, or one doesn't.
True, but what has that to do with kammic justice?
To pursue "legal redress" is to hire someone more powerful than yourself to carry out revenge on your part.
maybe sometimes, but clearly to claim that it is always so would be an unwarranted extrapolation; for we have Francis Bacon's
Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
It's not like the legal system is somehow a reflection of Objective Truth/Objective Morality/Absolute Truth/Absolute Morality, much less Absolute Justice.
What are those things of which you write, and what is a reflection of them?

But we might be getting ahead of ourselves here: a bit too much proliferation. Why would pursuing legal redress be wrong view per se?
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Re: Legal suit

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Sam Vara wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:39 pmWhy would pursuing legal redress be wrong view per se?
1. When you're not satisfied with people being merely heirs of their kamma.
To believe in kammic justice is to believe that the law of kamma is enough to satisfy your sense of justice. Not believing in the law of kamma is wrong view.

2. Because you want that person to be beaten up, incarcerated, their job taken away, their money taken away. You want him to feel what you felt, you want him to experience what you experienced when he stole from you. In short, you want to hurt him. Wanting to hurt others also falls under wrong view.

Sam Vara wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:39 pm
To pursue "legal redress" is to hire someone more powerful than yourself to carry out revenge on your part.
maybe sometimes
Not sometimes, but as a matter of principle. The legal system is a socially accepted and imposed way to streamline people's pursuit of revenge.

On the other hand, in terms of kamma, if, for example, someone stole from you and you believe that he is heir to his kamma, then you also believe that he will get his "just deserts" via the law of kamma, as it applies in his particular case (meaning that perhaps he will be stolen from in the future, or whichever kammic consequences might befall him, given the state of his mind and other relevant factors when he stole from you). Beyond that, no action on your part is seen as necessary.
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Re: Legal suit

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Radix wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 5:22 pm
Sam Vara wrote: Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:39 pmWhy would pursuing legal redress be wrong view per se?
1. When you're not satisfied with people being merely heirs of their kamma.
To believe in kammic justice is to believe that the law of kamma is enough to satisfy your sense of justice. Not believing in the law of kamma is wrong view.
There's an error of logic here. If the law of kamma isn't enough to satisfy my sense of justice, that doesn't mean that I don't believe in the law of kamma. I can believe that anything fails to satisfy my sense of justice, and still believe in that thing. The law of gravity, for example, doesn't satisfy my sense of justice, but I still believe in it.
2. Because you want that person to be beaten up, incarcerated, their job taken away, their money taken away. You want him to feel what you felt, you want him to experience what you experienced when he stole from you. In short, you want to hurt him.
No, I don't. There is no way that I could get a person beaten up or made unemployed, or feel what I felt, via legal redress. However we might conceive legal redress, that's not an option. Nor are those things necessarily entailed; a law suit could simply be for my property to be returned to me, or for a statement concerning me to be corrected, with no desire on my part for them to feel or experience any of those things. And I could seek to initiate a law suit against legal persons incapable of being beaten up or made unemployed or imprisoned or feeling or experiencing anything whatsoever, as a legal person could well be a corporation or other non-individual entity capable of entering into a contract with me.
Wanting to hurt others also falls under wrong view.
Does it? For wrong view, I was going by this:
And what is wrong view? 'There is nothing given, nothing offered, nothing sacrificed. There is no fruit or result of good or bad actions. There is no this world, no next world, no mother, no father, no spontaneously reborn beings; no contemplatives or brahmans who, faring rightly & practicing rightly, proclaim this world & the next after having directly known & realized it for themselves.' This is wrong view.
I'm happy to be corrected, but I would have thought that wanting to hurt others is merely dark kamma, whereas wrong view here is a denial of kamma.
Not sometimes, but as a matter of principle. The legal system is a socially accepted and imposed way to streamline people's pursuit of revenge.
Not so. Apart from the fact that if it were socially accepted then it would not need to be imposed, law does far more than that. Revenge involves hurting or harming someone, whereas...see above...
On the other hand, in terms of kamma, if, for example, someone stole from you and you believe that he is heir to his kamma, then you also believe that he will get his "just deserts" via the law of kamma, as it applies in his particular case (meaning that perhaps he will be stolen from in the future, or whichever kammic consequences might befall him, given the state of his mind and other relevant factors when he stole from you).
What if I don't care about those things, and simply want, for example, a contract made good or possessions returning to me, and don't have any consideration of his "just deserts"? I might be solely concerned with my "just deserts". And what are "just deserts" when dealing with corporate entities? Not everyone sees the world as a means of fighting with others, and the law benignly facilitates that as well.
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