1 00:00:01,381 --> 00:00:02,022 Good evening. 2 00:00:02,402 --> 00:00:04,986 We're continuing on with our study of the Dhammapada. 3 00:00:07,149 --> 00:00:30,223 Today we're looking at verse 200, which reads, Which means, 4 00:00:32,330 --> 00:00:37,037 Happily indeed we live, we who have nothing. 5 00:00:41,283 --> 00:00:57,848 We will eat, we will feed off of rapture, like the angels in the Abhasara realm, the Abhasara angels. 6 00:01:01,338 --> 00:01:05,524 ones who have a radiance, an abha. 7 00:01:10,211 --> 00:01:11,333 So this is the third. 8 00:01:11,373 --> 00:01:18,483 If you remember, the last two verses were also susukang vata jivama, happily indeed we live. 9 00:01:18,503 --> 00:01:19,825 This is the sukavagga. 10 00:01:20,726 --> 00:01:22,229 So it's talking about happiness. 11 00:01:23,470 --> 00:01:25,894 I think the Buddha was talking always about suffering. 12 00:01:27,325 --> 00:01:32,770 The only reason he talked about suffering was in order to find happiness, freedom from suffering. 13 00:01:36,534 --> 00:01:42,319 This verse was taught in regards to a story about Mara, really. 14 00:01:43,980 --> 00:01:56,472 The Buddha was dwelling in Panchasala, a Brahmin village called Panchasala. 15 00:01:58,814 --> 00:02:06,526 And he thought to himself, well, he thought, who can I teach today? 16 00:02:06,586 --> 00:02:16,581 And he had this vision of this large group of maidens, young women, , young women. 17 00:02:17,923 --> 00:02:22,229 And he thought, oh, they will understand the Dhamma if they hear it. 18 00:02:24,252 --> 00:02:28,298 And so he went into the village on alms, but he didn't get anything. 19 00:02:31,619 --> 00:02:46,594 And the text says that Mara, it's about Mara, Mara came into the village and went into their hearts and tricked or somehow made it so that none of them gave anything. 20 00:02:46,614 --> 00:02:48,456 People who would, I guess, otherwise have given. 21 00:02:51,780 --> 00:02:59,027 And the Buddha came out of the village and Mara came to him and taunted him and said, oh, so you went into the village on alms and didn't get anything. 22 00:03:03,867 --> 00:03:06,431 He said, did you get anything? 23 00:03:06,471 --> 00:03:08,814 The Buddha said, oh I got, no I didn't. 24 00:03:08,834 --> 00:03:11,878 He said, oh well, go back into the village and try again then. 25 00:03:12,860 --> 00:03:25,197 And he thought, and Mara thought, if he goes back into the village again, I'll get people to be mean and nasty to him. 26 00:03:25,217 --> 00:03:29,503 And at that time, this large group of young women 27 00:03:32,015 --> 00:03:33,937 came to the Buddha when he was sitting there. 28 00:03:34,337 --> 00:03:37,441 And so it was an opportunity to teach the Dhamma. 29 00:03:37,461 --> 00:03:41,385 Mara was taunting him and said, Oh, you must be really hungry. 30 00:03:41,405 --> 00:03:42,526 You've got nothing to eat. 31 00:03:42,566 --> 00:03:46,951 And the Buddha said, I have nothing. 32 00:03:46,991 --> 00:03:47,511 It's true. 33 00:03:48,152 --> 00:03:51,295 But it's not true that I will not feed. 34 00:03:51,315 --> 00:04:00,705 He said, I have no hunger because I feed off the rapture of enlightenment. 35 00:04:04,313 --> 00:04:06,957 It's a very simple teaching. 36 00:04:08,059 --> 00:04:09,882 It's also a fairly well-known teaching. 37 00:04:09,942 --> 00:04:10,944 It's a memorable one. 38 00:04:14,129 --> 00:04:16,853 Because being without is a part of life. 39 00:04:18,335 --> 00:04:30,675 It's a reminder to us of a good attitude to have in the face of what really just amounts to a change of experience. 40 00:04:33,254 --> 00:04:35,377 That's the key here, and that's the key in Buddhism. 41 00:04:37,359 --> 00:04:48,713 So the real lesson here in the story, in the verse, is about not getting what you want. 42 00:04:50,556 --> 00:04:55,482 How hunger comes from not having something that you want, or wanting something that you don't have. 43 00:05:00,389 --> 00:05:11,462 For some people, happiness depends upon a great deal of things, not just on food. 44 00:05:11,483 --> 00:05:16,849 For some people, for addicts, without drugs, there's no happiness. 45 00:05:18,371 --> 00:05:24,418 For ordinary people, without the objects of the sense that delight us, there's no happiness. 46 00:05:27,943 --> 00:05:29,164 But even for 47 00:05:30,950 --> 00:05:47,498 For people who are otherwise not addicted to sensual pleasure without things like food or what we would call the necessities of life, there can be no happiness. 48 00:05:52,727 --> 00:05:55,692 And it really highlights the 49 00:05:57,443 --> 00:06:02,792 shift in perception that we undertake in our practice of mindfulness. 50 00:06:02,832 --> 00:06:04,395 What does mindfulness change? 51 00:06:04,776 --> 00:06:06,459 What good is mindfulness? 52 00:06:06,499 --> 00:06:07,120 What does it do? 53 00:06:08,843 --> 00:06:13,270 It changes the way you look at your life, at reality. 54 00:06:14,993 --> 00:06:21,645 Instead of looking at your experience, your situation, in terms of what you have and what you don't have, 55 00:06:26,097 --> 00:06:28,321 You come to see it of what you're experiencing. 56 00:06:28,802 --> 00:06:32,470 You come to see your reality in terms of experience. 57 00:06:33,772 --> 00:06:38,762 The idea of getting or not getting, having or not having disappears. 58 00:06:42,169 --> 00:06:46,738 There's a quote, George Orwell once read a book by 59 00:06:48,085 --> 00:06:51,549 He was writing memoirs of when he had nothing. 60 00:06:52,970 --> 00:06:56,975 He fell into great poverty living in Paris and London. 61 00:06:59,357 --> 00:07:06,505 And he said there's a great freedom that comes from when you reach rock bottom, when you have nothing. 62 00:07:09,268 --> 00:07:10,930 Because you know there's no lower you can go. 63 00:07:14,114 --> 00:07:16,236 Your perspective changes. 64 00:07:17,414 --> 00:07:20,278 There's nothing to be afraid of because it can't get any worse. 65 00:07:26,887 --> 00:07:42,949 This is a good reason to think about becoming a Buddhist monk or leaving home and undertaking a reclusive life. 66 00:07:45,140 --> 00:07:57,478 Because it changes your perspective and it brings into contrast what you have and what you don't have, what you have and what you need to have to be happy. 67 00:07:59,221 --> 00:08:02,726 And you're able to see all the things that you require to be happy. 68 00:08:04,970 --> 00:08:11,940 You're able to change your perspective and work on these cravings, work on this suffering. 69 00:08:19,058 --> 00:08:33,699 So people will say things like, you need friends to be happy, you need possessions to be happy, you need something to entertain you in order to be happy. 70 00:08:34,721 --> 00:08:36,884 At the very least you need food to be happy. 71 00:08:38,526 --> 00:08:46,197 Our idea of happiness is in the externals, in things. 72 00:08:47,763 --> 00:08:49,485 Because we dwell in the realm of things. 73 00:08:49,605 --> 00:08:56,594 We think of me eating food is getting a thing called food and putting it in my body. 74 00:08:57,576 --> 00:08:59,899 We don't think of it as just an experience. 75 00:08:59,919 --> 00:09:11,053 We aren't able to see that eating food and the feeling of fulfillment that comes, the pleasure that comes from eating the food, is all just experiences. 76 00:09:14,527 --> 00:09:24,638 And so we lack, well we cultivate partiality and we lack the flexibility that comes from seeing reality as experience. 77 00:09:26,159 --> 00:09:40,534 When you're able to perceive food and friends and possessions and all the things that make us happy as simply experiences, you gain a flexibility, well you come to see that 78 00:09:42,472 --> 00:09:45,015 There's no difference between one experience and another. 79 00:09:45,055 --> 00:09:46,897 You can't cling to an experience. 80 00:09:47,838 --> 00:09:50,982 An experience can't be something that you wish for or want for. 81 00:09:53,665 --> 00:10:11,145 Once you see the momentary experiences, I'm not talking about an experience in a conceptual sense, but in a momentary sense, you can't cling to it because it arises and ceases and it has no quality. 82 00:10:12,745 --> 00:10:26,567 that is good or bad or even desirable or undesirable. 83 00:10:26,587 --> 00:10:39,748 When you look at things in terms of experience, you're watching, when we say to ourselves, pain, pain, thinking, thinking, when you watch in that way, you gain this 84 00:10:41,146 --> 00:10:45,913 flexibility, sort of an adaptability or flexibility. 85 00:10:48,076 --> 00:10:59,813 The peace that comes from from being content with whatever come 86 00:11:03,370 --> 00:11:11,961 We can talk about contentment in things, but ultimately, if we have craving, if we have attachment, there are things that we like and things that we don't like. 87 00:11:13,002 --> 00:11:14,764 A thing is something you can attach to. 88 00:11:15,986 --> 00:11:21,192 It's a concept in the mind, something that you can remember having. 89 00:11:24,696 --> 00:11:30,964 It's a thing that can provide stability, satisfaction, control. 90 00:11:32,378 --> 00:11:33,760 You can control things. 91 00:11:35,122 --> 00:11:36,403 You can keep things. 92 00:11:38,626 --> 00:11:41,149 You can be satisfied with things. 93 00:11:43,112 --> 00:11:54,326 Comfortable furniture or pleasant food, electronic devices, people, places. 94 00:11:55,488 --> 00:11:59,533 All of these things can provide stability and satisfaction and control. 95 00:12:06,905 --> 00:12:08,067 But they don't really exist. 96 00:12:09,709 --> 00:12:20,243 The problem that we have with things is that they're dependent on the underlying experiences, and experiences are unpredictable. 97 00:12:22,005 --> 00:12:32,980 When you talk about having food, what you really mean is having the potential to have experiences, moments of experience where you're eating, even where you're just seeing the food as an experience. 98 00:12:34,259 --> 00:12:36,062 And these are unpredictable, uncontrollable. 99 00:12:36,623 --> 00:12:45,496 Another important lesson of this story is about Mara, about evil. 100 00:12:46,257 --> 00:12:54,990 Whether or not you believe that there was this malevolent spirit taking over people's minds and hearts and making them stingy. 101 00:12:56,252 --> 00:13:00,739 Stinginess does exist and manipulation 102 00:13:02,440 --> 00:13:21,259 There are people where the circumstances of your life are plotting against you, people plotting against you, just chance, fate plotting against you, your own bad karma coming back to haunt you, so many things. 103 00:13:22,943 --> 00:13:28,124 But evil is in particular something that we have to recognize. 104 00:13:28,225 --> 00:13:33,426 Whether you recognize Mara as a being who came to the Buddha and taunted him, 105 00:13:35,752 --> 00:13:40,318 Going into a village and not getting any alms is a common experience for monks. 106 00:13:41,220 --> 00:13:42,121 It certainly happens. 107 00:13:43,463 --> 00:13:57,102 And by extension, anything, any activity that we undertake, trying to obtain something that we want and not getting it, that's common to everyone. 108 00:13:59,495 --> 00:14:16,913 Often because of the evil intentions of others, stinginess, miserliness, not wanting to share, not wanting to give, not wanting to help, wanting you to be without so they steal from you or they break things of yours or they hurt you with speech or actions. 109 00:14:20,302 --> 00:14:32,018 We think this body is a source of so much pleasure, but someone with bad intentions comes to you, they can do great harm and cause great suffering. 110 00:14:34,221 --> 00:14:42,532 All because of our attachment to things, the concept of something that is stable, satisfying, controllable. 111 00:14:44,294 --> 00:14:47,018 And in fact, reality is not like that. 112 00:14:53,157 --> 00:15:17,376 So this really speaks to the power of mindfulness, the power of wisdom, the power of seeing things just as they are, being able to see things just as they are, rather than react to them or conceive in them, like this is food that I'm eating, this is my body that is healthy, that is full and nourished with food. 113 00:15:22,992 --> 00:15:26,557 The Buddha indeed every day went to nourish his body. 114 00:15:27,359 --> 00:15:30,443 But when he didn't receive nourishment, there was no suffering. 115 00:15:32,246 --> 00:15:35,751 The Buddha had a greater nourishment. 116 00:15:37,534 --> 00:15:43,043 And that's the nourishment of the present moment, the nourishment of mindfulness, the nourishment of enlightenment. 117 00:15:44,565 --> 00:15:47,970 Being enlightened means seeing things clearly. 118 00:15:51,477 --> 00:15:54,521 Being without food is simply a different sort of experience. 119 00:15:55,862 --> 00:16:03,471 It may make you incapable of doing certain things, but it simply means a different form of experience. 120 00:16:05,434 --> 00:16:18,129 The state where the body is weak, is tired because of food, is an equally valid experience to the state where the body is energetic and full of effort. 121 00:16:18,149 --> 00:16:21,433 For a person who is attached to things like food 122 00:16:22,392 --> 00:16:24,017 Nourishment can be a detriment. 123 00:16:25,080 --> 00:16:31,239 When you are too well fed, you can become intoxicated by the strength of the body. 124 00:16:31,259 --> 00:16:36,756 The chemicals in the body start to work and you feel aroused. 125 00:16:39,183 --> 00:16:46,640 Having too much food can be a problem for people who are attached because it leads to addiction, it can lead to belligerence. 126 00:16:47,863 --> 00:16:52,534 People who are well fed are much more capable of fighting with each other. 127 00:16:54,353 --> 00:16:56,178 Having less food can sometimes be good. 128 00:16:56,379 --> 00:17:00,731 And for certain, not getting what you want is always good. 129 00:17:00,771 --> 00:17:10,017 As I said, for becoming a monk or even a recluse of some sort, there's a great power and benefit to it because it teaches you. 130 00:17:11,819 --> 00:17:13,041 It gives you a new perspective. 131 00:17:14,083 --> 00:17:19,672 The life of someone who has everything they want, gets everything they want, is fraught with peril. 132 00:17:21,054 --> 00:17:24,720 The potential for losing what you get, what you have. 133 00:17:27,023 --> 00:17:32,312 The potential for clinging to what you have and desiring more, becoming addicted to it. 134 00:17:34,435 --> 00:17:37,540 And needing it and being dissatisfied whenever you can't get it. 135 00:17:40,017 --> 00:17:43,020 The happiness of having nothing is a very powerful thing. 136 00:17:44,321 --> 00:17:52,348 And it's not that having things is a cause of suffering necessarily. 137 00:17:52,368 --> 00:18:07,362 But the power and the happiness that comes from not needing anything, being happy without things, having your happiness not depend on things, is the highest sort of happiness there is. 138 00:18:07,722 --> 00:18:08,843 It's invincible. 139 00:18:10,814 --> 00:18:12,516 You have no vulnerability. 140 00:18:13,818 --> 00:18:16,101 A person whose happiness depends on things. 141 00:18:17,303 --> 00:18:24,772 My happiness depending on me going for food and getting food is very dangerous for me. 142 00:18:25,654 --> 00:18:27,476 Setting myself up for suffering. 143 00:18:29,419 --> 00:18:36,568 Now if everything, if I could control everything and everything went as planned that would be great but this verse 144 00:18:38,810 --> 00:18:46,018 highlights a very important part of reality, that is, the potential for us not to get what we want, the potential for evil. 145 00:18:48,481 --> 00:18:55,249 We don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what our future is, but more specifically, we don't know when evil might hit. 146 00:18:56,670 --> 00:19:04,159 It could be in the form of another person, they might harm us, steal from us. 147 00:19:05,995 --> 00:19:21,861 They manipulate or lie to us, cheat us, might come in the form of the body, sickness, might come in the form of accidents, weather, natural disasters. 148 00:19:25,283 --> 00:19:39,636 certainly come in the form of our own defilements, when we get angry and do things that harm ourselves, when we get greedy and become addicted and attached to things and create ambitions and actions that cause us suffering. 149 00:19:43,600 --> 00:19:44,701 Happy without anything. 150 00:19:44,881 --> 00:19:46,883 I mean, it's a real powerful statement. 151 00:19:48,424 --> 00:19:52,928 We can use it to apply to not getting anything in our lives, but 152 00:19:54,781 --> 00:20:21,345 We can always think of the Buddha when we don't get what we want and remember that even when the Buddha had no food, which is something that for many of us is a very difficult thing psychologically, I mean, emotionally to be without, just the fear of not having enough food to eat, the stress of going hungry, worry about 153 00:20:22,861 --> 00:20:24,803 not being able to nourish your body. 154 00:20:26,865 --> 00:20:33,973 Think about the Buddha and how he said he had a greater nourishment than the food. 155 00:20:35,495 --> 00:20:45,826 His happiness wasn't dependent on getting what he wanted because his way of looking at things was not in terms of things that you can get. 156 00:20:46,687 --> 00:20:52,193 It's in terms of experiences which frees you and liberates you from 157 00:20:54,383 --> 00:21:04,167 the slavery really of needing things. 158 00:21:04,187 --> 00:21:05,811 So that's the Dhammapada for tonight. 159 00:21:06,974 --> 00:21:08,017 Thank you all for listening. 160 00:21:08,137 --> 00:21:08,899 Wish you all the best.