Posted by
Prof David West on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/DEBATE-about-Religion-and-Atheism-tp7580664p7580816.html
I hesitate to jump in as I was taught the Bhavagad Gita by a
professor/translator, not my mother or my local guru.
But, as I was taught ...
"duty has almost nothing to do with the philosophical lesson of the
story. Arjuna's dilemma is not between kill and not kill, or deciding
between two contradictory laws - but between attached and non-attached
action. Only the latter avoids the accrual of Karma (western spelling).
Non-attachment is definitively not detachment (detachment is an instance
of attachment). Non-attachment is acting with "perfect knowledge" that
the action is the "right" action in that context, with context being the
totality of the world. (A kind of omniscience, the possibility of which
is for another time and place.)
An action taken because "it is my duty," "blood will make me happy," "I
believe the end result will bring about world peace," "I am afraid,"
"but they are my kinsmen" - is an attached action. You act on the
delusional perception that doing so makes a difference and that you are
the causal source of that difference. Only when you know that you are
merely the means by which a correct action expresses itself are you
truly non-attached and free from acquiring yet more Karma.
I stand ready to be corrected by those more knowledgeable.
And how this affects compressible/non-compressible I haven't a clue.
dave west
On Mon, Oct 1, 2012, at 03:24 PM, glen wrote:
> Sarbajit Roy wrote at 09/30/2012 10:28 AM:
> > The Gita, however, (as I'm fairly sure the Old Testament does too)
> > expresses that once a man's side is determined, he is obliged by DUTY
> > to do what is "right", even if it involves heinous killings on a
> > massive scale or even the killing of his close relatives. DUTY is one
> > of the core elements of Dharma (the way of righteousness). Of course
> > DUTY cannot be taken in isolation, because the essence of the Gita is
> > the continuous weighing of choices between the Dharmic Law (kill /
> > harm nobody) versus the inferior Niti (Penal) Law (slay all offenders
> > on sight). Gita 1:30, 2:31 etc.
> >
> > So DUTY would probably be compressible. I am an ant, so I'm duty bound
> > to pick up every speck of sugar I can find and convey it back to the
> > mother ship.
>
>
> Yep. I'm totally ignorant of Gita. But this one clause suggests to me
> that duty is compressible, by (my) definition:
>
> "Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities ..."
>
> Incompressible (components of) systems are initiators of cause rather
> than passive transmitters of cause. If a duty is defined by removing
> one's _self_ from the situation, detachment, then it's definitely not
> prima causa.
>
> But I wonder, also, about the Dharmic Law, which sound like _rules_ to
> me ... rules have an input and an output, mindlessly transmitting cause
> from the former to the latter. Is there any inherent "be present", "pay
> attention", "be attached", "be the change you want to see", take
> responsibility for your actions element to Dharmic Law? If not, then
> it, too, is compressible.
>
> To promote an agent to an actor, we have to make it a prima causa, give
> it the ability to _start_ a causal chain ... or at least affect someone
> else's chain in a way that couldn't happen were it not present.
>
> Note that an actor's influence on the propagation of events need not be
> unique. I.e. 2 different actors could produce the same result. But in
> order for it to actually be an actor rather than an agent, the result
> cannot be "optimized out", so to speak. An actor can only be
> (perfectly) replaced by another actor ... though an agent can
> approximate/simulate an actor.
>
> --
> glen
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org