Anecdotes about Buddhist Monks, Pythons, Wild Monkeys, Veganism, etc.

hey I just got some scientifically
informative fan mail from a fellow who knows a lot about the behavior and biology of snakes he heard the anecdote mentioned in my recent video about a Buddhist monk who took a nap in the jungle sitting on a lawn chair and he that had a Python or some kind of giant snake come out of the jungle and tried to devour his hand this guy raises doubts about whether or not the story was true ie suggesting that the monk may have been exaggerating the story or making it up out of thin air now the first thing here I told that story very very quickly in my earlier video obviously the snake did not think it was attempting to devour human being obviously this guy's hand was was hanging off the side of a lawn chair basically you know he fell asleep with his his arm dangling in a certain way and from the snakes perspective it thought the hand was a much smaller mammal that also explains how the story ends auntie climatically because the snake gives up its grip on this guy's hand and and crawls away now this fellow is suggesting to me that the only way you could get this kind of response out of a Python would be if his hands smelled like a rat or mice or some other typical prey item for a Python now I have to say I find that interesting enough suggestion making short video response to it of course it's possible that this monk was indeed handling rats because he was living out in remote places I have to say though it is even more possible that this monastery was keeping pets of some other kind I have been to Buddhist monasteries where they had pet rabbits I consider that kind of unethical and inappropriate for a Buddhist monastery but they did they had had pet rabbits living in a cage famously some Buddhist monasteries have pet Tigers or pet elephants something like this that a lot of attention whether they are domesticated or not there are monasteries that have pet monkeys in the tropics that have monkeys in captivity to some extent I've been to another monastery that had wild monkeys living around it harassing the monks and trying to steal the food was just quite memorable having monkeys break into the monastery try to grab food out of the kitchen and run out mmm and whether or not it's okay under the terabyte of Buddhist monastic code I remember the Buddhist monk rent that place picked up a wooden stick and and beat a monkey and ran outside and raised up the stick like he was Tarzan trying to prove his superiority over the monkeys hilarious situation in many ways hilarious and incongruous so yeah I just say of course it's possible that this story I was told was complete fiction but I doubt it I've I've heard a lot of strange stories coming out of Buddhist monasteries of this kind basically monks coping with the wildlife and for this monk living in these remote this remote locale I doubt there was a lot of pressure on him to bathe or to keep his hands clean and his hands probably smelled like something whether that was a rat or a rabbit or maybe some other pet they were keeping there obviously they could have a cat see I don't know if your hands smell like you've been petting a cat would that attract a Python I don't know but as always the simplest explanation would just be meat right it's completely hypocritical but basically zero of these terabyte of Buddhist monks are vegetarian or vegan I've written an article about that I can provide a link the status of veganism within Buddhism is not what you might hope it to be in 2016 it's much weaker than the status of veganism within Hinduism which is itself a very interesting story to talk about so maybe his hand smelled simply like the meat of a dead animal he'd been handling in preparing food now in terms of the plausibility of the other basic assumption here that there are giant pythons in those jungles I do have a personal experience a personal encounter to relate that for me is is very sad and filled me with a great sense of contempt for my fellow human beings when I was living in the last of the jungles up on the loud Burmese border I saw a giant Python and it was a giant Python basically being slowly tortured to death by human beings now I say the last of the jungle because I was witnessing the deforestation as it happened in front of me and all around me as you may or may not know the most efficient way for human beings to get rid of the jungle they do cut things down with an axe but they also just pour gasoline on the ground and start lighting the jungle on fire now this snake that was indeed a a giant Python obvious I have no idea what species it was I'm using the word Python in a an unscientific way but to my eye it was a legitimate giant Python it was certainly big enough to very casually swallow a human hand it could do that with no trouble at all this Python had been badly injured by one of these fires by farmers who were clear cutting the forests and then when they found this Python in the fire writhing in agony they ran over and grabbed it alive but with a lot of its skin burned off and damage strapped it to a metal pole and then carried it a full day's march through the jungle to try to sell it as meat as exotic meat and I was in the tiny town you can't even say Tallinn I was in a house on the edge of the jungle where the jungle connected to the trade route that goes down the Mekong I mean you know the population there was basically one house with a local Thai little guy who paid them a couple of dollars maybe like honestly maybe it was one dollar for this Python and these were the guys selling the Python they were legitimately tribal indigenous people they were guys living in conditions over they they did not really they did not own clothes made in a Factory you know they were they were nearly naked themselves and living in very very primitive conditions and they had come down out of the remote mountains this point of contact with industrialized civilization to sell this dying snake now why didn't they have the humanitarian impulse to at least kill the snake before before selling it why had they strapped it and by the way that we was not strapped with plastic oh no these are real third-world jungle conditions they had strapped it down with rat an and you know jungle fibers that you collect from the trees they had strapped this snake down alive because there's no refrigeration out there as soon as meat dies it starts rotting and starts decomposing so they were keeping this giant snake in absolute misery and the people who came to look at it to consider buying it including my fellow employees and the supposed humanitarian NGO what did they do to get a reaction of the snake they picked up a stick and they poked the snake including when the snake opened its mouth poking it on the tongue for me this is one of many examples of the casual cruelty of my fellow human beings that filled me with contempt as I've said in earlier videos I mean we can talk about the politics of compassion but if we're really keeping it real hundred percent on us then we also have to talk about the politics of contempt