First, in defense of these Buddhist monastics, it is important to note that they (most) were not "monks" (bhikkhus) but rather novices (trainees, samaneras) during a probationary period that can last years as they learn and put into practice the Buddhist Monastic Code (Vinaya and Patimokkha).
Second, of all the rules to break, drug dealing cannabis -- as horrific and condemnable as it is -- is not the worst thing they could have done. The four worst things they could have done are "defeat" (parijika) offenses: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying about spiritual attainments. Or they might have committed one of the five heinous acts (anantarika-karma,deeds that bear bitter fruit in the very next life):
killing one's mother (matricide)
killing one's father (patricide)
killing an arhat (arahant, fully enlightened being)
Wounding a TathÄgata (a buddha, silent or teaching)
Creating a schism in the Monastic Community (Sangha).
We stayed behind in the monastery sweeping.
Third, there are no more excuses or consoling statements to be made. They each had about 5 kilograms or 11 U.S. pounds (110 kg or 242 lbs in total). This is no accident but sounds like a cynical abuse of the high esteem in which monastics are held to smuggle drugs, likely for sale and distribution rather than recreational or medicinal use. Novices (samaneras) have very strict rules to live by, beyond what is expected of all Theravada Buddhists.
Did the "businessman" sponsor put them up to it to gain financially, and will they say they knew nothing about it?
There are Five Precepts all Theravada lay Buddhists vow to maintain:
abstain from killing
abstain from stealing
abstain from sexual misconduct
abstain from lying
abstain from intoxicants that occasion heedlessness.
The very minimum precepts for monks-in-training (samaneras or "baby samanas") are the Eight Precepts or Ten Precepts, abstaining from harming, taking what is not given or handling "gold and silver" (money), sex (all erotic activity), lying, intoxicants, eating before dawn or after noon, using high and luxurious seats or beds, dancing, singing, self-beautification, viewing lowbrow entertainments and shows...
If one were to follow the major rules and the minor (etiquette) rules, it would never come to this unless, as we say, they were cynically used by the businessman drug kingpin as "mules" to unknowingly transport drugs into the very uptight and traditional island Buddhist country of Sri Lanka (Ceylon, Serendib) with a sizeable Tamil Hindu population and significant number of Muslims and Christians.
(Death and Dairy Girl aka Steak and Butter Gal) Fake eggs? Farmer exposes what they are now quietly putting in eggs to increase profits and destroy our health
The Buddha told this birth story (jataka) at Jetavana Monastery about a pious lay follower.
One evening, when this faithful disciple came to the bank of the Aciravati River on his way to Jetavana to hear the Buddha, there was no ferryboat at the landing. The ferrymen had all pulled their boats onto the farther shore and had themselves gone to hear the Buddha speak.
However, the disciple's mind was so full of delightful thoughts about the Buddha that even though he walked onto the river, his feet did not sink below the surface: He walked across the water as if on dry land.
But when he noticed the waves as he reached the middle of the river, his ecstasy [absorption] subsided and his feet began to sink.
As soon as he again focused his mind on the qualities of the Buddha, his feet rose [levitated, floated] and he was able to continue walking filled with rapture over the water.
When he arrived at Jetavana, he paid his respects to the Buddha and took a seat respectfully to one side.
"Good layman," the Buddha said to that disciple, "I hope you had no mishap on your way here."
"Venerable sir," the disciple recounted, "while on my way here, I was so absorbed in thoughts of [the excellent qualities of] the Buddha that, when I came to the river, I was able to walk across it as though it were solid."
"Friend," said the Blessed One, "you're not the only one who has been protected in this way. In olden days pious lay followers were shipwrecked mid-ocean and saved themselves by remembering the virtues of the Buddha."
At the man's request, the Buddha told this story of the past:
Long, long ago, at the time of the Buddha Kassapa [3], a lay disciple who had already entered the path [who had become a stream enterer] booked passage on a ship along with one of his friends, a rich barber. The barber's wife asked this disciple to look after her husband.
A week after the ship left port, it sank mid-ocean. The two friends saved themselves by hanging onto a wooden plank until they were cast onto a deserted island.
Killing eggs and birds
Famished, the barber took eggs from nests [the island being a rookery], killed some birds, cooked them, and offered a share of his meal to the follower of the Buddha Kassapa.
"No, thank you," that [partially enlightened disciple] answered, "I'm fine." Then he thought to himself, "In this isolated place, there is no help for us except the Three Gems[the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Enlightened/NobleSangha]."
As he sat meditating on the Three Gems, a naga king (naga-raja, reptilian, dragon, royal serpent) who had been reborn on that island transformed himself into a beautiful ship filled with the seven precious things [4]. Its three masts were made of sapphire, the planks and anchor of gold, and the ropes of silver.
The helmsman, who was a spirit of the sea, stood on the deck and cried, "Any passengers for Jambudīpa?"
"Yes," the lay disciple answered. "That's where we're bound!"
"Then come onboard," the sea spirit told him.
The layman climbed aboard the beautiful ship and turned to call his friend the barber.
"You may come," the sea spirit said, "but he may not."
"Why not?" the disciple asked.
"He is not a follower of the pure life," answered the sea spirit. "I brought this ship for you, but not for him."
"In that case," the layman announced, "all the gifts I have given, all the virtues I have practiced, all the powers I have developed — I give the fruit of all of them to him!"
"Thank you, Master!" cried the barber.
"Very well," said the sea spirit, "now I can take you both onboard."
The ship carried the two men over the sea and up the Ganges River. After depositing them safely at their home in Baranasi [Varanasi], the sea spirit used his magic power to create enormous wealth for both of them. Then, poising himself mid-air, he instructed the men and their friends: "Keep company with the wise and good."
"If this barber had not been in company with this pious layman, he would have perished in the middle of the ocean." Finally, the sea spirit returned to his own abode, taking the naga king with him.
Having finished this discourse, the Buddha identified the birth tale (jataka) and taught the Dhamma, after which the pious layman in front of him entered the fruit of the second path.
"On that occasion," the Buddha said, "that faithful disciple attained the fruit of the fourth path (arahantship). Sariputta was the naga king, and I myself was the spirit of the sea." Source
Karma is so complex a topic that trying to fathom the "working out of karma" is something on a scale so staggering that it is considered one of the Four Imponderables in Buddhism. Only a buddha can begin to navigate the intricacies, probabilities, and intrepidities of how any deed (action) will meet its many results.
Therefore, the comic above is very funny. Of course, we do not see things working out! We are, for one thing, looking on too infinitesimally small a timescale. For another, imagine just the balls on a billiard table. They are all more or less equal, except for positioning.
One ball bangs into them, and no one can predict where they will go -- not even the one with the stick banging one into the others in a very controlled setting. Now take the countless variables associated with any single deed -- the intention behind it, the thoughts after it, the unknowable impacts on others... It's just too much.
Even the Buddha, when he looked into the future, did not give an exact date when things would happen. But he did know that when this or that sign appear, the results are coming, and that was on a grand scale of collective karma.
More importantly he knew that it was not possible for bad karma (such as the breaking of the Five Precepts) to produce a welcome result. This seems like nonsense to us because we get pleasant results from breaking them all the time.
What we don't know is that that result is not the karmic result, the vipaka. When that resultant ripens, woe. If we knew that, what we shrink back from the unskillful, the unwholesome, and the unwise courses of action, of which there are ten, the Ten Courses of Unwholesome Action.
The Four Imponderables
The acinteyya are identified in the Acintita Sutta (AN 4.77), as follows [8]. There is the:
buddha-range of buddhas [i.e., the range of powers a Buddha develops as a result of becoming a buddha];
jhana-range of one absorbed in jhanas (the meditation absorptions) [i.e., the range of powers that one may obtain while absorbed in the jhanas];
[precise working out of the] results of karma;
speculation about [the origin, etc., of] the cosmos.
These four are imponderables that ought not to be speculated about [as doing so may lead one to become unhinged and nevertheless not understand them, when the path-of-practice that is the purification of the mind/heart is here and yields insight into all these things and why they are imponderable in the first place].
NOTE: (SN 56.41 develops this speculation as the ten indeterminate).
Acinteyya literally means "that which cannot or should not be pondered or thought about, the unthinkable, the incomprehensible, the impenetrable, that which goes beyond the limits of thinking and over which therefore one should not ponder.
These Four Imponderables (unthinkables) are:
the sphere of a buddha (buddha-visaya),
the sphere of the meditative absorptions (jhÄna-visaya),
the sphere of karmic-results (kamma-vipÄka),
brooding over the world (loka-cintÄ), particularly over an absolute first beginning of it. (See A.IV.77).
SUTRA
"Therefore, O meditators, do not brood [fret, preoccupy, waste time, become distressed] over the world as to whether it is eternal or not eternal, finite or infinite (limited or endless)...
"Such brooding, O meditators, is senseless, has nothing to do with genuine good conduct (see Ädibrahmacariyaka-sÄ«la, "supreme or higher morality"), does not lead to turning away, letting go, extinction [of delusion and suffering], nor to peace, full comprehension, awakening (enlightenment), and nirvana, and so on" (S.56.41).
Buddha's Wisdom (video); Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary; commentary and editing by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit
Jews who follow Judaism (as opposed to most Jews who just wear the label "Jew" like a secular identity, race, ethnicity, claim to fame, burden, or way of showing support for genocide and Western imperialism to build "Greater Israel") subscribe to a belief in kismet rather than karma.
What is KISMET? KISMET = The Jewish Koan (fate, luck, fortune, chance, destiny, predestiny, "God's plan," capricious universal indifference to anything we do because it's all written in advance and plays out by the force of the Fates).
Karma-shmarma, Judaism only believes in kismet (fate, destiny)
The historical Buddha, the greatest Karmavadin
Karma means "deed" or "deeds." There are all kinds of karma, that is, a great variety of intentional actions capable of bearing a result anytime in the future. The Buddha or "Awakened One" talked about karma so much that in his day he was not known as a "Buddhist." He was known as a Karmavadin, a "teacher of the efficacy of karma (action)." What we do comes back to us. The Dharmic religions, in contrast with the Abrahamic ones, teach the power of our personal action. Our deeds got us into this mess, and they can get us out (with help from others like the Buddha, the best friend of all beings, the gods, God, noble friends, parents, but mostly our own striving to develop compassion and wisdom, which lead to calm and insight).
Sadly, we often do not realize what we do in this sense. According to the Abhidhamma, a systematic explanation of the Buddha's "Doctrine in Ultimate Terms," what we are doing anytime we are committing an action is laying down a great number of cittas ("mind-moments") that act like "seeds" as it were. (What worse is that they have javanas, "impulsions," sub-moments of motivation, sub-cittas, a citta being uncountable numbers of "mind moments" not thoughts, as the term is sometimes mistranslated).
How many frames does it take to complete one "action" in a film? Karma has many more cittas.
A "thought," if one thinks about it is like a sentence. What is a sentence? It is at least one complete thought, which requires an actor and an action, even if life is not this way. Grammar imposes rules on our thinking so that noun and verb must at least be implied to speak a sensible sentence in modern English. A citta, in that case, would be like all the atoms used to write out that sentence, far from sentences themselves. (Imagine a molecule. What is it made of? Atoms. How many? An uncountable number). Cittas (the stream of consciousness or viƱƱÄna kicca) in the immaterial world of intangible software are like kalapas ("particles of perception") in the material world of tangible hardware and things.
A better way to think about it is to imagine seeing a movie clip, a short scene. It only lasts a moment, but what is it really made of? It is made of many many individual frames, which are the sub-moments of the film. The higher the fidelity of the film, the more sub-moments. There might be 100 frames for 1 second of movie runtime. A complete "scene" might then have millions of frames. A frame is not a scene; it's not even a second of a scene.
Now imagine that when we act (karma), our action does not take one second but a few seconds to complete. How many sub-moments elapsed? It is hard to say. Each of those mind moments has many impulsions. If each impulsion could produce a result when it ripens, one act will give results for a long time. The number "500" comes up a lot in Buddhism, but it rarely if ever means five hundred. It is an indeterminate number and a handy way of saying "many." One act of killing could easily result in 500 miserable rebirths of being killed or being sickly or having one's life shortened, and so on. The Buddha expressed this as "for a long time," meaning in many many future births.
The force or deciding factor behind a deed is the intention. What is decided? At the decisive moment of acting, what we in our normal consciousness might think is happening is just one thought.
But that is not at all what is happening. The best comparison to understand this is physics. When something happens, it appears to us that only one thing is happening, such as lighting a match. It is often, we do an act, and it is lit. However, physics tells us that many things are happening in the sub-moments. Fire itself is not a single thing at all but rather a process.
Each moment of "fire" is many (at least five) sub-moments of process:
Heat is heating,
oxygen is oxidizing,
fuel is fueling,
wick is wicking, and the
process of combustion is processing.
Abhidhamma (Sayalay Susila & Seven)
So what? Here's what. How long does it take to kill someone? With a gun, not long. An instant is enough. With a knife, as used in the infamous case of Nick Reiner murdering his parents, longer, a few instants. How long is an instant? For us in ordinary consciousness, it is just a finger snap's duration, right? But how long is it really, say, to a physicist or a psychologist? If we analyze it, that is, break it down to sub-moments, it's a long time.
Here's why it all matters: It isn't that one karma (one deed) will bear one result. This is completely wrong, but it's how nearly everyone talks, as if one action would bear just one result one time. One karma, one intentional action, will bear MANY results. Some might say an uncountable number of results. Now why is that? It is because each single "act" (deed) is built out of many impulsions, and it is these impulsions (as if they were seeds) that will bear results. So one single deed = a hard to count number of potential results.
The intention behind an act is so crucial that the Buddha equated intention (cetanÄ) and karma. They are not really the same thing, but so vital is that intention that it determines the classification of a deed. There are three obvious classes (good, bad, or neutral). That is, we can classify by results: This deed, when it ripens, will bear an unpleasant (possibly unbearable), unwelcome, unwanted result, so we call it bad. This other deed, when it ripens, will bear a pleasant, welcome, wanted result. Many deeds, being mixed, will bear mixed results. One might say other deeds, being neither good nor bad, will bear neutral results.
If I give even one unit (ancient kapana, dollar, rupee, coin), the motivation or intention behind it will reap many results many times because that one single act of giving was only accomplished through many sub-moments, many-many impulsions. If each citta (mind moment) is composed of many sub-moments, many impulsions, and each has the power to produce a result, one can see how even a little giving is great. However, this is simultaneously saying that even the slightest wrong (misdeed, unskillful act, bad action) has the power to produce many-many unwanted results.
This is all well and good and easy enough to understand. The Buddha went further to point out things that are not at all obvious. In fact, it is unlikely that anyone but a supremely enlightened buddha could point all of these things out. Why? The first thing that is needed is access to more than normal consciousness. This even an average, normal, instructed "worldling" can master.
Never having heard the Buddha's Dhamma (Dharma, Doctrine, Teaching), we are "uninstructed [ignorant] worldings." Having heard it, we are instructed worldlings. Putting it into successfully practice, we experience a "change of lineage" (gotrabhu), awaken, and are counted among the "noble ones," the enlightened in about seven stages (now universally reduced to four main divisions (stream entry, once-returning, nonreturning, and arhats or fully enlightened ones).
NOTE: It may be a little confusing, but "full" enlightenment is not "supreme" enlightenment. That distinction is reserved for people like the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama (Siddhattha Gotama) who awaken to the utmost WITH the capacity to teach. Nonteaching (pacceka) buddhas awaken to the utmost, that is with the intrepid powers of a buddha or thedasa-(tathÄgata-) bala.
He led us to understand one more extremely important distinction to be made. And here come to the point of all this discussion. There is a fivefold kind of karma (kamma in Pali) that might be called "the worst in the world." These are the Änantarika-kamma or:
The Five Heinous Deeds
The are five acts (five kinds of karma) that the Buddha classified as "actions with immediate destiny." They are:
parricide (killing one's father),
matricide (killing one's mother),
killing an arhat (a fully enlightened person),
wounding a buddha (a teaching [samma-sam-buddha] or nonteaching [pacceka-buddha] supremely enlightened person),
creating a schism in the Buddha's Monastic Order (Bhikkhu or Bhikkhuni Sangha).
In A.V. 129, it is said:
"There are five irascible and incurable humans destined to the lower world [dismal subhuman planes of existence] and to hell [avici, the waveless], namely: the parricidal, matricidal, homicidal [if the victim is an arhat], the wounder of a buddha, the creator of a schism in the sangha of a buddha."
About this fifth kind, see A.X. 35, 38.
With regard to the first heinous crime, it is said in DN 2 that if [greedy son] King AjÄtasattu had not deprived his father [the Buddha's student and supporter King Bimbisara] of life, he would have reached the path of stream-entry when he heard the Buddha teach as did all of his companions (App.)
Because he did commit this act, even though he was full of remorse for having done so, he was lost. His mind/heart could not reach the necessary calm and serenity (samatha) to attain liberating-insight (vipassana) to awaken to the ultimate truth. He did not become free of his destiny [his immediate next rebirth in the hells] as a result of his heinous deed nor of all further rebirth and suffering in samsara, the unending Cycle of Rebirth and Suffering (the Wheel of Life and Death).
Nick Reiner, son of Rob Reiner, TMZ, 12/18/25; Five Heinous Deeds (definition) Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary; Explanation: Dhr. Seven, editing: Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly
Every happy family is the same, but every unhappy one is unique. Ask suspect Nick Reiner.
.
Rob "Meathead" Reiner, RIP
Father and son strike Jewish community in Australia to avenge Zionist Jews' wholesale slaughter of Palestinians and others and an elite set of Jewish criminal bankers, financiers, arms dealers, surveillance and weapons experts, child sex traffickers, blackmailers, and tech billionaires. Meanwhile, closer to home (Los Angeles), a "nice Jewish boy" grotesquely murders two famous Jews in possible drug-soaked rage stabbing (then hires topnotch lawyer using their money to defend himself and aim for acquittal):
Jewish murder (the double heinous karma of parricide, in this case patricide and matricide) suspect Nick Reiner, son of legendary actor and director Rob Reiner (the genius behind This Is Spinal Tap, All in the Family, and other classic Hollywood products and son of the legendary Carl Reiner) and photographer Michele Singer-Reiner, has been arrested after allegedly murdering (stabbing to death) his parents in their upscale Brentwood, westside Los Angeles home.
He married my daughter...in the show
What must Archie Bunker think of this happening to Meathead Stivic (All in the Family)? Good thing he's passed into a dimension with a better point of view to better understand the strange, albeit ultimately incomprehensible, workings of karma (how a single cause motivated by greed, hatred/fear, and/or delusion leads to so many deleterious effects or vipaka and phala).
Murderous Jewish drug addict son Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested at 9:15 pm local time Sunday night (Dec. 12, 2025) and booked early Monday (Dec. 13, 2025) morning, according to online jail records from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
No official charges were listed, but Nick Reiner is being held on suspicion of a [at least one] felony. His bail is currently set at $4 million. Murdered parents Reiner and Singer were found dead Sunday afternoon.
A source later confirmed to Rolling Stone that the couple's youngest female child, Romy, had found her parents' stabbed bodies. Paramedics, firefighters, and police officers were dispatched to the Reiners' home in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood near UCLA.
By Sunday night, an investigation was just getting underway as the LAPD waited to obtain a warrant to properly search the house. At the time, LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said that the police were "not seeking anyone as a suspect or as a person of interest," though reports were starting to emerge that a family member was being questioned in connection to the unthinkable double homicide.
While a suspect had not yet been officially named, a source told Rolling Stone that drug addicted son Nick was involved in the alleged homicide.
While the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Reiner and Singer and still murky, Nick had a complicated relationship with his parents and had long battled a tenacious drug addiction.
He first went to rehab when he was 15 and was in and out of rehab facilities throughout his later teenage years.
Related video: Rob Reiner and his wife found dead inside their home, per media reports (MS NOW)
When he was 22, Nick put some of his experiences into the semi-autobiographical film called Being Charlie that he co-wrote which his loving father directed.
Speaking with the Los Angeles Times about the film, Rob and Michele spoke about the challenges Nick faced in rehab and acknowledged their own shortsightedness regarding the efficacy of these programs for their son.
"The program works for some people, but it can't work for everybody," Rob said. "When Nick would tell us that it wasn't working for him, we wouldn't listen. We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son."
Michele noted, "We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he's a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them." Morefrom Rolling Stone:
US Pres. Trump mocks murdered Jew Rob Reiner, says he was killed because of his severe 'TDS'
[Interestingly, Trump did not blame Dictator Bibi Netanyahu for fomenting worldwide animosity towards Judaism and Jews by promoting Zionist genocide as well as arming and funding wars and conflicts worldwide]
Rob Reiner's activist legacy remembered by former US Pres. Barry Soetoro Obama, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi
Rob Reiner didn't just make movies. He made moments
(STB99) Summer 2007: The band SANCHEZ rocks Snow Summit in Southern California with KROQ, singing a tribute to the greatest politician in DC history: US Secretary of War Defense and Vice President Richard "Brucey Boy" Cheney.
Author John Nichols wrote the definitive portrait of the ultimate power broker by "the toughest, most in-your-face investigative reporter in the U.S.A." (Greg Palast).
Dick Cheney sets energy policy. He guided the nation into war with Iraq. And, working closely with Karl Rove, he oversees the political infrastructure that allows corporate interests and the religious right to control lawmaking, regulation, the selection of judges, and the development of foreign policy.
I like Dick. - Me, too. Mean sonofbich though.
As John Dean put it, "This page-turner closes the case: Cheney is our de facto president."
With an emboldened [Bush] administration that has turned a thin victory into a renewed mandate―rewarding ideologues and purging dissenters―John Nichols's question is more urgent than ever: can this nation survive four more years of Dick Cheney?
The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney draws on groundbreaking reporting―including exclusive interviews with Cheney's college professors, Nelson Mandela, Gore Vidal, and political insiders. More
Dave Mustaine (formerly of Metallica then his revenge creation Megadeth) has bad mojo. No one in the metal community really likes him, certainly not his bandmates. Maybe there's a reason -- a bad childhood, trauma, scars, bad choices, and a spooky vibe. He did once make one good album though and at least one truly great song, strangely appropriate in the end:
The Story of MILAREPA: The SINGING SAINT who healed Tibet (Part 3)
(Buddha's Wisdom) Aug. 23, 2025: š THE MOMENT A KILLER'S VOICE BECAME TIBET'S MOST SACRED SOUND
What if a mass murderer could transform into Tibet’s greatest yogi? This is the story of Jetsun Milarepa, the sorcerer who killed 35 people with black magic…only to become one of Buddhism’s most beloved enlightened masters.
In this episode, we witness his final test in the cave of nettles, where supernatural demons appeared, and how his spontaneous songs of realization dissolved fear, healed trauma, and reshaped Tibetan Buddhism forever.
Part 1: • The Story of MILAREPA: The Sorcerer Who B...
Part 2: • The Story of MILAREPA: The Cave Where a Ki...
DISCOVER:
The night Milarepa’s demons transformed into wisdom beings
How his Hundred Thousand Songs began in the cave of nettles
His reunion with family and songs of forgiveness
Why villagers who once feared him became his followers
How Milarepa’s voice spread across Tibet, creating a Buddhist lineage
Ready to witness the impossible Buddhist transformation?
If inspired by Buddhist teachings, Tibetan masters, karma, enlightenment, and redemption, subscribe now to explore more life-changing stories.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The Enlightened Voice That Echoes Through Eternity
02:19 Chapter 1: When Demons Become Buddhist Teachers
06:44 Chapter 2: Songs of Buddhist Forgiveness and Family Healing
11:48 Chapter 3: The Wandering Years
15:55 Chapter 4: Sacred Songs That Transform Mountains
Thai police have arrested a woman who allegedly had sexual relations with monks and then used photos and videos of the acts to extort money from them.
Buddhist monks have vowed to give up sex while in robes (while ordained) and such a transgression is called a "defeat" offense or parajika, for which there is no remedy. They are disgraced and immediately excommunicated from the Monastic Sangha and can never become monks again in this lifetime. To continue pretending to be a monk is a drastic error -- incredibly bad karma, stealing from donors and shortening the life of the Order on Earth. Having been defeating may be embarrassing or nothing to be proud of, but so long as one immediately disrobes and confesses the offense, one simply returns to lay life. It is because one lingers on in robes, fails to confess, and receives the benefits of monkhood that makes it grave and heavy karma causing one trouble for a long, long time.
The woman, who police are calling "Ms. Golf," had sex with at least nine monks, police said at a press conference on Tuesday. They believe she received around 385 million baht ($11.9m or £8.8m) over the past three years.
Investigators who searched her house found more than 80,000 photos and videos used to blackmail the monks, the police spokesman said.
This scandal is the latest to rock Thailand's much revered Buddhist institution, which in recent years has been plagued with allegations of monks engaging in sex offences and drug trafficking. More:
(The Borderless Office) June 10, 2025: American men living in Pattaya Thailand (Buddhist Southeast Asia): Here's why it beats life in the United States. Whatever happens, falling in love and being suckered out of a fortune is common:
I was traveling as a vegan through India which, while mostly Hindu, at that time had about 100 million Muslims. (It now has 200 million or more).
I came to a strangely barren outdoor marketplace made of stone and clay. I watched from a distance as a bad smell of BBQ wafted through the air like an accident. Imagine the smell of burning plastic, upholstery, oil, textiles, and diesel fumes.
Men began to congregate, each at their own stall with animals, mainly sheep, lambs, or goats in tow. I blended in, holding still, just observing. And I began to realize these were butchers, killing animals by slicing their throats, beheading them, draining their blood, separating their corpses into portions, and piling bloody flesh on the stall tops for sale.
Shoppers, Muslims following their religion to eat the dead and Hindus violating theirs by buying carcasses (and therefore paying butchers to kill) for consumption, which is at odds with ahimsa ("nonharming"), were gathering.
The Dharmic religions enjoin humans to abstain from killing and from encouraging anyone else to kill. Butchers are encouraged to slaughter when people pay them to do it. Am I blameless for eating meat? It would be as if the Mafia godfather were to say, "I've never killed anybody" when he has hired and directed men to kill by paying them to do so. Is he blameless or as blameworthy as those Mafia men for all those killings? Butchers, paid for yesterday's killing, kill for tomorrow in full expectation that there is money to be made by those not doing the dirty work.
The flies. The dirty hands. The dust and pollution of uncovered stalls. The floors of stalls were a sheen of blood. There was some baying of the young sheep.
The men all seemed very nice, not yelling or argumentative, all in their workaday mode, thinking nothing wrong with slaughtering and selling in unhygienic conditions.
A modern human family walking on all fours?
Then, thinking of karma, I saw it. No one seemed to pay any mind, but I could not wrap my head around what people must be thinking they were seeing and why it was so. People probably go along to get along by not thinking.
An Ulas family member or distant relative, walking on all fours through the blood slats, was going from stall-to-stall begging. He had a Muslim cap like the others and clogs (rope and wood sandals) on his feet, which gave the appearance and sound of cloven hooves, as he ambled from butcher to butcher, who pitied him (or wanted him to move on).
They have him a few coins (backsheesh) or slivers of red flesh. To explain it to myself, I imagined that this man -- in a past life or earlier in this one -- was a butcher like them but then went crazy and decided to go on all four like a dog-duty ascetic.
But he was no ascetic, not one to do penance or tapas (fiery austerities), not Hindu or a member of one of the Dharmic religions. Yet, by his concurrent good deeds, possibly giving to beggars, he managed to gain rebirth in this world (on the human plane) rather than The Downfall (niraya), the worlds of woe that result from killing living beings and other cruelties.
Karma is such that the way it works out is not only strange but incomprehensible, one of the Four Imponderables. It is possible, particularly in this world of mixed karma (skillful and unskillful deeds), that one form of karma interferes with the other. Killers are not always immediately reborn in perdition.
It is possible by good karma (keeping the Five or Eight Precepts) that merit is made that counters unskillful actions for a time. The result of killing animals is not that one will one time be killed or reborn in hell but that it will happen again and again and those mental impulsions (javanas) formed in the doing come to fruition by conditioning a rebirth. One act (good or bad) has exponential karmic-results (vipaka, phala), ripening like fruit.
The man walked like a tall, skinny cow from booth to booth. The butchers gave charity. And he moved on to work the whole marketplace. I turned in disbelief, gobsmacked, and saw a girl selling piles of colorful powder dyes. It is not clear in what, ubiquitous plastic bags or wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. The piles were perfect and very likely synthetic and she seemed miserable to be there.
Then the smell hit me again and I saw smoke. It was a kind of hibachi, and an old Muslim man was placing something on the sooty grill. The smoke did not seem to bother the miserable salesgirl, but from a farther distance, it sure bothered me.
The man smiled at me, seeing my camera. I approached slowly and got close enough to discern what was burning. It was a pile of small heads of recently living lambs. It is the strangest thing to see a beheaded face separated from its torso, disconnected from its neck. The eyes were gently closed and I felt sure they might open at any moment. Was he cooking their brains in the skulls?
Surely, this was butcher offal (trash). What was he doing? I came to understand that he was singing the hair off to sell the heads for buyers to eat the face. Like a dog gnawing on a bone for marrow and gristle, scraps of remaining tendon, the smear of blood or scent of flesh, someone would buy this.
Price? 5 cents (It's hard to do the arithmetic conversion with moving exchange rates, and this was a long time ago when the US greenback fetched about 40 rupees). The man kindly smiled at me. All the men were nice, seemed nice, seemed well adjusted to their task, with wives and families at home, well-fed with lots of dead meat. India is a kaleidoscope. I thought that man an anomaly. But here is a whole family:
Family that walks on all fours have 'undone the last three million years of evolution'
Story by Harriet Brewis, Indy 100, 8/27/24
The skin on the palms of their hands is as thick as it is on their feet (60 Minutes AUS/Indy 100).
.
All families have their own quirks and habits, but one group of relatives has such a distinct trait that scientists have branded them a total anomaly of the human species.
I told you, Darwin. - No, Wallace, I already knew.
The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours. Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the anomaly.
In the years following the paper’s publication, evolutionary psychologist Prof. Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics (LSE) travelled to Turkey to meet with the extraordinary family.
Alfred Wallace, the unfamous father of evolution
The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children. However, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans.
“I never expected that even under the most extraordinary scientific fantasy that modern human beings could return to an animal state,” Prof. Humphrey told 60 Minutes Australia, which made a documentary about the family back in 2018.
“The thing which marks us off from the rest of the animal world is the fact that we’re the species which walks on two legs and holds our heads high in the air,” he added. More
All materials on this site are submitted by editors and readers. All images, unless otherwise noted, were taken from the Internet and are assumed to be in the public domain.
In the event that there is still a problem, issue, or error with copyrighted material, the break of the copyright is unintentional and noncommercial, and the material will be removed immediately upon presented proof.
Contact us by submitting a comment marked "private."
Do not follow this journal if you are under vinaya or parental restrictions. Secure protection by Sucuri.
Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at creativecommons.org/about/licenses.
%20wiki.jpeg)
