Topics Include: 1) Understanding Right Action as part of the Eightfold Noble Path. 2) The definition of Right Action: Abstaining from activities that cause harm to one’s self or others. Abstaining from taking life, stealing, and sexual misconduct. 3) Abstaining from killing: the definition of the taking of life. 4) The three variables determining the moral consequence of the taking of life: the object, the motive, and the effort. 5) Looking at the karmic consequences of killing from a larger moral context including a personal moral account within the context of a larger moral order. The fundamental understanding of the Dharma as a moral and ethical system based on ahimsa, or non-harming. 6) The question of suicide: the taking of one’s own life. How to understand it in a karmic context. 7) The question of vegetarianism vs eating meat. 8) The positive counterpart to taking life: the development of kindness and compassion for other beings. The expression of the moral life. 9) The killing of animals for sport. 10) The killing of insects. 11) Understanding our lives within the context of a moral universe.
February 27, 2021
45 min.