Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 71, which reads as follows.
nahi pāpaṁ kataṁ kammaṁ sajyukīraṁ vā mucati tahantam bālamanveti basma-cannuva-pāvakauti
Which means, he indeed, a evil action, when an evil action is done, just like milk, just like milk, just like milk,
means changes immediately forget the grammar just as milk doesn't go bad immediately doesn't change spoil immediately so too or evil deeds that are done when you do evil deeds well just as milk doesn't spoil immediately
Evil deeds are the same in that they follow the fool, Bala Manveti.
The hantang, burning, they follow the fool burning him or her.
Basmat channuva bhavako, just as fire covered with ashes, just like fire covered over by ashes, meaning smoldering underneath.
So the fire doesn't...
burn up immediately, but there's fire in the ashes.
When the fire burns down, it's still hot and it can still rise up and burn you.
So evil deeds are like that.
This verse was given supposedly because Mahamoggalana
while staying in Vultures Peak, Hijakuta, which I have now visited three times.
We just recently visited Vultures Peak.
It's a small mountain above Rajagaha that looks somewhat like a vulture at the top.
Or you can at least get how it was named by the locals.
It also seems to have had a reputation for being haunted.
It's where Maha Moggallanas saw many ghosts.
And so on this occasion, he was going on alms round with a thousand, anyway, with a retinue of other monks, I think, although it's not clear whether it was monks or it was just a bunch of ascetics from the area also going on alms rounds.
just getting in line with all these guys.
But it's also quite possible that this was the group of 1,000 monks who had previously been ascetics.
The grammar is not clear.
They had previously been ascetics and now had the people who the Buddha taught the... the...
Aditya Paryaya Sutta, the discourse on the fire, on burning.
Anyway, there were a thousand of these ascetics going into Rajgaha for alms.
So Mahamogalana went with, I think the other monk was Luck, and that was his name.
Along the way, Maha Moggallana saw a huge snake.
Was it a snake?
He saw a huge, yes, first he saw a huge snake with a head like a human and a body of a snake, but just huge, many stories, big, flying through the air on fire.
and in anguish.
So it was a ghost that was in terrible pain and suffering.
And this is sort of a theme that seems that there are many spirits of this sort wandering around the earth in terrible pain and suffering.
And Maha Moggallana smiled and the monk who was with him asked, why are you smiling?
It's funny how you might think that Arahants have a bit of a queer sense of humor.
Maha Moggallana was an Arahant.
It's interesting because they do seem to have a bit of a unique sense of humor.
The smile is not because of seeing suffering, but it's a...
sort of amazement or sort of a happiness that comes from understanding the Buddha's teaching or understanding the truth and being free from the rounds of samsara.
It's a difficult thing to say because it sounds somewhat cruel.
But it certainly is not cruel.
There's no sense that he wanted to hurt this being or he was happy for their suffering or so on.
It is absolutely not happy for their suffering, which would be a sort of a cruel state.
But it's a smile at the magnitude of the truth and of one's own freedom from that suffering.
But I think there's just a sense of awe and amazement at the nature of reality.
Like when you see something, wow, that's amazing.
But there's no sense of sadness, I think, is an important point to get across.
People often think when you see someone suffering you have to feel sad, otherwise you have no compassion.
That's clearly not the case.
There's a sense of happiness involved with compassion.
Compassion is a very happy state, and someone who is truly compassionate smiles, and smiles at the people who are suffering.
Sadness is anger, it's aversion to the state.
It's not wholesome.
Whereas smiling can be wholesome, as in this case.
Well, it's actually not wholesome because an arahat is only functional, but it's a positive state or it's a pure state.
And so anyway, Mahalakana, the monk who was with him, was curious and asked, because he didn't see this huge snake flying through the air.
So he asks Mahamoggalana, why are you smiling?
And Moggallana doesn't say anything.
He says, ask me again when we're in front of the Buddha.
And I might be getting this wrong, but he sees another ghost.
Anyway, he sees two ghosts.
Let's not get into the details.
He sees two ghosts.
One, the first one's a snake, and then another day he sees a crow.
Same deal, a huge crow, also on fire.
And he's just amazed by this state.
And he actually...
he asks the crow, yeah, the second one, he asks the crow, what did you do to get into this state?
It's not actually a crow, it's some kind of ghost in the shape of a crow.
And the crow says that he, in a past life, he stole, he was a crow, and stole some food
three mouthfuls of food.
Now the English version says that it's just food that was left over from a offering to monks.
And the grammar is again not clear, but I think that's an odd
I think there's not a very likely reading.
So I went to the Thai translation and it says, it points out that it's not what was left over.
It's not, it wasn't.
So what happened was these lay people got together and they were offering food to the monks in the area.
Many, many monks getting together.
And in a time of a past Buddha, you see this is very far into the past.
and
So they brought all this food from their homes and then the crow came and ate this food.
So the question is, when did he eat it?
Because it's kind of ethically important.
The crow was watching all this going on and I guess to some extent understood what it meant.
But somehow the power of the fact that the food was dedicated to pure individuals, ostensibly pure and enlightened beings,
There was a heavy karmic corruption in the crow's mind.
You could think of it as even if the animals don't know what's going on, they can feel the purity.
And so the corruption in the crow's mind to be able to act against that and to take food that was clearly designated for other purposes.
is a powerful act.
So to me that isn't likely to have been the case if it was just left over.
So with this suspicion went to the Thai translation and it's actually the opposite.
The Thai translation says,
No, it wasn't food that was already given to the monks.
It wasn't even food that they had said, this is for the monks.
It also wasn't food that they were taking home as leftovers.
It was just food that they had brought there, not yet having designated it for any purpose, but brought it just for the general purpose of making this offering.
The point is it was involved with something pure and that's an interesting case.
There are two interesting cases and that's sort of the thing you have to know about the Dhammapada.
As I've said before, the stories are often a little bit wild and shocking for some people.
It might not be what you'd expect from me and from the teachings that I give, which try to be very sort of, I guess, secular, you could say, or non-mystical.
But the mystical comes very much from the practical and from the empirical.
And so it's just a matter of understanding why it is that ghostly beings can exist, why it is that karmic retribution like this can occur.
Anyway, the other ghost, so Moggallana goes with this monk to
to see the Buddha.
I think probably, or maybe how it happened, although that's not how it's written in the book, is that the crow happened before and then he came and saw this snake and so he brought, he went to the Buddha.
The reason being is, if he had said, oh I see a big snake up there, it would be like bragging first of all, showing that he has some kind of magical powers.
Moggallana was the Buddha's chief disciple in regards to magical powers.
But it would also mean that he would have to stand on his own and stand against criticism or suspicion that he was lying or making it up or pretending to be some magical person.
So he said, well, let's go and wait and ask me that in front of the Buddha.
So they go in front of the Buddha, Moggallana,
relates what he saw, and then the Buddha says, oh yes, I was at Kichikutta as well, and I saw the same ghost.
thereby being a witness.
And the Buddha said as well, I didn't want to say anything until I had a witness.
Because you don't want, it's not that you feel self-conscious or anything, it's you don't want people to get unwholesome thoughts and doubts in their mind.
So instead when you have two people who can verify each other's stories, then it has a lot, it has more credence anyway.
So
And so the snake ghost in a past life had been a man and had invited an enlightened being, a Pacheco Buddha, to come and stay in a sort of a temporary leaf hut near this person's land.
This person was a farmer.
And so as a result of this, the purity and the fame of this enlightened being, many people came to visit him in this
rural area and many of them would just be ordinary townspeople and ignorant to the farmer's work and so they'd trample all of his crops and eventually many people came and as a result often his crops would be damaged, perhaps even ruined.
And he got more and more frustrated until finally he thought to himself, you know, look, the only reason these people are coming and trampling my crops is because of this stupid, enlightened individual.
This, this, this, I probably didn't think of him as that, but this, this con artist, maybe he thought, this, anyway, this religious individual.
So he thought, well, the only thing for me to do is obviously to burn down his hut and chase him away.
So that's what he did.
He burned down this hut and, I'm not sure, chased him away, but burned down the hut and destroyed the residence of the Pachacabuddha, who immediately left without a word or a complaint.
But the townspeople weren't as forgiving.
So they came at that point and asked the farmer, what happened to this hut?
It's all burnt down.
And the farmer said, I burnt it down or something like that.
And you're trampling all my crops.
I had to get rid of them.
And suffice to say the townspeople who were just ordinary individuals and not enlightened, they were not happy and being incensed and furious with this guy.
They beat him and stabbed him and killed him.
sort of yeah bad karma all around but you can say it was far worse karma too it's interesting actually not far worse karma but pretty weighty karma to do something to such a pure individual and that's important you know it was awful that he he was murdered and that's definitely bad karma for the people who beat him to death
But there is a recognition of the power of purity.
And that's sort of what's being presented in this tale, is that karma depends on your own actions, but it also depends on the people who suffer from it.
So if they deserve it, it's far less weighty, in the sense that they've done bad things as well, or in the sense that they're hoarding things.
If you steal from the rich, for example,
It's unwholesome because you're creating hostility and you're going against someone's rightful ownership.
You're taking something away from someone.
But if it's just a drop in the ocean, then it's far less weighty.
Further, if it's someone who's corrupt and evil, making them angry isn't that big of a deal or hurting them is bad.
But it's far worse if the person is pure because you're acting against this natural inclination to like the person and to appreciate their goodness.
You're going in the opposite direction or you're moving yourself very far away from them.
And also because of the greatness of their being.
So in this case, the greatness of that person being in that location, chasing him away was a very, very bad thing for many, many people, not just the enlightened being himself.
So that's the story, basically.
And then the Buddha gives this verse.
He says,
Yes, it's amazing how evil deeds, or it wasn't amazing to the Buddha, but this is the way of evil deeds, he said.
that they don't just flare up and then disappear.
They smolder.
And often, you don't even see that they're evil.
As we talked about earlier, I believe that tokang tokang, bit by bit, they fill.
It's like drops in a cup.
Until it gets overflowed, you don't realize that it's full.
So this is the lesson in this verse, in this story.
The caution always is that it leads to magical thinking, to the idea that karma is some kind of cosmic force out there.
How does it work?
Is it God?
Is it like God?
People say, well, you have karma, we have God.
What's the difference?
That's quite different, really.
I mean, karma is just another physical law.
So as I said, it's important for us to connect.
It's not a physical law, it's a natural law.
It's important for us to connect the moment-by-moment reality to the results, these big results of the huge snake ghost and the huge crow ghost.
um,
And so it's important to understand that karma is this natural sort of law.
It's a part of nature.
Like this hypothetical, probably wrong concept that if a butterfly beats its wings in China, there's earthquakes in America.
Probably doesn't happen.
But the point is that
We accept that in the physical world, the most minor change can potentially have awesome repercussions, gigantic, huge repercussions.
But we don't realize that the mind works actually very much the same way.
Actually, if you think about it, it's quite obvious, quite clearly the case.
Our actions change everything in our lives.
The decisions that we make are affected by our minds.
And that changes our lives quite significantly.
the impressions we make on others, the... the... the...
care that we take in our actions.
So people who are angry or people who are lost in thought and so on are much more likely to hurt themselves physically and so on.
And then the habit that is formed.
Of course, this is the connection here, is that karma works on a momentary level.
When you get angry, it hurts you.
When you get greedy, it sets you up for disappointment.
But it also changes you.
It changes who you are.
And this is sort of the meaning of how
It leads on to further rebirth.
A very profound act, like killing someone or stealing something from someone, something that is cruel and unwarranted, even cruel like this, like burning down someone's house who didn't deserve it and who was actually deserving of a...
great respect and reverence even.
These acts leave an impression on one's mind.
You can feel when you've done them.
If anyone in your past, you've done these deeds, you can feel how it changes you.
It really drops your... It's like suddenly you're carrying something around with you that you can't let go of.
And that's what leads you to be reborn in hell.
That's what leads to be reborn as a ghost or as an animal.
It's not magic.
It's the change, the coarseness that comes.
And conversely, if you work to refine yourself, work to better yourself, work to practice charity and morality and meditation,
then your mind becomes lighter and it's like relieving burdens and you can feel yourself feeling lighter and happier and so as a result you go to heaven which is of course always described as light and airy and up there you know in the cosmos.
It's not exactly up there, but it's in a sense up and out and expansive, whereas hell is far more repressed and constricted.
So the point here is to not be negligent.
And these sort of stories are of course given to people who accept this idea of future consequences of our deeds as a reminder of just how bad it can get.
Just how dangerous bad deeds can be.
If you don't want to be a ten-story snake or a crow the size of
the sky dome, the baseball stadium, burning and crying and wailing at your misfortune.
And just be careful with all things.
Be careful is very good Buddhist advice.
It has very much to do with what we're talking about being mindful.
shows how important mindfulness is.
So this kind of reminder is useful, this kind of story is a useful reminder, whether or not you scoff at the story, the idea of a ghost of that sort, who knows?
The idea that such beings exist, to me, isn't far-fetched or difficult to understand.
physical science hasn't found any proof and seems quite clear, any evidence of such things.
But then of course it's always, physical science is always looking for verification of reality.
That statement, and just if we can go a bit off on the tangent here, try not to go too far,
There was interesting work done in the last century gathering how good physical science is at ignoring anomalies.
This is just to point out for the skeptic that even if you did get a blip on a radar that turned out to be a ghost, how would you know it was a ghost?
And history shows, you know, you can plot out the statistics, you know, 99% of the time it will be disregarded as an anomaly.
And you'll say, you know, problem with the equipment, etc., etc.
Science is not perfect.
So the potential that science could detect such beings I think is still there.
But I think a more important point is that no matter what we know about the physical realm, there's nothing that says that's it.
There's nothing that says that there couldn't be some other aspect to reality.
And in fact,
seems that there has to be something more because we don't have the whole picture.
Quantum physics shows us that there's something missing and unless you believe in multiple universes you have a choice.
You can either believe in all of those theories or you can see what's right in front of you and that's the mind.
To see that there is a mental aspect to reality and in fact
In some sense, reality is based on experience.
The only way you can talk about the physical realm is from a point of view of observation, which we would say is your own experience.
The point being that there's no real reason to believe that different states of existence could exist.
This state of existence exists and there's nothing special about it.
So anyway, that's not the important point.
The important point is the recognition that our deeds have consequences, and often those consequences are not easily foreseeable.
They could even be chance.
You could lose the opportunity of a lifetime if you have a job interview or an exam or something, but you're not mentally there.
It can change your life.
You could have all the greatest opportunities in the world and miss them.
You could have the worst luck in the world and by being mindful and pure in the mind you could get the greatest break or at the very least you could be happy.
But more to the point here is that great things could happen to you.
I had a story that I tell often now of this woman who contacted me and we were in touch for a long time and she was in a desperate hopeless situation, sort of trapped in someone else's house.
And long story short, I got her to do some chanting, just as a sort of a backup to give her confidence and reassurance.
And it calmed her and it brought her peace.
And so as a result of this change, just a minor change in her life,
she decided to bring a Buddha image into her room.
And it turned out that this family refused to have that in their house and they ordered her to destroy it.
And instead of destroying it, she found someone, a friend of a friend who would come and pick it up.
And that friend of the friend came to pick up the Buddha image.
and take it away and they got talking and it turns out that they were quite obviously quite impressed by her sort of spiritual practice and they gave her a job they found her a job they said oh so here's someone you can go and live with and take care of I think take care of an old woman or something
And so she did.
She just up and left and was suddenly freed from her situation.
I always think of this as sort of an example of how setting your mind in the right way changes you, because she suddenly couldn't live with these people.
And this is kind of a karmic dissonance, which is actually a thing.
People with different karmas
No matter how hard they try, they can't mesh together, and they'll repel.
Whereas people with similar karma will attract.
And so the purity of her mind, you know, just naturally gravitated her towards these people.
And when they met, there was a connection.
They could feel the, or see the connection, or feel this similarity.
So, these are all sort of part of this idea of how
Evil deeds, good deeds, they have far-reaching consequences.
Just like milk doesn't curdle immediately, if you're not careful and you leave the milk out, it will spoil.
Same with evil deeds.
If you're not careful with your mind,
you keep it out in the evil, in amongst the defilements, your mind will eventually spoil, your life will spoil.
So people who think they can get away with evil and say, no bad is happening to me,
They don't understand this teaching.
This is like milk.
You put the milk in the heat, it's still good.
You take a sip, it's still good.
And then suddenly, it's spoiled.
Life can be like that.
This farmer thought he'd done a great thing, so he even boasted about it.
And then suddenly he's dead and in hell.
And coming back as a huge snake ghost.
So that's the Dhammapada for today.
and our live session so thank you for tuning in and wishing you