Sometimes you can’t figure out what is going on with some of the monk’s dhamma talks. The last one started out good, it was about the 5 precepts, and you’ve heard me mention this in past posts, but then it drifted into a parable that had trouble tying together. Something about a bunch of bandits who were very bad, murdering people and stealing things and while on the run from angry villagers, ran into a monk. Since they were pretty certain they were going to be trapped and caught by villagers they asked the monk what to do and he said, “look you have to practice all of the 5 precepts and do them all no matter what, even if you are going to die in the process.”
All the bandits said OK, whatever it takes and began to practice the 5 precepts. Somehow this transitions to a scene where all the bandits are in a field meditating when the villagers finally catch up to them and brutally murder them. But, because the bandits had piece of mind when they were murdered by the villagers they got to go into a heaven realm instead of a hell realm. Somehow this story is supposed to assist us in enlightenment but I’m not sure what my take away is going to be.