Okay, so welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verse number 37, which reads as follows.
Which means,
Wandering afar.
Roaming afar.
Wandering alone.
Without a body.
Lying in a cave.
Dwelling in a cave.
Traveling afar.
wandering alone without a body, dwelling in a cave.
Whoever will subdue this mind, whoever will subdue this mind will become free from the bonds of Mara.
So I try to make it clear according to the intent of the verse.
There's a bit of a word play here, or a little bit of a trick to this verse.
The verse starts not by identifying what it is that it's talking about.
So you start to get a picture in your mind from the first half of the verse.
Durangamang of something that roams about.
Ekacharang, alone.
And then suddenly you hear that it's without body, incorporeal, somehow like a spirit or a ghost.
It dwells in a cave.
So with the first half of the stanza of the verse, you start to get this idea of some beast, some wild beast or monster.
First a beast, but actually more like a monster because it has no body.
And then the second part of the verse makes clear what we're talking about.
This beast, what are we talking about?
The beast of the mind.
Whoever can subdue this, the beast of the mind, will become free from the bonds of Mara, the binds or the fetters of evil.
So this story was given in regards to a monk called Sangharakita,
He was also called Sangarakita Baginiya, which means the nephew of Sangarakita.
Because the story goes that there was an elder named Sangarakita who was an arahant.
And he had a nephew who also was given the name Sangharakita because when he went forth they wanted to name the nephew after the uncle and so they called him Sangharakita as well.
And as it went, the nephew went forth after the uncle and actually became a monk as a pupil of the uncle.
The uncle became the preceptor of the nephew once the nephew came of age.
And the story goes that this nephew went to stay in a certain monastery and stayed there for the rains.
And at the end of the rains was given two good quality robes, one of seven spans and one of eight spans, or seven feet and eight feet or something like that.
And so he thought he'd give the bigger one.
He'd use the one that was seven widths for himself and give the one that was eight widths to his preceptor, to his uncle.
And so he went back to where his uncle was staying and found that his uncle was off on alms round.
And so he swept the place and put out water and set up a mat, a sitting mat for his uncle and waited for his uncle to arrive.
When he saw his uncle coming, he stood up and invited his uncle to sit down.
and poured water, washed his feet, and gave him drinking water, and started fanning him.
And while he was fanning him, he brought out this robe, placed it at the elder's feet, and said, Please, uncle, accept this robe from me as a gift from my preceptor.
Now, Sankara Akita was an Arahant, and their tendency, because of their fewness of wishes and their contentment, their tendency is to refuse things that they don't need.
And so he said to his nephew, my triple robe is complete.
I have my three robes.
I don't need another one.
Please, you make use of it yourself.
And the nephew said, please, uncle, or please, venerable sir,
since I got this robe, since the moment I got this robe, I have been determined to give it to you as a gift.
Please accept it.
And again the elder refused, and he tried again and again.
He was saying, please, this will be of a great benefit to me.
Please, I want to make merit.
This is something good.
And his uncle refused to take it, the elder Sankarakita, refused to take the robe.
And the story goes that he became so upset by this because he had really set it in his mind to give this robe and he was expecting his uncle to just go along with it, which is often the case when we want to do a good deed.
We expect it to be easy and to work out the way we think.
And so he was quite upset by this.
And he said, this elder was my uncle before.
And when we were lay people, he was always very kind and considerate and welcoming.
And now he's my preceptor and he won't even accept this robe from me.
What use is it being a monk?
It would be better if I disrobe and do good deeds then.
He became very agitated and dissatisfied with being a monk.
And so while he was standing there fanning his uncle, he started to have all these thoughts.
This is really a good story to tell about this concept of getting distracted or turning a small thing into a big thing, making mountains out of molehills, as they say.
Because it went from just thinking that the idea of doing a good deed, it became this upset and this desire actually to disrobe.
And then it went on and actually he started to think, but what will I do when I disrobe?
How can I live when I disrobe?
I've got no money or nothing.
And then so his mind just carried him away with it.
And he started thinking, but what I'll do is I'll sell this robe.
I'll take the robe that is eight.
It's the one that I was going to give to my uncle.
And instead of giving it to him because he won't accept it, I'll take it and I'll sell it.
And with the money again, I'll buy a goat.
That's what he started to think.
I'll buy a female goat.
That's what I'll do.
And because female goats are very prolific, every time it gives birth to a baby goat, I'll sell the baby goat.
And I'll sell goat after goat after goat.
and I'll make some money in this way, and I'll have some capital, moola.
Once I have the capital, then I will, once I have some money and some wealth, then I will find a wife.
And I guess in India at the time you needed money because you had to give money to the bride's parents as a dowry in these sorts of societies.
And
And then I'll get a wife, and then she'll give birth to a son.
And then once I have a son, then I'll take my son to meet my uncle.
And then my uncle will be so happy to meet his grandnephew, his nephew's son.
And so we'll get a little cart, and we'll put my son, like his mind just totally took him away with it.
get this little cart, little baby carriage, and we'll put the baby in the carriage, and we'll set out, the three of us, to go and see my uncle.
And then along the way, he's just thinking, picturing in his mind, and they're going along the way, and then my wife will
will be walking beside me and I'll say to her, give me my son, I wish to carry him for some time.
And the wife will say, you keep pushing the cart, what do you want with carrying your son?
And so they'll argue, we'll argue back and forth and then instead of giving me my son, she'll pick him up and carry him herself.
But she'll be so weak because of all the travel and because she's a woman, she won't be able to carry him.
Not strong like me, like a man.
And so then she'll drop my son.
And he'll fall in front of the carriage as I'm pushing it.
And he'll get crushed by the wheels and he'll die.
And then I'll get really angry with her.
and say, look what you've done.
You're so weak, you can't even carry this.
My son, you've destroyed me.
And then I'll take my stick and I'll whack her over the head.
It's amazing how far his mind went.
The problem, of course, besides the obvious, but the real problem with this is he was still fanning the elder when he was thinking this.
And so he's holding the fan and he's so lost in thought that when he comes to this part where he's going to hit his wife, he takes the fan and he whacks the elder over the head.
And Arahant did that.
And the elder just sits up and he thinks in his mind, he was an Arahant so he wasn't returned by him, but it was quite a shock I suppose.
And he thought in his mind, what is it that's causing him, why in the world would he hit me over the head?
And with his presence of mind he's able to see that the reason he hit me over the head is because he's daydreaming here.
And so he spoke up and he said to his nephew, he said, Sangharakita, just because you weren't able to hit your wife doesn't mean you have to hit an old elder like me.
What are you doing hitting someone who's an old elder like myself?
And Sangharakita woke up and realized what he was doing.
And he became so ashamed that he ran away.
And the Arahant elders sent the novices after him to grab him.
And the novices took him to the Buddha.
So they captured him and they took him to the Buddha.
And the Buddha saw this novice is coming and said, is that a monk that you're dragging towards?
And they say, yes, this monkey hit his preceptor over the head with a stick, with a fan.
And they say, is that true?
And I said, yes, it's true.
But why was it?
Because I was daydreaming.
Because my uncle wouldn't accept this robe, and so I got a little bit carried away with my thoughts.
And then the Buddha said, you have to be careful.
Don't think.
Don't you let this mind think the way it wants to.
It goes far.
and so on.
And then he gives the verse, durangamangi kaccharam asari ranguhasayam me chittam sanyamesam timukantim varabhandana.
A very good story, one for us to consider.
Just kind of a light story for us to think of.
But very much the case when we
let our minds wander.
It can become very much our reality.
I think we can even take this story one step further, or this concept one step further, because it really does apply to everything, even our lives, our reality, as it were.
is very much the same as a daydream.
Even our whole lives is very much this kind of a daydream.
The mind will take us so far away.
Even when we do meet with these kind of situations where
where we are investing in business and developing capital, our mind still takes us further and further away, and you can still think of it as daydream.
The mind is something that is very difficult to subdue and very difficult to keep on track, very difficult to keep with the task at hand.
Even our lives, the lives that we do live, can be seen as some kind of daydream that we have.
The lesson which we take from this is that the mind runs away with us.
The mind takes us away with it.
It can do this even in our lives.
When a problem arises, we begin to develop thoughts and ideas and plans and goals and so on.
But there's no better example, I think, especially for us,
as this exact kind of situation, where we're in a monastic setting, or we're in a meditation center, and a problem arises, a difficulty arises, some conflict arises, and it takes us away with it.
How many times, when you're even just undergoing a meditation course, does your mind suddenly tell you that you can't stay here, that something has to be done, that you have to go home, and then what are you going to do at home?
People will even if their presence of mind is not strong enough, they will actually interrupt their meditation courses in order to pursue their goals.
I've had meditators who halfway through their course will come and tell me that they're leaving to go and start a business.
They've realized what is the, exactly like this story, they've realized what is their goal.
This happens again and again as a monk.
When difficulty arises, your mind will start to wander and you'll think, I can't take this anymore.
It's time.
I have to go back and live the lay life.
When monks come to tell you that they're going to this robe, once you get talking to them, you realize how far their minds have gone.
how they've already begun to plan their lives.
So it's very difficult to convince people who have decided to disrobe to come back because their mind is already gone.
Their mind is no longer with you.
This happens with meditators, it happens with monks.
It's something that we have to guard ourselves against.
So this is durangamang, that the mind goes far.
This can apply in many instances.
in our lives we have plans and we get very much caught up in our lives.
We get caught up in goals, we get caught up in ideas and dreams.
and therefore get caught up in busyness.
We eventually decide we're going to take out a loan or a mortgage, or we're going to build or invest in something, and we're going to start a family and so on, and we develop all sorts of binds or fetters based on this mind that takes us away with it.
We start to think that
We'll do this and we'll gain something from it.
We'll become something from it.
This will be a good thing for us.
suddenly we find ourselves trapped in these dreams that we have, trapped in the illusions that we've built up for ourselves.
Somehow we've committed ourselves to these things.
When people come to know us for our business or our family, our wives, our husbands, our children,
and we have to take care of them, and suddenly we're caught up in the results of our dreams, the place that our mind has taken us.
So for example, this is where Sangharakita would have found himself if he hadn't been so close to the Buddha.
He would have actually gone off and
And maybe if he hadn't hit the elder over the head, he would have actually left and decided to get caught up in this sort of life.
And the very things that he was dreaming about could very well have come true.
Or, of course, much worse and much more and much more of a tangle.
But this is most pertinent in the meditation setting, when we're practicing meditation, or when we're in a monastic setting, when we're in a meditation center, when we're trying to develop ourselves and stay on track, the mind will carry us away.
A small problem becomes a huge problem.
So there's something insignificant, as the elder just stating the fact that he had enough robes,
turned into a huge problem for this monk.
And so the one lesson that I think is very important that we bring away from this is not to make more of things than they actually are.
Not to see a simple problem or a simple set of experiences as an insurmountable problem, as a real obstacle, or even as an entity.
We should never let our minds trick us into thinking that these experiences that we have, and by experiences I mean really everything in our lives, what we label as a problem, or a conflict, or an issue in our lives,
to not see it as a problem or an issue or even a situation, to just see it as experience from moment to moment, to see everything like this.
This goes really with everything in our meditation.
When we have pains in the body,
not to let ourselves become convinced that there's something wrong, that maybe we're going to injure ourselves.
When there's thoughts in the mind or emotions in the mind, not to come to think that there's anything to them.
And this goes very much with addiction.
So when, for example, with...
with a problem that arises, anger arises in the mind.
You start to think about a problem that exists or a conflict that exists and great anger can arise in the mind.
Now, as I've said many times, the anger itself isn't a substantial problem.
The anger is something that causes you suffering, but that's all it is.
It doesn't, in and of itself, mean that you have to go and fall into conflict with others or run away from the situation or change your life or so on.
It simply means that now anger has arisen in the mind.
If lust arises or a craving arises, this is what most often leads a male monk to disrobe, from what I've seen.
They will come and they will tell you that they want to disrobe for this reason or that reason.
But the only thing that you'll see change within a week of their disrobing.
They will be married or engaged or somehow connected with some woman that they've known.
and so what happens is in the meditation practice or in their efforts to cultivate a pure mind there will arise these impurities in the mind and they will think this is too much for me this means this is a cause for me to disrobe or the only thing for me to do in regards to this lust in regards to this attachment is to disrobe and so it will become
a real problem for them when in fact all it is is lust arising in the mind and the pleasant feelings and so on and if we can break it up into these constituent parts whether it be anger whether it be greed or even delusion whether it be some kind of self-righteousness where we've been mistreated ill-treated unfairly treated and we begin to think that that uh
there is some injustice occurring.
Even in regards to that,
we can become caught up and we can lose our monastic life.
There's another reason why people disrobe is because of their feelings of injustice.
I talked about this Abhidhamma teacher.
He didn't disrobe and I was quite surprised to meet him sometime later, but it was enough to make him leave the monastery.
His feeling that he had been ill-treated and there was an injustice and there was impropriety going on and so on.
And because it became a real problem in his mind, he wasn't able to stay and he wasn't able to acknowledge it and he wasn't able to let go.
So even when we feel like the monastery has big problems and there's impropriety or there's injustice
something wrong with the place that we're living.
Whatever these problems are, to come to see that they're just experience, that they don't really exist, and they're mostly just these thoughts that come up in the mind.
So this is durangamang, that the mind wanders far into.
takes something very simple and develops into something big and can get totally removed from reality.
So the reality of our lives, the reality of our meditation practice, the reality of the experience, we totally lose this.
The mind has a very difficult time to stay close, to stay next to the reality.
So really this is what our meditation practice is all about,
bring the mind back again and again moment to moment to the ultimate reality, to the experience itself.
Ekacharang means there is only one mind arising at any given time.
The mind can't take two objects at once.
So it's kind of pertinent in this story because you can see that he totally lost track of where he was and his mind was totally unable to connect with the reality.
He was actually living this virtual reality of hitting his wife.
this non-existent life at that.
But this same concept can very much apply to our meditation.
Our mind can either be with the present moment or it can be with a thought.
It can't be in both.
You can't be meditating and thinking at the same time.
So you can't be living your life, engaging in your business and actively pursuing your goals and your thoughts and your dreams, and at the same time be meditating.
Someone asked me yesterday, one of the people visiting the monastery,
asked me whether it was possible to be successful in business and still practice meditation.
Of course, the answer that you normally would hear is that yes, it's possible.
But when you think about it, and when I thought about it, it seemed to me that no, actually, it's not really so possible after all.
Because the more you practice meditation, the less you're going to think about your work.
And if you actually are mindful during the time that you work, it is actually not going to lead to success.
If you're aware of the experiences as they occur, you're not going to have no ambition, you're going to have no dreams, you're not going to have any thoughts about the future.
You're not going to plan for the future, you're not going to worry about the future, you're not going to think about the future at all.
And so your business will probably not do so well.
The reason I thought like this is because we have the example of an Arahant, an Arahant who can't stay as a layperson.
When a person becomes an Arahant, either they ordain or they pass away.
There's no other possibility.
And this is because of their lack of interest, total lack of interest, and lack of ability really to conceive of things, to give rise to conception or plans or desires or so on.
So either they live in a situation where they are able to dedicate themselves to
to the ultimate reality, like as the Buddhist monk, or else they just naturally pass away and enter into full Nibbāma.
So the mind can only take one object at once, and you might say that the mind is
that the mind is only capable of one path.
So you have to choose for yourself what path you want to do.
And this is most obvious for people who are engaged in unwholesome activities.
So people who come to practice meditation and at the same time are engaging in unwholesome livelihood.
For example, this one meditator who was a biologist and he was very interested in Buddhism.
and so he came to ask me about meditation and with what little I knew at the time I explained to him and led him through the meditation course but after some time he came to me and he was really concerned about his actions as a biologist and how he was
dissecting rats and killing rats and guinea pigs and animals and so on and he found that it was really getting in the way of his meditation practice and i told them at the time that he had it was quite clear that he had to choose one or the other there's nothing that can be said there's no solution to this either you you
create suffering or you find peace.
You can't do both at once.
And so the mind can only go in one direction at once.
You can't both stay in the world and leave the world.
You can't both find peace and pursue stress, pursue a stressful active life.
You have to choose one or the other.
Asarirang, that the mind is without body.
It just goes without saying, and it's really just a kind of a trick to help solve the riddle, because it's much like a riddle, this verse.
The first half is something where you could pause and ask, what is it, like in The Hobbit, for example.
So here you have a riddle, and you have to give the answer.
What is it that wanders alone, roams afar, wanders alone, is without a body, and dwells in a cave?
But asarilang is interesting for another reason, that the mind is not something you can find.
It's not something you can look for.
It's not something you can even look inside and come to see.
Many people have actually tried to do this.
There's a meditation group that I was listening to.
I was listening to a talk that one of their leaders gave.
And they said that the mind has this size and you can actually see it in your body.
And if you practice a certain type of meditation, you come to see the mind, and you come to see how big it is.
It's about the size of an ostrich egg.
And this is very much against the Buddhist teaching, which says that the mind is asalhiram, that it has no form.
And the reason why this is important is to help us to see the distinction between the body and the mind, help us to remind us that
that what we're seeing is only a concept.
And it tells us that we can't actually find the mind, we can't look for it.
But it's kind of a funny thing to do anyway, because what are you using to look?
You're using the mind.
So when you say, you focus on, say, your abdomen here and you see your mind.
Well, what is it that's seeing the mind, right?
It's actually the real mind.
Whatever you see is just an object of the mind.
If you say, I was looking and I found the mind.
Well, what is it that found the mind?
How could you possibly, since it's the mind that is doing the finding, how could you possibly find it?
The importance this has for a meditation is that it reminds us not to try to take the mind as a meditation object.
How do we do that?
Or how do we accomplish the meditation goal, the goal of the meditation practice?
If we're not focusing on the mind, we focus on the body.
We start by focusing on the stomach, for example.
We focus on the breath, or we focus on the sensations in the body.
We focus on the thoughts that arise.
We focus on the object of experience.
We don't actually focus on the mind.
And what happens is that as you focus on, for example, the stomach,
you'll see the mind naturally.
Why?
Because what's looking at the stomach is the mind.
And you'll learn about the mind without actually observing the mind.
Because you can't observe your own mind, right?
So you'll be watching rising, falling, and suddenly the mind wanders.
And suddenly you're thinking about something else, thinking about hitting your wife or so on.
And so then you'll come back and you'll realize, oh, I was wandering there.
And in this way you'll learn about the mind.
You didn't ever have to take the mind as your object, just by taking the body as the object.
you will learn about the mind.
So in meditation practice we don't actually look to find the mind.
And people who say that they've experienced this mind or that mind, the best you can do is to realize after the state of the mind.
When you have anger, to realize that that was an angry mind.
According to the Abhidhamma, we can never actually be mindful of something as it occurs because we're too busy knowing it.
When we see something, we're busy seeing it.
So the next moment is when we're mindful, when we actually remind ourselves that we're seeing.
So the mind is not something that you can take directly as a meditation object.
It's something that you come to know through your perception of the body.
And this is why we do, for example, walking meditation.
Why we do, when we sit, why we watch the stomach.
People think, well, this is kind of a mundane sort of thing, a boring sort of object to watch.
Not of any use, because it has nothing to do with my mind, my soul, my spirit, or something.
But what it's going to teach you is how the mind relates to the object.
The reason why we find it boring and uninteresting is because of the problems in the mind.
This is what we want to examine, is how the mind...
reacts to the observation of something mundane, something simple, something ordinary.
And so we are walking, stepping right, stepping left, and we come to learn how the mind reacts.
Sometimes the mind is bored, sometimes the mind is interested, sometimes the mind is happy, sometimes unhappy.
So this is an important part of the word asarirang.
Guhasayang is interpreted to mean that the mind dwells inside the body.
The mind is inside this cave of the body.
So the body is this shell and the mind is like a person sitting in the
the room looking out.
And this is useful for helping remind us of where we are and who we are.
That our experience, it's quite actually a simple teaching and it's something that seems quite obvious, intuitive.
That of course the mind is within the body, but there's an important point here.
that this is all that is real, that all of these thoughts that we have and the plans that we have and our interactions with the world around us, for example, our interactions with other people, this monk's interactions with his preceptor, this is all illusion, this is all conception.
The reality is the mind is, even though we say it goes far, it's stuck in this cave, it's stuck in this shell of a body.
So that when you interact with another person, you're not actually interacting with them.
You're simply receiving experience at the ear and the up, and the six senses, and interpreting that like a person sitting at home in front of their computer.
You're sitting at home in front of your computer and you see us sitting here giving a Dhamma talk and listening to the Dhamma.
But actually you're still there at home.
But even more than that, you're actually still within your body and you're not even interacting with the computer.
But it's similar to that state.
But actually reality is here within this six-foot frame, as the Buddha said, the end of the universe.
You'll find here the origin of the universe, the end of the universe.
There's a story of a monk who tried to find the end of the universe and went, like scientists do, astronauts do, trying to find the limits of the universe.
and he actually died died on his way and wasn't able to find he went for a hundred years and couldn't find the end of the universe and passed away and then as an angel he came to the Buddha and asked him where is the end of the universe and the Buddha said oh you can't find the end of the universe that way I've tried that before and he told him a story how he did exactly the same thing and he said no no that's not how you find the end of the universe but he said within this imassuming
within this very being that is six feet tall and three feet wide and two feet thick or one foot thick this is where you find the beginning of the universe and this is where you find the end of the universe so it is an important teaching even though it's quite obvious reminds us that this is reality our reality is this being we can never step outside of it we can never be free from this
Even you might say with out-of-body experiences, that there's still, because it's on the level of conception, there's the concept that your mind is outside of the body.
But as soon as you come back to seeing, seeing, hearing, hearing,
you'll find that actually you're still very much confined to a specific space, or you're still very much confined to a specific set of experiences.
I'm not sure if it would be possible, what exactly would happen, but you'll find that you'll quickly come back and quickly lose the experience of traveling, of astral travel or something.
So the person who is able to subdue the mind, and he uses the word subdue here, and it's a nice one when you're thinking of the idea of the mind being some monster or some wild creature, that's really the best description to use, that this is a description of a wild beast or a wild creature.
So the subduing of the mind is the giving up and the cleaning out, the untying of these knots and this tangle that exists in our mind.
This tangle that leads us to
fall into such craziness.
They come up with such ideas and such plans and so on.
And this is why we see the world, the world of human beings sprouting up like wildflowers.
And you see people in so many different walks of life simply because of the tangles and the confusion in their minds.
There's no rational explanation for why different people are drawn to different occupations.
We've come up with all these ideas like it's
it's just my partiality, it's just the way I am, or that it's my genes, or that it's my upbringing, or so on.
What it is actually is our confusion in our mind, the wild nature of the mind that takes us into such craziness.
So you see people out there, if you look objectively, you'll realize that actually the state of things with human beings is quite...
quite chaotic and shocking, really, to see there are people who destroy themselves.
Right now and throughout the world, there are people who are destroying themselves, driving themselves into insanity and to breakdown, to burnout and so on.
People who are causing such suffering for others, who are destroying and corrupting their own minds.
People who are engaging in such debauchery and hedonism.
and destroying and burning their own minds up.
This is all because of the wildness of the mind.
So here we are coming to subdue our minds and keep our minds in the cage, keep our minds in the framework of reality, in the corral.
So whoever can do this will become free from the bonds of Mara.
The bonds of Mara, you see, Mara's realm is outside of our corral.
So I've given this a simile of the fence posts.
But it's not really actually to keep us in.
Or it's not really to cage us.
People think, well, this sounds very...
very confining.
But the point is that when the mind goes outside of this, it's the mind itself that suffers.
The mind becomes trapped by Mara.
So the Buddha gives another simile, not of a corral, but of a dwelling ground or the homeland or the familiar land of a quail.
So a quail will be
at most at home in a rugged terrain where it can dive under bushes and behind clumps of soil and so on.
But when it goes out onto the plain, then an eagle might catch it.
And when the eagle, there's a story, the Buddha tells a story of this quail that did that and then this eagle caught it.
and carried it up in its claws and the quail was moaning and complaining and saying, oh, if only I had stayed within my homeland, within my own territory, then there's no way this eagle would have caught me.
And the eagle heard this and said, and was so proud of itself, it said, phew, I could catch you anywhere you go.
And so they had a bet and the eagle said, okay, then I'll drop you down and we'll see if I can catch you.
And so there the quail stood up in its own territory in the eagle.
dove down at the quail and was going to catch the quail and the quail, at the last moment it dove behind a rock and the eagle smashed into the rock and died.
The Buddha gives this as just a little story to explain the difference between staying in your own territory, staying in the familiar, the place where your mind is comfortable, the place where you're comfortable, where you're familiar with, and to go out into unknown territory.
So the Buddha called the four Satipatthana, or you might say he called reality our territory.
And anywhere outside of reality, outside of the realm of the four foundations of mindfulness, the body and the mind basically, is the territory of Mara.
And it's where we become lost and where we become prey to Mara, to evil.
Because this is what happens.
As soon as your mind is out of the experience of reality and into conception, into illusion, into thoughts and dreams and plans and goals, it's now in the realm of Mara.
And so this is where there is no more guide.
So my teacher always says, there's no captain for the boat.
If you want a boat to get somewhere, you need a captain.
The boat is the mind, and the water is the object of experience.
Without mindfulness, once your mind gets out, it's like a boat without a captain, a boat without someone steering it.
It will go anywhere on the ocean.
Or you could say a boat without a rudder.
If you think of mindfulness as the rudder, there's a board that goes down.
If you don't have that board in the middle of the boat,
You can't even, even with the captain, you can't get anywhere.
The boat will go side to side.
The boat has no means of directing itself.
So this is why we see such chaos in the world.
We see people thinking that they can build up concepts in a way that is going to be stable, in a way that is going to be satisfying, in a way that is going to be controllable.
And because there is no direction, there is no stability in the mind.
They will constantly be, just like they're trying to direct the boat, but without the center board, without the rudder.
the rudder, no, the keel, no, or the centerboard.
Without the keel, then the boat can't stay on course.
No matter how much you try, the boat will not stay on course.
And the mind is the same.
Even if you try to set up your life and try to keep your job or your family or your situation stable, there's nothing stable in the world.
But a person who develops mindfulness, a person who does stabilize their mind, does one thing.
If you can subdue the mind, if you can make the mind experience reality clearly for what it is, when you see, know that you're seeing.
When you hear, know that you're hearing.
When you smell, know that you're smelling, and so on.
Whatever experience you have, if you're able to see it simply as that experience, as we say, when you see something, say to yourself, seeing, seeing and hearing, when you feel pain, so pain, pain.
If you're able to keep your mind in that, the mind will never fall into this sort of
partiality judgment projections.
So when this monk's uncle refused to accept the robe, if he had just been mindful of the situation, thinking, thinking, or been mindful of his own upset, upset, upset, and so on, it would have ended there, and it wouldn't have gone on to the thoughts of hitting his wife, and eventually the hitting of the elder.
If you can be aware of what you're doing, there's no way that your mind will become
caught up in such delusion until you become free from these sorts of daydreams and these sorts of illusions daydreams which can become an entire lifetime our whole life can become an illusion based on our delusions based on our thoughts and ideas and goals and so on
So, another important talk.
This is a verse that is one that I remember quite well.
It's a verse that is well worth memorizing and keeping in mind.
It's really the subduing of the mind, and we should remember what the mind is like.
This whole section is very much about, it's the jitta vaga, it's explaining about the mind.
So you see the similarities with them, reminding us of the nature of the mind, how the mind
how difficult it is to control the mind and how fickle the mind can be how light it can be and flighty it can be
and how much care it takes to guard the mind, and how much work it takes to subdue the mind.
And finally, how much benefit there is in subduing and guarding the mind.
So, another verse of the Dhammapada.
Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.