"I once believed that every man is predestined." "An evildoer atones for his karmic deeds through suffering unlike a good man, whose birth is a miracle to all." "One ill-fated night, an expected miracle seemed to be cursed under bad omens." "The omens foretold a life of great evil." "When this baby boy was born, his father suggested killing him," "but the merciful king saved the baby from death and sent him away to Taxila." "My son, keep in mind that you should devote yourself to your education to attain the Dharma core, and be free from worldly matters." "When I succeed, please come and take me home." "With supernatural powers, the guru can foretell your destiny... and tell which field of study you should follow." "Which field do you have in mind?" "I want to attain the core of Dharma." "And will I ever succeed, my brother?" "Ahimsaka, only those in the Brahmin caste like us can attain the core of Dharma." "The only one close to such success is our guru." "I've seen the boy's fate." "He is destined to be a murderous bandit, robbing of life those he owes a debt of gratitude." "Those he owes a debt of gratitude?" "You mean..." "To any soul he owes a debt of gratitude, he' II repay with disaster." "Brother," "So what field of study does the guru select for me?" "He has selected the most appropriate task for you." "Keeping goats." "The little Brahmin used his mother's rosary to count the goats, hoping he'd one day attain the core of Dharma." "Let the boy go." "Give me your word that you will let me go." "I cannot let you commit cruelty any further." "You will let this boy die?" "All right, let the boy go and I will spare your life." "Little Brahmin, are you hurt?" "Why did you kill him?" "This bandit is a follower of the Niratta cult, practising physical invulnerability... and committing crimes without conscience." "I f I'd let him live, a larger number of Taxila people would be dead." "It's the power of deities and celestial beings that has helped us kill him." "They wanted us to kill the bandit?" "Guru..." "What is the matter?" "I don't want these goats to be dead." "They will be reincarnated into a higher caste." "They will be reincarnated?" "Into a higher caste." "Like humans evildoers will be reborn as Untouchables, but meritmakers, by sacrificing 1,000 goats, will be reborn in heaven." "Practicing meditation leads us to visualise our 'mind'." "The highest goal of humans is to purify our minds." "When our minds have supreme purity, we will reach the core of Dharma." "I haven't seen you in a long while." "I hope you are fine." "Father!" "Father!" "This is a sacrificial arena." "You should behave yourself." "Do you understand?" "My daughter is naughty, not as well-behaved as other girls." "Look!" "Mother finished the sacrifice." "I have realised that this lady is your wife." "She has given birth to two girls, but she still hopes to give me a son." "With such a great sacrifice to Brahma, it won't be long before you have a son." "Guru..." "Tonight is the full moon for the month of Vesakh." "Perhaps with that light, Brahma wishes to send humans a message." "But that light appeared from the south, not from heaven." "I think it is not a heavenly light." "Perhaps there is a new Founder, one who has attained the Dharma core." "Once Ahimsaka completed the First Absorption, he anticipated a reunion with his mother." "Meanwhile, Mantani couldn't wait any longer to see her son." "Did I make myself understood... that you were not to visit him here?" "Sati..." "I have to confess at the time I gave birth to Ahimsaka, there were omens of evil." "Not only did it rain heavily, but also all weapons shone and blazed up into dreadful flames." "Such portents mean a murderous bandit was born." "But I come here merely because there might be a way to change Ahimsaka's fate." "How?" "I once heard from an ascetic that everything is impermanent." "I asked him if impermanence also included destiny, and he confirmed it to be so." "To which doctrine does that Dharma belong?" "I f this Dharma is true, ...it means... there's a way to reverse the prediction about my son." "To which doctrine does that Dharma belong?" "It's it's the Dharma of an ascetic from the Shakya clan." "What misfortune it is!" "Saying the words of that unconventional doctrine in this sacred place," "I deem a misfortune." "Bear in mind that any bandit can harm even his own parents." "So have a care!" "How much do you know about Siddhartha, a prince of Shakya clan?" "Halt!" "Why are you stopping us?" "On the way ahead there is a group of Untouchables." "My men are forcing them out of our way." "Go!" "Get lost!" "Halt!" "You want to save these people of misfortune?" "And who are you?" "Ahimsaka!" "How dare you show up here!" "Don't you know what your task is?" "It's a worry to the guru, letting you travel alone." "So he sent me to accompany you." "What are you thinking about?" "Do you know that there's one of the six Higher Knowledges which can make a successful learner read others' minds?" "However, anyone can make a guess what you're thinking about now." "But let me show you how it works." "You're so beautiful." "Please be merciful to me, Brahmin." "Be gone." "You..." "Untouchable!" "Brahmin, please listen to me first." "Only if you give me a chance to explain, then I' II cut my throat to sacrifice for my sin at once." "Be quick then." "I'm a daughter of a Brahmin advisor... but I was born of a slave mother in the palace." "Bitch, you Untouchable!" "Once your father slept with one outside the castes, you couldn't be anything but an Untouchable." "Please listen to me." "When you wrote to ask for my hand in marriage, my father was beset with problems." "So he foolishly thought this marriage would solve them." "What problems?" "He's now the Brahmin advisor, isn't he?" "You may not be aware that His Majesty the King cancelled the Great Brahma worship ceremony, and announced himself a follower of the new Founder." "Whom does King Pimpisarn worship now?" "I have never met him... but have heard others saying that... he's an ascetic of the Shakya clan." "That's all you want to say?" "Wait!" "I don't want your blood to profane this sacred ground." "You must do that somewhere else." "Let go of me!" "Stop!" "You damn bandit!" "I'm not a bandit." "I just..." "How dare you make excuses after kidnapping the guru's wife!" "My guru!" "Ahimsaka, you are predestined to be a murderous bandit, who is likely to commit matricide and patricide." "That's why your parents left you at my Academy, making the excuse it was for your Dharma study." "I accepted you out of my humanity, but in return, tonight, you have disgraced my wife!" "Shame on you!" "You're worse than any bandit!" "Kill him!" "Over there is Holy land." "Mother." "Ahimsaka..." "Ahimsaka..." "Who are you?" "What do you want?" "Ahimsaka, I do pity your fate." "You are the Holy Mountain's God?" "That is correct." "I am the one you have worshipped." "Please, have mercy on me." "You can be helped." "Whatever is predestined cannot be changed, but Dharma attainment can free you from worldy matters." "Me?" "Dharma attainment?" "Yes." "But you must sacrifice evildoers to God." "Stop them before they commit more evils." "Evildoers are everywhere on earth." "Once you sacrifice a thousand evildoers, ...you will attain Dharma." "Killing evildoers is what I should do, but you don't realise how special you are." "Once a sword is in your hand, you will gain supernatural powers." "You should henceforth commence your sacrifice for your own Dharma attainment." "Everything has happened because of me..." "The Great Brahma perdestines everything, out of my karmic deeds in previous lives." "You mean, you are atoning for your bad karma from previous lives?" "I must have committed such serious sins that I cannot atone for them in this life." "Do not think so, I pray you!" "Without me, you' II live a happy life with the guru." "I give you my word that you' II be exonerated." "What about you?" "I have to do more good deeds by freeing those bad souls." "Once you sacrifice a thousand evildoers, ...you will attain Dharma." "A thousand men..." "You've sacrificed many bandits so far." "Why don't you take a rest now?" "Many burdens I still shoulder..." "I appreciate your concern." "Brother, you are back!" "Ahimsaka!" "Have you heard of this ascetic of the Shakya clan?" "This ascetic discovered the Dharma, leading us to a spiritual awakening." "I now address him as the Enlightened One or the Lord Buddha." "Did the guru demand that you find this man?" "Actually, he demands that I study Lord Buddha's Dharma to find and disclose its evil implications to the public." "This means the Dharma must be very, very evil." "Not at all." "His Dharma is incomparably superb." "But I still worry about my mother, for she lives alone." "So I have come here to visit her, and then I can wear saffron robes and shave my head." "And then you won't recognise me!" "Does this Founder teach you... to worship the Great Brahma or not?" "The very first teaching I've learnt from the Lord Buddha is "Everything is Impermanent."" "Therefore, being a god is impermanent." "So why should we have such a blind faith?" "You no longer worship the Great Brahma?" "I have something amusing to tell you." "I used to believe in the guru's words that the Great Brahma predestined that you will harm me." "What nonsense that is!" "Ahimsaka now believed that evildoers were those who did not worship gods." "Instead, evildoers asserted themselves to challenge gods." "He had to stop this kind of evildoer, which greatly outnumbered bandits." "His original rosary was not enough to count the evildoers delivered from suffering." "He then made a rosary beaded with their fingers." "That was why he was named "Angulimala"." "A bandit with a thirst for fingers." "Fingers for his rosary." "You look stronger than the last time I saw you." "You know each other?" "I..." "Does she know about your massacre?" "I know he has killed some Niratta bandits." "By the way you sound," "I suspect that Ahimsaka didn't abduct you, unlike what Brahmin Sati has said." "She still has her chastity." "I believe your words." "But Brahmin Sati is hunting you high and low." "He wants to save his wife." "He wants me back?" "Why wouldn't he?" "I well understand that you have to do your duty." "Go ahead and do your duty." "A man of high caste cannot fight without daylight." "I shall return at dawn unless you decide to turn over a new leaf." "He is implying that you should leave tonight." "Have you forgotten that your duty is to free humans from suffering?" "But those men of wrongdoings are totally different from Vidhura." "You're wrong." "He deserves to be delivered from his severe sufferings, ...more than those evildoers." "I do not understand." "Listen carefully, last month his beloved wife died while giving birth to a long-awaited son who also died." "All humans bear sufferings." "Your killing is meant to set them free." "When you do attain the core of Dharma, you' II see... how much contented the minds you have freed have become." "I feel this fight is unfair, for you are loaded with worries." "My worries?" "How about yours?" "You shoulder so many sufferings." "At that very moment he believed he had done a good deed." "Every man suffers and deserves to be delivered." "He believed so." "You!" "I misunderstood that you killed only bandits, but you you slaughter any human." "Don't you have any conscience?" "No!" "I free their souls from sufferings." "So I shall free you, too." "At last, Angulimala, the bandit... who has killed hundreds of people and makes a rosary with their fingers returns to my Academy." "I come here to beg for your understanding." "Of what?" "Of... your wife." "All my life I have desired her for my wife." "She's so beautiful..." "so truly beautiful." "She is a woman of chastity." "Please be kind to her." "Woman of chastity..." "Throughout these years," "I have tortured myself to forget her." "I have kept upright the arm." "I had used to caress her." "You have attained the core of Dharma." "Attained the core of Dharma?" "Even mere meditation I am unable to do." "My mind is obsessed with her cheek I've touched." "Why... why do I have to be like this?" "Please set me free." "I can stand this no more." "What's on your mind?" "I feel pity for someone I once respected." "The guru, you mean." "As I have told you, every man is born to suffer." "But gods have eternal pleasure." "That is correct." "While meditating," "I focused my mind to see if a god like you is really contented." "How dare you question me!" "Then I discovered something." "What did you discover?" "When I was young, there were strange phenomena nobody could explain." "At first, I couldn't understand." "But now I do." "Once, a Mara tried to prevent a human from attaining the highest Dharma." "No matter how the Mara tried, the mere human always defeated the Mara." "How shameful!" "You've already realised who I am." "You're that defeated Mara!" "Being despised infuriates you!" "Being infuriated makes suffering." "Don't you see how gods and humans share one common fate?" "I condemn you to the place you despise most." "I' II never let myself be in hell, for I have nearly attained the Dharma core." "So many people have made sacrifices to this Holy Mountain." "How brainless they've been!" "And now you realise...?" "Yes." "I was deluded into worshipping gods and celestial beings even as I was close to attaining the core of Dharma." "From now on I' II only worship myself, my own pure mind." "But you haven't stopped killing people yet." "Why let them suffer like fools?" "The more souls I free, the purer my mind becomes." "You've seen the power of my mind, haven't you?" "It's me you should worship." "Then you' II gain whatever you desire." "Do you refuse this?" "In how many more lives will you live like this?" "Say it!" "What do you want?" "So I can give it to you." "I want you to be the same Ahimsaka ...the same one who saved my life with compassion." "I don't want you to be Angulimala." "Why don't you give this to me?" "Instead, he became obsessed with worshipping of his self," "Which, for many doctrine leaders, ...is the ultimate goal." "Acting like a new Founder, he preached with his sword and arrows." "I knew of no one who could show him the light, no one who had discovered a superb path above the worship of self." "On that day, I knew not..." "Southern food is spicy." "There's one thing I'd like to ask." "You once said you killed people to free them from suffering," "to purify your mind." "Right." "I'm also burdened with suffering." "Why don't you kill me?" "In fact, your mind will never be purified, if you let me live beside you." "Don't you ever wonder... why your life has been corrupted since you met me?" "It's not only your predestination... that has made you a bandit." "It's because of my cursed Untouchable blood." "Before you, please let me confess..." "I'm not that decent..." "I'm evil..." "I'm an Untouchable!" "You have become this because of me." "To me there's no way else... to keep you from committing more karmic sins." "Please forgive me." "It's me that corrupts your life..." "I have made you a sinful man." "No!" "You' II be all right." "No." "Please, my gods." "Oh no," "I don't need to beg any god." "Once I attain the core of Dharma," "I can cure you." "I've heard that Sudhin has commanded his troop to hunt Angulimala." "What do you want me to do?" "With your position, if you beg," "Sudhin would probably help our son." "Are you afraid of the penalty so much that you would let our son die?" "He's the bandit, no longer our son." "He should have been born dead." "Wait!" "You are not going to help that bloody bandit!" "I f you are, never ever come back here again." "I call down cureses on him!" "Let him die a death of tortures!" "Let him be put to hundreds of spears and swords." "There he is!" "Kill him!" "Hold on..." "Merely one more life you' II be cured." "Ahimsaka." "I still worry about my mother, for she lives alone." "I've come to visit her." "O Bhikkhu, stop, stop!" "I have stopped, Angulimala." "It is you who should stop now." "Your robes belong to the Shakya clan which is of righteousness." "Why are you lying about stopping?" "Angulimala, I have stopped harming all beings." "I have stopped in all things and atall times." "But you have not stopped." "You continue... without ceasing." "Hence, it is hard to stop." "I will stop after killing one more man." "That's why you decided to kill me?" "You should realise that I do it to deliver you from suffering." "Have you seen me bear any suffering?" "I f compared to you, is it me or you who bears suffering?" "But I've known that all things are impermanent;" "...all things are suffering." "This is a Dharma of yours." "So it means both of us bear sufferings." "Our Dharma is meant to make us see the truth of all." "To refrain from clinging." "With nothing to cling to, one can live without suffering." "I don't understand." "Angulimala, my coming is meant to lead you to attain the core of Dharma." "You don't have to lead me anywhere." "What I really want is to kill one more man." "I f I kill you, my mind will be purest." "And that's the Dharma core." "Watch!" "Angulimala, please contemplate your so-called 'mind'." "All right, I've been meditating about it since I was a child." "It won't bother me if I do it once again." "But this time I beg you to consider it through Dharma." "First, everything is impermanent." "Your so-called 'mind' is impermanent as well." "In contemplation you' II see endless impermanence." "Second, everything causes suffering." "Nothing should be clung to." "Please contemplate if your 'mind' can yield true contentment." "Angulimala, Third everything is without a true self." "What you're contemplating is not your true self." "Angulimala..." "To cling' to 'my self' and 'mine' causes all sufferings." "What's going on?" "It's him!" "The worst bandit of all!" "Be gone!" "You bandit!" "Get out!" "Get out!" "Kill him!" "O warrior, please don't kill him." "I am a daughter of Vidhura, coming from Taxila to avenge my father, who was killed by this evil bandit, Angulimala." "There is no Angulimala." "That evil bandit is no more." "A Bhikkhu's robes cannot remove evil deeds." "Please step aside." "But he's my son." "For years he's been paying for his karmic burdens." "How many lives does he have to pay for those?" "Please be out of my way." "No... please take my life instead." "How can you put your goal of attainment behind you?" "How can you take another path?" "What's it like then?" "Where on earth is your Nirvana?" "It's not too late." "What you need is one more life." "Then both of us can attain the core of Dharma." "In your eyes, what could I be?" "You're only physical, but I'm a trueself." "Please suppress your suffering." "Everything is as it is." "Everyone has rejected me since I was born." "It's me who has borne great sufferings." "How can you say I'm not a true self?" "Everything is without a true self." "There is no line drawn to discriminate 'You' from 'I'." "Just behold the rain." "Each life is akin to a single stream, ...clinging to individual thoughts." "But the stream truly takes a million drops of water falling from the very same sky." "And finally, they flow in the same direction." "The Lord Buddha's Dharma aims for us to realise this truth to refrain from clinging to 'my self' and 'mine'." "With enlightenment, one can live one's life without all suffering, which is Nirvana." "It's high time we realised this is not your self or mine." "It's high time we stopped."