[Buddha-l] Dependent arising variants

[curt]

Please excuse any past equivocation - perhaps I was being too 
conversational and paid too high a price precision-wise. How's this for 
non-equivocationality:
(1) The generalization that "all living things must die" is invalid, and
(2) The notion of "birth", both as the Buddha used it and as it being 
used in this discussion, is hopelessly underdetermined.

Anyone with any knowledge of developmental biology knows that "birth", 
as taken to mean "that event at which life begins", is a completely 
muddled idea. The same is true for "conception". Its also true for the 
development of the neural crest, which at least one catholic theologian 
has proposed, in all seriousness, as the event at which one can say 
"life begins".  Even the very process of fertilization is not definable 
as a single event that takes place at a given "moment". Fertilization of 
a human ovum by a human sperm takes several hours - and each stage of 
the process can itself be broken down into substages.

Of course, the Buddha was unaware of the muddledness of these ideas - at 
least it appears he was. He took it as given that "all living things 
must die" and that "birth is the beginning of life" (or, alternatively, 
that conception is). And he had no idea what a cell is.  I think that 
the lesson is that the Buddhadharma is not a good place to look for 
insight into biology. Any sweeping generalizations about "life" must, it 
seems to me, take biological facts into consideration.

The point about the aspens is that any attempt to arbitrarily concoct 
definitions about "life" that are limited to multicellular organisms are 
doomed to fail - because that concept is also underdetermined.

The real lesson - don't argue from biology.

- Curt

Jim Peavler wrote:

>
> On Feb 1, 2006, at 8:48 PM, curt wrote:
>
>>>
>> Death is not inevitable. Take single celled organisms, for example.  
>> They divide. Nobody "dies" when a cell divides.
>
>
> You equivocate, senor. single-celled organizims aren't exactly born  
> in the sense used here. If fact they are reincarnated, without the  
> necessity of the conditional cell that divides having to disappear  
> before the recincarnated forms can appear. Sort of a simultaneous  or  
> serial reincarnation.  On the other hand, any single cell (or  
> millions of single-celled) critters can be killed, as when you boil  
> water or bake bread.
> In short, what you say makes no sense, no matter how you slice it.
>
>> Single celled organisms are the most numerous form of life - so any  
>> sweeping generalizations should apply to them. The generalization  
>> that death is inevitable does not, however, apply to them. So it is  
>> invalid. It's possible that one could make a generalization about  
>> "multicellular organisms of the Kingdom Animalia" - but even that  
>> would not be a sure thing. Even deciding what exactly a  
>> "multicellular organism" is, exactly, is not always clear. For  
>> instance, what appear to be individual "Aspen trees" can, in fact,  
>> be thought of parts of huge organisms that cover entire  
>> mountainsides. I will die and Dan Lusthaus will die - but death is  
>> not an inevitable event for a living thing.
>
>
> And it keeps getting sillier. Yes, large groves of aspens (like many  
> fungi) are multiple vertical manifestations of subterranean root  
> systems. Of course every leaf of every branch of every trunk of every  
> root is itself multicellular. It can also pass from a "living" state  
> to a "dead" state, to wonderfully colorful effect. so what?
>
>
>
> Jim Peavler
>
> "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
> temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
>
>     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
>     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
>
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