Radix wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pmBut what is the justification?
I don't know.
When the Buddha first lays down a rule, some reason is most often given, even if it's merely a repetition of one out of three or four stock phrases. But as the rule evolves, with amendments being made and rulings issued regarding particular cases, justifications are rather thin in the ground and often non-existent. In the case of the ruling that taking from an animal or a peta isn't theft, this is merely decreed, with no justification at all being given.
Of course we can always speculate as to what justification the Buddha
might have offered if somebody had bothered to ask him. My own speculation, however, just leads me to a dead end.
Thus:
The taking of what is not given with thieving intent involves five factors. In the absence of any one of these factors no such act has taken place.
If taking from an animal never counts as an act of this kind, it must mean that at least one of these factors is always and necessarily absent in the case of animals.
For a particular factor to be always absent it must be that in its very nature it is non-applicable in the case of animals. But which factor might this be?
It cannot be that the factor of
perception is non-applicable, for it is possible that someone might perceive honey as being owned by the bees that produce it (as several posters in this thread do).
Nor can it be the factor of
thieving intent, for if someone perceives honey as being the property of bees then she can form an intention to steal it, regardless of whether the perception be true or false.
Nor can it be the two factors of
effort and
completed expropriation, for someone with the above perception and thieving intent may exert herself to take the honey and her exertions may be successful – the honey may come into her possession.
So, that leaves only one possibility: the factor of
adinnaṁ, meaning that the thing taken is the property of another and has not been given.
If this factor is non-applicable in the case of bees and their honey, it must be that the Buddha didn't regard property ownership rights as extending to the animal realm.
Now comes the difficulty: how to account for
why such rights are non-applicable to animals. It's just here that I come to a dead end. The problem is not that there's no possible explanation, but that there are too many possibilities and we don't, afaik, have a clear idea about how the Buddha conceived property and what he saw as being its ideological basis.
Radix wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pmIs it something like because animals (and petas) cannot be considered legal owners of something, taking it from them cannot be considered theft?
That would be the answer if the Buddha regarded property rights as arising solely or partly from human convention, but we don't know whether this is the case.
Radix wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pmWhere is the mistake in considering taking from an animal to be a breach of precept?
The mistake consists in presenting
avinaya as
vinaya, by saying, “...yes, a breach of the second precept...” when the Buddha has said, “There is no offence when it is in the possession of an animal.”
To hold to and publicly espouse an understanding of the second precept that's been hammered out by one's own reasoning, but which blatantly contradicts the Buddha's own ruling on what does or doesn't transgress this precept, seems a contradictory position for one who takes the Buddha as his refuge.
“Bhikkhus, for a faithful disciple who is intent on fathoming the Teacher’s Dispensation, it is natural that he conduct himself thus: ‘The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple; the Blessed One knows, I do not know.”
(Kīṭāgiri Sutta)
Radix wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pmCan you show that per Buddhist doctrine, there is such a significant difference between animals and humans (and between petas and humans) that taking from animals (or petas) doesn't count as theft?
No, I can't do that.
I could, by appealing to one theory of property or another, offer a variety of reasons for why the Buddha
might have taken the view that he did, but I've no way of knowing which (if any) would be the actual one.
james wrote:I undertake not to wander about in the wiggle rooms that surround the precepts and to do my best to be guided by the precepts themselves rather than by the exceptions to the precepts.
Radix wrote: ↑Tue Jan 10, 2023 7:50 pmIndeed. Going by the spirit of the precept, not primarily by the letter of it.
That seems a rather Christian way of looking at the issue. In Vinaya narratives, however, the good guys (i.e., those monks and nuns described with the words, “of few desires, with a sense of conscience, contented, afraid of wrongdoing and desirous of training”) are not depicted as being at all like good Christians. If anything, they are more like good Jews, by which I mean the kind of Jews who would fully approve of rabbinical statements like these:
“You are not permitted to select injunctions of the Torah which you consent to observe, and reject others for the observance of which you can find no reason. In accepting God's word one is bound to implicit obedience to it.”
...
“Regarding the ceremony of the red heifer (Numb. 19.), Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai explained to his pupils that its ashes could not render any unclean person clean. But as this is a statute of the Torah, we must inquire for no reason. If we refused to do anything that God commands without a definite reason, we should no longer be paying Him simple obedience.”
(Midrash Tanchumah)
“That one should not be wise above what is written is well demonstrated in the life of King Solomon. The Torah says that the king whom the Israelites should set over them should not multiply horses to himself, nor wives, in order that he might not cause the people to return to Egypt, and that his heart might not turn away (Deut. 17. 16, 17). 'Then,' argued Solomon, 'since the reason for the paucity of wives and horses is given, I am sure that I can stand proof against these; I can multiply horses and wives and shall not turn away and will not cause my people to return to Egypt.' Unfortunately he was not proof against the prohibitions, as it is recorded against him (in 1 Kings 2. 1-7). And one can also see the wisdom of the Torah in withholding any reason for many commandments it enjoins.”
(Exodus Rabba)
The attitude towards God and the Torah advocated here is very similar to that of the Vinaya Pitaka's good guys towards the Buddha and the Vinaya.