Ringkasan dibuat dengan bantuan AI • Belum diverifikasi
Ceramah ini membahas sikap Buddha terhadap perang dan kekerasan, menegaskan bahwa ajaran Buddha dengan tegas melarang pembunuhan dan kekerasan, sebagaimana tercermin dalam sila dan vinaya. Pembicara mengawali dengan menjelaskan standar tinggi non-kekerasan, seperti dalam perumpamaan gergaji, yang mengajarkan untuk tidak membalas kebencian. Ia kemudian memberikan teladan Master Hsu Yun yang selamat dari pemukulan tanpa membalas, serta pengalaman pribadinya yang anti-militer, untuk menunjukkan bahwa standar tersebut dapat dicapai. Selanjutnya, ia menceritakan intervensi Buddha dalam konflik air Rohini, di mana Buddha mencegah perang antara Sakya dan Koliya dengan mengajukan pertanyaan bijak tentang nilai air versus darah, sehingga mereka mencapai kesepakatan damai. Ia juga mengisahkan transformasi Kaisar Ashoka, yang awalnya penakluk kejam, berubah setelah pertempuran Kalinga dan menjadi pelindung semua agama serta menjalankan pemerintahan tanpa perang, menunjukkan bahwa perubahan hati mungkin terjadi. Pembicara menegaskan bahwa tidak ada pembenaran untuk perang dalam ajaran Buddha, bahkan dalam tradisi Buddhis Utara, dan prinsip perang adil dari tradisi lain tidak sejalan dengan Dhamma. Ia juga membahas pacifisme dan penolakan perang, dengan contoh dari Quakers dan Dan Berrigan, serta menekankan bahwa Buddha mendorong upaya diplomasi dan penyelesaian konflik secara damai. Dalam konteks Buddha dan Raja Ajatasattu, ia menjelaskan bahwa tujuh kondisi kesejahteraan yang diajarkan Buddha dalam Mahaparinibbana Sutta disalahgunakan oleh menteri untuk memecah belah Vajji, menunjukkan bahwa Buddha tidak mendukung perang. Kisah Vidudaba dan kehancuran suku Sakya menggambarkan keterbatasan bahkan seorang Buddha dalam mencegah akibat karma, karena Buddha tiga kali mencoba menghentikan Vidudaba tetapi akhirnya membiarkannya. Pada bagian tanya jawab, pembicara menjawab pertanyaan tentang Angulimala yang bertobat, menegaskan bahwa tidak ada kewajiban untuk campur tangan dalam tindakan orang lain, dan menjual senjata adalah mata pencaharian salah. Terakhir, ia membahas pentingnya niat dalam karma, perlunya memeriksa investasi yang mendukung senjata, dan menghadapi situasi sulit dengan perhatian penuh dan kebijaksanaan. Pesan utama ceramah ini adalah bahwa non-kekerasan adalah inti ajaran Buddha, dan meskipun ada keterbatasan dalam mencegah akibat karma, kita tetap harus berusaha untuk hidup damai dan bijaksana.
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sama Sambuddhassa
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sama Sambuddhassa
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sama Sambuddhassa
Buddhang Dhammang Sanghang Namassami
Welcome to the first of the Sunday afternoon talks for 2026.
This reigns retreat that has just begun.
And so the theme for this first one is
The Buddha said no to war.
Isn't that just weakness?
As I mentioned earlier on today,
I put out the word to the nuns and the monks
to suggest titles.
And so I usually get quite a lot come in
from various different people's suggestions.
And I sort through them and pick a range of different topics
that cover a kind of variety of areas of our lives and the world.
Meditation practice and our life in society
and our existence in the human realm.
And so given that there is the wars in the news on a regular basis,
and the great suffering and difficulty arising on account of those situations,
I thought, well, this is a good one for the first area to explore for this period.
The statement,
The Buddha said no to war.
Isn't that just weakness?
It's probably not taken from the mind of anybody who likes to come and visit Amravati.
I'm not presuming that any...
anybody who's come to visit necessarily thinks in that way.
But it's certainly that kind of thought appears in the world.
And so I thought it would be a good area to investigate
and to consider what was the Buddha's relationship to war
and to social conflict on that kind of a scale
where hundreds, thousands, millions of lives are involved.
One of the first things to point out,
is that in terms of the discipline,
both for the monastic community and for the lay community,
very high up on the list is the precept of not taking life.
For the lay community, number one of the five precepts,
and the eight precepts,
Pana, Atipata, Viratmani, Sikarpadam, Samadhi, Ami,
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking the life of any living creature.
Pana is breath.
So any, any breath,
breathing thing that is number one on the list,
so that that's a principle for the lay community.
For the monastic community,
it's even more profoundly detailed.
And so that the precept about not killing
with relationship to animals,
as well as to human beings,
is very scrupulously described in the Vinaya.
And there's,
there's no reason,
there's no reason that's ever,
ever given or described for deliberately taking the life of another being is allowable,
considered permissible or not,
not worthy of criticism of being recognized as a fault,
even to the point where as monks,
we're not even allowed to touch a weapon,
something that is designed to cause harm.
So something like a knife that's being used to carve wood,
that's okay,
but anything that's deliberately designed solely to kill other things like a bow and arrow or a,
or a pistol or a rifle,
we're not even allowed to physically touch that,
let alone pick one up and use one.
And so this is a refinement of discipline,
but I feel it's worthy of getting the mind around from,
from the beginning that the Buddha's relationship to,
to violence and to harming of other other beings,
particularly human beings,
but all other beings was very,
very clear,
very,
very distinct and repeated in many different areas of his teaching,
both in his Sutta teachings and also in the Vinaya discipline for the,
for the monastics.
One of the,
the most distinctive and often quoted teachings on this is what's called the,
the simile of the saw and,
and the,
the,
the Sutta number 21 in the middle length discourses,
the simile of the saw and the Buddha was very gifted as a teacher,
as we know,
extraordinarily skilled at getting your,
getting your attention and the simile of the saw,
he describes how if you were kidnapped by a group of bandits and they were cutting your arms and legs off with a two handed saw,
a banded on either end of the saw and they're both sawing away,
cutting,
cutting your arms and legs off,
said anyone who gave rise to a thought of aversion on account of that,
they would not be following my teaching and sets the bar pretty high.
You think,
well,
a little bit of annoyance might be appropriate,
you know,
but is it?
No.
And it's a way that one of the great skills of the Buddha is giving these very pointed,
pun intended,
examples that,
you know,
really get your attention like,
wow,
even if you,
you've been abducted,
you're being,
you're being badly,
you're being maltreated,
you're being deliberately harmed.
And yet,
even though those,
those people who've abducted you have kidnapped you,
you know,
they,
they could stop that to give rise to an aversion,
a thought of aversion,
a feeling of negativity towards them,
then you're going against the Buddha's teaching.
So,
so it sets a very high bar,
but it does get our attention,
doesn't it?
You,
you know,
use your imagination to consider that kind of that situation.
Wow,
that's really asking a lot.
But what he's saying is that there's no way that any feeling of aversion towards another being can possibly be justified or wholesome or be in accord with Dhamma.
Any kind of negativity,
aversion,
hatred that has to be out of,
out of harmony with,
with Dhamma has to be something that is say karmically negative as it is destructive for us.
And you might think that that's a sort of an absurd example.
But in,
in that light,
I frequently tell the story of great master Shuyuan,
who was a highly revered Buddhist teacher in the,
in,
in China,
in the late,
19th century,
early 20th,
early half of the 20th century,
the first part of the 20th century.
And he,
he'd made the vow to be a monk for 100 years.
So he became a bhikshu when he was 20 and he lived to the age of 120.
So he kept that vow.
He was so highly respected by all the different,
the five different lineages of Buddhism in China that they all asked him to be their supreme patriarch.
The,
the sutra study,
lineage,
the chant,
the meditation lineage,
the,
the,
the recitation lineage,
the esoteric lineage and the Vinaya school.
They all asked him to be their,
their,
their supreme patriarch.
So he was a very significant figure in Chinese Buddhism,
highly revered all around the country.
And when the communist takeover occurred in 1949,
then he was,
It was someone that the Red Army wanted to put down into silence.
And so a group of soldiers came around to his monastery
and beat him unconscious using wooden clubs.
So he was very seriously injured.
But to the amazement of his disciples,
the other Sangha members and the lay people around the monastery,
he didn't die.
And even though he was already at that point, 1949,
he was already 110 years old.
So he was not a young guy.
But despite having those serious injuries, he survived.
And then when he recovered, then the Red Army found out about that
and they went around again.
Another group of soldiers went around and beat him again very severely
but using iron bars the second time.
So he was very badly injured.
His bones broken, his organs damaged.
And he was in a coma for a long time.
But amazingly, as an old person, 110 years old, he didn't die.
And when he came out of the coma, he was very badly injured
and obviously had a lot of pain.
And his disciples said,
Shifu, Shifu, which is the Chinese for Long Po,
great elder, please, you're extraordinarily compassionate
and you know that you're in passing.
Your way would be very distressing to all of us.
And we understand that you're maintaining your life
because of your kindness and compassion for all of us.
But please, if it's the time for you to relinquish your life,
don't prolong your agony just for our sake.
And he responded by saying,
Oh, it's not for you.
I am deliberately staying alive,
but I'm staying alive because of the soldiers who beat me up.
Because if I died, the karma that they would receive,
the karmic result,
the pakha that they would receive on account of killing me
is so terrible, I don't want to be responsible for that.
So I'm maintaining my life.
This is a true story, a well-attested, well-accounted story.
And so after that, and he recovered,
the Red Army left him alone.
And he even continued teaching at his monastery and at retreats.
And so one of the first kinds of Buddhist meditation instruction
that Lumpur Samhita had as a layman,
when he was in the Peace Corps in Borneo,
there were books called Chan and Zen Training,
published by Charles Luke,
translated by Charles Luke in Hong Kong.
And the teachings that Lumpur Samhita used for his meditation guidance
were from a retreat that Master Hsu Yun led at the age of 114.
So four years later, he was still teaching meditation retreats.
And the instructions from that retreat were what the young,
Ajahn Sumedho used for his guidance
when he was a layman in the Peace Corps.
And you can find in that Charles Luke book,
Chan and Zen Training,
the kind of talks and meditation guidance
from that retreat in Shanghai, I believe,
when he was 114 years old.
So that was in 1954, 53, 54.
So it's not just speculative, the simile of the saw.
It does.
It does point to you can be being treated really badly
and still not give rise to thoughts of negativity on account of that.
So the Buddha does set the bar quite high,
but it's Olympic standard, but it's achievable.
And also I feel it's a good example for all of us
when we're getting irritated with one of our fellow monks
or one of the members of the community.
So I can't believe they did that.
And feeling...
Grumpy, I think, well, this is a thought of negativity
just on account of someone taking a wrong turning
or not arranging things in the kitchen the way I like.
How can they do that?
Don't they know?
So it holds up a mirror to our feelings of negativity.
So that in terms of the Buddha's teaching
and his relationship to conflict and negativity and warfare,
then there's a few examples.
I thought I'd share with you all today.
I was also reminded of my own relationship to the military world.
And in 1960, I know it's ancient history for many of you.
Some of us that age, but 1960 wasn't that long ago.
But I was about three.
And in 1960 in the UK, they ended conscription for the British Army.
So prior to that, if you were a man,
then you had to join the army.
You had to join the army for a number of years.
And in 1960, it was big news that the conscription was stopping
and that men wouldn't have to join the army anymore.
And I remember asking my parents at the age of three saying,
but if men don't have to join the army,
no one will want to be a soldier.
There won't be any soldiers.
And I think they said...
I forget exactly what they said,
but well, you'll probably find out.
There's still a few people that want to...
to be soldiers and join the army.
But my three-year-old mind, I guess,
was so inclined towards nonviolence that it's like,
well, who in their right mind would want to be a soldier
if you didn't have to?
The government didn't command it.
So I didn't have a strong inclination towards
the military life and that kind of...
that domain, even as a young child.
Anyway, so one of the main examples
from the Buddha's lifetime that's given
is an argument...
is an argument over water rights.
There was a drought.
Well, like our summer here,
we have a very, very dry summer.
We had a short rainfall on the morning of last Sunday
when we were celebrating Lumpur Samhita's 92nd birthday.
We had some rain that morning,
very auspiciously, I felt.
But we had hardly any rain at all other than that
for a long, long time.
So there was a drought in the north of India
in the Himalayan foothills.
And so the Rohini River was drying up.
And the Sakya Kingdom was bordered by the Kholian Kingdom.
And the Kholians had diverted the river Rohini
so that they could water their crops.
And so no water was getting through,
or not enough water was getting through to the Sakyans.
And so then this was...
the Sakyans found out about this,
that it was the Kholians that diverted the river
and was taking all the water for their crops.
And so they were...
they were fighting off against each other.
And there was...
a war was about to begin
over the water rights to the Rohini River.
And then the word reached the Buddha
that this conflict was about to begin.
And this is in...
the story is told in the Dhammapada commentary.
So it's the background to one of the Dhammapada verses.
And so the word reached the Buddha
and he made his way to the...
what was soon to be the battlefield
where the Kshatriyas...
the warrior nobles of the Sakyan kingdom
were facing off against the Kshatriyas,
the warrior nobles of the Kholians.
And he asked the question,
what is worth more,
the blood of a Kshatriya, a Katya,
or the drop of Kshatriya blood
or a drop of water,
or a lot of water?
He said, well, the blood of a Kshatriya
is worth infinitely more,
far, far more than just water.
It's not just a drop or a whole vessel full of water.
And then the Buddha said,
well, you're preparing to shed Kshatriyan blood over water.
This is not in accord with wisdom.
This is not wise.
You're overriding your own sense of value,
your own priorities.
So that...
Can you see what you're doing?
Can you see that you're about to shed and destroy
that which is precious over that which is not so valuable?
And so his words...
His words got through
and they managed to come to an agreement
and that they were able to share the water
and they made it through the drought.
So that's a famous instance
where the Buddha was called upon to intervene
between two warring or soon-to-be warring factions
and bloodshed was prevented.
And so that...
But it was...
The Buddha was called upon to do that
and it was successful in that particular instance.
So that...
Also, I feel it's very significant
to look at the life of the Emperor Ashoka.
Last year when I was on my year-long retreat,
I studied Ashoka's life quite a bit
and read a few books about him.
And it was very intriguing to see how in his early years
he hadn't assumed that he was going to be the emperor.
He had...
Elder brothers.
And according to different histories,
there are different reasons why he came to the throne.
But he was a younger brother
and he was sent out to govern Ujjaini,
which is a distant province away from Pataliputa,
where there was the center of the Mauryan Empire.
And his father, Bindusara, didn't really like him very much.
He apparently had a bad skin disease
and his father thought he was ugly.
And so he sent him off to Ujjaini.
You know, go out and govern Ujjaini.
Go away.
I don't want you around the court.
But as things...
According to some histories, that's the case,
Ashoka gets very...
Gets presented as being very handsome and fine in other histories.
But anyway, so he wasn't expecting to become the ruler,
but he eventually...
Bindusara passed away and then Ashoka rose to the throne.
And having been a sort of a minor prince,
living quite...
Quietly in Ujjaini.
And he was so sort of insignificant in the run of things
that when he wanted to marry a girl from a merchant family,
that there was no objection.
So his first wife, Vedisa Devi, was a merchant's daughter.
She wasn't from a noble family at all and no one objected.
So anyway, he came to the throne
and then there was this great change in him
and he became this extremely ambitious man.
And violent leader.
And just as his grandfather, Chandragupta,
and then his father, Bindusara,
had conquered much of India,
then Ashoka spread the Mauryan Empire even further,
all the way down to the...
Almost to the southern tip of India.
Ancient Amaravati was the southernmost area of Ashoka's empire.
And all the way up to the Himalayas,
across to what's now the Pakistan-Afghanistan border with India.
And all the way to what's now Bangladesh in the east.
So the Mauryan Empire became huge under Ashoka's rule.
But he was a bloody conqueror.
For eight years, he was just constantly at war
and conquering the outlying kingdoms.
And the last of those battles was against the people of Orissa,
what's now Orissa.
In that era, they were called the Kalinga people.
And it was an extraordinarily bloody conflict.
The Kalingans were the last holdout.
And there was this incredible carnage, destruction on the battlefield.
And Ashoka's army won.
They defeated the Kalingans.
And as the story goes,
as he was washing his sword in the river at the end of the battle,
a wanderer, a sannyasin, came by
and made the comment to the king,
you know how to take life,
but you have no idea how.
You have no idea how to give it.
And then walked off.
And so this,
and he was used to being an emperor and being unquestioned.
And even the yogis and religious people
were generally a bit more polite and less kind of confrontational.
But this particular yogi was very straightforward in his feedback.
And so then as the story,
again, there are various different histories,
but this is,
there's an Ashoka and rock,
rock edict right at the place where that occurred
that I visited when I was in India 20 plus years ago.
And you can see the battlefield down below that Dalgiri rock edict.
And according to the stories,
Ashoka sort of looked around him
and suddenly the horror of the battlefield really struck him.
The groaning of the dying soldiers
and the dismembered and dead bodies
and the blood and gore all over the field
and the crows and the dogs moving in to feed on them.
The damaged bodies.
And this horror of what he was responsible for
suddenly rose up in him.
And he was,
after eight years of campaigning and constant warfare,
suddenly it hit him.
Like, what have I done?
What am I doing?
What was this all for?
And it seemed to have led to a massive change of heart.
And so from that time,
Ashoka carried out no more military campaigns,
no more wars.
For the next,
the whole of the rest of his,
of his reign,
he didn't engage in any kind of warfare.
And he instead became a protector.
He was not just a,
say, the ruler,
but he also formed treaties with the neighboring states
to protect the borders
and to come to agreements
about not trespassing on each other's territory.
He,
after that battle,
sometime soon afterwards,
then he became a disciple of the Buddha,
having met a young novice,
who he was very impressed by in his wisdom and his demeanor.
And he became a devoted disciple of the Buddha.
But it was,
say,
not just that he protected the Buddhist community
and so built monasteries and stupas for the Buddhists,
but also he protected all the other religious groups,
the Brahmins and the different groups of wanderers
and worshipers of different deities.
He became the protector of all religions.
So it was an astonishing change of heart.
And in that era,
if you were a military leader,
a ruler,
a Kshatriya warrior ruler,
then they followed what was called the standards of Kautilya.
And it was your duty as a king
to be conquering neighboring kingdoms.
It's called Vijjigisu.
Your duty,
your duty is to be taking new territory.
That's your job.
And he went against that,
which was, again,
unheard of in his time,
to say,
no, we've got enough territory.
This is it.
And we're going to protect our borders
and establish friendly relationships
with all our surrounding countries.
So Ashoka,
despite his bloody past
and the incredible bad karma he created
in the first eight years of his rule,
that change of heart
seems to have been
absolutely genuine.
And his inscriptions on rocks
and on pillars that he erected
around the empire,
they're the first written records
that you have,
any historical records in India
that are reliable.
And they're very consistent.
And it shows that
he not only became a protector of religions
and protector of different social groups,
he also became a protector of animals.
And he tried to establish a vegetarian,
a vegetarian court
and limited the number of animals killed
for food in the royal palace and so forth.
And he actually established hospitals
for people and for animals.
And he had wells dug
and roads made and so on and so forth.
So extraordinarily compassionate
and benevolent in his rule.
And so that set a standard
that it's possible to rule
in a way that is not possible in India.
In a way that is avoiding warfare,
avoiding conflict.
Certainly he had already conquered
a massive amount of territory
and people knew he had a big army.
But it is historically apparently accurate
that he never used his army
for any kind of conflict.
Again, other than there was
when groups of bandits arose,
then small military units would go
and suppress areas
where bandits were operating
and harming the local people.
But he never,
he never went to war against another nation.
So that I feel is a really good example
of a ruler taking the Buddha's advice
about non-harming and not killing
and putting it into action.
And even today the Ashoka is a shining light.
The Ashokan lion is on the Indian flag.
I'm not saying everything is perfect in India,
but the Ashoka is held up as a great example
of skillful leadership,
skillful ruling,
and that principle of non-harming,
of non-conflict is right there
at the center of Ashoka's way.
And I think also that the fact
that he was so violent
and so bloody-handed at first,
and then he could change
and live and establish a skillful rule.
That's a very good example
that even if we have attitudes of mind
that are based on conflict and aggression,
we can change,
we can do things differently.
So then,
going to part of the theme for today,
so the Buddha saying no to war,
and Ashoka following his example,
isn't that just weakness?
So then people bring up the,
when this area comes up,
is there such a thing as a just war?
And that was a concept.
I was doing a little bit of reading up about this.
St. Augustine was the first one
to talk about this back in the late 4th century,
early 5th century of the Roman Empire,
when the emperor had become Christian,
and Emperor Constantine
was the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire.
And then it became a question,
well, if you're going to be a Christian,
what do you do about the barbarians,
the Goths and the Visigoths
and the Ostrogoths attacking
and harming the people of the empire?
What do you do?
And so St. Augustine was apparently
the first one of a Christian faith
to talk about the idea of a just war.
And then his ideas many centuries later
were refined by St. Thomas Aquinas.
I did have to read that up this morning,
so don't think I know this sort of stuff
off the top of my head.
But that's something that's often spoken about,
a just war and an unjust war.
And that people would,
and say, well,
when there was the Nazi government in Germany
and the danger to the other European nations
from the Nazi war machine in the 1930s
when that all began,
and surely it was a wise thing,
it was a just thing,
that when Neville Chamberlain tried to discuss things
and famously came back,
you know,
a piece of paper,
tried to negotiate with Hitler
and then the piece of paper was not worth
what it was written on.
And that negotiations failed
and the Second World War began
with the Nazi German government
invading Poland
and then wreaking all kinds of havoc.
And then say, well,
surely it was a good thing for Churchill to take over
and that that was resisted.
Surely that was a just war.
Or in more recent times,
when I was living in Thailand
as a newly ordained bhikkhu,
I was in 1979,
that was when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia
in order to suppress the Khmer Rouge,
which was ruling in Cambodia.
The Vietnamese army invaded from the east
and overthrew the Khmer Rouge
and Pol Pot in Cambodia.
People said, well,
surely that was a good thing.
That incredibly destructive and cruel government
they were overthrown.
Surely that was a just cause.
So that's something that's in the mind
and in our culture,
the idea of a just war.
So I thought that might be helpful to consider
in terms of the Buddha's teaching
and how that works.
The principles of a just war,
again, I looked up this morning,
so,
it must be a last resort.
It needs to be a just cause,
which means there has to be some immediate
and some ongoing destructive evil
that is at work.
So counteracting that evil destructive force
that's wreaking harm.
There needs to be a valid authority.
I'm not proposing the idea of a just war.
I'm just listing the things
I've memorized from this morning.
It needs to be properly authorized
by a government to go into a just war.
There needs to be the likelihood of winning.
It's on the list.
Number four on the list,
the likelihood of winning.
It needs to be proportional
so that the cure for trying to destroy
the harmful force
doesn't outweigh the harm that's being done.
So it needs to be proportional.
And there needs to be an exit strategy.
So those are the six principles of a just war.
I guess from St. Thomas Aquinas
back in the Middle Ages,
but as interpreted nowadays.
So,
then people ask,
in Buddhist tradition,
is there such thing as a just war?
Is that ever justifiable?
And one of the interesting things
is that you cannot go to war
in the name of the Buddha
in a valid way.
There's absolutely not,
in the Pali Canon,
in the Dhamma,
in the Vinaya,
in the suttas,
there's not a single sentence
or a phrase
that justifies going to war
or killing for a good cause.
There's not a single murmur of that.
And so that you can't go,
people have invoked the Buddha
and have said,
we're going to war to protect Buddhism.
But in doing that,
they are going against the Buddha's word.
That is not,
they might be wearing robes
or have a shaved head
and be profounding that,
but that,
I'm quite happy to say on camera,
that is not in accordance with the Buddha's teaching.
That is,
is,
say,
betraying
or counteracting
the Buddha's way.
That might be what the person is saying,
but that's not the Buddha's way.
You can't justify
attacking another,
harming another,
or going to,
let alone going to war
in the name of the Buddha.
And so that,
which is,
I feel is very interesting.
So in terms of Buddha Dhamma,
there's no such thing as a just war.
Every kind of war is to be avoided.
Every kind of killing is to be avoided.
Similarly,
again,
in our monastic discipline,
and this might be a whole area of discussion,
but in the monastic discipline,
you cannot,
any way that you take life,
even with the best of intentions,
is breaking a precept.
If it's a human life,
then it ends your life,
as a monk,
it ends your life.
So if I made a recommendation,
if someone said,
my father is terminally,
terminally ill,
and so he's asked me to end his life for him,
would that be,
would that be okay
if I follow his wishes
and bring about the end of his life?
If I said,
and I'm not doing this,
but just speaking about it,
if I said,
yes,
that's a kindness to your father,
and then the person carried out that action,
as soon as that,
the father passed away,
I would no longer be a monk.
That's the end of my life as a monk.
Finished.
I couldn't,
that's what's called a defeat rule.
So there's no gray area
in terms of our monastic rule with that.
Even with the best of intentions,
you're not obligated to maintain
somebody's life unnaturally,
by keeping them on life support indefinitely,
but if there's an action taken
to deliberately end the life of another human being,
and you've consented to it,
then as a monk,
then that's the end of your monk life.
Your life as a monk.
So it's very, very clear,
and there's pages and pages and pages
of details on this in our monastic rule,
so that you can't deliberately kill another being
and for it not to be an offense.
It has to,
so that even with the best of intentions,
in the northern Buddhist world,
it's a bit more blurry,
and they do have stories about
if somebody on a,
say on a ship,
somebody has started killing
all the other passengers,
and then a bodhisattva type being
then kills the person
who's doing all the other killing,
in order to save the lives
of the other people on the boat.
In the southern Buddhist world,
in the Pali Canon,
and even in the commentaries,
you have not a single word,
not a syllable that encourages
or allows that.
So it's very unequivocal,
very, very, very clear.
You know, you can't take life
without there being some serious,
negative consequence.
So that's, I feel,
important to reflect upon.
And we have inherited that
in the Theravada tradition,
the southern Buddhist world.
Other religious traditions,
as I said,
in the northern Buddhist world,
you have those more blurry examples.
And so that in some traditions,
like in Japan,
there's a,
forgive my bad pronunciation,
a principle called bushido,
the way of the sword.
And where back in the,
you know, a few hundred years ago,
it seems like there was some
wealthy landowners
who were sponsoring
and supporting a number
of Buddhist teachers,
and who brought about
the sort of support
for the samurai class
and that kind of rule
by the sword being justified
in terms of dharma.
And quite eloquently,
quite poetically,
but again, I would say,
again, I realize I'm on camera
and everything's being recorded,
I would say it might be called
Buddha dharma or Buddha dharma,
but I would say that's going
against the Buddha's way.
You know, the act of chopping
someone's head off mindfully
is,
is completely antithetical
to Buddha dharma,
that you might be very concentrated
as you go about the fight
or you swing the sword,
but that deliberate taking of life,
for whatever reason,
necessarily is against
the way of the Buddha.
So with all due respect
to those traditions
and some, you know,
great wise beings
who've come out of,
who've sort of come through
those lineages,
that way of the sword,
is not in accord with Buddha dharma.
It's a travesty,
if you like.
It's Buddha dharma
dressed up in the wrong clothes.
Literally, that's what the word
travesty means.
It's like dressed up
in the wrong clothes.
It goes really,
it might look like Buddha dharma,
but it's really counter to it.
It's the opposite of it.
So that,
that I feel is helpful
for us to consider
and to take to heart
and to think,
well, how does that work?
If there's no such thing
as a just war,
what it means is that
you really work hard
at negotiations.
You work hard to help
the causes for warfare
to not be formed.
If you want to avoid that,
then you put your attention
into where conflicts are brewing
and you work hard.
I would say in there,
over the years,
there have been
numbers of people,
not just in the Buddhist fold,
but in the Buddhist world,
in the Christian fold as well,
who are very vehemently
opposed to war.
And the Quakers
from the 17th century
were outspoken against the,
in this country,
in the UK,
outspoken against
the warlike practices
of the British government
and the royals.
And ever since the 1600s,
the Quakers have been
vigorously opposing war
and refusing to take up arms.
They're very,
very determined
and keen pacifists.
And that's carried on
so that the Quakers
will be conscientious objectors
to war.
And sometimes that's resulted
in people being imprisoned
or executed
or socially ostracized,
given the white feather,
or locked up in jail
during the course
of a conflict.
In more recent times,
being a conscientious objector
is a bit more acceptable,
allowable,
and that's taken,
it's more taken into account.
But in the past,
it was something
very dangerous to do,
very harmful to do.
Dan Berrigan
was a famous Catholic priest
in the Vietnam War era.
And he and his brother
and other people
associated with them,
they carried out acts
of burning people's draft cards
or going into military installations
and pouring blood into,
their own blood often,
into the machinery
or destroying atomic warheads
and such like.
Again, I'm not advocating
violent action,
but to say that the people were,
it wasn't just in the Buddhist fold
that people were objecting to war
or resisting engaging in war,
that that conscientious objection,
a heartfelt refusal
to take up weapons
to harm another being
has been something
that other groups
have been very dedicated to.
The Quakers,
the Jehovah's Witnesses also,
I believe,
they refused to take up arms.
And so that the,
to the degree that it's possible,
again, this is a subject
for discussion,
if we want to understand
or to consider
how to deal with conflict,
then from the Buddhist perspective,
you work vigorously
to try and establish
modes of discussion
and concord
and ways that different factions
can find agreement.
You find ways to disempower
the violent forces
and encourage the forces
of discussion
and the possibility
of peaceful solutions
is what you aim for
to every extent possible,
so that the causes for conflict
are resolved.
And so,
in this light,
it's also good to consider
in the Buddha's time
some other situations
where the Buddha
was confronted
with these issues
and that they were,
you know,
live circumstances
that he had to deal with
that were happening
around him.
And I thought also
just to mention
a couple of those
since they're
so worthy
of consideration.
And the first one
the longest discourse
in the whole of the Pali Canon
is the Mahaparinibbana Sutta,
the discourse
on the Buddha's last days.
And it begins
with an idea
forming in the mind
of King Ajatasattu
who had taken the throne
by killing his own father
Bimbisara
who was a disciple
of the Buddha.
But Ajatasattu
was a violent man
but he also was
to some degree
a dedicated disciple,
had great respect
for the Buddha
but he also was
very determined
to be a warrior
noble king
that was
a dominant figure
in the country.
And so
the Mahaparinibbana Sutta
starts off
with King Ajatasattu
thinking
the Vajjians
their capital
was Vesali,
they are mighty
and powerful
I want to
bring about
their complete destruction
they are far too strong
they are far too powerful
and important
I need to bring them down.
And then
he then considers
well
the Lord Buddha
he is never
wrong
in his understanding
of things
and so he asked
his minister
Vasakara
go to the master
and let him know
that King Ajatasattu
has declared
I want to destroy
the Vajjians
I want to bring them down
and defeat them utterly.
Say
let the master
you know
go to the master
pay your respects
greet him politely
and then tell him
that's what
the King Ajatasattu
wants to do
and then listen carefully
to what he says.
And so
Vasakara
goes along
to the Buddha
and then
greets him politely
and pays respects
and then
then he makes
that statement
that oh
the
the King Ajatasattu
wants to destroy
the Vajjians
and
and
wipe them out
completely.
And then
the Buddha
then turns
to Ananda
and said
Ananda
is it the case
that the Vajjians
meet together frequently
and in large numbers?
And Ananda says
yes it is.
Well as long as
they meet frequently
and in large numbers
then
they can expect
to prosper
and not to decline.
Ananda
when they meet together
do they carry out
do they meet
in Concord
carry out
their affairs
is in concord and separating concord yes they do well if they if they do like that then they can
expect to prosper not to decline they said do they respect their elders yes they do do they
do they expect respect their ancient traditions yes they do do they protect the women folk of
their nation yes they do and do they respect their shrines and the holy places yes they do
do they respect their wanderers and holy people of different sects yes they do well in all those
cases if they do that then they can expect to prosper and not to decline and so then vasakara
hearing this um then then had the realization well it seems that we're it will be impossible
for king ajatasattu to defeat the uh the vajjians by force of arms so the only way that he'll be
able to defeat them is by subterfuge by propaganda by sowing division and dissent the buddha didn't
tell him to do that
at all but that's what vasakara the minister took from that and went back to ajatasattu
and so then uh they hatched a plot and they they uh pretended that that vasakara was
was ejected from the court was banished he was publicly scolded and and uh and uh
and dismissed and so then having lost his rank and his wealth he went off to
to the vajjians oh you know he was banished and he was banished and he was banished and he was
I've lost my my position with with ajatasattu and can I can I stay here for a bit oh yes certainly
you know you're a wise person you're very knowledgeable and so they let him stay he
became an instructor for the for the youth it kind of became a teacher and over the next three years
he was sowing division and dissent and conflict very subtly in the vajjian people and there was
so much argument so much division amongst the vajjians that after three years ajatasattu just
walked in and took the place over
so some people have said or criticized the buddha that well surely he must have known what was going
to happen and that uh that the buddha aided uh king ajatasattu in conquering the vajjians that's
really awful how could he do that but uh there's no if you read the sutta closely there's no
indication that the buddha wanted that to happen or that he saw that it was going to happen and
some people said well he was omniscient he knew everything he must have realized that
but there are a number of situations in the you find in the vajjian that are not going to happen
where the buddha makes statements or does gives teachings and he doesn't look forward to see what
the result is going to be there are situations like that like the in the um again in our vinaya
discipline that the that that same rule about about uh not taking life um the origin story of
that is that the buddha gave a lot of teachings about about the unattractiveness of the body
and the the uh the off-putting
qualities of the body he went off into retreat in the forest uh for a few weeks and then when
he came back he discovered that a number of the monks had committed suicide or that and and one
particular monk that had been helping others to to end their lives because they were so disgusted
with their body and so that went and and there in the in the again you might be suspicious or
wonder about this but the buddha comes back and says to ananda ananda the sangha is very reduced
where have all the monks gone you know
venerable sir the the the some of the monks misunderstood your teachings about the
unattractiveness of the body and they developed aversion negativity to the body so to the extent
they wanted to end their own lives and then um one of the one of the monks who was known as a sham
a sham recluse a sham summoner a false summoner was lending them a hand and ending their lives
with a knife and so then then the buddha started teaching mindfulness of breathing
it's right there in the vinaya pittika i'm not making this up so so he came back and he asked
that question to ananda you know why is the sangha so reduced and then well you're
venerable sir so it seems that there are times when uh that's a bit of an extreme example but
it's there um that the the buddha didn't look and he says that himself he said i can know any
knowable object but i don't know all things at all times that when he's when another one of the monks
ondra claims to be omniscient the buddha says it's impossible the mind cannot know all things
at all times so i can know a knowable object if i intend to i can put my mind onto something and
it can be known but if i don't put my mind there then i won't know it and so it seems to match that
that situation so i know the things have been written that the buddha was was surreptitiously
helping ajanta sattu and was kind of colluding with him but that it's not that's not the
that's not there in the in the sutta and the fact that the uh that vasakara took that advice about
the seven causes of welfare um and uh and then uh used that as a means of creating division
that was vasakara's doing and and ajanta sattu and there's no indication that the buddha intended
that or wished for that or supported that so again i realize i'm being recorded and other people
but you know
that there are academics have proved i've shown you know but uh in my reading of it it's uh that
the uh there was no intention on the buddha's part for the his teaching on those seven causes
of welfare to be used in that way so another um uh story that is kind of significant uh in a number
of ways is um again with a that the buddha was kind of in the middle of and uh whereas
that story of vasakara and ajanta sattu that's in the suttas that's a canonical um this story comes
from the the commentaries but it it seems to um be quite uh have a quite a bit of validity or
credibility to it so what happened again i'll try not to be too long we've only got 10 minutes
so um the sakyans were very proud and they would only marry other sakyans or kholians
and they considered they
were descended from the sun god they were known as the aditya bandhu the the relatives of the sun
and they were descended from the sun god so that they wouldn't marry outside of the kolians and
sakians and then king pasenadi who had didn't have any sons by his queen malika they had one
daughter princess vajiri but he didn't have any any sons to inherit the kingdom and so
he thought about getting married again having another queen and then queen malikas was very
supportive of him finding another queen so he might have a son and then it was suggested that
you could marry a sakian princess then the sakians tend to be a bit standoffish and if
you married a
a Sakyan princess, that would kind of bring you closer to the master's ancestry, the Buddha's
family, the Sakyans, and that would be a boost for the Sakyan kingdom. So they made overtures,
Pasenadi went up to Kapilavatu and made it clear that he wanted to marry a Sakyan princess.
The Sakyans were so proud, they were disgusted by this idea, even though Pasenadi was the most
powerful ruler of that region, they thought, he's a Magadan, how can one of our princesses
marry this unworthy idiot from the south? This is impossible, you can't sanction that.
So somebody came up with the idea that they would take a servant girl and, rather like
My Fair Lady, train her to be a princess.
And then pass her off as a Sakyan princess. And to cut a long story short, they did this.
Vasa Bhakatya was the name of this slave girl, and she was taught how to behave as a princess.
She was married to King Pasenadi, and then she gave birth to a prince shortly after the wedding.
King Pasenadi had no idea, she wasn't a princess, she did her act very well,
and she gave birth to Prince Vidudaba.
So then, again, it's a long story, it forms a large part of the plot of one of the books I just wrote.
So Vidudaba, then at the age of 16, is curious as to why, I know my father's family very well,
I meet my grandparents from my father's side, I've never met my grandparents from my mother's side,
I'd like to go and meet the Sakyans, why can't I meet my Sakyan grandparents?
And he pesters King Pasenadi and Queen Vasuba, and eventually gets permission.
And he leads this embassy up to the Sakyan kingdom, and they manage to fake it,
because of course they won't share food with him, because he's the daughter of a slave girl,
he's the son of a slave girl, so she's not pure.
But they manage to trick him all the time during his visit to seemingly respect him as having had a Sakyan,
princess as a mother.
So it's all subterfuge and deceit.
They get away with it.
So the prince is very happy with how he's been received, lots of pomp and circumstance,
and lots of good treatment, lots of nice gifts.
And as he's leaving, one of his soldiers realises, oh, I forgot my sword, I left my sword in the throne room.
I had to take it off when we went to the throne room, so I'll go and pick it up.
He goes into the throne room, and he sees some of the Serpents,
washing the throne where he'd been sitting.
He said, why are you, what are you doing?
Oh, we're washing the throne with milk and water, because that son of a slave girl sat here.
So we've got to purify it before it can be used by one of the proper nobles.
Son of a slave girl? Really?
Oh yeah, and they don't realise that he's not in on the ruse.
And so then he finds out, oh yeah.
Oh yeah.
And that so-called prince here, his mum was a slave girl from the kitchens here.
So then he takes that back to Vidudaba.
Vidudaba then gets, takes it back to Kapilavatu.
Anyway, cut a long story short, only got five minutes.
So he gets deprived of his royal status, to his great chagrin,
and Vasaba gets put in jail.
But eventually,
he gets released, and King Pasenadi dies,
and Vidudaba inherits the throne, becomes the king.
As soon as he's king, he says, okay, we're going to launch an attack on the Sakyans.
And interestingly, at least to me, very interestingly,
Prince Jeta, who gave the land of the Jetavana,
he's the only one of the princes of Magadha who objects.
He says, no, this is the family of the master,
the Sakyans, they're a great people.
You can't attack them just because of your dubious ancestry.
That's awful.
You know, you're suggesting you're going to wipe out the whole Sakyan nation,
just destroy them all.
And Vidudaba says, yes, that's exactly what we're going to do.
And then Prince Jeta, who was known as a bit of a party animal,
the kind of a sort of a bit of a vain and shallow character,
he's the only one who stands up against Vidudaba.
And then Vidudaba takes his sword, chops his head off,
and nobody else objects.
And so they march on the Sakyan kingdom.
So then, this is where the incident occurs.
So the Buddha hears about this,
and that this whole army of Kosala is going to attack the Sakyans and to wipe them out.
And so he goes and sits by the road from,
from,
Savatthi to Kapilavatthu.
And he sits under a kind of sparsely leafed tree.
There's a big banyan across the road with lots and lots of shade.
And he's sitting right by the border.
And as Vidudaba's army arrives, then Vidudaba says,
why are you sitting under this tree with only the scanty shade?
Why don't you sit under the banyan tree, which has got deep shade?
And the Buddha says,
well,
the shade of my family keeps me cool.
So Vidudaba kind of gets the hint and turns back.
Then he,
a little while,
now I must be resolved,
goes back again.
And it has three encounters with the Buddha.
And each time the Buddha persuades him to turn around and go back.
And then the fourth time Vidudaba says,
no, I don't care what he's going to say.
He's, he's tricked me three times over.
He keeps, he's so quick with his words.
He's so clever.
I'm not going to stand for it.
And he kind of,
he kind of hardens his heart and he goes through.
And, and then on the third time,
the Buddha lets him pass.
And it doesn't,
it's not able to stop him.
And he goes,
and Vidudaba goes to Kapilavatthu and then slaughters the thousands of the
Sakyam people.
So people might think,
well,
why didn't the Buddha use his psychic powers?
Why didn't he just sort of do some of his mojo and make,
make Vidudaba kind of forget what his plan was or make him have give him the memory that he's already killed the Sakyams?
Or why didn't he kind of pull some maneuver to stop him?
And, and so it's interesting that even in that,
that commentarial story that after three attempts,
the Buddha lets him go ahead and doesn't make any attempt to stop him further.
And that's not just that incident,
but in many places,
a number of places in the canon,
when people are determined to make,
make some stupid mistake,
the Buddha will make input three times over.
And after the third time,
if the person is still determined to go ahead with it,
okay,
it's up to you.
It's your choice.
So he let people make their own stupid mistakes.
Again,
I feel that's a very significant teaching.
That's something to learn from that.
He didn't just use his,
his,
his power,
his genius or his psychic abilities to make people behave according to his wishes.
Even something like the,
the destruction of his own family,
his own clan.
He,
uh,
he didn't intervene beyond making that input.
And again,
I feel this is a significant thing worthy of contemplation and reflection.
Okay.
You make your input three times and after,
if three times is not enough,
okay,
the other person there,
they're on their own.
And so then,
uh,
that,
uh,
in a way could be seen as the karmic result of the Sakyan's carrying out that deception because he couldn't undo,
what the ancestry of Vidur Dabur was.
He was supposed to be the king of,
of,
uh,
of Kosala,
but his mother was a slave girl and he,
he hated that idea.
And then he reacted in that violent way.
I'm not justifying,
you know,
saying it was a good thing,
but,
um,
that,
uh,
that choice of the Sakyan's to consciously deliberately deceive and maintain that deception that had that extraordinarily painful and destructive result.
Obviously the Buddha wasn't happy about it or didn't,
he didn't want that to happen,
but,
uh,
I feel it's,
it's worthy of reflection.
So,
uh,
he didn't force that,
uh,
that,
uh,
a different result to occur,
but rather when there's,
there's a,
a war is going to happen.
You do what you can to,
to prevent it.
You do what you make your input and beyond a certain point,
there's,
there's nothing one can do.
It's out of one's hands,
even if you're a Buddha.
Again,
this is,
uh,
I think powerful when there's that feeling,
we must do something.
We should be able to do something.
There must be a way we can stop this.
Even the Lord Buddha himself,
there was times when he,
that it was beyond his own power.
So I realize that's a bit of a sober note to end on,
but I think worthy of contemplation.
So the hour has gone by,
so I'll end it there and we can have a break for some refreshments.
And then 20 past three,
we can gather back for some questions and discussion.
Don't come and ask me questions in the break,
save them for afterwards.
People are always doing that.
So save them for everybody.
So if anyone has any questions,
this is the time for those.
If you can take the microphone.
Hello,
thank you.
I have actually two questions.
One is the,
some of the first followers of Buddha for what I have understood where either
there was a guy that was abandoned or that had killed people.
So I'm just wondering how that is conciliated with the fact that,
that they had committed that if it was something that he did before they become monks,
if that will not,
and I know the two things.
Another thing it's also about doing or not doing.
So for example,
if there's something on a table and someone is pushing it,
if I don't do anything,
it will fall off the table.
So is by having no action by not putting any,
any impediment for something to happen.
I'm not also partially responsible for the,
for the outcome.
Of what is going to happen.
If I know that something by not doing something,
people are going to be dying or killed.
I'm not also partially responsible for that.
Thank you.
So first one,
so Angulimala,
one of the most famous stories of the Buddha's time was a bandit.
And for the stories in the Sutta,
it doesn't specify his background very much.
But the commentary to the Sutta talks about how he was a very gifted student and that he was so accomplished and so and outshone his fellow students that they plotted to get him discredited and accused made it seem as though he had had an affair with the daughter of his of the teacher in this,
in there.
And so the teacher by way of graduation said,
you have to bring me the the fingers of a thousand people that you have killed.
Otherwise you can't graduate.
And so then he gave up his life as a Brahmin student and became a bandit so that you don't have that in the Sutta for whatever reason he was a bandit and had killed a lot of people.
And the name,
Angulimala,
Angulimala is a finger,
Mala is a garland,
so garlanded with fingers.
So he wore the fingers of his victims around his neck and in war people's fingers,
people's ears were often worn and taken by as trophies by people.
So that's quite credible.
So the after the Buddha met him and he realized that this person was a bandit,
but he has many good qualities and he had,
as they managed to help Angulimala to see the error of his ways and the kind of unskillful path that he was on.
He then asked if he,
Angulimala asked if he could become the Buddha's disciple.
And so the Buddha,
his actual name was Gajamantani Buddha.
And so that's how the Buddha generally referred to him.
And so,
later,
after,
he'd given the Bhikkhu precepts to Angulimala.
So he's already been ordained as a monk by the Buddha.
Then the Buddha happened to meet the King Pasenadi and he was just on his way out with a troop of his army to go and try and catch Angulimala.
And the Buddha said,
so great King,
if you saw that Angulimala had shaved off his hair,
had put on the ochre robe and had forsworn all violence,
and had undertaken spiritual life,
how would you relate to him?
And then the King said,
well,
I would pay my respects.
I would ask if he needs any requisites and I would treat him like any other Bhikkhu.
And then the Buddha said,
this is Angulimala.
And then the King got his hair stood up on end.
And the Buddha said,
no,
there's no need to be afraid.
He's,
he's quite harmless now.
So then the,
the King chose not,
not to say,
well,
I want to punish him anyway,
or he's killed all these people.
So therefore he should be subject to the civil law.
The King,
the Buddha had established that the King would be,
would be forgiving.
And so that's what they stood by.
Angulimala had to remember all the killing that he'd done and the violence he'd perpetrated on others.
And then also in the Sutta,
it describes how people would attack,
not just people would attack him in the street,
but kind of the families of people who he killed,
but also things like it seems like sort of tiles would fall off roofs or branches would drop off the trees and kind of bash him on the head.
And,
and one,
one instance he comes back to the monastery and his robe is torn and his head is bleeding and his,
and these sort of bashed up by the either by people throwing rocks at him or by branches,
dropping off trees.
And the Buddha said,
you know,
bear it,
you bear it.
Because,
you're experiencing the,
the mild results now of what you would have experienced over many,
many hundreds of years,
many thousands,
many hundreds of thousands of years,
you know,
in states of deprivation.
So there was still the karmic result of all his violence that was working out even though he was a bhikkhu.
And then he eventually became an Arahant so that he doesn't seem to have had a long life,
but he,
that,
that,
that violent history was not an absolute obstacle to his liberation.
With respect to your question,
second question about the obligation to intervene or to take action.
It's,
it's interesting that in again,
using the Vinaya standard,
there's no,
there's no obligation to stop somebody else doing something stupid or violent.
It's your own choice.
You can choose to be involved or but it's,
there's no sense of if you don't intervene,
then that's reprehensible.
That's,
that's worthy of criticism.
It's,
it's your choice.
And so that that's and that's very,
very consistent.
I mean,
that you have five or six large volumes of the Vinaya teachings and there's,
I don't believe there's any instance where it says anything that says,
you know, you should,
you should intervene to stop an unwholesome action occurring or that it's all to do
with your own actions,
your own intentions.
And so what other people do is their own business.
It's in the realm of what's skillful and wholesome rather than what's actually an offense.
So you,
you might take action to,
to help another but then and once in a while the Buddha would pick up in his sort of
psychic field,
oh,
so and so is ripe for enlightenment and he would just go for a walk in that particular park and,
and be there for to have an encounter would occur but it was always up to the the individual how they how they engaged how they exchanged so sometimes he would deliberately put himself in a situation of being helpful but it was always it's like a live situation.
He wouldn't he wouldn't just walk up to people and say let me give you some instruction.
He would sort of be around and then a dialogue would occur and or people would invite him to sit down and then the questions would would appear so that it's I know in in Western philosophy moral philosophy they have this sort of that sense of sins of omission as well as sins of commission that makes sense to you so that you that you in order to be morally proper you should do some sort of action.
something to to make something good happen or something stops something bad from happening but in the in the Buddhist perspective you don't that it's very very rare if I can I can't really think of any any kind of fault of omission it's all to do with the choices that are made in in your own jitta and the results of those choices so please any any other questions don't be shy these sessions are for for all of you so.
Please if you can pick up the microphone so everyone can hear it's a very interesting at the beginning you mentioned about the weapons I'm trying to relate this to the hunter hunter's wife story in Dhammapada commentary the wives who prepare the weapon every day for husband to do the hunting many of it many of you may heard about this.
and wives she invent but she achieved a sort of partner and and how this this can be happen and you know preparing weapon for her husband to kill and then do it every day I think there's a one the story I heard is about intentions and then.
Then.
come at come at past life.
And my my second question needs to.
Well what's a question.
but the question or the question is about a weapon you mention in the early beginning.
Then touch it then
yeah well they're just too to respond to that first of all so one of the wrong kinds of livelihoodみたい jiva his to be selling weapons.
So if you have a shop selling weapons that are used to take life,
then that's one of the kinds of wrong livelihood.
Or it's like selling poisons to kill things.
That's one of the defined kinds of wrong livelihood.
Selling alcohol or drugs, similarly, that's wrong livelihood.
Micha ajiva.
Ajiva. So that if you are, I'm not familiar with that particular story.
I've read a lot of the Dhammapada commentary stories.
I can't remember that one in particular.
But if you compare it to having a shop that sells weapons,
and that's what you're doing, you're making a livelihood
out of preparing and selling weapons to others,
then that's intrinsically unwholesome.
Just like if you're selling drugs and alcohol,
or if you're in the slave trade,
there's all Micha ajiva, wrong livelihood,
unskillful, unwholesome livelihood.
Then what about lay people?
I'll just give you one example about the war right now.
Which one?
There are a few going on.
Yes.
It's due to be...
Our money, our pension, we don't know,
because there's money invested into the weapon
if we are not careful enough about our saving, our pension.
Is that something we need to look at it as a Buddhist?
You can do.
I think every country has its own particular protocols.
And if you...
I know that...
Some people, when I was living in the States,
they would withhold some of their taxes because of their understanding
that so much of their tax dollars were being used
for things that they weren't comfortable with
or they didn't feel were appropriate.
They'd probably get into trouble with the law on account of that,
but they would take a stance about that.
But it's certainly appropriate to investigate that
and to see if there's some alternative.
You know, if you're...
If there's a pension fund,
and you know that pension fund is being used
for supporting weapons manufacture,
then it might be better to choose a Quaker pension fund
or something that you know.
Because nowadays, there has to be very clear disclosure
that those kind of organizations,
they can't easily hide things away
so that you can find out.
Okay, what is this company investing in?
Where is my pension fund being put?
And so that's much easier nowadays to find out.
And then if you realize,
oh, that's being used in a way that I don't feel comfortable with,
I should take my savings out of that place
and put them in another place
where they have a much more wholesome profile,
then that's certainly appropriate to do.
I would say that's a...
I wouldn't...
I mean, sometimes things are out of our control.
You've already committed,
okay, I can't touch this money for the next 10 years.
That's the agreement that I made.
So, okay, that's what you signed.
So there it is.
But, okay, well, in 10 years' time,
when I can do something with it,
then I'll see if I can put it into something more wholesome.
But it's worth finding out
where those investments
or those pension funds are being kept.
So, you know, the English Sangha Trust
has a certain amount of investments
and we're very careful about what those investments are put into.
We have a very close eye on all the things
that the money that is donated to the EST is used for
and what it's not used for.
So it's very, very clear.
And you can designate and keep track on those things.
So it's certainly worth putting a bit of attention into.
Thank you, Lungpho.
But also, intentionality is the key piece.
Again, looking at the...
I mean, I know most people are not living by the Vinaya discipline,
but it is a good standard.
So there's a tiny, tiny percentage of our Vinaya rules
that can be broken with no intention.
But like 99.99% of the Vinaya rules,
it depends upon what your intention was.
So that if there's no intention to do something unintentional,
and wholesome, then there's no offense.
It's a very small percentage
where whether your intention was skillful or not
is still an offense.
But the vast majority, intention is the key.
And then when the Buddha was asked,
karma is intention.
Intentionality is the central thing.
And that's what distinguished his teaching
from other determinations made by different spiritual groups.
So like some would say,
well, whether you tread on an ant on purpose and kill it,
or whether you do it by accident,
the karmic result is the same.
The Buddha said, no, no.
If there's no intention to harm,
the karmic result is very different.
The ant is still...
Their life is still ending,
but the effect on the individual
is a very different effect on your heart, on your mind.
If there's an intentionality in...
in treading on the ant or not.
So that was a key piece of the Buddha's teaching,
that intentionality is key.
So that if you put your funds into a particular pension scheme
and you didn't realize at the time what it was being used for,
like there's no intention,
oh, whoopee, this is going to support nuclear weapons.
There's no intention to do harm
or to do anything unskillful.
So even though you might find out,
oh, actually that is supporting a...
a company that they are providing the electronics
for all sorts of missile guidance systems or something,
that you had no intention to be supporting that
when those funds were put there.
So that's important to bear in mind
because we can agonize a lot over our lives
and forget that that aspect of intention
is really a central principle of Dhamma.
And that you...
If there's the mind that says,
you know, I want to go and I want to drive my car
so I'll see how many insects I can kill against my windscreen.
No one thinks that way.
You drive your car to get from A to B,
to come to Amravati to listen to a Dhamma talk.
But if some insects are harmed on the way
by colliding with the windscreen,
it's unfortunate,
but that's what happens when you drive a car.
It's a...
There's no intentionality.
And so it's very different...
From the Buddhist perspective,
it's a very different karmic result
than if there's an intention to harm
and to act in a violent way.
Thank you, Luang Por,
for the very interesting and thought-provoking Dhamma talk.
I just want to clarify two things.
One is now...
If you can speak closer to the microphone.
Okay.
Thank you.
When...
When America invaded Venezuela,
they didn't fight back,
and America took over Venezuela.
And America invaded Iran,
but they are fighting back.
They couldn't still conquer that.
So then, likewise,
if unruly people,
group of unruly people,
come here and try to attack this monastery,
being the head monk,
what would be your reaction to that?
Well...
I would be mindful
and work with the situation as it arose.
You know, you can't predict.
It's like many times in the past,
Luang Por Samada would talk about how
when he was a student at UC Berkeley,
University of California in Berkeley,
and he was quite a pacifist.
And the question that you'd be asked would be,
what would you do if a maniac attacks your mother?
That was a kind of standard question,
or say,
the proposition put to someone who was promoting pacifism.
What would you do if a maniac attacks your mother?
And then Luang Por would say in his Dhamma talks here,
he'd say,
I realize now that was an unfair question.
I don't know what I would do.
I'd do something.
But who knows what the situation would be.
Why would a maniac attack my mother?
Maybe I could turn the lights off.
Maybe I would have a big cushion nearby
and I could just run at the attacker
and knock them over with a big cushion.
You know, I don't know.
But you can't predict.
So there have been times
when people have come in here and caused difficulties.
I don't think anyone's been physically attacked.
But people have broken in.
And there used to be in front of my kuti,
it used to be Luang Por Samheda's kuti,
a standing Buddha image that was pushed over,
got a dent in the shoulder by some...
When there used to be a pub in Great Gaston,
the Cock and Bottle,
it used to be a very common thing
that people would drink at the pub
and come up on a Friday night.
And when the cloister wasn't a cloister,
it was like an open car park area,
they'd come up, race around the car park
and ring the bell and jump back in the car.
And back to the pub again.
Yeah, and one night they pushed the standing Buddha over
so it got a big dent in the shoulder.
So, you know, you adapt to those circumstances.
So we put the Buddha back on its pedestal
and patched up the shoulder.
It's now in the garden area rather than out front.
So I don't know what I would do.
You know, there have been times
where there was a number of terrorist attacks
within this country.
Yeah.
France, there was a Catholic priest
was killed in his own church.
Not that long ago,
the staff of the Charlie Hebdo magazine
were attacked and killed in their offices.
So, you know, I contemplated these things at that time.
What would I do sitting in the temple
if somebody came in and started firing a weapon
or you heard the sound of a weapon being cocked?
What would I do?
My answer is I'd be mindful.
I don't know exactly what I'd do,
those big kind of triangular cushions are quite good.
So that'd take a few bullets.
So I used to be a rugby player,
so I could revive my rugby tackle,
my rugby tackling genes.
I don't know what I'd do.
Something, but it depends entirely on the circumstances.
And so that taking that leaf out of Lumpur Tomatoes book,
you know,
it's an unfair question
because you don't know what you do.
There'll be some way that you can respond
to diffuse the situation
or to work with things differently.
Sometimes just when I have been
confronted or assaulted
by a bunch of football supporters on a train once.
Actually, the day of I.B. Horner's funeral,
that she was the president,
I went to the Pali Tech Society and a relative of mine.
I went to her funeral in London.
On the way back to Chidhurst,
it was a Saturday afternoon and some West Ham supporters,
they've kind of heckled me from the across Charing Cross Station
or Waterloo Station.
And I got it when I got to the train with Anna-Garica Rory
was with me.
I thought, oh, that's very nice.
So there's a compartment that's empty.
So I got in this compartment and then,
these football supporters found the same compartment
and piled in and it was a no smoking compartment.
And one of them, the first one who came in had a cigarette,
sat down in front of me,
took a deep toke on the cigarette
and flicked it into my face and swore at me.
So I thought, well, this is interesting.
So, you know, it was like a confrontation.
And then the rest of the gang,
about seven or eight of them all piled in.
And then,
started saying things.
So my, I didn't know what,
I didn't have a plan obviously,
but I just turned to the one who was most lippy,
kind of the one who was making the kind of loudest insults
and turned to him and just sort of started engaging with him,
turning away from the guy who'd threatened me
through this, you know,
flicked the cigarette in my face,
kind of hit me in the face and just started bantering
at speed with the one who was talking.
And so I avoided the one who wanted to punch up
and wanted to beat us up and just engaged in conversation.
And just, that was the way we worked it.
And by the time we got to Guildford,
which was where they were getting off,
it was turned into quite a good conversation.
They were grilling me about, you know, monastic life
and what we weren't allowed to do,
what we were allowed to do.
So, you know, if you say, what we were allowed to do,
what would you do if half a dozen agitated football supporters
came into your train compartment and assaulted you
or swore at you and threatened to attack you,
what would you do?
I wouldn't know what to say, but when that happened,
it was a long time ago, it was the early 80s.
But yeah, you respond and we avoided
any physical harm being done.
I was a bit worried about the lit cigarette
having fallen down beside the door.
It was on the seat beside me,
but I thought, that's a small concern.
If I get a singed robe, no worries.
But I didn't, everything worked out fine.
But you can't predict how a situation can be diffused.
There's another friend of ours,
she had told me how she's physically quite small.
She's less than five feet tall, very slightly built.
And she was on a train platform in London,
late at night, and she'd had a tough day at work.
She was feeling in a bit of a grumpy mood, she said.
And then she was alone on the platform,
it was like after 10 o'clock at night,
and this large man who approached her to assault her,
and she said, I just looked at him and said, no.
And she's tiny, she's a really tiny, tiny person.
And he was so taken aback by, she was completely unmoved,
unafraid, just irritated, like, oh God, not this.
And just sort of barked at him, like, no.
And I haven't got time for this.
And he said, well, sorry.
And he was kind of apologetic and backed off,
and left her alone.
So she was kind of surprised.
But sometimes we can work with situations
in ways that we don't, we can't predict.
And also we forget the humanity of the people
that we're with.
A similar situation happened with another monk on the way,
on a train up to Manchester.
Fortunately, that day that I was assaulted, West Ham had won.
If they'd lost, it might have gone differently,
but West Ham was successful that day,
so that was a blessing.
But yeah, a similar thing happened to one of our monks
on the train up to Manchester,
and a bunch of football supporters.
And similarly, the one who was kind of the leader
of the gang was most kind of aggressive and, say, domineering.
And again, so they worked it into a conversation.
And by the time they were halfway through the journey,
the guy was crying, and kind of saying,
I don't like to be this way.
I don't know how to deal with my mind.
So I just lashed out at people,
and turned into this whole kind of confessional
with his mates all around me going,
yeah, what's happened to Steve, you know?
But it was like,
you know, you forget that these are real living beings,
that there are causes for them acting in those ways
that often they don't understand themselves.
They don't even know why they are that way.
So that you can find ways to work with the situation,
sometimes even meet the humanity of others
that they don't even know is there.
So anyway, you had a second question.
Thank you, Leon.
Paul?
Yeah.
My second question is with regard to the life-supporting machine
you talked about.
One of my friends who's a doctor here,
his younger brother in Sri Lanka,
both put it in a life-supporting machine.
And he and his other brother in America, another doctor,
they both of them went to Sri Lanka.
And other relatives, Nevi was the doctor
in the general hospital looking after him.
He was in life-supporting machine.
Then the doctor said, it's no use.
We have to turn off the things.
Then these two Western doctors said, yes, turn it off.
But the relative said, no, we are not going to do that.
According to Buddhism, we don't do that.
And they didn't do it.
And after about, I think, two weeks, they had to take him home.
And after three months, he passed away.
What is the position in, if I'm in that situation,
for example, as a Buddhist, I don't want to do it.
At the same time, I can see him suffering.
So what would be the advice would you give?
Well, as I was saying, in terms of Buddha Dhamma,
there's no such thing as mercy killing.
I would say in the Southern Buddhist tradition,
in the Pali canon.
That allowing someone to pass away naturally is, again,
it's spelled out in great detail in the Vinaya.
But I think it applies equally to lay people.
So there's no obligation to maintain someone's life
to every measure possible.
It's not like you're, it's an offense
if you don't do absolutely everything humanly
and physically possible to extend
a life.
But if you do, if you take an action to deliberately
end a life, then that has a negative karmic consequence.
And so that allowing someone to die naturally is one thing.
But deliberately ending a life is something completely different.
And that's quite clear.
Again, it takes a lot of mindfulness and attunement
to the situation.
Because every situation is unique.
But from, I would say, from the Buddhist perspective,
to be profoundly, genuinely respecting the life
of another living being to the fullest extent possible
is the way.
And to not be taking any, to take any action
that shortens a life is, I would say,
out of keeping with Dhamma.
I know it's a hot issue and a much debated,
but to me it's very, very clear in the Buddha's teaching
and also in my own intuition.
And so when my father had an aortic aneurysm,
so his aorta split, and he'd had a heart attack
about 13 years previously, and they didn't,
when he blacked out at the wheel of his car,
going very, very slowly, but he blacked out
and his car very gently rolled across the road
into the side of a house, and they airlifted him to the local hospital.
The hospital in Kent, in Maidstone.
And because he'd had a heart attack,
they didn't realize that he had this aorta,
aortic aneurysm, and so they gave him blood thinners.
So he was bleeding more profusely into his body cavity.
But by the time they realized what was going on,
he was, his condition was very, very serious.
So we got a call the next morning,
can you come to, can you come into the hospital at eight o'clock?
You know, can you come in right away?
And so then, he was still conscious and we were able to be with him
for a little bit and to talk with him.
Then he became unconscious.
And then the doctor spoke with myself, my mother, and my sister.
My elder sister was trying to get back to England.
She was in Russia at the time.
And so the doctors spoke to us and said, well,
in very English understatement, Mr. Horner,
he was very poorly.
Yes, we realize that.
And he says, we have two choices really.
If we leave him as is,
then he'll probably pass away in the next few hours.
We could try, you know,
we get the crash team in,
open him up and try and repair the aorta
and to help him to survive.
So, he's not that way, but it's at the age of 80.
It's quite possible he wouldn't survive the surgery.
What would you like us to do?
So, I was just thinking, hmm.
I got as far as hmm, okay, just digesting the question.
And then both my mother and my sister said,
we should just let him go, you know, just let him pass.
And so, at that moment, I decided, okay, that's sort of, you know,
but my mother and my sister, they both, she's a nurse,
my sister's a nurse.
My mother, obviously, had been married to my dad
for decades and decades.
And so, okay, that's how they feel, fine.
I won't stand in the way of that.
And so, that was what, that was,
and also the fact that if they had tried to open him up
and to do the repair, the damage to the aorta,
that that might have killed him earlier,
just in that attempt.
So, I didn't stand in the way of that.
So, that was a very active situation in my own family.
And I feel totally comfortable with that, as it was.
Then he was unconscious, and then he passed away
about three hours, four hours later,
somewhere, you know, in the early afternoon.
He passed away, you know, very peacefully.
So that, I have no regrets about that, no doubts.
But it was, you know, that was, if I'd been by myself,
and then it would have been different, but I wasn't by myself.
So, you can't predict exactly what the dynamics
of a situation will be.
And the fact that both my mother and my sister
just straight away said, no, we should,
obviously, you know, they cared about him deeply,
but they both said, no, we should just let him go peacefully.
It was so obvious and immediate to them.
Okay, well, no need for me to stand in the way of that.
So, let it be.
So, again, we have these moral questions,
and what would you do if, you don't know.
Because there's so many factors that can be playing into it
that you can't predict.
And so, like Lumpur's response to, you know,
what would you do if a maniac attacked your mother?
I said, I don't know.
I'd do something.
I would respond mindfully to the situation,
but exactly what I would do, I can't say.
And I feel that it might, again,
it might seem like weakness or being wishy-washy,
like, now, what would you do?
You'd have to decide, you know, take a stand, you know.
Well, no, who says?
Because life is so messy.
You know, it's fuzzy, it's not clear.
And every situation is completely unique,
like the exact composition of this group of us today.
It's unique, this moment, the first of the Sunday Talks,
2026, it's exactly like this.
It's not like another Sunday Talk.
It's not like next week's.
It's this one, and it's this question.
It's like this now.
So, you can't predict, but if you take refuge
in mindfulness and wisdom,
and you're attuned to the situation as best you can,
then you'll find that sometimes when you speak up and say,
I think we should go this way,
or it's time, or just be still, be quiet, leave it be.
And you can't predict what is the right thing
at any one moment.
But the more that the heart is really, genuinely in tune,
with the time, the place, the situation, and the deep tissue of the moment's experience,
then what intention, what initiative arises will be in tune with Dhamma as a responsivity.
And so with that situation with my father, I consider that it was a long time ago.
It was 1993. It was a long time ago, more than 30 years ago.
I have no regrets at all. I feel totally comfortable with how that went.
But you could look at that and say, well, that's a real moral dilemma. What would you do?
But looking back, well, the mind was attuned to the time, the place, the situation, the people that were there,
and that was the decision that arose.
And that arose from that mixture.
So speaking of the time and the place, the situation, 4 o'clock has come around,
so let's call it a close there for today.
Thank you for your attention and your good questions.
Next week, the title is Why Less Is More.
Why more means less. Thank you.
Why more means less.
So it'll be Why More Means Less. Thank you.
So that'll be the theme about acquisition, relinquishment, renunciation, and ownership, and all those good things.
So do come along if you have the time and the interest.
And thank you to everyone for setting up, taking care of all the details.