“What have I done? If this is a victory, what's a defeat? Are these vultures, crows, eagles the messengers of death or evil?” - Emperor Ashoka
Dave Cuomo continues his series on the history of Zen with pt 4 - Ashoka! It's one of the most extraordinary and unexpected stories in world history as a bloodthirsty warlord emperor sees a simple monk walking across a field and over night turns one of the world's largest empires into a bastion of peace, piety, and goodness. Everything we know about Buddhism comes from this one moment and Dave explores all the implications of what happened and why. The sangha jumps in and discusses what morality is and where it comes from, how the Buddhist cannon was formed, and who exactly we can call a sociopath.