Okay, so continuing our study of the Dhammapada with verse number 18.
Today I've brought out a bigger book.
This is the commentary on the Dhammapada.
So it has the same verses, but it also has the stories.
Because today's story has a bit of a problem to it.
But it's a very simple story, and the verse itself is very much the same as the past three verses.
So this one is, idanandati pechanandati katapunyo ubhayatanandati.
So here she is blissful and hereafter she is blissful.
or has joy.
The doer of goodness rejoices in both places, or is blissful in both places.
Thinking, I have done good, she rejoices.
And even more she rejoices having gone to heaven.
So I use the feminine here.
There's no need to use the masculine all the time.
But specifically here, we're talking about a woman.
It's a daughter of Anathapindika.
And Anathapindika was one of the Buddha's chief lay disciples.
And he would go to see the Buddha every day.
and various reasons.
The first one is, of course, to listen to the Buddha's teaching.
But he would never go and ask the Buddha to teach on this subject or that subject, because he would always think, oh, the Buddha has so much work, and he's a prince, and he's very delicate, or he's a very special person, so I won't try to tire him.
So he wouldn't ask.
And the Buddha would never... The Buddha wouldn't be concerned about this.
The Buddha would just look at the Anathapindika and know what Anathapindika needed to hear, and so he would give a talk anyway.
So Anathapindika would go and listen to the Buddha's teaching every day.
Anathapindika means one who gives food, who feeds the poor, who feeds those without any refuge.
Anatha.
So he was a very great and very rich man as well.
So he was an example of a good rich person, which does exist in the world even today.
He was one such person who was very
a very good sort of person.
Another reason is he'd go to feed the monks.
Whenever anybody wanted to feed the monks, they would bring Anathapindika along, because he knew the monks very well.
So either he or Visakha, who was this other female lay disciple, would bring them along.
He was very busy, and certainly also busy with his work.
He had his daughter, his eldest daughter, stay at home and if monks came to the house, she was to give them food and to listen to their teachings.
And so she would give them food and then listen to their teachings.
And as a result of practicing the teachings that she got, she became a Sotapanna.
And then having grown up, she got married and went off to her husband's home and left home.
And so he passed the job on to his second daughter.
And the same thing happened.
She also became a sodapana.
But she also was old enough to go off and get married again.
Then we come to the third daughter.
And the text says that having listened to the Dhamma,
She not only became a Sotapanna, but she became a Sakidagami, Sakadagami, which is the second stage.
Sakata means with only one rebirth.
So she was almost to the point where she had no more greed, no more anger.
Her mind was very pure, and at most she would come back once to this world before becoming enlightened.
And then it says something that the English translator interprets as, she was upset, being so upset because she couldn't find a husband.
The other two found husbands, but she couldn't find a husband, and she was so upset that she stopped eating.
But as far as I can see, that's not what this says.
It says, having been, verily having been a young girl, but it could also mean an unmarried girl, but it most likely just means that she was very young.
she was afflicted by such a disease.
So I don't know what such a disease is.
It's not quite clear.
And for that reason she stopped eating.
She got very sick.
Probably she was young and had some sickness of being young.
So having stopped eating, she wished to see her father.
So she was at the point, basically she was at the point where she was about to die.
Wanting to see her father, she sent someone to the monastery where of course he was listening to the Dhamma.
No, he was giving dana, giving food to the monks.
But when he heard the call, he immediately went back home and asked her, what is it, Sumana?
Sumana was her name.
What's wrong?
And Sumana was on the point of death.
And so I guess she didn't hear him quite well.
And she said, what did you say, younger brother?
And he was shocked.
This is her father of course, right?
And he said, are you deranged?
Have you lost like Junda the pork butcher?
Is your mind unclear?
And she said, no, no, my mind is not deranged.
Younger brother?
And he said, he didn't know, what is this?
She's calling him younger brother.
And he said, are you afraid?
Because he figured maybe she's so afraid that she's going a little bit hallucinating or isn't able to recognize her own father.
And she said, no, I'm not afraid, younger brother.
And with those words, she passed away.
She did her time, made her time, which means died.
And so even being a Sotapanna, Anathapindika was also a Sotapanna.
He had been practicing the Buddha's teaching for quite some time.
And even though he was a Sotapanna, so he was someone who was quite meditative, he still couldn't bear to hear this, because of what she was saying.
And so he started crying, or he was weeping, and he went to see the Buddha.
And the Buddha said, how is it, Anathapindika, that you are crying in this way?
Nata Pindika said, my younger daughter has passed away, my youngest daughter.
And the Buddha said, well, so, haven't you been listening?
Everyone has to die.
She passed away and that's just part of life.
And he said, yes, I know, I understand that.
But what makes me so sad is that even though she was such a good girl and very conscientious and very kind to everyone and quite interested in the Buddha's teachings, still, when she died, she was totally deranged.
Her mind was not clear.
I'm afraid of where she may have gone.
And the Buddha said, that's not why she... Or he said, why do you think she was deranged?
And Anathapindika said, well, she called me younger brother.
And the Buddha said, well, you are her younger brother.
And he said, how is that?
And the Buddha said, well, she has become a sakitakami.
She is older than you in the paths and fruition.
So because of her attainment of becoming a sakitakami,
you are her younger brother as only a Sotapanna.
So it seems like she may have actually been trying to give some teaching to Anathapindika to say to him, look, you're still only a Sotapanna.
You should work hard to get to the higher path.
And the Buddha said, and now she's gone to... And then Anathapindika asked, where has she gone?
And he said, the Buddha says she's gone to Tushita, the heaven where all the future Buddhas live and the Buddha's mother now resides.
And he said, is that the case?
Wow, she was happy here, doing good deeds here, and now she's rejoicing up in heaven.
And the Buddha said this verse as well.
In the same way, it's just the same verse that he always would say, but changed a little bit.
That yes, it's true.
Even the
Rejoice here and rejoice hereafter.
The word nandati.
So last time we had modati.
Modati means to rejoice.
It's the same as mudita.
Mudita means joy.
When we have joy for someone else's good deeds.
Rejoicing in other people's good deeds.
It comes from the same root as modati.
Here we have nandati.
Nandati means joy or bliss or the same sort of idea.
So the story is very simple and the lesson is very similar to the ones we've gained.
I'd like to talk about his Punya.
So just talk a little bit about what it means by Punya because we might wonder how this relates to us.
Here we are in a meditation center.
We're not out there in the world.
We're not like Anathapindika giving gifts to the poor, giving alms to the poor.
We're not even out there giving dana or giving food to monks.
or supporting the Buddhist teaching.
We're not even listening to or reading or studying the Buddhist teaching.
Actually we are, no?
We have a sutta every day.
But we're not doing hardcore studying.
We just have one story every day.
So how is it that we're doing good deeds here?
I think the answer should be fairly obvious, that we practice in meditation.
But it sometimes doesn't feel like that.
It feels like you're sitting here, and what good am I doing sitting here torturing myself, having to deal with the chaos in my mind and the pain in my back and the mosquitoes and the leeches?
only getting to eat once a day and so on?
Well, I mean the answer is not difficult and if you study Buddhism it's easy to understand.
Goodness of course exists in the heart and so when we talk about goodness we always say dana, charity is goodness, sila, morality is goodness and bhavana, mental development is goodness.
But even with charity,
What it means is giving up.
Dāna means giving.
But in a Buddhist sense it means giving up.
It has to do with greed.
The giving up of greed.
So here you are in a place where you can't
indulge in any of your desires, and when the desire comes up, you're forced to look at it and become objective about it, and to see the greed for what it is, the wanting, wanting entertainment, wanting this or wanting that, wanting good food, wanting a nice bed, wanting to sleep more, wanting so many types of pleasure.
But you can't have them.
And by looking at them and by forcing yourself to stay strong with them, you're giving them up.
And this is what you should be able to feel, is that actually your mind is becoming straighter.
This crookedness that comes from clinging.
Clinging is like this.
This looks like clinging.
This is the hand crooked.
But if the hand is straight, it can't cling to anything.
The mind is the same.
In order to cling, it has to get all twisted out of shape, all bent out of shape.
When the mind is straight, as the Buddha said, the straightening of the mind, it can't cling to anything.
Nothing clings to it.
So this is really what we're doing is the greatest gift that we could ever possibly give.
We're giving freedom from our defilements to all beings.
We're giving the world a great gift.
It's our purity.
So because we don't have the greed in our mind, because we train ourselves out of this to not need so much.
We need less and less and even if we get to the point of Sumana or the Arahants that we've been talking about, then we won't need anything and our lives will be a blessing to the world.
And the same goes with anger.
The reason why we practice morality is to give up anger.
So the same goes with morality.
Morality is not so that we can brag about it or so we can feel proud that we're keeping precepts.
But it's to stop our minds from becoming angry, basically, by not hurting, by not...
saying nasty things, and then creating suffering for others.
We're giving up our nastiness, the evil that we have inside.
And with Bhavana, the purpose as well is to give up the defilements, in this case delusion.
The real reason why we practice meditation is not to give up greed and not to give up anger.
Because you can give those up with an ordinary meditation, maybe transcendental meditation or so on, but delusion can't be rooted out.
If you practice loving-kindness meditation, you can get rid of your anger.
If you practice
mindfulness of loathsomeness, dead bodies and so on, you can get rid of your lust.
But to get rid of delusion, you have to practice vipassana, true bhavana.
You have to look at reality and look at these things, look at desire, look at anger, but also look at the objects of your desire, look at the things that you cling to.
And so by doing this, our minds are going to become perfectly developed.
And as I talked about in the one about the rain coming in through the roof, you can cover it over with concentration.
Your mind can be completely secure from greed and anger, but you can never secure it from delusion.
So in order to secure it from delusion, you actually have to take the roof off and be open to the whole world, the whole sky.
And as a result of being open and understanding just everything, so that whatever comes in, you understand it and you see what it is.
There's no partiality, no categorization.
You see things for what they are.
You see things as impermanent.
You don't see anything as, oh, this is going to last and this is going to be satisfying to me.
You don't see things as satisfying.
You see things as unsatisfying.
You see it as what it is.
not going to satisfy me.
Why?
I've seen it.
It comes, it goes, it comes, it goes.
And so you let go of things.
You don't say, this is me, this is mine.
You don't think of it as controllable because you've seen how uncontrollable it is.
By seeing this and seeing it repeatedly, the mind eventually lets go and gives up.
And the mind is able to live anywhere.
There's a famous story that actually the Buddha, the whole idea of covering up is not...
Not a good metaphor.
The best thatched hut is actually where you throw the roof off because there's a story, this man, he's saying, ah, you can rain if you want because my roof is well thatched.
And the Buddha said, you can rain if you want, I don't have a roof.
He was talking simply about the fact that he could stay under a tree or out in the middle of the field even and let it rain because he has no attachments.
But for the mind it should be the same.
The mind should be able to encounter anything without any prejudice.
So in the beginning this will take concentration.
It's true that you have to... First you do have to push away some of the problems.
You can't deal with them all at once.
Once you push them away, then you slowly bring them back.
You slowly look at them.
So someone who practices Samatha, for example, they will push everything away.
And they'll feel real bliss and calm.
But the purpose of Samatha meditation is not to feel bliss and calm.
It's to...
give you the space, push everything out of the way, so you can slowly pick things one by one and look at them.
Once you practice Samatha, you should then open your mind up, reflect back on the five aggregates, the Khanda.
If you don't ever focus on the Khanda, you will never understand Dukkha Satsang, you'll never understand the Four Number Truth.
So even after practicing Samatha, you have to come back, you have to pull the roof off,
slowly, and begin to look, until finally you don't need the roof at all.
You can have the roof, not have the roof.
But true mental development is the opening up of the heart, and keeping the mind perfectly balanced and centered, but letting be, open to anything, open-minded.
Okay, so that's talking about goodness.
So I think it should be clear that what we're doing here is the greatest goodness.
And what that means is that as you're practicing, even now today, yesterday, today, the day before and so on, you're changing as people and your minds are changing and you'll never go back.
Unless you decide, I'm going to be an evil person again.
You can go back.
But this is something that you carry with you.
This is what the Buddha said.
You will go to goodness.
And you'll find this, that your mind is pure.
And your whole life will be better.
And as I've said before, people often misunderstand this.
They think, and people who practice meditation also do.
People who are traditional Buddhists, they think this and they hear this, oh, meditation is good punya.
So they go and practice meditation.
When they finish, they think, now I'll get rich.
Or now I'll have this.
And then sometimes horrible things happen.
Sometimes when people finish practicing meditation, they get hit by a car, break a leg, or lose all their money or something.
It can happen like that.
And it can actually happen because of the meditation, because what you're doing is clearing out so much garbage that the only thing that's left is the really strong ones.
And really strong bad karma that was just waiting or had no opportunity can actually get an opportunity as a result.
But once it has the opportunity, it's finished.
And the point being that the goodness that comes from it is the goodness in your heart.
You stop thinking so much about my suffering, my happiness, and you start thinking about my purity, my impurity, because you know where happiness and you know where suffering come from.
Some people who practice meditation can go back and have a great amount of suffering.
Obviously, people before they meditate also have a great amount of suffering.
But the difference is that after you practice meditation, whether it's suffering or whether it's pleasure, that the mind doesn't suffer.
The mind suffers far less.
And as a result of being pure,
The result of the meditation, obviously that evil that happens to you has nothing to do with the meditation.
The meditation sometimes clears the way for it to come.
It can also clear the way for good things to come.
But what you'll find after you meditate is certainly you get the results of karma actually quite quicker because your mind, your whole universe is much purer.
But the point being that the goodness that comes from the meditation and then the goodness that you give to others has an incredible power.
It takes time.
It can often not come in.
It takes time.
Maybe it doesn't come in this life.
But even the part that doesn't come in this life...
It's an incredible power that's building up inside of you, and it's going to show itself in your next life and in all lives to come.
But also a very important thing is that actually you do generally, or you always do, get some goodness in this life.
A person who does good deeds is never without.
It's not like you have to wait until your next life to get any benefits.
What you start to feel as you practice meditation, as you do any goodness, is what the Buddha said, I have done good.
And you start to feel good about yourself.
Because before I practiced meditation, there wasn't much good about myself that I could feel proud of.
But once you practice meditation, you know for yourself that you're doing something great for the world.
Not only for yourself, but also...
for the whole of the universe, really.
As I said, by giving people protection from your defilements.
You're making the world a better place.
You're doing the training that all beings should undergo.
The training that's necessary to be kind and compassionate and
and generous and helpful and beneficial to the world.
Because without wisdom, there's only a very limited amount of benefit that you can give to the world.
It's with wisdom that you're able to solve people's problems and give people answers and generally bring clarity to yourself and to other beings, to the whole world.
So really we're doing, you're doing a great thing here and I'd like to express my appreciation and give you encouragement and not to be discouraged by the fact that it seems impossible or it seems to be going very slowly because it's very difficult to see sometimes and there's a lot of baggage still carrying around that you have to be patient with.
It's not going to just fall off in one day.
But the results have a great power to them that's not evident in the beginning.
And it becomes maybe more evident when and if you leave or when you start to go out and teach others or help others.
You can see that it's incredible what you're able to give as compared to what you're able to give before.
Or the purity of mind that you bring to any situation as opposed to the impurity that you would bring before.
So that's the end of these four verses.
The next two verses are actually quite different.
And that's the next story.
It has two verses.
After those two verses, we finish the Yamaka Vagga, the first chapter of the Dhammapada.
So almost done one of, I think, 22, 23 chapters.
Eventually we'll get through them all.
So thanks for listening and back to meditation.