dawn of peace wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 5:18 am
according to Abhidharmakośa, if people commit killing in group,each individual in the group is responsible to all killing commit by the group:
when many persons are united with the intention to kill, either in war, or in the hunt, or in banditry, who is guilty of murder, if only one of them kills?
If you look closely, you will see that the sutra you cited does not exactly refer to the question you ask.
You ask about the shared
act of killing. The sutra refers to the shared
intention to kill.
A group of people may share the same intention and each will experience the same karmic results associated with intention.
But if some actually commit the act and others don’t, then although all share the results from intention, only those who actually kill will experience the karmic fruition from the actual killing.
After that, the next phase you might say, is being happy with having committed the action. Those who feel remorse will not suffer the karma specifically associated with being happy about committing the action. Those who are proud about having done it will.
Finally, if there is then a desire to do it again, those who possess that desire will suffer from that desire and its consequences, while those who think, ‘This was a terrible thing to do and I hope never to do it again’ will not suffer from the intention to repeat the action.
Intention to commit an act, committing the act, rejoicing in having committed the act, and then desiring to commit the act again all add up to a full-blown “transgression” particularly if we are referring to the breaking of a vow, either a layperson’s vow or a monk/nun vow.
Specifically referring to the title of this thread, my understanding (I think this is the same in all traditions) is that the level of ‘karmic payback’ varies according to the four degrees associated with committing an act, described above But I may be mistaken, and some schools may hold that all four are required, and unless one hits all four, that no karmic seeds are planted. Kind of like hitting all the bases to score a run in baseball.
Again, one has to consider whether we are talking about breaking vows, for example, if a monk kills, or whether we are just talking about a general pattern of negative accumulation, as in the case of a hunter or butcher, who hasn’t made such vows.
EMPTIFUL.
An inward outlook produces outward insight.