Dharma's CD-ROM GAme Demo (continued):

Next you must renounce all your worldly possessions, except for a robe and a food bowl, and embark on one of 3 Paths through life -- the City Path, the Mountain Path, or the Forest Path (the Buddha himself chose the Forest Path):

4. Choose your Path through life.

If you choose the City Path, you will end up as a sea captain, and one of the challenges you will meet on this Path is the same as the Buddha had to deal with in one of his past lives.  Will you handle it as well as he did? 

He was the captain of a merchant ship, sailing trade routes in the Bay Of Bengal and the Arabian Sea.  On one particular trip there was a terrorist on board, who took action to sink the ship and kill everyone on the ship, including himself.

In this game you must decide what to do, and quickly!  However, to reach Nirvana, you must act in a way that balances your own good or bad Karma against against your responsibility for your passengers' well being.

If you picked the right guru at the start, he/she will be able to help you through this.  But you must still have enough cleverness to interpret their advice correctly!

So see how wise and effective will you be in this situation, which is depicted by these top two frames: 

5. Two sample challenges: on the City Path (above)
 and the Mountain Path (below).

If you choose the Mountain Path (bottom two frames, above), you will become a novice Monk in a remote Monastery high in the mountains of Central Asia.  At dawn you are awakened by the approach of invading hostile soldiers.

In dealing with this threat, will you conduct yourself in a way that brings you closer to Enlightenment? 

This disturbing scenario has occurred repeatedly throughout history, and it's still a problem today in some parts of the world.  Now it's your turn to solve it -- in a way that the Buddha might have!  If you have the right guru by your side, you will at least have some good clues.