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Plants - sentient?????
I have had this doubt for about a day now 
.... Are plants just like animals?????? For literally they are immortal - for trees die only if their natural things are blocked and killed(of course i am not speaking about those plants, or rather, grasses, which die in some months naturally)... Is my opinion wrong??? Or is there an explanation??? Or is it like this,
The state of being a tree is a lowly birth resulted from de-merits, hence, a tree has to serve others(I think this explains why trees are helpful in many ways) until it gets merits, when it annihilates and gets born again to lead itself to enlightenment...
That was how I explained it to myself...
Love,
Nidish
.... Are plants just like animals?????? For literally they are immortal - for trees die only if their natural things are blocked and killed(of course i am not speaking about those plants, or rather, grasses, which die in some months naturally)... Is my opinion wrong??? Or is there an explanation??? Or is it like this,The state of being a tree is a lowly birth resulted from de-merits, hence, a tree has to serve others(I think this explains why trees are helpful in many ways) until it gets merits, when it annihilates and gets born again to lead itself to enlightenment...
That was how I explained it to myself...
Love,
Nidish
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Comments
That work for ya? Just see that life, all "things", are transient and so are not really what they seem to be at all. The Buddha's teachings are nothing less than a way for humans to see these simple truths for themselves, and so to replace wrong thoughts with right thoughts (right view). With firm Right View in place, we no longer act contrary to nature; not acting contrary to nature, we find peace.
Namaste
What kills a tree is it's environments, geographical disturbances, human irresponsiblity, insects etc.
Annuals flower and generally live for only one year. Biannuals flower every other year, and self-seed. perennials flower every year, and continue to thrive for much longer. A laburnum tree is relatively short-lived as it has a "life-span" of between 20 to 30 years. A sequoia hangs around for a bit longer. Some yew trees live for two, maybe three even occasionally (rarely) 4000 years. Some Olive trees make it to 2000 years.....But everything has a beginning, a middle and an end. Even trees. Even if they last a natural life-span, they will die. Trees are non-sentient plants and have no coherent 'logic-reason' mechanism, although research shows plants react to light, sound and being pruned or cut. But it's an inherent survival aspect, it doesn't make them sentient.
Some humans die of old age, you know.
My father died of old age.
Granted, he had many things wrong with him, but none of them actually killed him. Nothing malfunctioned or accelerated his end.
He just had total age-related system failure.
He was the greatest.
Is it the truth? I don't know.
And BTW, redwoods do seem to be immortal, in the sense that even when they die (they can live 1000 yrs. or more), new redwoods sprout from their fallen trunks.
Metta
Yes, plants are living, Nidish, and they do suffer. But they can't achieve enlightenment, because they're not capable of practicing, meditating, being mindful, etc. I suppose you could say that providing shade is compassionate "practice", but I think we're pushing the envelope.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320720.800-stressed-plants-cry-for-help.html
http://ds9.botanik.uni-bonn.de/zellbio/AG-Baluska-Volkmann/plantneuro/neuroview.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(paranormal)
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/081017-plants-cry.html
http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=772
In my case that doesn't leave any room for feeling, thinking or suffering by plants, since they don't have brains.
Sure as heck is some good weight-loss system....
[quote] It does this through the cell development process of transdifferentiation. Cell transdifferentiation is when the jellyfish "alters the differentiated state of the cell and transforms it into a new cell." In this process the medusa of the immortal jellyfish is transformed into the polyps of a new polyp colony. First, the umbrella reverts itself and then the tentacles and mesoglea get resorbed. The reverted medusa then attaches itself to the substrate by the end that had been at the opposite end of the umbrella and starts giving rise to new polyps to form the new colony. Theoretically, this process can go on infinitely, effectively rendering the jellyfish biologically immortal [...] [/quote]
I have no idea what the quote means, other than it means the jellyfish will make itself kid again, grow up and repeat potentially forever
What do you think of these articles/theories?
Individual plants (and animals like us) are their vehicle and almost a by-product.
That accounts for the biological organisms. But we are special because we are sentient. Why?
Because as we all know a pinprick of infinite mind grabs hold of a fertilized egg and spends about 80 years in the human biological form conveniently but not intentionally provided by the genes. We're like parasites or symbiotics on the scene the genes have worked so hard to keep going!
There are many plots and subplots going on; parallel processes..., you know..., Humanity is not the only thing "happening."
Kid's stuff really.
(True story)
Trees. plants animals and insects, regardless of whether they are sentient or not, should be treated with respect
To be fair, I just found some kind of evidence that certain plants may respond to sound - a Mordecai Jaffe made dwarf pea plants grow at double rate by making a "warble" sound. A warble-sound, however, has little to do with the sweet compliments from a caretaker.
Whatever plants do, they do it in a "planty" way with reference to other plants, to scare away herbivores or to lure pollinators. The only way to communicate with plants will be to use such channels - and the messages will be limited to "I am infected with a virus" or "I am emitting B-rays" (which would be wrong speech, as humans cannot emit B-rays or hormones warning about viruses).
What are you having for dinner? If you don't kill and eat animals and you don't kill and eat plants, that severely limits your dietary choices.
Sorry to be blunt, but this is a silly thread (again, and again, and again, every time it comes up). Plants are not sentient beings. They are not aware of their own existence the way an animal is.
He told me a story about when he first went to the West, where he wrote home reporting that he ate hamburgers from _MacDonald's_ (not kidding) and his relatives and Dzogchen colleagues wondered if he were rolling in too much money because of the good eating! :eek:
Sooooo, my point is he obviously knows something we don't because some ideas in this thread are looking a little threadbare (haha) and misconstrued. Very interesting stuff however. I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it.
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/09/episode_61_deadly_straw_primar.html
As for the 'scream', my uni database only has NewScientist from 2000, but the article is in 1998, so I can't really read it. However, from the first paragraph it seems like they looked at the ethylene released and decoded it at sound at 2khz. I think a lot of things, decoded as sound, would sound like a scream. So again, it's not conclusive at all. Certainly not enough to conclude anything about a plant's sentience.
I think it's all clever wording by the researchers. By saying 'scream', 'cry', 'violently convulsing' and so on, the interpretation is a little distorted. I could say "the rusty hinges cause the door to squeak and rumble when closed" or I could say "the door had a violent spasm attack and shrieked in agony". That changes the implications entirely.
So yeah, I am swayed a little from "that's ridiculous and I don't care to hear of it" to "hmm, interesting".
There has been conducted a lot of research into the fields of parapsychology and not one single time has anything useful come out of it. And it never ever (like this plant-thing) lives up to the standards of controlled, scientific experiments. You know - the kind of research which makes humans capable of traveling to outer space, modifying the genes of other beings, splitting atoms, rebuilding cell structures, conjuring antimatter, manipulating light, build computers, robots, artificial intelligences, transmitting sound and picture - even in 3D..
It's not like "science" is a system based on a fixed set of principles which makes it subject to the same flaws as, say, religion and other anecdote based systems. There is a reason why a specific recipe must be followed, and if you follow that and have a bit of luck you will work miracles - real, undeniable, quantifiable miracles. Miracles which can then be performed by anyone who wants to learn the method involved in the "magic" - say, impregnating a woman by joining meiotic cells.
Even if we didn't want to use our own logic to make these plant "theories" fall apart, we could at least have the courtesy of listening when real scientists (the ones creating the real miracles) tells us, that this is just bogus. They if anyone know what is science and what is not.
Buddhists brag about how Buddhism and scientific method does not rule out one another, and Buddhists often even claim that Buddhism is scientific in its world-view. It would suit Buddhists then to differentiate between pseudoscience and real science, as to not make themselves look silly.
I also wish that magic was real as in stories, that plants were sentient, that animals could talk, that I could move things with my mind, that there were gods and miracles and secret potions and unicorns - but there are not. Our world is boring in that sense - but then just look at how magnificent it is, just as it is. All the fascinating creatures, places and phenomenons. All the impossible inventions of man. I'd say we have enough excitement right under our noses - no need to fall for tall tales
Metta
True, it has it's own set of flaws based on limited technology and limited human understanding of phenomena.
As for the OP, before you can even discuss what living things are sentient, you first have to define what "sentience" is. Without doing so, the discussion is kinda pointless.
By the way, limited technology and understanding isn't the flaw of science, it's the purpose of science.