kirtu wrote:Malcolm wrote:The idea that plants are not sentient is a cultural idea, it is not a hard doctrinal Buddhist position.
My point of view is, if it breathes, if it uses prāṇa vāyu, it is sentient.
I have come to the conclusion there is no such thing as nonsentient life.
OK, so you can accept various Hindu, Jain (I think), Taoist, and shamanistic views regarding sentience (all of which *can* hold that all life is sentient - not that they always do hold that view though).
Malcom wrote:dzogchungpa wrote:So, do you hold that, for example, humans can be reborn as trees and vice versa?
Hell, according to the Jatakas, one can be reborn as a bridge or a broom.
Unless you can provide a quote I'll have to point out that this is an incorrect reading of the Jatakas. Sentient beings can be reborn as beings (usually spirits or dewas or ghosts of some sort) that use the objects as homes. Sometimes they are essentially imprisoned in those objects (like the Mahasiddha whose mother was reborn as an insect inside of a rock that was used as a hearthstone). This, BTW, is a common shamanistic view (although there can be variations from culture to culture). Many people who grew up in Hawaii, for example, would be comfortable at least with the idea that beings inhabit plants, rocks, mountains, ocean, etc. even if they were uncomfortable articulating that in a wider, esp. Western, cultural context). However this view is also acknowledged variously among American Indian groups as well. And this is also the general Tibetan view.
Kirt
HI Kirt:
Again, the story you cite is a cultural misunderstanding of fossilization. Tibetans, as well as most other humans, did not understand that creatures they found in rock were born millions of years of ago, died, and settled to floor of an ancient ocean -- nevertheless, rock formations where trilobites are found are used in Tibetan medicine.
I think the dividing line between sentient and nonsentient is a great deal more porous than Buddhists would like to acknowledge.
Then there is the case of earthworm. If you cut an earthworm in half, clearly both sides live on, and indeed will form individuals. Are earthworms sentient or not? If they are, how does their individual sentience arise in absence of conception?
Perhaps it is the case that Buddhadharma does not account for everything in the Universe, as much as we would like.
As far as the broom and bridge stories go, they can be found in the Petavatthu. There are a number of examples where monks and so on are born as inanimate objects, pillars, brooms, etc.
The container/content metaphor (mind/body, spirit/tree, etc.) is a powerful metaphor, but that is all it is.