Musa Basjoo Cuttings

Regarding the banana plant cuttings on the 26th of August, they turned out to be too small and went brown and died. Will try bigger ones next year if can.  It is true that they ought to be at least 2 feet tall before they are separated.

A note on morality.

I’ve been watching “The Atheist Experience” a lot on YouTube which is a show made by the Atheist Community of Austin in Texas. It is a live phone-in show and I highly recommend it. The majority of callers are either atheists themselves in various stages of de-conversion from a theistic religion (usually Christianity) or they are Christians who frequently attempt to justify their faith in God. A topic that often comes up is morality. The Christians will often ask how people would live morally and do the right thing without their religious beliefs. They think that the reason that they don’t just do whatever they want with no remorse or guilty conscience is because they fear the consequences from a supernatural source. This does not stand up to scrutiny however when we analyse it. If morality is determined by what a God says is right or wrong then theoretically it is possible for bad things to become moral. For example, if God decided to make rape a moral act then would it then become ok to go ahead and rape someone? If your moral compass comes from God’s word then surely you would have to accept it at face value. If God decided it was acceptable to steal then would a Christian start stealing? Of course not. So what is stopping an atheist from raping or stealing? The answer lies in human nature. Morality is an instinct based on compassion for others. We don’t break into peoples’ houses and take what we want when they are out because we understand what that must feel like for them. Humans can “put their feet in someone else’s shoes” as they say. I wouldn’t like it if that happened to me so I don’t do it to others.

The problem with a moral code built on a foundation of belief in the supernatural is that you really need to understand the Bible in great detail in case someone tests you on it. If you live by your own common sense, compassion for others and appreciation of the way things are then you simply draw upon your own personal experience if someone asks why you do (or avoid) what you do.

I’ve been looking at various sources on the Internet regarding morality in Buddhism and in some cases they would seem to steer me towards the law of karma. Karma is cause and effect and this is indeed a fine place to begin when dealing with decisions regarding right and wrong. The intention behind your actions is what decides the results of those actions or words. This makes sense.

Some sources I’ve looked at recently say that Buddhists believe the mind continues after the body dies. Another source said that after your body dies your cravings come back and are reborn in to some other body in the physical world. I personally think this is impossible to prove and is another example of theories that are not possible to prove. I wonder why some Buddhists feel the need to introduce the existence of the soul (or a similarly un-proveable version of a soul) into the religion. It is impossible to prove that anything continues after a person has died. Where they got this information from baffles me. But look at this connection:

If you teach people that the mind builds up good karma by living a moral life and that karma is transferable beyond this life after death, does this not remind us of theistic religions?

Be good, kind and believe = heaven

Be bad, selfish and disbelieve = hell

Likewise:

Be good, kind and build up good karma = good rebirth into better situation or no rebirth (nirvana)

Be bad, selfish, materialistic and build up bad karma = bad rebirth as animal i.e. dog.

This is, in my view the reason why some Buddhists still believe in this. Threatening someone with posthumous punishment in order to keep them in line should never be accepted in Buddhism. It cannot be proven to be true and therefore should not be part of it.

If I became a monk I would make it quite clear from the start that I reject anything that relies upon belief without evidence but am quite enthusiastically in agreement with the teachings of the Buddha. In any case, suppose that karma really did transfer to another body after death and it worked in exactly the way that these teachers explained... If that were true then I would still get a decent rebirth because my ability to build up good karma would not be affected by my disbelief in the system itself. That is the best part. We learn that through compassion and working to reduce suffering to ourselves and other beings is the route to lasting happiness. With kind and well intended actions and words we find that same kindness returned to us in other ways. This is the karmic cycle that we can trust since the benefit to ourselves and the outside world are visible to us and can be observed and enjoyed.