I want to point out first that this person referred to a story about two monks who came to a ford (which is a low river crossing) where one decides to carry an elder woman to the other side because she couldn't cross the rapid waters. This story is not a Theravadin Buddhist story. So when someone refers to a story like this, trying to put it in a context here, nope, you can't do that. You just can't do that.
What happens in this story, that I also read many years ago, an older monk and a younger monk walk to the river, it is in flood. There is a woman who would like to cross the river. The older monk simply picks up the woman carries her with him to the other side. He puts her down on the other side, they keep going on their journey, he never says a word. After a little while, the younger monk says to him, "How dare you pick up that woman, that is against our rules. You can't touch a woman, how dare you do that, how can you possibly do that?"
In this story, and I say again it is not Theravadin Buddhist, the older monk says, "I have already put down the woman, you have not." Now it is a cute story, but I am saying again it is not Theravadin Buddhist. The Buddhist monks have a rule, a requirement, which is very essential to their training that they would never pick up a woman unless it was an absolute emergency. The story was not an absolute emergency as far as I know the story. So, unless it is an absolute emergency the monks actually have that rule to protect their practice, to protect their discipline, to protect the entire Buddhist religion.
I won't go into every detail, but on a deeper level, they have certain rules that are set up from the Buddha to protect things. So, in this sense the question in general was when is it necessary or important to break or relax a certain rule to avoid a greater damage. Emergencies fine. But you have to look at more of an overview, and this a problem for many people who have idealism. When there is a rule or requirement that has been made up by somebody for a long time, idealistic people can often look at this and go, "Oh, this is not necessary, we should get away with that, put that away, whatever." We have to be careful of changing something that has been set up for a long time based on the experience of other people.
All of you know we are much stricter at Wat Kow Tahm than here in Germany. Ok, why are we stricter there? Because the conditions are different, we have a beach 15 minutes walk away with lots of semi naked people, fun and games just a short distance away. We have very cheap retreats, so it is easy for people to leave and not care about their money. We have developed a lot of requirements and rules which help protect the retreat. Now occasionally, and thankfully it has been very few over the past few years, occasionally people don't like our rules, and they will complain about the rules. But they don't see the overview. Now that word "overview" is very important. Anyone who has ever been a manager of a business, a manager at a working place of any type, has an overview due to experience of having, usually, "worked up the ladder", having done all the various different jobs. They can usually see a big picture.
Somebody who comes in new often doesn't see the big picture. They may see a little picture and they think, "Oh we should change that. That is not important." But they don't actually see the repercussions of it. Actions produce results, all of you have heard that. Certain actions produce certain results, all of you have heard that, too. So, we have to be careful when there is a rule or a requirement that has been established, especially for a long, long time, to just go and break it due to our feelings about it. And that is often where it comes from, people's Vedana.
Now remember Vedana, feelings. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. When we have a pleasant feeling we like it, we want it again. And sometimes we forget what we are doing while we are caught in pleasant Vedana. We often forget whether we are doing something that is actually in the long run, in the overview, going to interfere rather then actually help.
So, one of the biggest bits of advice when they say, "Could you please give some advice how I can decide whether it is appropriate to follow a rule or relax it?" Consider the task, and ask. Ask somebody wiser, or somebody you think is wiser. Or if you can't find somebody wiser, at least ask somebody. Get more input because your doubt might take you in the wrong direction, and we don't want to go in the wrong direction.
Now the second question at the end was, "Does the fetter attachment to rites and rituals also mean attachment to blind obedience of rules and requirements?" Some of you may not know what this word "Fetter" means. In Theravadin Buddhism they say there are four stages of enlightenment. There are also Ten Fetters, or I could say very strong defilements, very strong negative qualities that people have and they get destroyed or weakened as these four stages of enlightenment take place.
Some people never go into all four stages of enlightenment, they just go straight to full enlightenment. Some people will go to one, some people will actually go to all four before they get to full enlightenment. So, there are these ten fetters, which are specifically stated in relationship to the levels of the four stages of enlightenment.
In the first stage, which is called Stream-Enterer, one of the three fetters that is totally destroyed is what is called attachment to rites and rituals. So, what does this actually mean? Would it be that somebody who reached that stage never follows any rites and rituals? No. It just means they are not attached to a rite and ritual as a path to enlightenment. Buddhist monasteries around the world today are going to do some chanting. Before they do the chanting, almost every one of them will light some candles and incense. This is a ritual they do around the Buddha statue.
The fetter attachment to rites and rituals is the belief that just performing a ritual will help purify the mind and help a person get enlightened. Rather than focusing on the purification by wisdom of the mind. This is what is different. Many of you probably know about the 10,000 prostrations that some Tibetan Buddhists and other Buddhists do. If a person believes that if they bow 10,000 times and just by performing them then they will get enlightened, then that is an attachment to rites and rituals as a fetter.
It would also be blind belief. And here, we don't want to be blind about anything. So if you are in doubt about a rule, whatever, just ask. And when you come to Theravadin Buddhism, as you have all heard me also say, if one teacher can't answer your question, just go to another. Your question will get answered when you find enough teachers. This is one thing about Theravadin Buddhism - it is very open, there is nothing hiding in the woodworks. It is something to discuss, it is something to sort out. The Kalama Sutta, we want to prove it. We want to prove it, we don't just want to blindly believe.