HHDL = His holiness, the Dalai Lama I've collected good references here, including the actual video, and snippets from forums discussions containing valid critcism and explanations of cultural context, and most importantly, what the rules of the actual vinaya that buddhist monks are supposed to follow: 1min. video: Dalai Lama kissing boy and asking him to suck his tongue At the time of this writing, HHDL is about 88 years old. He has an exemplary record devoting his life to compassionate service to all living beings, as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. In this age of 'me too', everyone with a cell phone with high resolution cameras, and the ability to quickly publicize any indiscretion or sexual crime, we've seen sexual predators in positions of power being exposed and convicted. Leaders of large corporations, governments, professional sports, doctors, leaders in all religions. Tibetan Buddhism has an especially poor track record with corrupt sexual predators. https://thewal...
Hello Frank.
ReplyDeleteHow to reconciliate this sutta with SN 4.23?
"Now at that time Venerable Godhika was staying on the slopes of Isigili at the Black Rock. Then Venerable Godhika, meditating diligent, keen, and resolute, experienced temporary freedom of heart. But then he fell away from that temporary freedom of heart. For a second … third … fourth … fifth … sixth time Godhika experienced temporary freedom of heart. But for a sixth time he fell away from it. For a seventh time Godhika, meditating diligent, keen, and resolute, experienced temporary freedom of heart.
Then he thought, “I’ve fallen away from this temporary freedom of heart no less than six times. Why don’t I slit my wrists?”
The suicide in SN 22.87 for example, was due to the monk having debilitating pain in some kind of terminal health condition. In SN 4.23 The sutta doesn't explain in detail the reasons and motivation, so we can only guess. My guess is Godhika had a bad enough physical health condition (that would be the only reason for an arahant who can do ceto vimutti to not be able to do it) that perhaps there was also severe enough chronic pain to warrant suicide. That's just a guess. But even if there was no chronic pain, the point of that sutta is for an arahant it's blameless whether they choose to endure (khanti, khamo) the pain or not. So either way, not a contradiction with MN 125 and those related suttas on khanti.