5 Heinous Crimes

[Hunter]

Im having some trouble understanding some things right now. I have read that there are five heinous crimes that can keep you from becomming a noble being or entering the path to enlightement.
I understand that part, but are there other actions that you cant change and you have to pay. When i was in fifth grade I stole a book from the school book fair. Afterwords i felt very guilty and i was wondering if this will hinder my path to Nibbana. I really want to work hard on this path and i hope i havnt already ruined it.

[Abyss]

Im having some trouble understanding some things right now. I have read that there are five heinous crimes that can keep you from becomming a noble being or entering the path to enlightement.
I understand that part, but are there other actions that you cant change and you have to pay. When i was in fifth grade I stole a book from the school book fair. Afterwords i felt very guilty and i was wondering if this will hinder my path to Nibbana. I really want to work hard on this path and i hope i havnt already ruined it.

Did you hear about Angulimala? He was a mass murderer and killed almost 1000 people. But he still became an arahat in the same life. So I don't think you have to worry about that stolen book. I think most of us have done some evil deeds in their lives, sometimes much more serious ones than stealing a book. I think the important thing is to see that it was wrong and not to do it again. And even if you commit one of those 5 heinous crimes, you are not lost forever.

[Moggalana]

I understand that part, but are there other actions that you cant change and you have to pay. When i was in fifth grade I stole a book from the school book fair. Afterwords i felt very guilty and i was wondering if this will hinder my path to Nibbana. I really want to work hard on this path and i hope i havnt already ruined it.

No, you haven't ruined it. For a better understanding of kamma, check out this three articles:
http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/2008/05/k ... ers-i.html
http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/2008/06/r ... tural.html
http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/2008/06/k ... s-iii.html

[Hunter]

Did you hear about Angulimala? He was a mass murderer and killed almost 1000 people. But he still became an arahat in the same life. So I don't think you have to worry about that stolen book. I think most of us have done some evil deeds in their lives, sometimes much more serious ones than stealing a book. I think the important thing is to see that it was wrong and not to do it again. And even if you commit one of those 5 heinous crimes, you are not lost forever.

Thank you Abyss for telling me about Angulimala! It makes me feel great to see people go from the lowest of forms to sainthood. As i read more Buddha said that if you kill your mother, kill your father, injure Buddha, Kill an Arahant, or cause a schism within the sangha that its impossible to attain enlightenmetn within this life because of the fact those five actions are called Heavy Kamma and have to fruitate before enlightement, and the only way to do that is to go to one of the Hells. But, if you did other bad things, like Angulimala, you can change and become an Arihant!

Thanks again Abyss!

[Bozworth]

Even if you do wind up in a hell, it's only temporary. It's more of a setback than something that precludes liberation at a later time.

Having said that, don't go to hell!

[Ben]

Having said that, don't go to hell!

Well, it looks like Hell might have finally frozen over!

[rowyourboat]

Ven Moggallana was supposed to have killed his parents in a previous birth and spent aeons in hells, but later became one of the Buddhas chief (enlightened) disciples. He had to pay for that even in his last birth because he was murdered by thugs. So even Garuka kamma effects aren't permanent or an obstruction to attaining nibbana in later lives. Devadatta -who injured the Buddha is supposed to attain nibbana in a future life (After his period in hell is over) as a pacceka buddha according to the commentaries.

[BubbaBuddhist]

I think the commission of heinous crimes coarsens the mind, making it more and more difficult for the individual to attain the state of mind necessary to the state of receptiveness to grasp or appreciate dhamma.

I was rather forcefully reminded of this when a friend of mine reconnected with me on Facebook. He called me and during our conversation he asked me if I remembered the incident in High School involving the dog. I hadn't thought of this in over thirty five years, but I did remember it, and it does qualify as a heinous act. I didn't do it, but I witnessed it. My friend and I were part of a summer program to provide summer jobs for neighborhood kids to keep us out of trouble the year before we went to High School, we were fifteen years old, and we were assigned to a city brush cleaning crew. The men on this crew were rough, uneducated sorts, who joked around with us but you wouldn't think they were bad men. Except one day, a homeless dog was scrounging around, and one man lured him over with a bite of sandwich, and the dog came over and gobbled it down. The man picked the dog up. The dog licked the man's hand in gratitude. I remember that very clearly. Then the man threw the dog into the wood chipper, laughing loudly. From the laughter and applause of the rest of the crew, this wasn't the first time this amusement had occurred.

I was horrified. In fact, I ran about a block before throwing up into some bushes. Then I ran the rest of the way home, because at fifteen I thought men who found it funny to kill a dog in this manner might take it into their minds to do the same with a teenage boy. I got a call the next day from the supervisor of the program asking me why I wasn't at work. I was afraid to talk to him. He could tell something was wrong, and to his credit he was very kind to me and instead of giving up he eventually got me to talk. I finally told him what happened. He repeated it back to me and asked "Did it look like the dog had an owner?" I said no, it was a stray. To me, this didn't make any difference, but he was apparently relieved there wouldn't be an angry owner looking for legal compensation. He told me that the crew were rough, but really weren't bad guys. He found me another position, helping the janitor at the High School, which was much better. My friend stayed with the road crew for the rest of the summer. He had a tougher disposition. He said there were no more dogs in the wood chipper, but lots of squirrels and one cat.

The supervisor told me the boys on that crew weren't bad guys. You see, I disagree--those guys were bad guys, or at least most unfortunate. They were possessed of minds so coarse they will never know the beauty of the dhamma, or the happiness of empathizing with other sentient beings. They took pleasure in killing innocent animals for sport. My friend and I discussed this for a while and he told me he heard that the head of that road crew had fallen from a bucket truck and broken his back about a year after that summer. He spent the rest of his life in severe pain and finally killed himself with pain killers and alcohol. My friend said "He got what he deserved;" at one point I would have agreed but these days I'm not so quick to judge. Finding dhamma is a gift a rare few receive.

But that poor dog. I remember him licking the hand of the man who killed him. Wow. What a world. That's my story of a heinous act.

J

[cooran]

Hello Bubbabuddhist, all,

The man wasn't bad - just ignorant. We have all done the same or worse in our beginningless wandering, our Samara- ing.

I recall my childhood, when Christmas came around, every family raised their own chickens (no fast food then) specifically to eat. Just before Christmas, the hens and roosters chosen for the meals would be caught, legs tied, and then hung upside-down from the clothes line until the blood ran to their heads and dazed them. They would then be brought to the stump used as a chopping block, held down, while Dad or an Uncle raised an axe and severed their heads from their bodies. The hens' nervous system took over for a minute or so, and the headless chicken would run around the yard to the amusement of all on-lookers.

These were kind and compassionate people .... to other humans and to house pets, horses and dairy cows. But it was incomprehensible to them that what they were doing was cruel. After all, the Lord God had put animals (without souls) on earth for the use of humans (with souls).

No need to judge anyone -

Not that this is really on-topic, as the Five Heinous Crimes are:
matricide, parricide, the murder of an arahant, the wounding of a Buddha, causing a schism in the Sangha.

metta
Chris

[Ben]

Thank you John for retelling that incident from your youth.
Both disturbing and moving at the same time.

Hi Chris, like you, I knew good kind people who performed cruel acts. I distinctly remember an incident from my childhood someone attempting to kill a small animal and when confronted with myself and other kids who were distressed by the animal's obvious disrtress, countered it with 'its all-right, animals can't feel pain'. in the face of blatently observable fact, what ignorance!
And you're right, it is getting off-topic.
metta

Ben

[BlackBird]

When I was a child maybe 4 or 5 I used to torture slaters by dropping them in a body of water then fishing them out. My personal tower of london also included sticking pins through the slaters torso, when I was about 13 I took to a host of moths with a pressurized water hose, hunting them down and spraying them until they were dead. That was pure evil. Dunno why...

I had been taught as a child that if an animal was in pain it was better to put it out of it's misery, a pernicious view that I am yet to be able to ween the person who taught it to me away from.

Anyway one day when I was 14 years old, some friends and I were going up to the local school to play basketball. There had been some solid wind the night before and under the hoop lay about 5 or 6 injured chicks that had fallen out of the nest in the tree above. They weren't able to move much and I made a judgement call that there wasn't much hope for them, recalling what I had been taught I decided the best thing was to put them out of their misery, I found a solid stick of wood and took to a couple of them with it, I could only manage two before I realised the task was too grusome and without merit. I think after that moment I decided I never wanted to kill or harm again.

During my life I have killed, stolen many things, engaged in sexual misconduct on several accounts, spent many years lying, creating falsehood, slandering and taken exorbitant amounts of intoxicants.

If I hadn't discovered the Dhamma and turned my life around I would have been on the fast track to Avici. Even now, unless I can gain some sort of security from my practice there's no telling what unwholesome kamma might ripen. The long term kammic trend is mostly downwards, something I hope we shall all manage to escape from.

metta
Jack