Long weekend report

I did very little, actually.  Good Friday, in particular, is always like the laziest public holiday on the calendar.   

It may not be a very seasonally appropriate thing, but I did finally finish reading Karen Armstrong's "biography" of Buddha.   I didn't realise that there was a (sort of) Judas figure in the story, getting upset about leadership succession plans, although this guy was more into direct action, trying to kill Buddha with a boulder and a drunk, aggressive elephant. (Road Runner cartoons came to mind when I read this.)  Anyway, the Wiki version of the longer story goes like this:

Shortly thereafter, Devadatta asked the Buddha to retire and let him take over the running of the Sangha. The Buddha retorted that he did not even let his trusted disciples Sāriputta or Moggallāna run the Sangha, much less one like him, who should be vomited like spittle, and he gave a special act of publicity about him, warning the monks that he had changed for the worse.^[10]

Seeing the danger in this, Devadatta approached Prince Ajātasattu and encouraged him to kill his Father, the good King Bimbisāra, and meanwhile he would kill the Buddha. The King found out about his plan and gave over the Kingdom into the Prince's control.

Ajātasattu then gave mercenaries to Devadatta who ordered them to kill the Buddha, and in an elaborate plan to cover his tracks he ordered other men to kill the killers, and more to kill them and so on, but when they approached the Buddha they were unable to carry out their orders, and were converted instead.

Devadatta then tried to kill the Buddha himself by throwing a rock at him from on high, while the Buddha was walking on the slopes of a mountain. As this also failed he decided to have the elephant Nāḷāgiri intoxicated and let him loose on the Buddha while he was on almsround. However, the power of the Buddha's loving-kindness overcame the elephant.

Devadatta then decided to create a schism in the order, and collected a few monk friends and demanded that the Buddha accede to the following rules for the monks: they should dwell all their lives in the forest, live entirely on alms obtained by begging, wear only robes made of discarded rags, dwell at the foot of a tree and abstain completely from fish and flesh.

The Buddha refused to make any of these compulsory, however, and Devadatta went round blaming him, saying that he was living in abundance and luxury. Devadatta then decided to create a schism and recite the training rules (pātimokkha) apart from the Buddha and his followers, with 500 newly ordained monks.

The Buddha sent his two Chief Disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna to bring back the erring young monks. Devadatta thought they had come to join his Sangha and, asking Sāriputta to give a talk, fell asleep. Then the Chief Disciples persuaded the young monks to return to the Buddha.^[11]

The Buddha did not show any hatred or deceive, even after what Devadatta had done. Soon after, Devadatta got sick and realized that what he had done was wrong. He tried to go to the Buddha's place to apologize for what he did, but it was too late. On the way to see the Buddha, the earth sucked him into the Niraya Hell for his deeds.

 Huh.

In new recipe news:   I tried a chermoula chicken recipe pretty successfully.   Followed a version from a guy on Youtube but can't find it now.  From memory:  the marinade is about 15 g of parsley and corriander finely chopped, the flesh of a couple of small preserved lemons, four cloves of garlic minced, a couple of tablespoons (or maybe a bit more) of harissa paste, some olive oil, a teaspoon of ground cumin and ground ginger, supposed to be some saffron liquid but didn't have any, just a bit of water instead, a teaspoon or so of salt and some pepper.  Marinate the chicken.   Finely chop a coupe of onion and start cooking them in the tagine, with a bit more ginger powder.   Chicken and all marinade goes on top and cook for maybe 45 or 50 mins on low.  Add a handful of olives and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Cook covered for another 10 min, then take lid off and let the liquid reduce to a sauce.  Very nice.

There is also movement domestically, but I will post about that separately.