So somebody here says, very simple question.
Can someone who commits murder achieve enlightenment in future lives?
Who's going to pick this one up?
Owen?
Owen from .
Did you not do a video or something recently on this one about the guy trying to get 1,000 murders?
And then he came across the Buddha.
Oh, that's good.
Oh, yeah, you mean that video, the movie that I put the piece together?
No, I think it was brought up a while back where there was a guy who was basically told to get the fingers of a thousand people.
Oh, you mean you don't know the story?
You know what I do, but not word for word.
But like you, you know who that's talking about?
You're not familiar with the Majjhima Nikaya Sutta, the Angulimala Sutta?
No, not... You know what I should do?
I should find a way to post the movie.
There's this movie, a Thai movie called Angulimala, and it tells the story really well, and the ending is really cool.
If you look up the video I did called Forgiveness and Redemption...
in Buddhism.
Do you remember the Tiger Woods scandal?
Everyone does, no?
The worldwide thing, no?
Unfortunately.
And you remember how the Christians started saying stuff like, well, if he was only Christian, Jesus would forgive him?
And they said, like, there's no forgiveness in Buddhism?
Anyway, it's kind of an American thing.
Are you guys from America?
You don't know this?
I'm kind of interested in Tiger Woods because he's supposed to be Buddhist, and so it's an interesting topic.
And so there was even a Buddhist who was interviewed about this, talking about, you know, they were trying to get him to argue with this, but instead of arguing, he just said, you know, how sorts of things he thinks Tiger Woods should do.
And so I put together this video, because the story of Angulimala is the perfect response to this question.
So look up that video, Forgiveness and Redemption in Buddhism.
And you'll see I stitched it together from this movie and put some subtitles on it.
And that part of the movie, if you watch the whole part, is just perfect.
I mean, they did a really good job, and it's sad that it never became very
famous movie.
I think that whole part, not just the parts that I put in, where he meets the Buddha and what the Buddha says to him and the result and the impact that it has on him, it's just very well done.
Especially if you know the story of Angulimala, because it's a famous Buddhist story.
So, a little bit of detail here.
Why is it possible that you murder someone and then can become enlightened?
It makes it more difficult, yeah.
It defiles your mind, but it depends on what other good qualities you have inside.
Hard to believe that a person who kills someone could have good qualities inside.
People can do things on the spur of the moment.
Obviously, Angulimala didn't, but
That's the thing.
He killed 999 people and he was still able to become enlightened.
I think the key was he wasn't doing it out of hatred or malice.
He was doing it out of misunderstanding, out of wrong view.
So once he was able to change that wrong view, he was able to progress quite quickly and become an arahant.
But he suffered horribly for it.
He was beaten.
What the Buddha said about it, they said, how is it possible he could become
enlightened it's in the Dhammapada if you read his story it's in the Dhammapada commentary there's a book Buddhist legends if you look up this translation of the Dhammapada commentary where he says the Buddha says who they make their by using good deeds make their bad deeds insignificant
So you have this very, very bad deed.
But the deed of becoming an Arahant is so much more profound than even killing lots of people that it actually makes even that deed insignificant.
Because they asked, how is it possible that he didn't have to go to hell and suffer for countless lifetimes?
And the Buddha said, if he hadn't become an Arahant, that's where he would have gone.
There was no hope for him.
But because of his ability to become an Arahant, which is incredibly surprising, he only had to suffer torture in this one life.
It doesn't really say what happened to him.
He probably was beaten to death or something.
Who knows?
Probably not.
Probably it says in the commentaries that he set himself on fire.
A lot of the Arahants, you read stories about how they spontaneously combusted.
Ananda is said to have done that.
Because they don't want people to have to worry about them.
Because they know if they
it's funny to read and interesting to compare to today's the methods of today among Buddhist circles because what they said is they knew that if they didn't spontaneously if they died and let people have their body people would just fight over their bone relics fight over the body and it would be what they say is it would be a burden to people having to bury, having to have a funeral and so on
And so Ananda, he had two sets of relatives.
Actually, it's not quite true about the relics, is it?
He has two sets of relatives, and he knew that they'd be fighting over his body, so he went over the river, I think the Rohini River, probably, where the Buddha went over, and he floated over the river, and he spontaneously combusted and made a determination that his relics would distribute evenly on both sides of the river.
So Ananda's bones were...
half to the I don't know I guess it's the the Sakyas and the Golyas I guess those are the Buddha's two sides I don't know it's his cousin so something like that anyway that's the story I heard Eva Misutin
There's a question that I've seen a couple of times now, I think, about... Oh, sorry, we should stop there.
Anyone have anything to say on what we were just asking?
Murder, no?
If you kill someone, if you kill your parents, you can't become enlightened.
Killing your parents is one of the five Garukamas.
If you kill your father, if you kill your mother, if you kill an Arahant, if you hurt a Buddha, or if you create a schism in the Buddhist Sangha, these are the five Garukamras, the result of which a person is unable to attain even Sotapanna in this life.
So Devadatta is one of those people.
Ajatasattu is another one those kind of people cannot so Mahasi Sayadaw makes a point here he says in that regard people who euthanize their parents are guilty of very very heinous crime something to keep in mind from a Buddhist perspective
But killing a person doesn't disqualify you.
It makes it much more difficult.
And it makes your practice much more unpleasant.
And it does corrupt your mind.
It's a very, very bad thing.
But to say that a person, it's not difficult.
It's not unthinkable for a person to become at least a sotapanna or even sakitakami without too much trouble.
A lot of suffering, but in this life, certainly doable, depending on the other qualities of mind that they have.