Okay, good evening.
So we're looking at the Dhammapada again tonight.
Continuing with verse 193, which reads as follows.
Which means, a
A thoroughbred man is hard to find, hard to get, hard to find.
They are not born everywhere.
In a place where such a wise person is born, that family finds great happiness.
There's not much of a story.
This is another one of Ananda's questions.
Ananda didn't become enlightened until after the Buddha passed away.
So you sometimes wonder whether these questions were a part of that.
I think that's perhaps a little unfair, but he seems to be very much interested in gaining all the theoretical knowledge he can while the Buddha is still around.
And I don't think you can necessarily chastise him for it.
I don't think the Buddha ever did.
Buddha seemed to understand that Ānanda would become enlightened, but that his goal and his intent, his path, because not all Buddhist practitioners have the same path, his path would be one of theoretical study.
And so he had many questions just to make sure he understood and that he knew
not just understood, but knew and had in his mind all of these teachings.
Apparently he had a very good memory.
There are people in the world, you hear about them, they have these photographic memories or something.
Apparently Ananda had a very good memory.
So he could remember anything, but he had to hear it.
So he asked the Buddha many questions.
And his question here was, where do you find a thoroughbred human?
He said, we know about thoroughbred horses and elephants, and they're actually pretty easy to find.
You can find them anywhere, but where can you find a thoroughbred human?
So the story says the Buddha took it to mean that Ananda was talking about a Buddha.
And so there's two ways we can look at this verse.
From the story perspective, we're talking about the Buddha.
Where do you find a Buddha?
And it's not easy to find a Buddha.
It takes a long, long time.
It's not just two or three days and then you get a Buddha.
A Buddha is something that requires uncountable lengths of time, many, multiple uncountable lengths of time for a person to become a Buddha.
They're very rare.
They don't just arise up anywhere.
So he talked a little bit about the conditions that are required for the arising of a Buddha, what sort of family they'll be born into and that sort of thing.
But from the perspective of the verse, there's another aspect.
Yes, the verse says that it's hard to find a Buddha, but it also says how hard it is to find a thoroughbred person.
But it also talks about how great it is for their family, and just how great it is and how much happiness comes from a person who is thoroughbred.
And it makes us think of the Buddha's teaching on thoroughbred humans.
And it seems pretty clear from that teaching that the Buddha didn't reserve this teaching only for Buddhas, this designation.
So just because someone isn't a Buddha doesn't mean they can't be thoroughbred.
So there's two things I want to talk about here.
The first one, coming off the story perspective, is a little bit of humility.
Because
it's easy to think that you're special.
And in Buddhism, this manifests itself as people thinking that they're qualified to become a Buddha.
And I think, I'm certainly not a person to put someone in their place and say, you can't become a Buddha.
But I think the general consensus in our tradition is that a lot more people want to become Buddhas than will ever actually attain Buddhahood.
So Kondanya was, no, not Kondanya, what's his name?
Kacchayana, I think.
I think Kacchayana, one of the Buddha's chief disciples, had made a vow to become a Buddha.
If it wasn't him, it was someone.
And when he came to this life and saw the Buddha, he thought to himself, oh boy, that's just too pure and too perfect.
I'm not capable of that.
And he gave it up and became a monk.
But a lot of people just have the idea to become a Buddha and
I think it can be based on this sort of conceit of thinking that you're special.
Thinking that you have some special quality that makes you better than everyone else.
And so when I read this verse, one of the things I think of is it's a reminder that I'm not a Buddha.
I'm not this kind of a thoroughbred.
I'm not anything special.
I think that's potentially useful.
Of course you have to be careful not to be too hard on yourself or think of yourself as bad or evil or corrupt or just useless or pointless.
But on the other hand, we have to find freedom.
We have to, to some extent, see how worthless and useless we are, our bodies and our minds.
Because part of letting go is seeing how useless it all is.
Part of becoming a Buddha, even, is to realize how useless the person who is the Buddha actually is.
Meaning in an ultimate sense, the person, the being,
The identity and even the physical and mental manifestations are in and of themselves of no value.
They have nothing that you should cherish or hold on to.
So reminding ourselves that we are just ordinary and that our minds are chaotic and unwieldy
Reminding ourselves that we are not something special can be quite useful.
It's useful to come down to earth and to not hold yourself up over others or to think of yourself as something special.
If you want to become a Buddha, you have to let go of that.
If you want to become enlightened, you also have to let go of that.
But
On the other side, it's important to be encouraged and it's important to remember the greatness of the Buddha's teaching, of the practice, the greatness of mindfulness, the greatness of purity of mind, the greatness of greatness, the greatness of goodness.
And so we talk about what is the difference between a thoroughbred and just an ordinary human being.
An untrainable, sort of, if you relate it to animals.
You have these animals that are thoroughbred, like a horse or a dog.
I don't have much familiarity with elephants, thoroughbred elephants, purebred elephants.
Purebred dogs are somewhat exceptional.
They have an intelligence that's, I guess they say bred into them, but you could also think of it as something to do with the human connection and how humans are born as animals and animals are born as humans.
They have a strong connection to being human or to just intelligence or high-mindedness.
And so they're very easy to train.
And so we make the simile, the analogy with human beings, comparison to human beings.
What sort of human being is easy to train?
What sort of a human being, when they put their mind to it, can achieve greatness?
And the Buddha talked about, in particular, in relation to the path, he talked about a horse, a horse that
and knows the way to go, a horse that is responsive.
So there are different kinds of horse and different levels of capacity of horses.
Some horses, the rider pulls up the goad, the stick, and they just have to show it in the right direction and the horse knows, the horse knows to go.
The second type of horse, you actually have to touch them.
That would be a very special horse where you didn't even have to touch them.
They knew right away, go left, go right, go faster, go slower.
But the second one, you have to touch them.
And when they feel the touch, not a painful touch, but just a touch, and they know which way to go, to speed up, to slow down.
Third type of horse, you actually have to make it hurt.
If it doesn't hurt, the horse won't go.
I don't know, it sounds kind of cruel.
I'm not giving directions on how to deal with horses.
I think probably horse riding has some bad karma associated with it, but with similes you can talk about these sorts of things, like hunters and that sort of thing.
But so you hit it till it hurts.
When it hurts, then the horse knows to go.
Fourth type of horse, you really have to get to the bone.
Really have to like really make it injured or bruised even.
You bruise it if you make it really hurt.
And then the horse will go, go this way, go that way, and so on.
I think, I hope I'm not getting this wrong, it's been a long time, but I think that's the fourth one you really have to hit to the bone, I think.
Yeah, that's what it is.
Of course, the fifth type of horse, you can hit them until they die, and you hit them until your goad breaks, or the stick breaks, or the horse falls down, and it'll never go the right way.
So that rather violent list of horses, how does that relate to humans?
How does that relate to us, to meditators?
It's nothing like the, I'm not going to hit anyone with a stick, this isn't that sort of teaching.
No, the stick here is death and suffering.
Some people just when they hear about it, if you remember the Buddha, the Bodhisatta, when he heard about
well actually that's not true but he had never heard of this the legend goes that he had never heard of old age sickness or death but the first type of person anyway just when they hear about it they actually tried to not let him know about it that's where the legend goes i don't know if it's actually true but that's what they say but when we hear about it
hear about people dying like in a tsunami or an earthquake or you hear about murders these mass murders now that we hear about people just going in and shooting people because they're different color skin or because they're gay or because they're different religion or whatever and
You hear about that.
You hear about, not about the evil of the killing, but about the death and the suffering, and you think, wow, that really is the nature of life.
That's in the realm of possibility.
I am not...
at all prepared to deal with such reality, which means I'm out of touch with reality.
I am not safe.
I am not where I should be.
I have not attained what needs to be attained.
Some people think like this and they really get a sense of urgency and work and become enlightened and learn the way to free themselves from the danger.
of old age, sickness, and death.
I'm suffering just from hearing about it.
That's like the horse that you don't even have to hit them with it.
It hasn't hit them at all.
Second type of person, they have to see someone or they have to actually come in contact with someone who is suffering and sick and old or dying or dead.
They have to actually see it or come in contact with it in some way.
And when they do, then they start, they realize this could happen to me and it just, this is the nature of reality.
Suffering is a part of life.
Here I have been negligent, engaging in mindless, meaningless pleasures and so on.
The third type of person, it has to be someone close to them.
When their parents die or their relatives or friends or loved ones,
When they get old, sick and die, then they see, like I said before, it's like the armies of Mara have attacked your fortress and the walls are crumbling.
It's like you see the people dying around you.
It's like an army has been attacked by the great armies of Mara, great armies of death.
And the fourth type of person, well, they don't get it even when people around them are dying.
They have to themselves be old, sick, or dying, have to be in great pain or suffering.
And then they realize it.
Then they realize something needs to be done.
So it's quite desperate at that point, but they are still considered to be trainable, right?
Because they realize that something needs to be done and they go and do it.
They take up the practice of training their mind, purifying their mind, cleansing their mind of all the clinging and attachment that might cause them suffering.
And they're able to free themselves.
Fifth type of human being, what's that one?
Well, they get old, sick and die.
And even on their death bend, they're still drinking and smoking or cursing people or clinging to things.
Still up into their last moment, their last breath, they die in a bad way.
Even when they're dying, they don't realize.
And part of it is just our culture, you know, we're taught
We're taught ways to be.
If you had only one day to live, what would you do?
Go and party, you know.
Do all these skydive, you know.
Go traveling.
See things.
See all the things outside of yourself.
None of which will prepare you and make you better equipped to deal with this part of life that is death.
None of it will lead to greater things.
So someone who does, someone who takes up the practice for one of these reasons is considered to be a thoroughbred, purebred.
It's a sign of greatness.
So it's something to be proud of and encouraged by.
Just not to let it go to your head, I think.
The other reminder that we're not Buddha, that we're just, we're actually rejects at this point is quite humbling.
If we had been great people, we would have probably become enlightened when the Buddha was here.
But we were around back then, probably humans, maybe animals.
Who knows?
We could have been anywhere.
But we missed it.
We missed our opportunity.
And here we are.
We're like the beggars outside of the palace walls, taking scraps 2,500 years later.
And the other part of that is how great it is, right?
So the greatness and the benefits and the happiness leads to great happiness when there is such a person.
It's happiness for their family, happiness for their society.
I think this is something that is a good reminder and would be a great thing for people to realize, for families to realize when they are hard on their children or pushing their children into
making money or finding worldly success or stability, getting good grades and how they are disappointed in their kids if they don't do well in school or if they change their religion or if they happen to be homosexual or any number of things.
Transgender is a big thing now.
Much hate there.
How disappointed people are because of
things like that.
Anyway, I'm not getting into all the many types of disappointment that parents have and all of the expectations for worldly success and stability and rectitude, moral rectitude in various ways, religion and sexuality and so
All of these things that lead parents to denounce their children and throw them out.
And all of the things that parents look for in their children and force their children, push their children into getting a good job and making money and getting married.
For many cultures, marriage is a very important thing.
You must get married.
That's a measure of success.
And if only people realize what was a true greatness and what would really be a truly great thing for your children to do would be for them to practice and free themselves from suffering, to purify their minds and to train themselves to realize that all of that useless, meaningless stuff is useless and meaningless.
is of no consequence.
And all the energy people put into pushing their children and forcing their children to find success is all wasted and misguided.
And there's so much greatness that comes not from money or worldly success, but from a child or a person who
follows the path and finds their own way to free themselves from all clinging and craving and anger and conceit and ego and so on.
How much greatness comes not just to them but to their family and to their society.
They become a morally upstanding citizen.
They become someone who is able to give advice, someone who guides others and supports others in their own spiritual practice, someone who is harmless, who is not cruel or unkind, someone who is generous and wise.
It's such a great thing to have in society that
This is just a reminder of what are the important things in life, what are the important qualities that we should aspire for in ourselves and aspire for in the people around us.
Hard to find, but wherever you do find such a person, such a wise person, great happiness comes to everyone.
So that's the verse.
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for listening.