Once again, I think about suggesting that if you are, for example, sitting or walking and being mindful of your posture and your breathing, you have my full support to practice such mindfulness and While practicing mindfulness in this way, you may be able to let go of discursive thought consistently and become quite tranquil, concentrated, flexible, and be rested. That's a practice of concentration. You can also practice, of course, patience when you're in pain.

[01:07]

And you can also practice generosity in all situations. You can practice clearly observing the ethical precepts, the ethical teachings. And you can practice enthusiasm and energy. And you can study phenomena and practice wisdom. But in all these practices I'm encouraging you to simultaneously be aware of the vows of the bodhisattva. So, for example, when you're sitting and being mindful of your posture, you could simultaneously consider the infinite possibilities of bodhisattva aspirations, bodhisattva vows, bodhisattva wishes, bodhisattva prayers.

[02:22]

And learn to surround and support all your activities of practice with whatever bodhisattva vows among the infinite ones available you wish to think about. Among the infinite ways that bodhisattvas think, you can actually think like a bodhisattva. You could adopt some of the ways bodhisattvas think. You could think that way too. And of course, you can also forget about that and not do that. So it's a possibility for you to bring the thinking, the vowing of bodhisattvas together with whatever practice you're doing. And again, when you're doing things that aren't formal practices, that aren't on the list of basic bodhisattva training, for example,

[03:29]

eating a piece of fudge or brownie. We had brownies. Were those brownies that Eileen made for us? Did you make those brownies, Eileen? Huh? You did? Thank you. We ate them. And so while eating a brownie, one can consider what is the relationship between this brownie eater and the Buddhas? while I'm eating this brownie, what's my relationship with all the Buddhas right now? Actually, I find it myself, thinking about what my relationship with all Buddhas or even one Buddha is while I'm eating a brownie, I find that not a problem to think of that. It changes the brownie eating quite a bit. It makes me feel like I've got company, excellent company.

[04:37]

The company was there before I thought about the company, but now I'm thinking about the company. And I'm also thinking that the company that I have eating my brownie, all the other people around me who are eating brownies or not eating brownies, they have the same company. These Buddhas are not just with me. I'm not the only one here who has a relationship with Buddhas. However, at that moment, I might have been the only person among all of you who were thinking about your relationship with Buddha. But maybe not. Maybe the rest of you were also at the same time that I was thinking, what is my relationship with Buddha? Maybe you guys were too. as you were putting something into the compost bucket, maybe you were thinking, what's the relationship between me composting and the Buddhas? You might have been doing that.

[05:42]

I don't know. It's not really my job to keep track of your vowing. But I do happily join your vowing and invite you to join mine. And I think that these vows go very well with any activity of any living being. Very well. And we can learn to do this. And I never heard of, so far, people are having some trouble learning these things, but I haven't heard of anybody having a problem of considering their relationship with enlightenment while they're doing their life. It doesn't seem to be a problem, it seems to be a big benefit. So, we do forget, we do forget to consider, what's my relationship with enlightenment again? We do forget, but sometimes we remember.

[06:48]

And I think when we remember, then we're bodhisattvas. Because bodhisattvas, their whole life, their whole life is thinking about Buddha. They're thinking about all the time. And there's infinite ways to think about Buddha, and they think about Buddha in infinite ways. but they do think about Buddha. That's how they live their life. And they also, when they think about Buddha, that means they think about all sentient beings, because Buddhas think about all sentient beings. So everybody's included, but don't leave out Buddha. Of course bodhisattvas are devoted to the welfare of all living beings, human and not human, and they're also devoted to non-living beings like mountains and water and sky.

[07:49]

They're devoted to all this, but they're also devoted to Buddhas, and they think about them all the time. They learn this. So, please consider inviting the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to join you in all your activities And not just a one-time invitation, but a repeated invitation and a repeated consideration of whether they're coming or not, whether you feel their presence or not, whether you want them to be with you or not. It's possible sometimes you think, well, I'd rather not have them with me right now while I'm doing this. Okay. They're there anyway, but okay. Okay. So that's a kind of reiteration. And I actually myself do enjoy when I am considering my relationship, paying homage to my relationship, acknowledging my relationship,

[09:03]

being mindful and imagining and whatever my relationship with the Buddhist. I feel good about doing that while I'm doing anything and I find it very helpful. And also my understanding is that this is how bodhisattvas practice. They do innumerable practice But they always think of Buddha while they're doing their practice. They always think of enlightenment. They always think of the enlightenment which is the same enlightenment for them and all beings. They always think of practice which they understand is the same as the enlightenment of all beings. They think about that. And they also practice whatever practices Buddhas have ever done. So I imagine that's like really clear and that you have some questions, some problems. That makes sense. How about this and how about that?

[10:05]

So you want to bring up anything? Yes, Linda? I've missed some of your talks lately, but I wonder if you could say something more about saving. Saving? Saving. I felt I understood this morning probably what you meant, but I wasn't sure about saving all these. Saving. Well, saving means participate in their salvation. It doesn't mean that you're going to do it all by yourself. And so people's salvation will come when they themselves understand the Dharma. So, and they will understand the Dharma when they open to all beings. And then once they, as they start to open, as they learn to open to all beings and accept responsibility for all beings as they do these practices and they learn how to take care of themselves in this openness and this responsibility together with all beings, if they learn how to be upright and gentle in that environment,

[11:23]

they will then receive the Dharma, they will receive the Buddhist teaching, and they will be liberated. They will be saved. What? You save by you doing that, exactly. You save by showing the practice that will liberate beings. You show beings the practice of liberation. And you participate by just being together with them and practicing with them. Because you join the practice with them which you're already doing, you wake up to the practice and then they see you waking up to the practice and then they say to you, what are you doing? And you show them. And then you show them again and again. And then they eventually start copying you.

[12:28]

And then they become free too. That's a teacher. You can't wake them up, but you can show them the way to wake up. The Buddha couldn't wake up everybody, but the Buddha could show people how to get themselves into a position where they could see. So even the Buddha meeting, even Shakyamuni Buddha meeting people, they're actually seeing this Shakyamuni Buddha and he's talking to them, but they still don't really actually see the Buddha, they just see a person who they call Buddha, who's talking to them. But the Buddha talks to them and they start to practice while they're listening. And as they get into practice, suddenly they see the Buddha, the actual Buddha. They see the Dharma. But even having the Buddha right in front of you, an actual manifestation of Buddha, you still have to join the practice of Buddha to open to the Buddha. So now you can start learning the practice of Buddha so that you can show other people the practice of Buddha and the joy of practicing the practice of Buddha and the joy of showing others the practice of Buddha and bodhisattvas.

[13:46]

That's how you save them. And along the way, when you start to see the Dharma, you realize things like, well, there actually aren't any beings to save. You realize that kind of stuff too. you realize the mind of no abode, which the bodhisattva is open to. And then you really are unhindered in your teaching practice. You're unhindered by your ideas of beings. And you're free of your ideas of Buddhas, yeah? When you see Buddha, you're free of your ideas of Buddha. Right. Okay? Yeah, you're free of your ideas of saving, right. Because your ideas of saving now are that somebody's not saved. So, got to get over that one. Steven?

[14:49]

This morning you were talking about such things as feelings and thoughts as being... Yeah. That surprised me. I wondered if you could speak about what a being is. A being means something that exists. Right? An existent thing. It isn't like you're nice to the person, Stephen, you're kind to the person, Stephen, and mean to all Stephen's feelings. Right? That won't work, right? And also, this isn't that you're kind to Stephen's feelings and mean to the person who's composed of all these feelings. So a person is composed, according to the teaching, of five aggregates. Form, feeling, conceptions or perceptions. There are many mental formations and consciousness. That makes a person. But all the parts of a person, they aren't persons, but they're beings.

[15:53]

Persons are made of a multitude of beings. We don't have some existence by ourself. We are just something that's wonderfully created by many, many beings, some of them being our history, some of them being our neighbors, and our neighbors come to us as form. All these beings here with us are coming as smells and touches and tastes. But also people can come to us, other beings can come to us by being aware of their minds. All these beings support us. All our history supports us. These are all beings which make persons. And we're persons. We're persons who have relationship with infinite beings. And some of the beings are persons. But some of the beings are not persons. Like a fingernail isn't a person. It's part of a person.

[16:56]

But it's a being. Okay? All beings. And you can perceive feelings. You can perceive fingernails. You can perceive humans and dogs and mountains. All these beings you can perceive. And you do relate to them. You will relate to them. And then the way of relating to them You know how, right? How? This is a quiz, of course. How do you relate to beings? Right? Yeah, don't lean towards them or away from them. Right. You walk around them. You take care of them. You don't grab them or... You don't touch them and you don't turn away. That's the way you take care of them. Any further instructions? Huh? Be generous with them. Right.

[17:57]

And by the way, before I call on Kim, all these practices are simply... expressions of the reality of your relationship as it currently exists, always. You really are always upright with people and you really are generous with people. But we have to practice these practices to realize it. Without practicing uprightness, we don't really understand that we're upright. We kind of do, but we have to put it into action. So if I tell you that you're already generous, you might say, great, I had a feeling that was the case, I'm glad to hear it. But if you don't practice it, then you won't fully realize it. But you already are generous, but you have to put it into action. You already are really honest, but you have to practice it to realize, yes, that's where I'm at, I really am honest.

[19:02]

So, yeah, that's how we relate to beings. So let's practice that. Kim? On that point, I've been sitting with what it means to learn to save the living beings and thinking about the saving and the being generous. And it's really good to hear you talk about modeling and imitating me. Just being with, I was thinking about just being with sentient beings in their moments of joy and distress and so on. And I was thinking about compassion and how compassion metta practice too is a way that we put to work our saving little beings. And the difficult stuff that I think I and I know a lot of people have to let go of is around

[20:12]

It's really good when you can let go and have compassion for difficult people, people who cut in front of you when you're driving. Recognising when you need to have compassion. It's very difficult still. You keep going on your way and, you know, I could talk about it as me, but I could keep going on my way and I'm fine. But then that difficult person or people, or beings, go off to create more havoc. And I guess it comes back to something, someone was talking about agency too, and whether that's ever possible. Perhaps it is through asana and collective effort. But I was thinking about, oh, it bothered me too, I suppose, the issue here is that sometimes I think compassion's a really good sort of, it's almost like an escape, you know. compassion and then to turn away from something or not? You know, I mean, it's about boundaries.

[21:17]

It's about what compassion can do or can't do. Yeah, so one thing you're bringing up is compassion that turns away from some problem. That could look like compassion because you're not like a problematic, maybe a violent person. Okay? You turn away from them. And that might seem like better than attacking them. Maybe you wish them well and turn away. And you're probably concerned about, well, then will the person continue to be violent if I just give them a kind look and turn away? And the answer is they might continue to be violent. They might even get more violent until begging somebody to come and save them from their violence. And maybe if they're violent and nobody comes to help them, they'll just keep getting more and more violent until someone comes to help them.

[22:26]

And one way to help them is help them become free of their violence. And so, of course, one way to try to get them to be free of their violence is to totally destroy their violence. But that doesn't necessarily work. If it did, then the Buddhas would be teaching differently. But Buddhas are usually characterized as gentle rather than fierce. Although they could be fierce, and there are fierce deities in our tradition, Buddhas can manifest fierceness. They could, but usually they get bodhisattvas to do that for them. The Buddhas usually are characterized as gentle. And there was a story of the mass murderer, you know, the mass murderer about to kill his mother. His name's Agulimala.

[23:27]

Quaring the story, he was about to kill his mother. The Buddha just happened to be there. This is kind of a setup. What? I thought he was out to kill. What? I thought he was looking for Buddha to kill. No, he was going to kill his mother. And Buddha saw that and intervened. So then when he saw Buddha, he was going to kill Buddha. But Buddha put himself... between this murderer and his mother. And then the guy said, okay, I'll kill this guy. And so he goes, and this is a big strong guy, he's killed a lot of people already. So he starts running after Buddha, or walking fast, and not catching up to Buddha. And Buddha's just walking along slowly in a meditation. And he starts running faster and faster, and he's not getting any closer to the Buddha. So he calls out and says something like, Hey, yogi, what's going on? Why can't I catch up to you? What are you doing?

[24:28]

And the Buddha says, You can't catch me because I've stopped. And he wakes up. So this is a case of the Buddha not being that rough, actually. You could say, well, kind of being kind of magical. A little bit of magic. but gentle magic that snapped this very violent, crazy person out of it. And the Buddha also could see that this crazy person had some good roots in his past prior to his going insane. And so the Buddha saw this man could be awakened, and he managed to awaken this person. This is one of the amazing stories of the Buddha's teaching. where he was kind and gentle and woke the person up. There are some other cases, however, when we can't see a way to do it. But basically, the bodhisattvas basically are often characterized as basically constantly

[25:35]

accommodating or according with beings. They basically accord with them. I haven't heard about bodhisattvas occasionally or constantly confronting and conflicting with people. They accord with them. They tune into the person's violence and they accord with it and then they convert them. They accord with them and love them, and the person changes. So it isn't just that they see a violent person, accord with them, walk away, and the person gets more violent. Although that can happen, because sometimes bodhisattvas cannot see a way to snap the person out of it. But they get in there and they try. They say, okay, here we are. Okay, here we are. Yeah, here we are. We're moving along here together. Yeah. Here we go. Here we go. One, two, three.

[26:37]

One, two, three. A whoop for you, you know. Like, you know, when two people are turning the rope, you know, you go a one and a two and a three and you jump in. That's what bodhisattvas do with people. One and a two and a three. But sometimes they don't, it's going too fast or whatever. They can't get in there. But once they get in there, one, two, three, and then everything starts flipping around. That's what they want to do. If it doesn't work, then they just go out and go their own way? If it doesn't work, then they try something else. They keep trying, but sometimes they can't find anything in the time scale of the story. Not to say I'm a bodhisattva, but I used to be the director of the city center. And they asked me to be the director because they thought that I would be able to play with the violent people coming into the building.

[27:39]

They thought I would be able to do that rather than just ignore them. A lot of people were just letting the people come into the building and harass the residents and then go, you know, But they asked me to come because they thought I would interact with these people. A Zen bouncer. Yeah, like a Zen bouncer, right. So they invited me in. And when people like, when people, like when one guy was like, he punched the tenzo, the head cook. And so then when I heard about that, people came and told me that he punched the Tanzos. So I came and I said, would you please leave the building? And he did. Some other people weren't sure exactly how to relate to him. I said, would you please leave the building? And he did. And that same person, however, came to the building a year or so later and I was in the courtyard of the city center, and he came into the courtyard, and Suzuki Roshi was there, and he was walking towards Suzuki Roshi, so I was going to intervene between him and Suzuki Roshi so he wouldn't bother Suzuki Roshi.

[28:57]

Okay? So I went over to him and I said, would you please leave the building? And the guy yelled sort of over me, and he said to Suzuki Roshi, would you tell your stupid disciple to get out of the way? So I was trying to protect my kind of small-bodied great teacher, right, from this aggressive threat, or anyway, hassle. So I got there and the guy yelled, tell your stupid disciple to get out of the way. And Sri Krishna got up and walked across the courtyard and said, stupid? Who's stupid? And he took the guy's hand and walked him to the door. And he was very happy to have Suzuki Roshi escort him to the door. So I was a little embarrassed that I was trying to protect Suzuki Roshi who could, as I knew from previous experience, could pacify, pacify aggressive beings.

[30:05]

Not always, but But I was going to pacify him, but that didn't work. So my teacher did. And another time a guy came in and went around a lot of the rooms and stole a lot of money. And he was apprehended. And I was the director, and they brought him to me. And he said, I said, you know, people say you went into their rooms and stole money from their rooms. He said, no, I didn't. And I say, well, if you didn't, I'll tell you what. If you just give me your money, all your money you've got, and nobody comes to saying that their rooms were robbed, I'll give you all your money back. But if people come and say they're missing a certain amount of money, I will deduct the money that you have from that and give it to them, and I'll give you the rest."

[31:07]

And he said, you know, he resisted. He resisted that suggestion. And I said to him, I said, and this is a guy who just came off the street, you know, who saw Zen Center as an easy target, an easy, what do you call it? Easy mark, which it was, pretty easy. Yeah, he came in and he went to all the rooms and got the stuff. But he got apprehended. It wasn't that easy. So I said to him, if you give me the money, I promise you I'll give it back to you if nobody comes with any losses. And if you do that, you're welcome to come to Zen Center. But if you don't give me that money, you will not be welcome in this community anymore. You know, we won't tell... You will lose our friendship in that way. We'll still care about you, but you can't come here anymore if you do that.

[32:11]

And that really had an effect on this thief. And he gave me all the money. And he left. And that was it. He never came back to get the change. But he was welcome to come back. And he knew that. I think. And he appreciated that. He left the building happily. And then, a couple years later, more than a couple years later, I was in the entryway of the Zen Center, and a guy came in the building with a knife, with one of our students. And I saw him from the hall, and I thought, no. I can't convert this guy. It's too advanced for me. It's not my job. I couldn't do it. I could see it. So I just stepped into a little office called 911.

[33:18]

And the police were there in 45 seconds. And they walked into the door. And the guy was pacified. No, no, totally, oh, okay, police. And he gave them his weapon and they took him away. So sometimes we accord with them and we say, this is not, I can't do this, I've got to get somebody else to do this. Other times we can't. So we want to get in there and we want to disarm them. We'd want to disarm. We want to disarm. And so we look for that way to bring gentleness and uprightness and honesty and harmony to disarm. And we look for the way to move with the energy to disarm it. We don't want to just stay away from it and let it pump up until somebody else comes in and beats them up or whatever.

[34:22]

The police did not beat him up. He went with them peacefully. And he had just killed his own baby by throwing her in the ocean to be with God. So he was totally insane on a homicidal binge. This is not necessarily the work for me, but it's the work for somebody else who can come and also help and disarm him. So we don't want to just let people go off. We want to keep in touch with them, keep them in our embrace, in our awareness, and keep watching them and guiding them, but we don't always see the way to turn them. But we keep looking for that opportunity. We don't want to forsake them and just let their karma crash. But sometimes we can't see any way to do it, so we just stay with them as much as we can at an appropriate distance until we or someone else can come in and take their hand and turn them around.

[35:39]

That's the bodhisattva way. That's the saving that we're hoping to do. But sometimes it's too advanced. Okay? This is to advance for me. I accept. Yes? It sort of made me think of the story of Lang Dharma. Do you know the evil king of Tibet? And then one of the monks disrobed and killed him. Took on the karma, but he did that too. Because this king was destroying monasteries and all this. And I'm just wondering if that maybe wasn't a success. I don't know what you think about that, but it seems like it might not have been. It wasn't that successful. Right. The more successful story would be It's a story about a monk who disrobed and killed somebody to protect people from the person who was killing people. So bodhisattvas, of course, are committed to not taking life, totally committed to that. However, if it would benefit people to take life, they should do it.

[36:44]

So compassion is more important than their own ethical... practice. And if their own breaking the precepts would benefit people, they should do it. And occasionally, breaking precepts could help people. Like, for example, lying can sometimes help people. So this is an example of a monk who protected people, but the monk couldn't convert the king. The monk's love and compassion was not intense enough to actually go to the king and convert the king. But even Shakyamuni Buddha couldn't convert everybody. Like Devadatta. Like Devadatta and like the army invading the Shakyamuni clan. Even he couldn't somehow convert everybody today. But that's what we want to do. We want to actually turn violent leaders... around and make them peaceful. We want to do that but, you know, and the bodhisattva in some cases, if you could stop the person from right now killing someone, you would benefit that person, you'd benefit the potential murderer, and you'd benefit the people who are going to be murdered.

[38:03]

But that's different from converting the person, which would be even a higher value. That you would not just stop them from doing evil deed, but you'd snatch them out of it. And so we have Zen stories like that, you know, where the Zen teacher doesn't just stop the violence, the Zen teacher converts the violent one into a humble, gentle student of the Buddha. There are stories like that, but there's also stories where the Zen teacher not only doesn't stop the person, but the person kills the Zen master. There's stories like that too. And the Zen master doing well under the circumstances, but being killed. Yeah, right. Right. Yes? It seems like the examples you've given in the last few minutes are very clear. Yeah. Okay.

[39:07]

It seems like a basis for... action based on subjective assessment. When you say, in the case of the monk who just wrote and killed the king, this all happens within someone's mental framework. And we as humans can justify a lot of stuff. that at least seen by the masses is unjustifiable, unjust or incorrect. We can justify things to ourselves, you mean? Yeah, rationalization. Yeah, we can justify things to ourselves that other people may not agree with. Right. Yes, that's right. And taking an action such as killing someone because you feel it would protect others which is also the justification for the death penalty.

[40:16]

Just a second. You took a big step there. So in this case, however, most of the people in Tibet agreed with this. In this case, what he did was supported by most people. And I think you're right that we do operate within a subjective field. It's true. I agree. However, some things we do are not just determined, not just some things we do, but everything we do is not determined just by our subjective field. It's determined by all the things that create the just subjective field. So sometimes you do things that you might not even think are good and other people think are good. But still, The basic teaching is, the first teaching is, study your subjective feeling. But it doesn't mean that if you study your subjective feeling and your subjective feeling or your subjective evaluation is, this would be good.

[41:20]

It doesn't mean that that will be good. We're not saying that you can be sure as you look inside yourself at your story of what's helpful. It doesn't mean that if the story of what's helpful is appearing in your mind and you act on that, that it will be helpful. We're not saying that that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about being aware of what you think is helpful and being aware of what you think is not helpful. And being aware of what you think is helpful requires awareness. In other words, what you think is helpful might not happen if you don't pay attention to that you think is helpful. However, what you think is not helpful can happen without you paying attention to that it's not helpful. Does that make sense? So driving unskillfully, you don't think it's helpful, but you don't have to pay attention to your driving to avoid unskillful actions.

[42:26]

Or in other words, you can drive unskillfully without paying attention. But what... What caught my attention was the notion that one of the fundamental precepts is to not take what isn't given to know the result, not to kill. Yes. And yet, saying there can be exceptions to that may be true. It's not an exception. No, no, it's not an exception. It is a violation. It's not an exception. It's still a violation. You know, it's still unreality to do that. But if it helps people, the Bodhisattva is supposed to do it. Now, he doesn't know it's going to be helpful. He just thinks it will be. And he might be wrong. But anyway, in the millions or billions of Buddhists that there have been, we have like one example. How many examples do we have?

[43:29]

Two? It's very rare. But before we get any more examples, we're actually being told that we actually should go against the precepts if it benefits people. These precepts are to liberate people from the realm of suffering. They're not ultimate truth. They're ways for us to pay attention. And by paying attention, we're being told that things will evolve in a positive way. And we're not being told, don't pay attention. We're told that if we're paying attention and we see that violating a precept would benefit beings, in the spirit of realizing Buddha, we should do it. Even though we don't know for sure that it will benefit beings,

[44:30]

and even though we're pretty sure that it is violating the precept, but we can't be sure it's violating the precept, but we think it would be, and we're willing to do that. And this is not, and the subjective thing is, the subjective thing is, I think it would be helpful. Yeah. And hopefully, the person who's doing this is a bodhisattva who can talk, get some counseling on this. And it doesn't say, it doesn't say you can't go talk to your teacher about this. It doesn't say you can't consult the Buddha about this. That'd be fine. And you'd see if you got confirmation from other beings who also thought this would be beneficial. And most bodhisattvas spend a long time bringing what they think is good to their teacher and saying, I think this would be good, what do you think?

[45:35]

They'd spend a long time doing that and then watching how their conduct goes from there. And it's not very often do bodhisattvas bring to their teacher what they think is not good and their teacher think it is good. But this would be a case where they would think, I know that breaking the precepts is... I've committed not to break the precepts, but now I think it would be good to break a precept. This is unlikely that my teacher is going to agree with me. People almost never do that. I think it would be good to break this precept in this case. It's very rare. I almost can't think of any examples where someone said, I think it would be good to break the precept. I think it would be beneficial. And come to me and said that. But in this case, the Bodhisattva would be happy to go talk to their teacher or innumerable teachers about this because they would think this would be good.

[46:42]

This is amazing. I now see that violating this precept would be helpful. I'd like to tell the Buddhas about this and see if they agree. It's very rare. But you're being asked to open your mind up to beyond what these precepts are. I just want to say one thing and I'll let it be. I think there have been a lot of murders over the course of history. Yeah. And one that affected me a hundred years ago where the person thought it would be helpful to do this. What was the example? Almost 20 years ago someone came into the place where I worked and killed seven people. Yes. He said somebody came into where he worked and killed seven people and they thought it would be helpful. Okay. Yes.

[47:43]

Yes. Right. Okay. So he would have the same attitude as a bodhisattva. That he would think it was helpful and the bodhisattva would think it was helpful. So that way they'd be the same. What's the difference? What's the difference? The difference? Yeah, the difference between those. One guy who thinks it would be helpful who commits a heinous crime and the other guy who thinks it's helpful and is beneficial. That's the difference. The people who are still alive after this murder occurs

[48:44]

They think it's helpful. That would be the judge. Everybody would think it was helpful. Everybody. Including the guy who got killed. Everybody would think it's helpful. In the other case, in your example, probably nobody thought it was helpful. As far as I know. Nobody. Including the guy. Probably he did not think it was helpful after he did it. I would guess. He thought so beforehand, but afterwards usually these people shoot themselves and feel terrible. I'm talking about a case where afterwards everybody feels good. That's the difference. That's the difference. Where everybody thinks that the violating the precept was beneficial. Would a 50% feel good?

[49:46]

I would say, yeah, I would say it's not good enough. If it's 50%, you know, be a, what do you call it, a conformist. Follow the precepts. If you go to your teacher and your teacher disagrees with you about violating the precepts, I would say, you know, follow the precept. Is it safe to assume that this monk exhausted all other ethical possibilities first? Is it safe to assume that the monkly story explored all other ethical possibilities first? That's a bit extreme, but I would say that the whole country of Tibet was exploring, all the Buddhist monks in Tibet were trying to ethically deal with this guy. I don't know how many there were, 100,000 to a million monks in Tibet were trying to follow the Bodhisattva precepts and deal with this king. Right?

[50:47]

That's what they were trying to do. And one of them decided to do it this other way. And afterwards, this now is a historical example of somebody violating the precepts, which the rest of the monks were following. He couldn't be exhausted by himself, but he and the whole Sangha were trying to peacefully deal with a king who was killing them. They weren't raising a Tibetan monk's army, which they could have done, to fight back. They didn't do that. One of them did, apparently. I don't know the whole story, but one of them did. And he stopped being a monk, I guess, when he did. So the whole situation was trying to respond to this guy in a non-violent way, and one person stopped him. And, you know, maybe everybody basically felt like it was beneficial, including to the king.

[51:52]

I don't know. I'm just saying that these precepts are to meditate on so that your behavior becomes more and more skillful so that you become more and more non-violent. That's what they're about. But they're not just about that. They're about your mind being not caught. It's about becoming free of gain and loss, good and evil, and all that. And it is now a little bit past 5.30, but I appreciate your bringing this forward, your question.

[52:30]

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