Sentient Beings

Does anyone know what the general definition of sentient beings is in Buddhism or related eastern traditions? I know some texts mention things like the short, the tall, those with two legs, those with many legs, and so on, in a way which implies that at least most (if not all) visible insects are included.

I am guessing micro-organisms and plants are not usually included. If I recall it does include things like ghosts and deities.

Is there a sort of laundry list of characteristics that put a being in the category? Has eyes? Can move? Has legs? Is visible to the naked human eye? Reacts visibly to stimulus (ie moves away if struck at)?

Just curious if there are any parameters.

This is more of a conceptual ponder than a practice-related question.

Alright, Ona, spill it: what (or whom) did you step on?

Kidding. You probably already checked this, but here's the link at wikipedia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentient_beings_(Buddhism )

Broadly, all beings possessing consciousness. How that could possibly be determined with any certainty is beyond me!

But how do you know if another being has consciousness/sentience? That's what I'm trying to determine.

Obviously if you say "may all sentient beings have peace" then all sentient beings get the little peace wave, because God sorts it out.

I just wondered if there was some traditional Buddhist way of deciding whether or not a thing has sentience or feels suffering. Like a plant, for instance, or a rock, or amoebas, or fleas.

This is often a discussion in the West, isn't it, such as people arguing about whether or not various animals, fish or insects feel pain/suffer/are conscious (sometimes in the context of deciding if it's okay/not okay to eat them, hunt them, cage them, experiment on them, etc.)

Just wondering if such a discussion ever took place in traditional Buddhism (without reference to modern science/western categories).

Alright, Ona, spill it: what (or whom) did you step on?



-awouldbehipster

I'm sure I step on myriad things. I wash myriad things down the drain. There are myriad things I can't even see that are everywhere, on my body, in the air, etc.

The question came up more recently when I killed mealy bugs that were killing a large planter full of palm-like shrubs on the veranda.

I wasn't going to NOT kill them, because the plants were there first and belong to the owner of the apartment and would be very expensive to replace. But I also wondered if (their, the plants) lives aren't as valuable as any other, really. That is, if I say "kill plant okay, kill mealy bug bad" where else are such lines drawn? Does a creature have to have legs? Eyes? Be able to move independently? Be visible to my eyes? What are the criteria by which some beings are considered sentient.

If, as we are suggesting, sentience is THE defining thing, and not any physical characteristics, then there's not really any way to know whether things are sentient or not (even rocks and trees, from the perspective of many traditions, are sentient).

Intriguing. Off to read Wikipedia.

Interesting:

"Furthermore, and particularly in Tibetan Buddhism and Japanese Buddhism , all
beings (including plant life and even inanimate objects or entities
considered "spiritual" or "metaphysical" by conventional Western
thought) are or may be considered sentient beings. [5] [6] "

Obviously if you say "may all sentient beings have peace" then all sentient beings get the little peace wave, because God sorts it out.

-ona

Sending a peace wave to "sentient" beings is elitist.

Of course, "being" means something that the entity has something other than form, and therefore means sentient anyway.

In the end, as long as everyone is as free from suffering as possible given the circumstances, that will have to do.

Sadhu times three! and Amen!

I'll have what you're having, Mr. Boisterously Cheerful Lately.

Guilty. I think it's the trillium blooming that's doing it to me. Ah, springtime!

Very funny. Hard to wrap one's head around (even while experiencing it), but the southern hemisphere is now going into winter, with shorter days, the sun drifting off to the north (????) and a change in bird species, flowers blooming etc.

I constantly forget this, because it makes no sense, and then someone will say "ah, but it's fall" and I'll stare for a moment and try to work out how that's possible, and then I remember.

The first time I came down here (Brazil) it was already winter, and the sun was in the north. It rose in the east, drifted along slightly north of center, and set in the west. It took ages to not find that vaguely disorienting.

I have to admit that my bedroom is a killing field for stink bugs. I've developed a highly sophisticated system using an apple sauce jar.

Sometimes I feel really bad and spare a life. Usually though, it's into the clear sarcophogus they go.

Sitting has definitely made me more attuned to nature though. I appreciate it and its infinite beauty MUCH more than before.

I heard of a meditation center so fixated on not intentionally killing bugs that they had bedbugs and fleas in the rooms. Lovely.

@chris re: "I have issues with plants." I think that discomfort is always the interesting place to look. Setting aside whether there's any proof of the sentience of plants or any other object/creature/thing, why does the idea make you (or anyone else) uncomfortable? What attachments does it point out?

For example if I don't eat meat because "animals are sentient" and then I discover fish are sentient and apricots are sentient, I have to rethink my relationship to eating.

I do capture and release with most insects (beetles, spiders, moths, large ants, caterpillars, etc.). I kill mosquitos if they are biting me. I eat animal products, from cheese to steak.

Spiders are the big change - I used to be quite afraid of them and kill them frequently. Now I am not so afraid of them and make an effort to help them out of the house.

I would be fooling myself if I pretended most of these decisions are anything other than pragmatic. I find it more honest (for me) to say that I value this or that animal
or inanimate object or plant over another one because it serves my own
interests - for example I like the taste, it doesn't bite me, it looks
nice, or whatever.

For me, the core issue of the discomfort is admitting that all life is transitory, and that everything alive is so at the expense of other living beings--whether that is right in our faces at every moment [because we live by hunting and entertain ourselves picking lice] or hidden behind the layers of 'processing' that delivers our food to our plate, our wooden houses and furniture to our ownership or tenure, our relatively insect-and-microbe-free bodies to our daily activities. A lot of lives are lost supporting mine. That being so, respectful acknowledgement is in order; preening righteousness over being more innocent than others -- is not.

The operative principle always seems to be awareness-- not to waste my one wild and precious life, not to mention all those countless little supporting lives, shambling through unconscious to it all. It's on me to be a participant.

Is there something a bit twisted in our focus on "a lot of lives are lost supporting mine"? One thing I liked so much about that story David Whyte told about being lost in the forest was that it took away the "me, the human, center of the universe" perspective.

"If you were to count them, you’d find that microbial cells outnumber
your own by a factor of 10.
On a cell-by-cell basis, then, you are only
10 percent human.
For the rest, you are microbial.
(Why don’t you see
this when you look in the mirror?
Because most of the microbes are
bacteria, and bacterial cells are generally much smaller than animal
cells.
They may make up 90 percent of the cells, but they’re not 90
percent of your bulk.)
"

"Even on your skin, the diversity of bacteria is prodigious.
If you were
to have your hands sampled, you’d probably find that each fingertip has
a distinct set of residents; your palms probably also differ markedly
from each other, each home to more than 150 species, but with fewer than
20 percent of the species the same."

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/microbes-r-us/

"whence upon we will all sustain ourselves on artificial food matter" - chris

Wait, doesn't a vast majority of the population already do this, re: Red #40, sodium benzoate, aspartame, etc?

Re: the sentience of plants. There's a neat book called the Secret Life of Plants from the 70s that describes experiments that hint at a type of plant consciousness. That's the first half. Then it kinda devolves into alien abduction theory. Never made it past that part. It was out there, even for me.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Peter-Tompkins/dp/0060915870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334089071&sr=8-1

The point about plants, microbes etc is more for the sake of thought experiment in the western context. In the animist context, one interacts with plants, at least, as beings with some level of sentience (spirit). In any case, I have no dog in that fight.

Yeah, you fight dogs?