Good evening.
Welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verses 227 to 230, which read as follows.
PORANAMETANGATULA NETANGADJATANAMIWA NINDANTI TUNHIMASINANG NINDANTI BAHUBHANINANG
mitha bha nimpi nindanti nathiloke anindito na ca hu na ca bhavisati na ca tarahi vijjati e kantang nindito poso e kantang va pasang sito yang che vinyu pasang santi anu vijja suve suve
Which means,
This is an ancient thing, Atula.
It's not just something from today.
They blame those who sit silently.
They blame those who speak a lot.
Even those who speak in moderation, they blame.
There is no one in this world who stays unblamed.
there never was and there never will be nor can you find someone here and now a person who is solely blamed a person who is or a person who is solely praised but whoever
That person who the wise praise, having observed them day after day.
A person with flawless behavior, a sage endowed with wisdom and ethics.
Just like a gold coin,
Who would think them worthy of blame?
Even the angels praise such a person.
Even by Brahma are they praised.
Four verses.
Which were taught in response to Atula It starts off by saying this is an ancient thing, Atula The Buddha is talking to Atula who was a lay person, a lay follower of the Buddha Who had his own posse of friends, also followers of the Buddha I guess
And one day Atula thought to himself and amongst his group they thought they would go and listen to the Dhamma And so first they approached Revatta They had heard that Revatta was a wise and accomplished practitioner of the Buddha
Of the Buddha's teaching And so they went to him And they sat down and paid respect to him And said, Venerable sir, we've come to hear the Dhamma Please teach us the Dhamma But if you know Revata Revata was fond of solitude And so Not that It can't be considered a lesson But he said nothing
He sat quietly and they all sat quietly and waited for him to speak and he didn't speak.
They say silence is golden, but while these lay people weren't subscribing to that, they got upset.
Atula got upset.
I don't know about his followers, but about his friends.
He got upset and said, what use is this?
What's going on here?
We tried to get him to talk.
He won't talk.
No teaching being done here.
And so they went on.
Let's go find another monk.
Find someone who will teach us.
And they went and found Sariputta.
Well, surely, if anyone's going to teach us, it's going to be Sariputta.
He's the Buddha's right-hand monk.
And so they went to Sariputta, sat down, paid respect and said, Venerable sir, we've come to hear the Dhamma, we went to see Revata, he didn't say anything.
We ask you, please, please teach us.
So Sariputta said, okay, sit down, listen carefully, and he started talking and teaching the Abhidhamma.
akusala dhamma, akusala dhamma, abhyagata dhamma, wholesome realities, unwholesome realities, indeterminate realities, and on and on and on and on.
Anathulagyan got upset, quite frustrated.
He stood up and said, Venerable sir, enough, thank you.
thought to himself, this is ridiculous.
Too much.
How are we supposed to remember all of that?
How are we supposed to take that all in?
How are we supposed to practice all that?
He just keeps going on and on, and it's just too much for us to take.
This monk talks too much, right?
So they thought, well, where else can we go?
Well,
I know someone who everyone loves, Ananda.
We'll go see Ananda.
He's the Buddha's attendant.
Surely he knows how to teach the Dhamma.
He'll have listened the most to the Buddha teach and so his teaching will be similar to the Buddha's teaching.
We'll go and listen to the Dhamma from Ananda.
And so they went to find Ananda.
Ananda, they found him, sat down, paid respect to him and said, Venerable sir, we've come to hear the Dhamma.
We went to see Revata.
He didn't say anything.
We went to find Sariputta.
He talked forever.
He didn't talk too much.
Please teach us the Dhamma.
Give us a suitable teaching.
Ananda said, of course.
Happy to help.
And he started teaching the Dhamma, taught him something, doesn't say what exactly, but just a concise, well thought out teaching on the Dhamma.
Not too long, not too short, talk and done.
I guess it didn't take that long, but he gave him a teaching.
And Abdullah again stood up
Stomped off.
Thought to himself, what the heck was that?
That's it?
Just that?
Something like that.
What is he doing just teaching us that?
Just that?
As though that's enough?
this monk doesn't understand how to teach the Dhamma.
And so he said, he said to his people, he said, come, let's go.
I know where we'll get a true teaching of the Dhamma.
We have to go straight to the source.
And so he brought them all to the Buddha and they said,
sat down in front of the Buddha, paid respect to him and said, Venerable Sir, we've come to hear the Dhamma, but wherever we go, it seems it's inadequate.
We go to see Rayavata, he says nothing, just sits there like a log.
We go to see Sariputta and listen to him, he just talks on and on and on, no end.
Then we go to see Ananda, what does he do?
Just this little nothing, Dhamma.
He teaches us something simple, something so short.
Then he's done.
And that's all.
Please, Venerable Sir, we've come to you as our last resort.
Teach us the Dhamma.
What did the Buddha do?
He taught him this verse.
He said, This is the truth.
They blame those who don't speak.
They blame those who speak a lot.
Even those who speak in moderation, they blame.
There is no one in this world who goes without blame.
So there's several lessons.
There's a major lesson, I think, that is clear from the verse.
But there's several things that we can talk about that are interesting as meditators.
The first is the character, well with the story there's really, what I think is most interesting is the character types, the study in the character of the enlightened ones, the study in character of the unenlightened ones, the study in character of the Buddha.
This story tells us something about all three of them.
For the enlightened ones, it shows us that they're not all alike.
Ananda would have been only a sotapanna at that time.
But Sariputta and Revatta were both arahants and couldn't be different.
Revatta was absolutely committed to solitude, and Sariputta was committed to teaching.
And in fact I don't think it would be fair to say that Revatta didn't engage in teaching or that even he wasn't teaching Atula something.
Because absolutely it was a teaching for him to be quiet and stop talking.
It sounds like Atula probably already knew the Buddha's teaching.
He was a follower of the Buddha.
And it's quite possible, given especially by what the Buddha said at the end, that he didn't actually need a teaching.
What he needed was to quiet down and close his mouth and close his eyes and do what Revatta was instructing.
But another thing is...
and it relates to the character type of students, but relating to the character type of enlightened ones, we have to understand a sticking to their character type that it seems, and I think it's reasonable to
to claim that an enlightened one doesn't devote themselves to pleasing or to accommodating people who come to learn from them.
So we have often this idea that a teacher will give us everything we need, will lead us, will guide us to enlightenment.
When in fact I think that's expecting too much.
We can see from these examples that the enlightened ones gave teachings.
So that's a good example for us all to follow, that as their followers, as the people who have come after them, that we follow their example and teach others.
But they also stick to their own practice, that the teaching seems to come very much out of their own practice and as a part of their practice, that they don't teach in such a way as to humor others or to pamper them or to spoon feed their students.
And the important meaning for us is that it's our duty to gain the knowledge and to understand.
The duty of understanding is not in the teacher.
It's not their duty to make us understand.
The fact that we don't understand a teaching may vary well and quite often does rest on the students.
And it's therefore our duty to cultivate understanding and to seek out understanding on our own rather than expecting it to come from the teachers.
In other words, we may not
gain what we need from a teacher, because they are not really there for us, as no one really is.
You should never be there for someone else in the sense of existing or acting for someone else's benefit.
That's not really how goodness or
Peace, happiness works.
If you're living for other people, as many teachers often find themselves doing, it's quite stressful, it's harmful, it's unpleasant.
And more importantly, I think, from a point of view of the student, it's unhelpful because it leads to complacency in the student.
And so we see that quite clearly here that Atula was really shirking his responsibility.
These monks were doing their responsibility, even Revata.
He was doing his responsibility in the sense that he was practicing.
And that's what the Buddha makes clear.
His panya and sila were perfect.
He never broke them Atula had no cause to complain Rewata owed him no words of the Dhamma And so if he's not going to teach If he's not going to say anything He's not going to say anything He's still perfect He's still perfect because his practice is perfect
The onus lies on Atula and on the student to get the Dhamma, to find a way to gain the learning themselves.
And often that means to actually practice it instead of obsessively trying to find words of teaching.
We often in modern times seek out too much the pariyattisasana, the intellectual learning, trying to read all the suttas, trying to listen to all the dhamma talks or read all the books written about Buddhism.
And that's because of the pleasure that we get from that, the excitement, the stimulation that we get from the knowledge and from the goodness.
But that is not the same as gaining wisdom and understanding and the habits of clarity and mindfulness that come from actual practice.
It's very different.
And we mistake one for the other.
We mistake the good feeling of reading good things and that they're all good things with the actual goodness of practicing them.
It's quite likely that Atula was in that category.
He didn't really need teaching.
That being said, we can look at the character type of students and I think one thing that is worth noting is that we should sometimes tailor our teachings to individuals.
It's worth noting that for some people a short teaching will be more beneficial, some people a long teaching will be beneficial.
And so it's worth knowing that sometimes one teacher might be more suitable than another.
That if you're going to look for a teacher, you might decide that this teacher is...
This teacher teaches more towards an intellectual crowd like Sariputta.
People who are keen on intellectual Dhamma were more likely to follow Sariputta, I think.
And it's not that Sariputta couldn't teach anyone because he was the most skilled besides the Buddha.
There's no question.
And he taught many people who were not intellectuals, but he still seemed to have an intellectual bent.
And so...
He may have been more beneficial slightly to people who were intellectual.
Whereas Rewata probably was more beneficial to people who were just like, listen, I don't need it.
Just show me how to practice and let me sit in peace.
And people who were intellectual might have had a hard time because they had too many doubts.
They would have had a hard time with Rewata.
So we, to some extent, we should seek out appropriate teacher, but I think it can be misleading to put too much emphasis on that.
Something to note, but not something to be too concerned with.
And I think it's probably more likely we get quite concerned with that looking for the perfect teacher and waste time with a teacher that's good enough.
Because it's not that big of an issue.
The other thing we could point out that's really obvious from this is that as teachers and as practitioners who come into contact with others, we're not always going to be able to reach people.
And sometimes our teachings and our support and our help towards others is wasted.
And I think that's something only the Buddha was able to see fully.
It seems like these three other teachers wasted their time to some extent.
Maybe, maybe not, maybe they were setting him up so that he would go to see the Buddha The commentary might like to say something like that sometimes That they knew they were just setting him up so that he'd go to see the Buddha Maybe, maybe not But nonetheless the Buddha knew exactly what to do That this man, rather than give him a teaching He made him, rather than give him a lesson, he made him the lesson And made a lesson out of him
And so sometimes we have to understand that we're not always going to reach everyone.
And just because we give the truth doesn't mean people are going to appreciate it.
As practitioners, we have to understand that the lack of appreciation is always on us.
Even if the teaching is rotten to the core, if we get upset about it, we're also rotten.
Not to speak of the greatness of these arahants and enlightened beings.
That one should then, this is a great evil for Atula to not only feel, not only be upset by them, but to express his upset everywhere he went.
Speaking badly about Revata to Sariputta, speaking badly about Revata and Sariputta to Ananda and then going to the Buddha.
And speaking badly of three very pure individuals To the Buddha, in front of the Buddha In front of everyone who would have been there And to all his friends
So I don't get the sense that Attula had a lot of spiritual potential It doesn't say, and it's remarkable It's remarkably missing from the end of this story Usually at the end it says, well the listener gained greatly And a lot of people gained greatly It doesn't say that for this one It's quite likely that Attula gained nothing And it just ended up being a lesson And the lesson is great, so we have this lesson
The storytelling is showing us some of these qualities of enlightened beings, unenlightened beings and of the Buddha.
The lessons of the verse, first of all, the most prominent and probably the most important is about the lokiya dhamma, about blame.
So if you don't know what the lokiya dhamma are, they're a set of
Dhammas of things that categorize
good and bad things from a worldly perspective.
Lokia means worldly.
So they're the eight things that encompass what's good and bad, or what's seen as good and bad in the world.
So we have, they're in pairs.
We have the good and the bad.
We have happiness and suffering.
We have wealth and poverty.
You have fame and whatever the opposite of fame is, being a nobody.
And we have praise and blame.
Blame, no?
Blame is a bad thing from a worldly perspective.
And usually these are taught in terms of that.
In fact, the good and the bad are
neither good nor bad.
They're taught in terms of not clinging to these things.
They're taught in terms of understanding the unpredictable, unreliable nature of these things, that if your happiness depends on happiness, you're going to be unhappy, because you can't always be happy.
Pleasure.
The difference between a philosophical idea of happiness, like contentment or peace, and the actual pleasure.
If we're stuck on pleasure, we're never going to be happy.
Because there's also suffering.
The vicissitudes, they change.
They come in pairs.
You can't have one without the other.
Not forever.
We think fame is great, but we can't always be famous.
We think praise is great, but we'll often be blamed.
We think wealth is great, but we'll often be poor.
Or we gain and loss, really.
Those are the two opposites.
We think it's good to get things, but we'll lose them again, and we'll lose as much as we gain.
But the other way to look at them, it's sort of related, but is more in terms of
Don't rely on these things.
Don't rely on them to provide any meaning.
Meaning, if someone is praised, it doesn't mean that they're worth listening to.
It doesn't say anything about their character.
Someone is blamed.
It also doesn't say anything about their character.
Someone is rich or poor or famous or not famous, right?
This is a big one.
Oh, there's a very famous teacher.
It must be good.
Actually, it's not necessarily directly related.
fame and praise, not only are they dangerous to the individual, they're also dangerous to people who see them in other individuals.
Wealth, happiness.
We see someone's very happy, we think, well, they must be enlightened.
Not necessarily.
Happiness can very much be a function of the brain.
And so you might find an Arahant who is very dour,
and maybe even unpleasant to many people because of how serious they are.
And it can be very much just because of their chemical makeup.
Some people just aren't as happy as others, just aren't able to cultivate the pleasure.
The scientists will tell you this.
It's the way the brain works.
And so this is an important lesson for us as Buddhists, as people, as spiritual practitioners.
Don't listen so much to blame, praise.
Of course don't engage in blame.
But when you hear other people blaming a teacher or a person, anyone let's say, don't immediately jump on the bandwagon.
It's not to say that
person who is, it's not to say that the majority is wrong.
Quite often, the majority is right.
And if a lot of people praise someone, it is often a sign that they are worth listening to.
But it's not reliable.
Because the thing about the masses, people in general, is that they're, they're often wrong.
Not that they're always wrong, but that there's a blindness.
The majority of people are, to some extent, spiritually blind.
And so it's hit or miss where the stream of society takes you.
If you follow the way most people feel or most people believe, it can be quite misleading.
And so that leads in, that is why really the essence of this teaching is in the next verse, where the Buddha says, That person who the wise prays.
So first of all, we make that distinction.
Yes, praise can be a very good tool for understanding whether someone is worth listening to, worth associating with, but only a certain type of praise.
What kind of praise is that?
The praise of those who are wise.
Again, we shouldn't simply go by praise, but the problem being that we don't know
we're not able to know the nature of all beings.
And so, if you want to know the good of someone, you can often ask wise people.
Ask them, or listen to them.
If a person praises, if a wise person praises another one, then you know, oh, this person is worth listening to, of course.
I mean, that's quite simple.
But I think the important lesson here is not that we should just wait for people to be praised or listen only to people being praised, but the important thing is the shifting of the importance from praise and blame to wisdom.
We shouldn't be concerned with praise or blame, we should be concerned with wisdom.
Because a person who is wise will praise one who is wise, right?
A person who is unwise may praise people who are wise, may praise people who are unwise.
Hit or miss.
And the next part where it says, anu iccha suve suve.
describes the difference, one of the differences between how wise people praise and how ordinary people praise.
A wise person praises someone having observed them day after day.
And so this is an important lesson, a reminder that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.
We shouldn't be quick to judgment.
It's very easy to be taken by someone, to be moved by someone.
Oh, they seem very wise or they seem very pure.
They seem very good on first impression.
And that's not nearly as reliable as a careful observation of their habits, their speech, their behavior, their views, day in and day out.
The Buddha said the only way you can really know someone's character, unless you're a Buddha, is by spending time with them.
Something you can only learn by observing.
That it's deeper than simply how they speak, how they present themselves.
All of that can be faked, can be taken on, can be affected.
Affected in the sense that it's an affectation.
It's just an artificially constructed or cultivated quality.
People who speak very well are often very entertaining, very inspiring.
I listen to inspirational speakers who are very inspiring and you're moved by them.
But you think about what they said and you realize, oh wait, that's not right.
It's not true what they said.
It is possible to be a very skilled orator and teach people all the wrong things, mislead them.
It's much more common to teach them nothing, to sound good but offer them no benefit from it.
Powerful orators.
We must go deeper.
And it kind of points to the rest of the verse or the rest of that verse in terms of the qualities of someone who we should listen to, who we should respect and who we should aim to be are much more than someone who people praise.
And they are much more than just appearing to be good.
They are qualities that are deep and involving the core of our being.
Specifically what the Buddha says here is panya and sila.
What we should aim for and what we should try to emulate
are the qualities of wisdom and behavior.
What the Buddha often in other places called vidya and charana.
Vidya means knowledge, charana means conduct.
But the meaning is panya and sila.
Panya meaning wisdom, not just knowledge of anything.
It means wisdom, knowledge of the truth, understanding of the truth.
And charana doesn't just mean conduct, it means ethical conduct, sila.
Panyasila samahitam, someone should be a faultless character endowed with wisdom and ethics.
So wisdom encompasses all the mental qualities of clarity and understanding, our ability to see things as they are, that walking is just walking, standing is just standing, pain is just pain.
Thoughts are just thoughts and our emotions are just emotions.
Seeing them as they are, seeing them as impermanent, unsatisfying, uncontrollable,
Wisdom involves the clarity that frees us from clinging, frees us from the desire, the craving, the seeking out of satisfaction in things that can't satisfy us.
Character is the other side of the coin that shows that this wisdom is internal, is deep, is intrinsic to us.
Because when you talk about all these good concepts of understanding and so on, it's very easy to affect that, to claim that, to speak as though you understood that.
But the only way it can be clearly seen that someone has understood the Dhamma is through their actions, of course.
Sure, it's possible that someone might
act in a spiritual way without actually being spiritual.
You might see someone sitting quietly in meditation and think that they're enlightened.
It turns out that their mind is scattered or, or could just be engaged in peaceful states that have nothing to do with the cultivation of wisdom.
On the other hand, a person might know everything, having studied the Buddhist teachings, having listened to the Buddhist teachings, but never practiced it themselves.
So they know everything, but they know nothing.
And it's only when you see these two come together, the actual behavior, which is including speech, the things they say, the way they talk, the way they act, the way they walk, the way they talk,
the way they think by only observing all of that and observing it suwe suwe day after day, tomorrow after tomorrow, it says.
again and again, day in and day out, that you can really know the true character of a person.
And more importantly, who really cares, right?
What's so important about knowing other people's good qualities, perfections and imperfections?
We shouldn't be obsessed with other people's faults
We shouldn't be obsessed with what they've done and not done.
People who are obsessed with criticizing others often have very strong character flaws themselves.
And they often mask them.
It's often a reaction to them to their own character flaws that they lash out at others because they themselves are feeling inadequate.
We quite often lash out, because we're so critical of ourselves, seeing our own faults.
Our reaction rather than deal with them, be honest with ourselves, is to
be critical of others.
So Atula was probably in this category.
He was probably not very happy about himself and certainly not very settled in his own mind.
And so he took to belittling others.
Of course, when we belittle others, it serves to boost our self-esteem.
We're not the only one who's imperfect.
I think the biggest lesson here implicitly is that we shouldn't obsess about self-esteem.
We shouldn't obsess about better, worse, good, bad.
We certainly shouldn't scold and we shouldn't blame other people, speak badly about them to others.
we shouldn't be moved by the blame of others.
A very good example of these Arahants who were certainly not moved by the blame that was piled upon them.
And the Buddha who wasn't moved by the blame, the Buddha could have easily said, oh, well,
If those guys aren't going to teach you right, must be something wrong with them.
Yeah.
I'm sorry that they were incompetent.
I'll try and teach you.
He was unmoved, of course.
Of course.
There's no way the Buddha was going to entertain the blame of his chief disciples.
But it's a good example.
It's a reminder to us not to be moved by the blame of others on ourselves, which is a very important lesson.
Not to be upset or angered or belittled by other people's blame.
But also not to be moved by the blame that they pile on other people.
You hear some criticism of someone else, well, consider the source.
Is it a wise person who's saying this?
If it's a wise person, they probably wouldn't spend too much time criticizing others.
It's not really the way of wise people to waste their time criticizing, to engage in such harmful practices, unless it's really important and really necessary.
No, it's not to say, right, that a wise person won't criticize or blame someone, but they would have a really good reason to.
They would do it wisely without any desire to hurt the person who they're criticizing.
We shouldn't be moved by blame or praise.
We shouldn't be moved to be praised.
Our practice should not be about other people praising us.
If I act like this, people will love me more.
Maybe, maybe not.
Sometimes the love of others is a fickle thing.
The most important lesson here, I think, is about self-esteem.
It's not the direct lesson.
The direct lesson is don't scold others, I think.
But more importantly, the real direct lesson is that blame is not something that you can rely upon.
That everyone gets blamed.
It's a reminder that people might blame us even if we're doing the right thing.
Just because people blame you doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing.
And that blame is a very dangerous thing to cling to.
Blame or praise.
When we cling to it, it causes great stress and suffering.
When we engage in it, when we cling to it, whether people are blaming us or someone else.
So an important verse to remember, it's one that you often hear Buddhist teachers bring up.
Ah, yes.
No one in the world is free from blame.
It's a reminder.
You hear someone blaming someone else, you say, well, I blame everyone.
It doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with that person.
So, that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for listening.