Re: abortion and moral judgments

[Guest guest]

Dear Dan,

I must be getting senile.. I do not understand this sentence of yours:

" say this with complete mindfulness of to whom I am speaking, and still ... this is nothing but straight-forward good-Germanism. "

because I try not to judge my neighbor, I am guilty of "germanism"???

Is that a distinct disease from Nazism? Or a "bury one's head in the sand", ism???

If I smelled the smoke from a concentration camp...what would I do? Is that the question? If that is it, believe me I asked myself that question many times or how would I have behaved as a gentile during Hitler???? I simply cannot know. I am not a heroic person and if I had a family to protect would I have behaved as I wish I would have? I don't know. How can I say? I would be afraid? Would I be heroic? I tend to believe not, unless G-d's grace would have pushed me.

Dan, dan, I have enough survivor's guilt for the moment. Don't you think i have questioned myself for some 70 years? Therefore, as an adult, I refused to hate those "Germans". I am not what heroines are made of...and I am a mother and a lover...how can I know until I am in the circumstances and have no place to hide?

I used to torture myself as a child with the stories of the early Christian martyrs and wonder what I would have done? Being a coward, I would probably have denied everything not to be fed to a lion or had my breasts cut off, or being grilled over an open fire. I would have recanted everything at the Inquisition I am sure.

What would I do? what would you do? Act like McCain and say no to being released early? I doubt it, in my case. You see only a weak human being who depends heavily on the grace of G-d, and I am not sure when bravery or compassion win...sometimes it is one or the other,sometimes both.

Look, I try to handle what happens daily. Sometimes well, sometimes badly, sometime disastrously for those around me.

As for judging others. they too may not be heroes, but ordinary human beings, and I do not and never will know their souls...isn't it better to allow them the assumption that they will try to do their best? If they know it. Or if they are unlawfully bothering others, I will do a citizen's duty, obviously.

Until we are tested in real circumstances we will never know who we really are. To judge others by a standard I may not be able to sustain myself, I believe is wrong. That, I know, is how I feel.

As for abortion...well My problem was the opposite. I was told (wrongly, praise G-d) that I could not bear children. So Ray and I decided we would adopt (and we did and have 2 natural born and 2 adopted kids) I have no real idea how I would react, because during my last pregnancy which was medically "hairy" and delivery prolonged, I wondered somewhat deliriously and in labor, whether as a Catholic in a Catholic hospital they would let me die to preserve the child ( this was over 45 years ago).....and I had 3 small children at home at the time and a husband overseas.

What would have become of my other very young children and the new one without a mother ( a disadvantage every child psychologist I know considers very grave for the child)

So, Dan, I am not tossing off fast answers nor trying to muddle the emotions. Unlike you, I have had to consider these problems personally and with a child ( Palin isn't the only one) The only way to do that is to be honest and prayerful. perhaps being "right" isn't the most important thing in the world.....maybe compassion and love are more important , and each case will be judged individually by the circumstance and the strength of the individuals involved.

My fitness to judge is that of every human being. Wanting to be a "moral" humane individual as well as citizen allows me to exercise my options as a citizen and make individual judgments on what my country does in my name.I personally see nothing mutually exclusive.

Dan, don't sneer at me, You may find me all the things you think objectionable, but I have been closer to this war and more involved in the "right to life" debate than you.Oratory is fine, but experience beats it every time. I have no overblown image of heroine at the barricades of this "war" only a mother who never had to make that awful decision because i wanted children more than anything and had the means, and even, after all the health, and the love and maturity to be a mother.

Toni

I don't have to set up moral conundrums to tease myself with...did that in "Christian Ethics" class in college and like everyone else was talking through my head. There are so many real moral dilemmas today, I am thankful I do not have to sit in judgment of them all.So, as you say "whence this moralistic rhetoric about missed potential?" my answer: My citizenship status.

Re: abortion and moral judgments

Dear Toni,toni wrote:

It seems to me, I left myself open to criticism by Dan for not specifically mentioning the obvious. Yes, I do make judgments on moral questions according to my personal set of values. One really must do that knowing that: it is a temporary, never final judgment of what little we know of the person we are judging or the action or values he is responsible for making.We cannot turn away shrugging our shoulders and not seeing (because we believe in Unity...that doesn't work while we live in duality)We are responsible social beings.

I can say torture is wrong...according to my values

I can say stealing is wrong, but I had better understand why...I wouldn't condemn Valjean for instance, or the constantly referred to guy who steals to buy a life-saving prescription for his wife or child

Aquinas and the loaf of bread. These are incommensurables, as you well know. We are not talking about stealing, we are talking about killing. If the same guy bought a kidney harvested from a victim murdered for the purpose in order to save his child's life, what would you say then?To repeat, I think I might even be able to live with the killing, the homicide, that abortion necessarily entails, if it were killing with a good conscience. The ancient Greeks did it, and they cut some ice with me. But let's not kid ourselves about what we are doing. If "enlightenment" mean anything, surely it means eschewing these gross self-deceptions. A fetus is either a human being, or an extraneous appendix, a tumor. There are no other possibilities. If it is nothing but a tumor, then there is no need for all this "agonizing, deeply personal" Sturm and Drang. Nobody storms and stresses about the morality of removing a hot appendix. If, on the other hand, it is a human being, then it is what it is - do it, or leave it. Screw your courage to the sticking point, and let's dispense with the hand-wringing - either that, or show some mercy.

......and on and on.

Black and white is not an option for a mature moral individual!

The ones I judge most severely are myself and my community since we are the ones who by turning away and not seeing, put the joint smoker in jail for years as if he were a violent drug dealer, but allow millions of our dollars to be given away in no-bid contracts which could have been used, for example to help the hungry.Those crooks in public "trust" are never jailed because the public either does not know or doesn't care enough to raise its outrage.

I see how great it would be to believe in "reward and punishment"as a moral guide of absolutism...but actually I outgrew that stage of moral development at about age 10.

Just to set the record straight, Dan...yes, I find myself saying " I think that is good" or "I see that as an evil".If I saw a serious law broken I would alert the authorities. If I were again on a jury, I would try to follow the law as I have done in the past, always wondering if I have the humility to see correctly.

But, in private life, after bringing up my children and as a teacher trying to hold up the common perceived moral good in behavior, I really try not to pass judgment on everyday behavior of my neighbors. I say this with complete mindfulness of to whom I am speaking, and still ... this is nothing but straight-forward good-Germanism.

Unfortunately where my country is concerned, I have to exercise my moral judgment constantly, and find my country not living up to its potential in so many ways...according to its self publicized rhetoric. And now, a contradiction ... if you are so unift to judge as you claim, then whence this moralistic rhetoric about missed potential?regards,Dan Watkins

What a sad day to watch the shenanigans of its leaders.What a sad day to watch the suffering we are causing...and yes, occasionally happily the good we are capable of.

Hope does spring eternal, I am told.

Toni

[Guest guest]

Hello Alice,

I would be interested in reading the 2 Tibetan translations on the intermediate state - my email is miasmom9@...

Bless you,

To: JUNG-FIRE Sent: Saturday, May 2, 2009 2:03:37 PMSubject: Re: abortion and moral judgments

since you bring it up, might as well throw this into the pot.. (mutt! Hello. Soup? Thank you. Old friends, etc. )

alice:

The word SPIRIT comes from Lat. spirare, to breathe.We are born when we take our first breath and die withour last.We breathe when the umbilical cord is severed.The astrological chart is based on the time, date, place of birth. It works as the unique way that individual will process experience.So in a sense that is the beginning of life in the manifest world and when the "Spirit" enters the body.So what about the fetus? Could that not be the building of the container for the Spirit?A clumsy analogy is the building of a car. It takes the driver and the ignition key to make it work. It is manufactured, used, and finally ends up used metal or put in a museum as some few embalmed human bodies - Lenin - mummies, frozen or pickled ones are.........I do not have the answer and I am always saddened by the necessity for some abortions and like the expression

"Prayerfully pro-choice".Any thoughts?loveao*********deb:Re: [Negative-Capabilit y] Abortion thoughtsYes, thoughts!Life is the thing, the what-beats-my- heart mystery of being. On a personallevel, I choose to feel that life begins at conception: the potential, thehope, the growing under / by its own will, the sacred. (Growth. Suchmystery. Who controls a fetus's growth?) I also understand that this is mychoice, my thinking, made only for me; made over what I govern. A choicethat's allowed to me. A choice I understand that not everyone can or willmake.When is the fetus sustainable on its own? That's the thing a culture / polis*can* define by evidence given by the practical nuts and bolts world. *Bythat we make law.* And such laws are in place, as in -- "[...] states

cannotprohibit abortions prior to viability, and laws that prohibit abortion afterviability must include an exception for the 'health of the mother.' "Which frames the debate, the true morality that defines a culture:We must do all we can for the health of all mothers and children. Health, after all, fosters growth. And *growth IS sacred.*And last week, a report told us that 1 in 5 American children live in poverty. As for the world... how many starved today? When there's enough food to go around. But it doesn't. this is the garden:colours come and go,frail azures fluttering from night's outer wingstrong silent greens silently lingering,absolute lights like baths of golden snow.This is the garden:pursed lips do blowupon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing(of harps celestial to the quivering string)invisible faces hauntingly and slow.This is the

garden. Time shall surely reapand on Death's blade lie many a flower curled,in other lands where other songs be sung;yet stand They here enraptured,as amongthe slow deep trees perpetual of sleepsome silver-fingered fountain steals the world.e.e. cummings*********mike:I'm always fascinated by this one.Certainly life begins at the instant of conception. The Tibetan Buddhist description of the growth of the foetus is quite fascinating inasmuch as it actually describes it from inside - in terms of what's happing energywise. Almost any occidendal account i've read is speaking of dead foetuses at various stages and the descriptions are of what seems to have happened externally up to that point.Briefly put, the actual meeting of the sperm cell and ovum, calls in a third entity as it were - calls in a rider - an awareness which is not inherent in material (witness how dead and 'material' a dead

body is)(before it becomes host my pullulating other lives of course)... the body is made up of its solidity, its fluids, its empty spaces and its warmth. None of these is conscious.Consciousness also never changes. Like a mirror, it reflects what is before it, life, death, happiness, sorrow, bliss, terror, but - ultimately - none of these change its basic nature which simply to be aware - to be witness - and to be nothing in itself except this faculty for being aware. This is what comes and goes and rides bodily forms that seem to be born and to die after a brief period of maturity and (optimally) the creation of further bodies of the same nature that can play host to awareness.Awareness was never born and never dies... it has always been... since before even time and space (it's first two vectors) came into being. Awareness is the is of what is. Without it, nothing is. And yet, when you look for it it has no form, no colour, no shape, and not

even a 'seat'... We say, for example, (us accidental occidentals) , that awareness is seated in the brain, but when we point to ourselves, we don't point at the head - pointing at the head means that you or someone else a bit doolally - we point at the chest, at the heart. The Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan words for mind all mean heart... This is not to say that the brain is unimportant - obviously it is, but it is an instrument, if you like, of awareness, not its home.That being - because it almost invariably sets itself up as a centre and what is peripheral to it and then splits itself off from the periphery - is what comes into the meeting of spermcell and ovum. Why don't we remember this? If you've seen that instant on film you'll know that it's pretty damn shocking - extremely violent - a literal slamming together and almost simultaneous destruction of all the other spermcells around. I think most of us are quite shocked, not least inasmuch as

the bardo - the intermediate state - between life and life is quite scary in itself... One generally flees one's way through it in utter terror at the nightmarish experiences there as the structures of the past consciousness begin to fall apart and themselves die...One comes screaming out of the bardo into what looks very often like some form of safe haven - a crevace in a rock, a hollow log, or - for those whose karma really is clean, a beautiful house or temple and into this extremely violent explosion whereby one fuses with the material energies of the father and mother and the growth process slowly begins.Some extraordinary books on the subject are:Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life - HIis Holiness the Dalai Lama [RIDER PUBLICATIONS, 2002]The Jewel Ornament of Liberation - various versions... H. V. Guenther [RIDER, 1970]Khenpo Konchog Gyaltsen Rinpoche [sNOW LION, 1998] Ken & Katia Holmes [ALTEA PUBLISHING,

1995]*The Life and Teaching of Naropa - H. V. Guenther [OXFORD, 1963]The Tibetan Book of the Dead - Gyurme Dorje [http://us.penguing roup.com/ nf/Book/BookDisp lay/0,,978067085 8866,00.html]The Mirror of Mindfulness - Tsele Natsok Rangdrol [RANGJUNG YESHE PUBLICATIONS, 1987]Death, Intermediate State and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism - Lati Rinbochay & Hopkins [RIDER, 1979]and, of courseThe Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche [RIDER, 2002]*As Gems of Dharma, Jewels of FreedomThis is not to pooh-pooh the occidental version - On the contrary, I believe a marriage of both views is of primal importance - Not least for the beings who are dying because of ignorance.Of course the arguments for abortion are many and cogent (at least on their level). The arguments against are often far more confused and ignorant than those for it. Here, however, is an argument which might render the

question - and the moral imperative of the question - far more subtle.I, personally, can see abortion as a possibility where the birth of the child will really harm or endanger the situation of the mother and/or the child itself.On the other hand, it was never promised that life would be fun, or even easy, but there are very few who would give up the chance for it if given the choice. No-one, as far as I know, gives up their life easily, not even those who take their own. There is always some sort of struggle. And taking the life of another living being - and particularly a defenceless living being - has never been considered among the better ways to accumulate good karma even in ignorance.There are exceptions to everything, of course, and an action that is 'good' in one context may be very harmful in another.This is where the subtlety comes in.Under separate cover (since neither Jungfire nor negcap accept attachments) I can

send anyone interested copies of two translations on the subject of the intermediate states I've recently made from the Tibetan, one the introduction to an empowerment given by my own teacher, His Holiness Düd'jom Rinpoche, and the other of a trio of short texts by the 14th. c. polymath, Longchenpa (klong chen rab 'byams)..

alice:On jf, Dan wrote in reference to abortion:

To repeat, if we are going to kill, then let's kill - and let's do it with a good conscience. Eschew the pale criminal within, and embrace the joy of the knife. It isn't complicated. It isn't essentially a wrenching, deeply personal, agonizing decision, or any of that .... nonsense. All of that fevered, overblown rhetoric serves only to obfuscate for the purposes of calming the conscience - that is, for the purposes of self-deception. If you would do it, just do it. Draw your sword and cut the knot. Access your inner Lady Macbeth, if need be.I can tell you are not a woman!Mothers go thru 9 mos of pregnancy, n usually at least another 20 yrs of loving care, concern, love, pride etc.It only takes about 3 minutes to kill that child on the battleground or in the street! Now if that is not a waste of time management, I don't know what is! I myself have raised 4 n lost one thru miscarriage n, at the time, almost

died myself - out-of-body experience. I am profoundly grateful that my only son, a Conscientious Objector, came back safely from Vietnam. Exempt as a student at Stanford. he had refused not to be drafted, because he thought that was unfair. He became a CO n then had to write Senators, etc. to get permission to be sent to Vietnam to help undo the harm. He succeeded n worked in the pharmacy sector. In his free time, he volunteered to work in a Vietnamese hospital, n within weeks he was helping in the OpRm n so found out that he wanted to go back to Stanford to study to become a doctor. He returned safely, got his degree in Philosophy, n then went thru the years of study there to become an MD n later a psychiatrist. Today he is a gerontologist teaching and working at a Veterans Hospital in Madison, WI n is now known for developing a program for treating patients in five different aspects - as human beings not just cases. His name is Dr. Howell. He

married Meg Little, a fellow student, now also a child psychiatrist, n they have 4 grown children. Anyone interested can google him.I am sharing this because it gives me an opportunity to relate an archetypal [Jung!] experience, wh I have never forgotten. Before leaving for Vietnam, came home to say goodbye. As he stood leaving, in his uniform, on the stoop, I reached out to give him one last hug, not knowing if this were the last time! As I put my arms around him, I suddenly became aware - on another unexplainable level! - that I was uniting with the collective Mother in all of history, in all the world, who had been, were, and would be saying farewell to a son she bore who was heading to an uncertain future. The uniform that youth wore was death-defying courage, the task to defend an ideal.The experience was shattering.Today, of course, alas it would include daughters as well.In

haste,loveao------------ -deb:Well, MacDuff. We cut out much of what makes us human here, don't we? And it seems another example of that illusion that we have about thinking consciously.In America we justify our decisions economically and after the fact. New car or baby? Most abortions occur before conception; before the act of sex.We all have our stories. How we came to be. Who knows what future pulls us towards it?Imagination, the key human element. We are story tellers and we are stories ourselves. Our "irrationality" works in so many ways, and how often it simply keeps us all alive we can't know. But I always think of those Rand computer war games in the early 60's that insisted we should use the bomb, the big one, against Russia (Dr. Strangelove was spawn of this). Thank the gods, thank Fortuna, we didn't listen to reason.Abandon reason, empiricism? Not saying that. No!

I'm saying -- individuate. With reverence and humility, trust the unconscious, where we really think. Stop believing in devils, hiding beneath your persona. Allow yourself to examine your feelings as psychopomps, their message veiled in symbols, and the images -- the things that pop up in your imagination -- as something beyond your own small intellect tapping you on the shoulder.Religion based in "proof" and literal scripture: magical thinking. An attempt to materialize what is mystery. It also ignores and rewrites history, the truth that really does set you free. After all -- what does History really teach, but the origins of our prejudice?