r/secularbuddhism

Hello, r/secularbuddhism. I have a question about ownership and responsibility for our actions (karma) and whether that changes under a sufficiently manipulative cult.

So, I had an unfortunate interaction last night on r/exjw. I was in the wrong. A young man came on and gave a few details about an affair that he had, and one of the elders in his congregation compelled him to do something that I found reprehensible. He later revealed in a deleted comment that he was a young man taken advantage of by a much older woman, he was not with a young woman his age like I assumed, and then he was manipulated by this corrupt elder while in a vulnerable state. I misread this situation and apologized to him.

My problem, aside from jumping to conclusions like that instead of probing for more information first, is that I want people to take responsibility for what they did. I hate the idea of putting all the blame on cults and cult leaders or their middle management. Those people will never take responsibility for what their followers did. I hate this idea of denying our own agency, and this has probably hardened me.

I am open to the possibility that I'm entirely wrong about this. It could be that my passions about right and wrong are getting ahead of me. It could be that our responsibility is reasonably mitigated when under authoritarian pressure, but I have a hard time accepting that.

So, I bring this to you. What do you think? To what degree do we own our actions if we are in a religious or even a political cult like this? What is your secular Buddhist perspective on this?

Thank you, and I apologize again.

For context, I would regard myself as practicing both the above.

As for how I would personally understand Antinatalism - generally - it would be: the treatment of procreation as imposing either possible or definite harm on or from the newly born, and, as such, treating it as immoral, along with the practice of non-procreation.

In regards to Secular Buddhism, I would understand Antinatalism to be one of the many cessations of the - here quite literal - cycles of rebirth, that cause and condition suffering.

(Provisional secular metaphor of ‘Rebirth’ as those enacted and consequently recursive and cyclical patterns of similarity that eventually incur suffering.)

I would appreciate your perspectives on this.

However, please remember the Subs rules, as I would appreciate no ad hominems that are specifically derogatory; I understand we can never remove perspective, motives, and intentions from argumentation, but please be respectful nonetheless.

(I notice a lot are going to take the route of upvote/downvote, rather than actually engage)

For no particular reason, I was wondering this morning, are there any descriptions of how Buddha died? Of course there are, and of course there are a few interpretations...

I just found this pdf and found it it's quite 'secular' in it's medical analysis of the symptoms, and timing around Buddha's last meal and subsequent demise.

pdf Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing https://hasp.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/jpts/article/download/27999/27395/56972

It's also relatively grounding to understand that even this brilliant, legendary teacher is not immune to illness and old age... It strangely brought up feelings of compassion... That this was a man, and he suffered pain, and that there was no medicine or surgery... I assume he was surrounded by wise people, and that we/they/he are all helpless in the end.

For some reason I also had assumed the Buddha was strictly vegetarian, but I guess that is perhaps not exactly true.