On 12/10/2012 6:00 PM, Merle Lester wrote:
his understandable decision NOT to 'care for and share with' every wandering rice-bag who wanted to live off the charity of those who supported the monastery."RAF..... Please explain what you mean by this RAF...?....
What it means is that the abbots of religious institutions did not always feed/shelter every wandering mendicant who showed up at the gate; those they did feed and shelter were expected to move on within a few days at the most, and often after one night and a meal or two. THEY coined the term "rice-bags" for those who took advantage of the religious institutions to live without doing much work and/or not being serious about their efforts to attain realization. The story to which I referred illustrates this; the gatekeeper closed the gate on a wandering monk and broke his leg. It is my contention that this was not done by the dharma-master, out of a desire to shock him into kensho, but by an ordinary monk (or perhaps even a servant) as part of a policy (which would have been set by an authority of that institution) not to let every wandering monk gain entry.
RAF
