Hi Bill, Thanks Bill, your duality and sentient / cognitive explanation are very helpful.
My question originally came out of my wondering where on the scale the Buddhists tend to draw the line regarding sentience. Is the Earth included as a sentient being? The sun? An amoeba? A neutron - being that neutrons apparently are aware that eg humans are observing their behaviour? (I realise that I, being a professed newbie, tend to lump all Buddhists together in the way that some people might lump all fish together (including sharks and minnows under the same heading). I have noticed that this is not the case but the distinctions aren't clear yet.) :-) Beverley. ________________________________ From: Bill! <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, 30 May, 2011 11:17:24 Subject: [Zen] Re: Sentient Beings Beverley, 'Sentient' is of course a general English word, not a Buddhist-specific word, so you'd only have to look it up in a dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online defines 'sentient as: 1: responsive to or conscious of sense impressions <sentient beings> http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient You might read some Buddhist texts that say something alike 'all sentient beings have Buddha Nature'. Buddha Nature is just another term for awareness, and the only way we humans have of being aware is through sensual experience. But it is an awareness BEFORE our discriminating mind starts post-processing these pure sensory experiences by filtering, augmenting, categorizing, judging and (most critically) separting them into subject/object. Like: 'I see the flower, but the flower is not me - I am separate from the flower. I am 'in here' and it is 'out there'. Instead of just referring to awareness as Buddha Nature, our discriminating mind has even split our awareness up into 5 categories: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Please note (especially all you Theravada afficionadoes out there) that 'sentient' does NOT mean 'having cognitive ability'. The awareness of Buddha Nature can only be realized through sentient abilities, not cognitive abilities. IMO - Bill! --- In [email protected], Beverley Huish <beverley.huish@...> wrote: > > Hi, > > I keep coming across references to 'sentient beings'. How does Buddhism > define > > a sentient being? > > :-) > > Beverley. >
