The old monk carried the woman across the river
And I put her down.
The little monk has been carrying that woman in his heart
After three miles
Still thinking
How could an old monk do this?
He broke his vows
He touched a woman
He carried her all over the river.
Isn't this breaking the precept?
Walked five miles
Still can't let go
The more I think about it, the more annoying I get.
The more you think about it
Finally he couldn't bear it anymore
open up
The old monk turned back
Glanced at him calmly
Said a word
I asked the little monk thoroughly
The old monk said
I've already put her down
Why haven't you put it down yet?
Hello
Hello.
I am Wang Lijie
This story is very popular in Buddhist circles
And a lot of people will laugh.
Simple to say
Don't be persistent
But I want to go in the other direction today.
I'm not going to talk about what the old monk did.
It's the little monk's fire
The thing that burned for miles and didn't go out
What is that fire called?
Ring
Let me put it more precisely.
The way to understand the ring
Because the little monk thinks the old monk has broken his precepts
He has a thread in his heart
It's called don't touch women.
The old monk crossed the line
So the old monk was wrong
But if we take it back to the original teaching of Sakyamuni.
Go see
You will find
The young monk's understanding of the precepts
Something went wrong at the root.
Let me tell you a little historical detail that many people don't know.
Palilustro
It is the most complete and oldest preserved record of the Buddha's commandments
It records more than 200 bhikkhu vows
But these commandments didn't just fall out of the sky one day
It's not the moral axioms deduced by the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree
Every commandment
Have a specific event as the origin
There is a word in Pali called Nitona
It means dependent origin.
That's the rule. Under what circumstances?
Because of what person's behavior
And was formulated
Let me give you an example.
And one of the commandments was that no monk should plant his own.
I just can't farm by myself
Why is that?
Not because farming itself violates some moral principle
It was because there was a monk who loved to grow vegetables.
Saw by his family
Said he would hurt the bugs in the soil
This is not what a monk should look like
Affected the reputation of the Sangha
So the Buddha made this rule.
One more.
Monks were not allowed to cross the river alone
Why is that?
Because a monk's clothes got wet when he crossed the river
Saw by passers-by
Caused discussion and misunderstanding
You see
The logic of these rules is not that this is always morally right
Their logic is that doing so helps your practice
Good for the operation of the Sangha
Good for your relationship with society
It's a function-oriented rule system.
Not the coming of the divine will
It's not about the moral law of the universe.
Is a very smart person
In the process of solving specific problems
Accumulated practical wisdom
Buddha on his deathbed
He also said a word to Ananda
And it sparked a lot of controversy.
So he says.
If the Sangha deems it necessary
The little ring can be abolished.
Pay attention to the meaning of this sentence
Rules are tools
Tools exist to achieve a purpose
Not eternal, sacred, immutable
The sentence in the Diamond Sutra is the most thorough
Fashang Yingshe
Not to mention illegal
Rafts are used to cross rivers
To the other side
You still walk with it on your back?
That's not piety.
Is persistence
The function of the commandment
What is it?
Sakyamuni had a three-step framework in his teaching.
It's called Jiedinghui.
ring
Is the first step
fixed
Is the second step
wisdom
Is the third step
Why start with abstinence?
Think about it.
You told a lie yesterday
So now you're sitting there trying to meditate.
What is your brain doing?
It's tracking that lie.
It's playing back what it said.
Worried that the other party has found it?
Thinking about the next step
If the other party asks, how should they answer?
This thread has been hanging in the background
Draining your cognitive resources
Such a brain
It's hard to be quiet
Because it has too many threads that are not closed.
keep the precepts
Is to reduce these threads
You don't lie.
You have less of the cognitive burden of tracking down lies.
You don't take advantage
You have a lot less of the implicit pressure to figure it out with others
Commandments make certain behaviors default settings
So that you don't have to redecide what I should do in every scene
That saves cognitive resources.
Leave it to deeper awareness
From a neuroscience perspective
This is actually the process of habituation
When a behavior pattern becomes a habit
The basal ganglia of the brain take over the process.
Prefrontal cortex can be freed from this
To handle more complex tasks
You have been riding a bicycle for many years
You don't have to put your left foot on every bike ride
Right foot
Keep your balance.
This program has been automated
Your higher layers can think about other things.
keep the precepts
It's to automate the mind of the practitioner.
Take some energy-intensive ethical decision-making processes and make them low-energy habits.
And thus leave the cognitive bandwidth for the actual practice.
That is, continuous awareness and mindfulness.
So commandments are not the goal.
It's a path to certainty.
It must be a path to wisdom
But there's a catch.
The Buddha gave it a special name
Pali is called abstinence
It means clinging to the commandments and the ritual itself
Make the means an end
When the Buddha listed the obstacles to spiritual practice
Put this one in the top three
Alongside self-identification and doubt
You think about it carefully
Buddha Himself
Excessive attachment to commandments
Listed as a spiritual disorder
Not spiritual achievement
This is the problem with the little monk
He's not really keeping the precepts.
He was keeping an idea about keeping the precepts.
There's right and wrong in that thought
Pretending to judge
Pretending to have a story about being a good practitioner
And these things
It's what really makes his heart unable to calm down
Ironically
He uses it to pursue purity
The ring itself became the source of his impurity
But there are examples in history.
It's worth a visit.
These people
Not all the commandments are fulfilled
But it has achieved a very high level of spiritual achievement
The first one.
Central Digimara
You may not have heard of this name
But he has an entire Pali scripture named after him.
His name means collar
Because he killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people
Chop off your fingers and string them around your neck
He was a Brahmin scholar.
Being deceived by an unscrupulous master
Tell him to kill a thousand people to achieve liberation
He believed
Because he has no discrimination
Because he made obedience to authority a practice
The day he met the Buddha
Just completed the 999th
Ready to kill the thousandth
His mother (because the Buddha appeared and shifted the target)
In order to complete the task set by his master
He caught up with Buddha on the way.
Cut with a knife
But can't cut
Buddha didn't walk fast
He chased for a long time
Just can't catch up
He was shouting.
Stop
The Buddha turned back and said
I stood there for a long time.
It's You
Not yet stopped
He collapsed on the spot
Drop the knife
Follow the Buddha and practice as a monk
Finally proved the arhat fruit
That is, the highest achievement of liberation
It's in the scriptures.
After he became a monk, he became attached to the street
Recognized by the families of former victims
To smash with a stone
Hit with a stick
His head was bleeding
Beaten almost inhumanely
He just stood there.
No resistance
There was no anger.
Buddha saw it
Tell him.
You bear this
It is to repay the karma of the past with the present body
Bear with it.
Anemoras was killed by a man who killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people
Become such a person
Second
Milarepa
You should be familiar with this name
He studied black law at an early age
Create hail with spells
Killed dozens of people
He later followed Venerable Marpa
After going through hardships unimaginable to ordinary people
He became one of the most significant achievers in the history of Tibetan Buddhism
His Taoist songs have been recited for hundreds of years
third
Vimalakirti
This man has a very special place in Mahayana Buddhism.
He was a layman.
Not a monk
No shaving
Not holding all the bhikkhu precepts
He goes in and out of liquor stores
Receive people in various ways
But his wisdom
In the Vimalakirti Sutra
Even Manjushri admired him
The Buddha sent several great disciples and bodhisattvas to visit the ailing Vimalakirti
No one dares to go
Because he was speechless when asked before
These three people
From the surface
Broke a lot of rules
Even committed an unforgivable mistake in the eyes of ordinary people
What do they have in common?
Not keeping the precepts
It's real fragmentation.
It's the old self that defines you.
It's really broken.
Not suppressed by the rules
It broke down on its own.
After the collapse
Another thing came out
And we went back down to the river.
What did the old monk do?
He saw a man in need
He responded to this need
He helped her.
And he kept walking.
During his entire operation
No, I'm doing a good thing.
No, I'm breaking it, but I have a reason
I don't care what kind of person this woman is
Nothing.
Is a response
complete
awake
Then disappeared
His heart
Clean from start to finish
But the little monk
He didn't carry the woman.
He didn't do anything.
However, in his heart
The woman carried the road for miles without putting it down.
He used the default mode network of the whole brain
This is a concept in neuroscience.
It refers to an area of the brain that activates automatically when there is no specific task
Responsible for self-referencing, moral judgment, social assessment, and rumination
To deal with a matter that has nothing to do with him directly
He's not thinking about his own practice
He wondered if the old monk had made a mistake
Ironically
The few miles of the little monk
That's the real persistence.
That's the real spiritual question.
The old monk is pure
Little monk
Although nothing was done
It's not clean.
And here's another thing worth noting.
Did you notice
The more strictly a person follows a certain rule
And sometimes it's easier to judge people by those rules.
Not intentional
It just sort of came naturally.
Because that set of rules has become the coordinate system by which he judges the world
What is he looking at?
Measure against that ruler first
This kind of thing sometimes appears among practitioners
A person who is strict
It creates a subtle sense of self-definition.
I am a ring bearer
He knew he had followed the rules.
And this one knows.
It becomes itself.
The problem with young monks is not just obsession
There is another layer.
His ring
Has become his identity
He's defining who he is with commandments
So when he saw the old monk's behavior
I feel more than just confused
There is another threat
If the old monk was right
What about my identity?
commandment
At this time
It's not a raft anymore
It becomes a badge of identity.
Commandments are rafts
Still an anchor
This is a question that every practitioner needs to check for themselves
Rafts are used to cross rivers
You use it.
You appreciate it
But on the other side
Can you put it down?
Anchors are for fixing
It pinned you in one place.
It paralyzes you.
You spend all your energy maintaining it
Maintain the cleanliness of the surface
But you didn't take a step forward
The practice of the old monk
Put him in a specific situation
Able to respond soberly
Act thoroughly
Then leave cleanly
No trace
This is the deepest side of keeping the precepts
Not motionless
It moves without leaving a trace
So...
Can you be enlightened without keeping the precepts?
I don't think this question is accurate enough
A more accurate question might be
Your commandments
It's helping your heart become clearer
Or is it helping you maintain an image of me as a practitioner?
If the former
Commandments are your friend
You need it.
You respect it
But you know it's a tool
If the latter
Commandments have become one of your most hidden obsessions
And it's an obsession that's hard to spot
Because it wears the coat of the ring
It looks like a spiritual exercise.
It's actually building a stronger self.
The little monk is a mirror
He saw it.
It's something that almost all of us have in our hearts
Use rules to define who you are
And then use that definition to judge others
And the old monk
At that moment
Neither define themselves
He didn't judge anybody.
He carried that woman across the river.
And I put her down.
Really let go
That's a nice thing to say.
But you just have to look within yourself.
You know how much it weighs.
The reason why this story has been passed down for so long
I don't think it's because it tells us anything
Quite the contrary.
Because it reflects what we have been carrying in our hearts
It doesn't have to be a woman
Maybe it's a misinterpreted sentence.
You're still defending yourself in your heart
Maybe it's something that wasn't done all those years ago.
You sometimes go back and think
If only that would have been the case
Maybe it was something that happened in a relationship.
On the surface, you've already turned the page
But every time I think about it
The mood is still there
We thought we had let go
But let go
There are two kinds.
One is that the thought stops coming.
Because you're holding it down.
Because you are tired
Because time has diluted
The other is that it's completely done in your mind
It happened.
It's over.
Your relationship with it is clean
Let go of these two
It feels different.
The first
You just stop actively thinking about it
But it's still there.
Like a stone under water
Occasionally it floats
The second
That thing is really gone.
It's not that you are suppressed.
It just disappeared.
We thought we had let go
Many times
Is the first
In your heart now
Is there anything?
You think you put it by the river
But I actually walked for miles with it on my back
Don't answer me that.
It's for yourself.
I am Wang Lijie
See you next time.