Sep 13, 2026 · 2 hr 31 min · 16 segments
Questions include: oppression of advanced spiritual beings; what to do about Internet addiction; the ethics of buying and selling pygmy meat in the Congo; the case of Lindsay Clancy; the possibility…
Pannobhasa BhikkhuHostAnd he says, while thinking about the class struggle plus theology of liberation and malarkey, the following occurred to me.
How could someone firmly set on the ancient path ever point his finger and say, here, this man is my oppressor? And this could just be like a rhetorical question as far as I can tell.
So sorry for having to wait a number of weeks to get the answer, but I'll give it a shot.
This question, the first thing it reminded me of was, is a well-known story that I think is mentioned in the Pali texts, certainly in the commentarial tradition, and I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in Mahayana sutras too.
At least in passing, it's just sort of like referenced as something that people already know about.
And the story goes that he was meditating in a park and the king of Kalinga, I'm pretty sure it's an ancient country on the east coast of India.
King of Kalinga took his harem of wives there, and then he took a nap, and the harem of wives saw this ascetic meditating under a tree, so they all kind of circled around him, and he started teaching them some sort of pre-Buddhist dharma.
And he goes and he sees the women all sitting around this kantiwadi, this teacher of patience.
And so he starts demanding an explanation for why this man is monopolizing the attention of his wives.
And when he hears that he teaches patience, he has some henchmen some bodyguard, start hacking off limbs one by one.
And then he's being all superior and saying, do you teach patience now? Do you teach patience now? As his hands and feet and everything are getting chopped off.
And even before he was a fully enlightened Buddha, he still was not, help, help, I'm being repressed.
You know, he just accepted it because that's like a Buddhist virtue is to accept oppression with patience and equanimity, especially if you're a heavy hitter.
I mean, the real Buddhists in ancient India were the ascetics, the renunciants.
So certainly someone who has renounced the world and is no longer wallowing in political views and all that, he's not gonna be blaming some patriarchal oppression, some Kshatriya class, anything like that.
And he says, while thinking about the class struggle plus theology of liberation and malarkey, the following occurred to me.
How could someone firmly set on the ancient path ever point his finger and say, here, this man is my oppressor? And this could just be like a rhetorical question as far as I can tell.
So sorry for having to wait a number of weeks to get the answer, but I'll give it a shot.
This question, the first thing it reminded me of was, is a well-known story that I think is mentioned in the Pali texts, certainly in the commentarial tradition, and I'm pretty sure it's mentioned in Mahayana sutras too.
At least in passing, it's just sort of like referenced as something that people already know about.
And the story goes that he was meditating in a park and the king of Kalinga, I'm pretty sure it's an ancient country on the east coast of India.
King of Kalinga took his harem of wives there, and then he took a nap, and the harem of wives saw this ascetic meditating under a tree, so they all kind of circled around him, and he started teaching them some sort of pre-Buddhist dharma.
And he goes and he sees the women all sitting around this kantiwadi, this teacher of patience.
And so he starts demanding an explanation for why this man is monopolizing the attention of his wives.
And when he hears that he teaches patience, he has some henchmen some bodyguard, start hacking off limbs one by one.
And then he's being all superior and saying, do you teach patience now? Do you teach patience now? As his hands and feet and everything are getting chopped off.
And even before he was a fully enlightened Buddha, he still was not, help, help, I'm being repressed.
You know, he just accepted it because that's like a Buddhist virtue is to accept oppression with patience and equanimity, especially if you're a heavy hitter.
I mean, the real Buddhists in ancient India were the ascetics, the renunciants.
So certainly someone who has renounced the world and is no longer wallowing in political views and all that, he's not gonna be blaming some patriarchal oppression, some Kshatriya class, anything like that.
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