Cloning souls

[Raynald Prevereau]

> cloning however, raises the question of the relation between life and
>soul...and maybe time and knowledge.

The problem of cloning souls put forth by Erik Hoogcarspel is interesting.
Of course, for Buddhists this is a false problem since the soul is a
fiction and the origin of life is not nearly as important (perhaps even
insignificant) as putting an end to du.hkha.

I leave it to others to address Erik's question, but I wish to raise
another one: How would Buddhists approach the problem of cloning? In fact,
what could be the problem with cloning for a Buddhist? I suspect that
cloning sheeps opens the door to cloning humans and, perhaps eventually, to
creating a 'perfect humain being' on the basis of, undoubtedly, very
arbitrary criteria if politicians, economists and war generals ever had
their say in the decision. Yet, as Vasubandhu suggested in his
Vi.m"satikaa, it is because we have a similar karmic history that we have
similar experiences of the world. Cloning humans would reshape the karmic
potential/status of humanity, but in what sense is it a problem?

Please note that I am not totally immoral and that I am aware of some of
the problems related to cloning. In this message, I simply wish to raise
the question of cloning in the context of Buddhist philosophy; I have no
thesis (thank you Naagaarjuna!).

Raynald Prevereau
Sept-Iles, Quebec, Canada

P.S. I realise that my question is perhaps more appropriate for a list such
as BUDDHA-L. BTW, is the BUDDHA-L list still alive? (If not, where did its
soul go? -- no pun intended. I just had a long day.)