GENIUS FORUMS

Diebert; Let me turn your question around: Why would one cause unnecessary harm; i.e., suffering that did not lead to liberation? If one action causes unnecessary harm and another action avoids unnecessary harm, I would act to minimize suffering by choosing the action that avoids unnecessary harm. H...

Tomas;

We know Dick Cheney’s view, but what is your view of “do no harm”?

Do no harm <http://donoharm.us/>,
clyde

You seem to be suggesting that increased awareness of suffering increases the quantity of suffering itself. I think that increased awareness of suffering has not effect on the quantity of suffering itself. For example, my awareness of the color red does not increase the quantity of red in the unive...

Diebert; I don’t know what an animal experiences and cannot say whether “most animals” experience stress or not. You seem to have an affinity to animals and know their experiences. Would you have an opinion on what a rock or plant experiences in terms of stress? Don't you have method to establ...

Diebert; Thank you for the notice regarding the timing of your next response. Perhaps others will participate in the interim. And you failed to quote the concluding sentence of this short paragraph, “Therefore, you can act to minimize suffering.” Why would one minimize it as some sort of princip...

Diebert; OK, then you know what suffering is. Since you have an imagination, you can imagine the suffering of others. Not knowing what suffering is, would be ignorance. There's no need to add more imagination to what is already ignorance for most. This was addressed to you, personally, not “mostâ€...

Diebert; ...it seems pointless for you and I to discuss what a third person, the Dalai Lama, intended when he spoke those words. I quoted those words spoken by the Dalai Lama because I understand the words as supporting “do no harm” and believe that most people will have a similar understanding....

Diebert; I don’t know what the Dalai Lama meant. Okay, but then why did you quote him? You asked, “So the Dalai Lama is placing the social being as life's purpose?” I know what the quote meant to me, you know what the quote meant to you, but neither of us knows what the Dalai Lama intended and...

Diebert; I don’t know what the Dalai Lama meant. The two sentences quoted were taken from a speech which you can read at the linked web-site. And the Dalai Lama has written many books, some of which discuss suffering, compassion, etc. I don’t know what the Buddha meant by dukkha . There have bee...

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

-- from the 14th Dalai Lama’s Acceptance Speech of The Nobel Peace Prize 1989 (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peac ... tance.html)

Diebert;

Does the wise person know suffering? If so, what does the wise person understand of the nature of suffering?

Do no harm < http://donoharm.us/ >,
clyde

... do all living things have imagination, including one-celled animals and plants, all of whom exhibit perception as they respond to stimuli? Only to the degree they have a certain amount or complexity of stimuli and memory to retain traces of them, creating the mirror-like effect needed to have a...

Could you possibly explain to me how you think your motto "offers profound insight into the nature of the world and self" ? I see no profound insights in your motto or associated information. Rhett; I agree that no simple slogan can possibly, in and of itself, answer all questions. So you...

. The tree in my example symbolises ignorance. I purposefully undertake to eradicate ignorance, by ripping out the roots. Clipping the tips or tweezing out fibres is a waste of valuable time. . Rhett; What method(s) do you use to eradicate your ignorance? Have you succeeded in totally eradicating y...

. Rhett: The kind of people that resonate with the message are typically either (a) those too shallow and duplicitous to integrate it into their lives, that would drop it the moment their attachments come under threat, meaning it will do little or no good, or (b) the kind that could be engaging in ...

free hugs: http://youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

I asked you if you could have such perceptions without imagining them. Let me repeat myself in other words: the imagination is the mechanism through which perceptions arise. The imprint is the imaging and through memory becomes imagining. Diebert; That is an interesting view of imagination and perc...

I do not believe that there is one path to that realization, nor can I state what another must experience along the way, other than to say that human beings experience suffering. There are a couple of things you could say about the path. For example would you agree that realization includes knowing...

You posit that “[o]ut of the imagination grows reason”. I do not know what set of causes and conditions are required for reason to arise. Then for you it must seem like magic! Watch out for that rock, it might suddenly gain reasoning abilities and beat you with chess. Diebert; A plant grows out...

Your use of the term imagination to include “basic sensual experiencing” (perception) seems unusual to me. A dictionary definition (Merriam-Webster) of “imagination” is “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in r...

. “Do no harm” is a guiding principle and we do not offer specific “do’s and don’ts”. It very much has the form of a specific don't. How about a guiding principle like "Become Wisdom". Tell me why you won't swap to this fellows. . Rhett; I encourage you to promote “Become Wi...

. Rhett: The kind of people that are actually doing the obvious forms of physical harm are typically the kind of people that are dullened to your message, or can see it's inapplicability to their circumstance. Therefore it will, by most reasonable accounts, do no good. It would just waste valuable ...

. Rhett: The kind of people that resonate with the message are typically either (a) those too shallow and duplicitous to integrate it into their lives, that would drop it the moment their attachments come under threat, meaning it will do little or no good, or (b) the kind that could be engaging in ...

How do you deal with that which is not conceptual? I'd say the faculty that deals with that is called the imagination . This embodies all of our basic sensual experiencing and opining, while supplying creativity toward the higher faculties. Out of the imagination grows reason, like homo sapiens gre...

Matt Gregory wrote:Living by fixed rules is a problem because rules are not intelligent. People are.

They have the potential, anyway.

Matt;

I agree. “Do no harm” is a guiding principle and we do not offer specific “do’s and don’ts”.

Do no harm < http://donoharm.us/ >,
clyde