..续本文上一页 experience in itself is all that”s necessary. But there are some experiences which it”s actually better not to have – especially if they”re against the ordinary interpretation of the Five Precepts.
For example, you might say, ”I really want to experience murdering someone because my education in life won”t be complete until I have. My freedom to act spontaneously will be inhibited until I actually experience murder.”
Some people might believe that ... well perhaps not so much for murder, because that”s a really heavy one – but they do for other things. They do everything they desire to do and have no standard for saying ”No”.
”Don”t ever say "no" to anything,” they say. ”Just say "yes" – go out and do it and be mindful of it, learn from it.... Experience everything!”
If you do that, you”ll find yourself rather jaded, worn out, confused, miserable, and wretched, even at a very young age. When you see some of the pathetic cases I”ve seen – young people who went out and ”experienced everything” – and you say, ”How old are you
Forty
” And they say, ”No, actually, I”m twenty-one.”
It sounds good, doesn”t it
”Do everything you desire” - that”s what we”d like to hear. I would. It would be nice to do everything I desire, never have to say ”No”. But then in a few years you also begin to reflect that desires have no end. What you desire now, you want something more than that next time, and there”s no end to it. You might be temporarily gratified, like when you eat too much food and can”t stand to eat another bite; then you look at the most delicious gourmet preparations and you say, ”Oh, disgusting!” But it”s only momentary revulsion and it doesn”t take long before they start looking all right again.
In Thailand, Buddhism is an extremely tolerant kind of religion; moralistic attitudes have never really developed there. This is why people are sometimes upset when they go to Bangkok and hear horrendous stories of child prostitution and corruption and so on. Bangkok is the Sin City of the world these days. You say ”Bangkok”, and everybody”s eyes either light up or else they look terribly upset and say: ”How can a Buddhist country allow such terrible things to go on
”
But then, knowing Thailand, one recognises that, although they may be a bit lax and loose on some levels, at least there isn”t the kind of militant cruelty there that you find in some other countries where they line all the prostitutes up and shoot them, and kill all the criminals in the name of their religion. In Thailand one begins to appreciate that morality really has to come from wisdom, not from fear.
So some Thai monks will teach morality on a less strict basis than others. In the matter of the first precept, non-killing, I know a monk who lives on the coast of the gulf of Thailand in an area where there are a lot of pirates and fishermen, who are a very rough, crude kind of people. Murder is quite common among them. So this monk just tries to encourage them not to kill each other. When these people come to the monastery, he doesn”t go round raising non-killing to the level of ”You shouldn”t kill anything – not even a mosquito larva” because they couldn”t accept that. Their livelihood depends very much on fishing and the killing of animals.
What I”m presenting isn”t morality on a rigid standard or that”s too difficult to keep, but rather for you to reflect upon and use so that you begin to understand it, and understand how to live in a better way. If you start out taking too strict a position, you either become very moralistic, puritanical, and attached, or else you think you can”t do it, so you don”t bother – you have no standard at all.
Now the second precept is refraining from stealing. On the coarsest level, say, you just refrain from robbing banks, shop-li…
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