Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verses numbers 38 and 39, which read as follows.
anavati tajitasa sadhamang avijanato pariplavapasadasa panyana paripurati
anavasuttacchittasa ananvahattacchittasa punyapapahinasat papapahinasat nathiccagaratobayam nathiccagaratobayam which means anavattacchittasa
For one whose mind is not settled down, who doesn't have penetrating knowledge into the good dhamma or the good truth, who has wavering faith,
panyana paripurati, wisdom does not come to fulfillment, to complete fulfillment.
And thirty-nine, anavasuta citasa, for one whose mind is not sodden or soaked.
Ananvahata citasa, who is not afflicted in the mind,
Who has abandoned both goodness and evil.
For such an awakened one there is no fear or there is no danger.
So these two verses were told in regards to a very memorable story and one with a very good lesson for all of us.
So the story goes that in the time of the Buddha there was a man who was the son of a good family and he was
He was a very hardworking person and he worked as a farmer, I think, or he worked as a merchant or something.
He was very diligent in his work.
Sorry, he was raising cows.
He was raising oxen.
And one day he was looking after the herd and he realized that one of his oxen had disappeared.
And so he went off into the forest to look for this missing ox, missing cow, I think.
And he spent all day, all day, until around, or all morning, until around midday, looking for this ox.
And finally he saw it, finally he found it.
and he had gone all morning without eating anything.
So he brought the ox back home or he brought the ox along and before he got back to his
his house, he was so famished and fatigued by this search that he thought to himself that he should find some food for his mid-day meal.
And he remembered that the monks, there was a Buddhist monastery nearby, and he figured that, well, he could probably, these monks are nice people, probably they'll give me some leftover food, you know, whatever scraps they have left.
And so he tied the cow to a tree or something by the side of the road and went off to the monastery where the monks were staying.
And he came up to them and asked them if they had any food left over.
And so they pointed him out to the place where they would dump all their food together when it was finished.
put it in a bin or something.
And he went over to look and he saw that there was such delicate food or such delicacies, such high quality food.
And he was amazed because this was the leftovers.
All the monks had eaten their fill and all that was left or what was left was the most delicate food.
And he started eating it and just the taste of it and the way it was prepared and everything, he was amazed by the quality of this food that he himself didn't normally get.
So he thought to himself, well, this must be a special occasion.
And he asked the monks, he said, what is it today?
There's some marriage or something, the king is giving you dana today or there's some special occasion that you get this kind of food.
And the monks were kind of surprised and they said, oh, no, this is what we get every day.
This is the kind of food that people give us every day.
There's nothing special about today.
And he was amazed and he thought to himself, I could work all day and all night, even on a good day when I have many customers or when I have good pay and good work and so on.
Even working all day and all night, I would never be able to taste such delicate food.
And these monks say they get it every day.
And so much greed arose in him.
And I mean, you can understand.
He had spent all morning in this search for this ox, which cost him a lot of time and probably some money in the end.
And so he was...
He thought to himself, wow, what am I doing?
It just made him realize what a useless life he was living.
Here he was trying to make his living with oxen in ordinary ways and striving and working so hard and getting nothing out of it.
So he saw how fruitless it was.
And so he thought to himself, why don't I just become a monk?
And then I can live like this and get what I want and not have to do hardly anything, he thought.
And so he asked the monks and he arranged everything at home and he came back and he ordained as a monk.
And he was so happy as a monk because of course he got all this delicious food.
And so he became very fat and very greedy as a result of this.
And so he would just sit around and eat and do nothing.
And eventually, as time went on, he realized how disgusting this was, that all he was doing now with his life was eating.
And of course, he had this energy in him that was left over from working.
And so he thought that this was kind of a waste of his life.
He thought, what am I doing here?
I'm just getting fat and greedy.
And he could feel the defilements actually increasing in his mind.
And so he thought to himself, this is not the life for me.
This is a disgusting, evil sort of life.
And so he decided, he said, I better disrobe.
Better that I go and live a noble life or a life of some purpose as a layman.
And so he disrobed and went back to his work.
And of course,
As he was toiling, his body became thin and wretched again.
And he was so overworked and he was so tired that again he started to think about the monastery and about living life as a monk.
And again his mind changed.
Again he became discontent with Salimah.
And again he thought of the monastery.
And so back he went to the monastery and asked the monks, oh please, please, please, I really made a mistake.
Life out there is so much suffering and it's so meaningless.
And of course he would talk really well to the monks.
And the monks thought that the one thing that when he was a monk, because the commentary explains that when he was a monk,
The one thing that he did do was help the monks.
So he was very helpful and quite energetic in doing good deeds, doing good things, or supporting the senior monks.
And you might say it was because of his propensity for hard work as a layman.
And so they did look kindly upon him, and they let him ordain again.
And again, he was quite helpful, but he was also very greedy and very lazy, and he just got fat again.
And so again he became discontented that this is kind of a useless life.
And again he decided to disrobe.
He became discontent as a monk.
Another reason, of course, might be because of how simple the monastic life is, how little there is.
You're not allowed entertainment.
You're not allowed enjoyment.
Food only goes so far, and this lust that he had for food, or this desire, this attachment to good food, of course would just create more discontent in him.
And once the discontent builds, it's hard to stay put anywhere.
And so he disrobed again.
And the commentary says that in this way, he ordained and disrobed six times.
back and forth, back and forth to the homeland, not content with either one.
And you might say it was totally the discontent itself that was stopping him from finding content in either one.
Until finally something happened to him.
He was there at home after his sixth disrobing, and
and kind of feeling ashamed of himself and not sure what he wanted to do with his life and where he was going.
And then again he became discontent with it and he decided he was going to go forth and he went.
he went into his bedroom to try and arrange his things and get ready to become a monk again.
And then he saw his wife was sleeping on the bed, and he saw her robe had fallen off, her clothes had fallen off, and she was lying there naked and drool coming out of her mouth and snoring and her body exposed and so on.
And he got this revulsion in his mind, because he was snoring and drooling and so on.
And he was able to see the natural state of the human body when it's not trying to attract, or when it's not animated with the mind and all of the ways and means of the mind.
And so it looked to him like a dead person.
And he recited to himself, This is what the commentary says.
He thought to himself, Or it wasn't just thought to himself.
So he gained this perception that this was impermanent and suffering.
That this thing that he thought that was his wife and he thought of as
as something attractive and something pleasurable, was actually something that was unsure.
And it goes deeper than that, because it was the realization that really there is nothing that can be called wife or attractive or beautiful or so on.
The lust and the love, the pleasure that he derived from this object, this person, or even this whole state of existence that he was living in,
was impermanent.
And now there was revulsion arose in him.
And he realized that what the Buddha said was true, that nothing is constant.
The same object that can create desire in you, the next moment can create revulsion.
And so he realized that all that there is is experience.
And this really hit him profoundly.
And this was probably coupled with the insight that he had gained, what little insight he had gained through his monastic life.
allowed him to develop a little bit of insight and knowledge.
And the story goes that then he grabbed his robe and he said, this is it.
Now for sure I want to become a monk and I don't want to ever come back here.
And he left and went out.
On the way to the monastery, he was reciting this to himself.
And according to the story that we have it, he became a Sotapanam.
He attained Sotapatti while he was walking.
So what happens then is once this realization comes, of course the mind becomes quite clear because the mind is drenched and sodden as according to the verse by the defilements.
And so at this time those defilements were out of his mind and his mind was quite clear.
And so everything began to look like this.
He was able to see that the pleasure that could be got from walking became the pain, became painful.
And the happiness in the mind can turn to unhappiness.
And seeing that everything changes.
Whatever good comes, only comes for a moment and then it ceases.
And everything changes.
Whatever is pleasurable one moment can be displeasurable the next.
So it's a nityang and dukhang.
And of course anantah.
It's non-self because you can't control it.
You can't live your life so that it's always going to be pleasant or that it's always going to be controllable or that it's always going to be one way or the other.
And so by extrapolating that, even when walking to the monastery, he was able to see, you would assume, he's able to see then the movements of the foot and the movements of the body and the things that he saw and the things that he heard and everything around him.
He's able to see it with wisdom.
And because of his teaching, the teaching he had gained as a monk and so on, he became a Sotapanna.
So he became an enlightened being of the first degree, of the first level.
And he went back to the monks.
And the monks had given him a name.
This name they gave him, Chittahatta.
Chittahatta means he's under the hand of the mind, or he's under the control of the mind.
He's controlled by his mind.
So they called him mind controlled, controlled by the mind.
They said, oh, here comes Chittahatta, guess what he wants?
I bet he wants to ordain again, this kind of thing.
And they said, we're not going to ordain.
They said, no, look, this is ridiculous.
We're not going to ordain you again.
You ordained six times, disrobed six times.
You're useless.
They said the English translation is they said your head is like a grindstone.
I don't know what the Pali is here.
But they said, basically, you're useless.
You're a hard-headed, stubborn individual.
You're a useless individual.
You'll never be good as a monk.
And he begged and pleaded with them.
And, of course, there would be something in his voice because now he was totally changed as an individual.
He had become a Sotapanna.
And so, kind of surprised at themselves, they let him ordain again.
Also, it says, it's because he was quite helpful to them.
when he was a monk.
So kind of out of their own greed, they let him work in and said, help us.
And it says within just a few days, he became an Arahant.
And then after a few days, after a week or so, the monks were watching him.
They're like, what?
You're not ready to go home yet?
When are you going to go home?
When are you going to disrobe?
You know, it's already been a week, you know, you're late.
Hello.
And he said to them, when, you know, oh no, before...
Before I was, when my mind was untrained or when my mind was full of uncertainty, then I would, then I wanted to disrobe or then I was attached to the world.
But now,
I've given up that life or something like that.
I've given up those defilements in the mind or something like that.
I'm basically saying, you know, telling him in a roundabout way that he had become an Arahant.
And so they were laughing and they were kind of...
making fun of him and they went to see the Buddha and they said, you should hear what Chittahatta is saying.
Chittahatta is, you know, now he's got a new tack.
He's pretending like he's enlightened or something.
And the Buddha said, no, actually it's true that this is how it goes when your mind is not settled on one thing or another, when your mind is not content, you know, it's not settled down.
And when you don't understand the truth,
when you don't understand the truth, and so you waver and go to this or that, and so on, according to the verse.
So when you don't have true faith, when your faith is wavering, you cannot come to true knowledge, and so on.
And then the Buddha told the story of the past, which is also quite interesting, but I think it's a little bit too much.
So I'll just briefly, he says the same thing happened to him when he was a Bodhisattva, that he was a farmer and he had this
He grew beans and he was left over with a pine pot of beans.
But then he realized this was ridiculous, this growing beans again and again.
And in the end, all he ends up with is where he started, which is more beans, more beans to plant.
So he doesn't gain anything from it.
It's a meaningless existence.
And he decides to go off into the forest.
But he spends some time in the forest and he gets discontent there and he comes back and he does the same thing so that actually seven times he ordains and disrobes as an ascetic or he goes off into the forest seven times.
And coming back the seventh time he realizes how silly he's being and how he has to set his mind on something.
He can't keep wavering back and forth.
He has to decide what is right and when it's right he has to stick with it.
And so he said, how am I going to do this?
I have to establish my mind.
I have to get rid of this thing that's bringing me back.
Because what would happen is he put the pine pot in his room.
and leave it there.
This was his mistake.
And then he'd go off into the forest and he'd be sitting in meditation and all he could think of was this pint pot of beans.
Oh, I didn't plant that pint pot of beans.
It's going to get carried away by rats or something.
And so he'd say, okay, I'll go and I'll plant the pint pot.
And so every time he would do this.
And finally he had this pint pot of beans and he said, I'm not going to do this anymore.
And he decided to throw it away.
So he went to the river
And he took his shovel that he used to plant with, and he tied it to the pot.
And he threw them over his shoulder or over his back into the river.
And he said to himself, this is it.
And as he did it, he said to himself, I've conquered, I've conquered.
He shouted out when he was standing by the river.
He said, now I've conquered.
And the story goes that the king was there bathing by the river, and this king, when he heard these words, I've conquered, I've conquered, it was quite upsetting for him, or terrifying really, or upsetting anyway, because kings don't like to hear, of course, other people say, I've conquered, I've conquered.
The king expects that they should be the one that says, I've conquered, I've conquered.
So the king was quite upset at this, and he said, find out who that was who said that.
And he came up to him and he scolded him.
He says, what are you doing saying I've conquered?
Who are you that would conquer here?
This is my, don't you know whose kingdom this is?
And the ascetic said, or this farmer ascetic said, O king, what you have conquered is only external to yourself.
I have conquered what is internal, which is much harder to conquer.
I have conquered my defilements.
And he explained to him what he'd done.
And the king decided to become an ascetic as well.
And the story goes on and they went off into the forest.
But on to the point of this story.
The point of this story is in the verse that it is in the essence of this state of things, or this mind state.
The state of mind that is unsettled.
So this is the first word in the verse.
It means a mind that isn't settled down.
mind that isn't settled on something.
If you're not really set on something or really, you haven't settled your life or set yourself on something.
You haven't come to establish your mind on one path or another.
If you're not sure about what you're doing,
So the other word is that when your faith is wavering, your confidence, your certainty about what you're doing.
And so it's actually that you could say that the Buddha is...
admitting or acknowledging the fact that this happens to people even when they come to ordain, even to monks, that during the course of training it's natural for them to decide that they can't do this or to be drawn away to some other path because their mind still hasn't come to be settled and they haven't come to understand sattvam mang avijanato, they haven't come to understand the truth.
So the case with this man was he became a monk and on the one hand you could say he had some good in him.
He understood the meaninglessness of life.
That here he could do this work in the world.
He was perfectly capable.
He wasn't a lazy person.
But he simply didn't understand the higher good.
He couldn't find anything better.
So all that he found better was to go and live as a monk and gorge himself.
And he realized that that was also useless.
So you could say on the one hand
As a lay person, he was torturing himself.
This would be Atthagilamatha Yoga.
And then as a monk, he came to Gamasukhalika Yoga, which means to gorge himself or to dedicate himself to sensual pleasures, which is kind of funny because normally it's the opposite.
For us, it's certainly the opposite.
When we leave the monastic life, we're able to go back to much luxury comparatively.
And when we come as a monk we have to live here in drudgery and hardship in the forest with mosquitoes and leeches and alms food and so on.
None of us are going to get fat here.
But for him it was the opposite here.
He was getting fat as a monk and lazy as a monk and he was torturing himself as a lay person.
So he saw the meaninglessness of both of these but he couldn't see the Dhamma.
He didn't come to settle himself on the truth.
Another way that this often happens, which isn't based on this story, but another example that's, I think, a very good one along the same lines, is when people pick and choose their meditation techniques.
This is one that we always...
We see often with meditators, they'll come here to practice, then they'll go somewhere else to practice, and they'll go back and forth, and they're also unable to settle their minds on anything.
And as a result, they're not able to see the truth.
So the moral really is to settle yourself on the true teaching or the good teaching of the Buddha, to settle yourself on the core teachings of the Buddha.
Another way is when...
people undertake the practice of insight meditation and they come to investigate and to learn about impermanent suffering and non-self, and then they become discontent with that.
And they want more, they want something else, or they want to have fun, or they want to go walking off in the forest.
Monks will want to go off into the forest.
They'll find something that is unsatisfying.
with wherever they are because their mind is not settled.
So it's important on one hand to be settled in one life, but it's also important to be settled on what is true.
So this is the meaning, the mind has to be settled, has to be settled down, but it has to be settled down on what is correct and what is proper.
So it was good that he had this intention to ordain, and it's good that people have the intention to come and practice here.
But it's a warning that we should practice in order to settle our mind, in order to become more content, not practice or become a monk to in the end become more discontent and want more and more and more and look for more and more greater things.
the mind should become settled down on reality, should become settled down so that it's comfortable anywhere, and so that it becomes less interested in going here or going there.
Often people ordain just for this reason, because of discontent.
They ordain because they're running away from the world.
They want to go as far away from the world as possible, and so as a result, they wind up going back and forth.
They'll run away because they have all these defilements inside.
And they'll say, no, no, no, and they'll run away from them.
And then they'll find the same defilements pulling them back again.
That they've just covered up with this extreme aversion towards them.
And then they'll wind up disrobing later on.
Our mind, we have to be, we have to practice to become settled and to become content with reality.
We're not running away from anything.
We're setting ourselves, we're finding a place where we can take a stand against
the defilements.
So becoming a monk shouldn't be about running away from the world.
It should be about retreating to a place where you can make a stand, where you have your defenses set up, and where you're able to then fight the defilements.
So there's something very good about living off in the forest, but the point of living off in the forest is so that you can deal with these problems, not run away from them.
which was, in a sense, what this monk was doing, running away from his problems and ordaining out of discontent, discontent for his life in the world.
And that isn't enough because his mind wasn't settled, because he didn't really have faith in the teaching.
But this goes for everyone.
This goes for all meditators.
During the meditation course, we'll often find beginner meditators wavering.
It's the teacher's job to establish them and settle them and help them find contentment.
But it's the meditator's job to find contentment in the practice, that they shouldn't follow after their discontentment.
They shouldn't follow after the changes that go on in the mind when the mind comes up with some
problem or some excuse for not continuing on the path.
When doubt arises, when their faith starts to waver, they should not treat it as something important or something worth listening to.
They should examine it and learn about the doubt as they learn about everything.
It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with doubt or that we have to have full faith regardless of our doubt.
It means that when we have doubt, we have to understand it.
We have to settle our minds, settle the doubt, give up any uncertainty.
examining it and learning about the reality of it.
Then wisdom becomes fulfilled.
Wisdom will not be fulfilled as long as we haven't gotten to that stage.
This guy is sort of an extreme example, but he's a good example for all meditators.
Until we get to that state, we must be very careful about the wavering of the mind and the mind that is not settled on one thing or another.
So when we went to Ratanapura, this was a good example of that, the realization that
it's going to always be like that when we go there we all feel very peaceful and we think oh here there's no problems here everything is wonderful and this is a common case with monks that they will go here and here and here and jump from place to place to place looking for the perfect place until they realize that there is no perfect place
Okay, and that's the first verse.
The second verse is just basically the opposite, but it does have some interesting connotations in it.
The meaning of it is quite interesting.
Anavasutajitasam means a mind that is
It's a difficult word to translate, but it does have to do with streams or flowing, the mind that doesn't have outflows.
Or you could say the mind that is not green or not sodden, not wet, sappy.
The mind that has become dry and clear and sober.
And this refers, according to the commentary, to greed, I think.
This is the sort of mind that has no greed in it.
So the mind that is not drenched with the defilements of sensuality.
So this comes when, in this example, it came when he saw his wife in a position that was not so attractive.
And of course when she was sleeping, it's interesting actually to think of this, because normally when we see a human being animated, we've cultivated such slick manners and charms and smiles and ways of being attractive to each other, just even unconsciously, that we do it as a matter of course.
So it's interesting to think that it is actually quite different when a person is sleeping.
When they're sleeping, they can often be... Because the mind is no longer in charge, then the body goes back to its very base and physical nature, which is often not so attractive.
Of course, the same goes when we don't care for the body, when we stop obsessing over it, putting on makeup or even washing the body, cutting our hair, cutting our...
beards, when we're not wearing beautiful clothes and so on.
And we can see actually how unattractive the body really is.
The body is actually something quite... It can only be attractive to one who is sappy or wet, to the mind that is wet.
And so when this came to him, when this realization, quite an extreme...
opposite vision that he had of his wife in this position, his mind became clear.
And so this is an important quality of mind for us to understand.
You can't understand the problems with sensuality until you get to this, until you have this realization.
So one of the important functions of meditation is to take you out of your ordinary state, to take you out of your ordinary life, to put you in a place where you're going to have to come into contact with extreme
or new experiences.
So coming and living in a cave, for example, or eating only in the morning, having to be put in contact, living in the forest, having to be put in contact with states of physical and mental reality that are different, that are going to break you out of your...
your ordinary experience.
so that those things that you found attractive before are going to seem unattractive.
One example is we'll have people put all their food, monks will put all their food in a bowl and stir it up.
And so what was once attractive will become repulsive.
For example, we'll have meditators sometimes, for a few days we'll have them not bathe, and have them come to understand what the nature of the body is.
And because of the extreme shift, the mind will be able to break out of it.
It's delusion.
And then you'll be able to see, only then will you be able to see the problems, because it's very difficult.
This is what our sutta, a mind that is drenched, is on fire.
It's not able to see the truth of this.
The things that we like, very hard for us to find any reason to give them up.
They seem to be pleasurable, they seem to be enjoyable.
And really it's only when we're able to break them up, when we're able to pull ourselves out of this and see the things simply for what they are.
So seeing the objects as objects, seeing the feelings as feelings, seeing the liking as liking, seeing the clinging and the chasing as what they are.
that we can overcome this.
It's a very important point to keep in mind is that we shouldn't expect ourselves to reflect upon beautiful things and somehow find them ugly.
We have to work and we have to develop our minds and sharpen our minds so that we're able to cut away from this.
And then the other side is ananvahata, means the mind that is not afflicted.
So that is not afflicted, I think, means by anger.
But these can both go for either way.
So in the end, the meaning is defilements, that the mind is free from defilements.
But the affliction of anger is another one that takes us out of our clear state of mind.
That anger is another one that colors the mind and boils the mind, sets the mind on fire.
When a person has anger towards something or aversion towards something,
It's just as bad as clinging and it's just as dangerous as clinging.
It's something that can upset you.
It can cause you to do things that you wouldn't otherwise even consider doing.
It can cause you to hurt other people.
It can cause you to hurt yourself.
People who get angry will wind up kicking things and screaming and yelling and pulling their hair out and so on.
So being free from both of these.
And the interesting word is the next one, for one who has given up good and evil.
It's a really interesting phrase because it's not one you'd expect having read through all the Buddha's teachings on how we should cultivate good.
The Buddha said, a person who has, if they've done good, they should develop it.
They should do good, having done good, they should do it again and again, cultivate goodness.
So then the question is here, what are we talking about for one who has given these things up?
And the point is that the more goodness that you do, the more goodness that is cultivated in your mind, and the more pure your mind becomes, the less inclined you become to do either good or bad deeds.
And when a person becomes fully enlightened, they don't have any inclination to do either, meaning they don't have any inclination to gain anything.
The point is they become contented.
But this contentment comes through doing good deeds, so it's kind of a bit of a paradox.
or a bit of a
juxtaposition, I don't know, how in the beginning you're very keen on doing meditation, very keen on becoming enlightened and so on, and in the end you don't become keen on anything.
And your keenness, the impulsion that arises in the beginning will take you eventually, you realize the correct way, or you realize the truth of life, and then you have nothing left to do, or you, even along the path,
you lose all your interest and all your desire for anything, even your desire for meditation.
So when an arahant practices meditation, it's not out of desire, it's not out of the
intention to attain anything.
It's simply just a natural understanding of the truth of life or the truth of reality that leads them to go from one moment to the next, meditating and being mindful and seeing things clearly as they are.
It's important to understand that this doesn't mean that a Buddhist meditator or a Buddhist practitioner should not do good deeds.
It means that through their practice they will eventually give up any desire to do any deeds whatsoever and they will simply act appropriately in every situation.
They'll find themselves being less keen and less desiring of
doing anything, whether it be good or bad.
They'll find themselves just wanting to live with life and being content with things as they are.
So when it's time to eat, they'll eat.
When it's time to talk, they'll talk.
When it's time to be quiet, they'll be quiet.
And they'll have no partiality or no desire for this or that.
And when one finally comes to be an Arahant, they will have given up all desire to do good things or bad deeds.
So this is what it means to give it up.
It doesn't mean that even Arahants don't do
good things for others, it just means that they don't have in their mind some intention that it should have this or that result, because they've given up the past and they've given up the future.
And because they've given up the past and the future or any expectations, the last part is, nattī ca gharato bhayaṁ, for such an awakened one there is no fear or no danger.
Because they have
because they have no expectations, because no matter what comes, they're content with it.
They have no feeling that it should be otherwise.
This is really a good summary of what we're aiming for in the practice, that we have no expectations that things should be otherwise than what they are.
nor do we have expectations that things should stay the way they are.
So when anything changes, we become completely unattached to it, no matter what the situation is, no matter what arises in us.
When mosquitoes are on us, we might brush them off, but our practice is to brush them off mindfully and not get upset.
So we don't think, oh, what are we doing in this place where there are many mosquitoes?
We just keep brushing them off.
Whereas an ordinary person, or when we still have our defilements in us, we'll get angry.
Not only will we be brushing them off, but we'll start to say, why am I sitting here?
What am I doing in this place?
And this is what happens to forest monks in general.
And eventually, what can happen is eventually they become very discontent.
Oh, this is no good, that is no good.
Often they'll become, they'll get sick in the forest and then they'll become discontent with that and so on.
And they'll want to disrobe.
And they will even, monks who have been amongst monks for 10 years, 20 years, will decide that they've had enough and it's time to go back to the lay life.
And then you'll hear them whine and complain as lay people, saying how horrible it is as a lay person and so on.
For such people there is still danger, there is still fear, there is still problems.
And they will not thereby come to understand the truth.
But through cultivating and through developing contentment,
Through developing insight.
Through developing insight we'll come to be content and we'll come to be... We'll be able to overcome these.
In the beginning, of course, we're still going to get angry, we're still going to get upset, we're still going to be attached and want this and want that.
But we'll be able to see through it.
We'll be able to...
set our minds, establish our minds, and we'll be able to establish our confidence in what we're doing.
We'll become very confident because of the results of the practice.
So another thing is that we should never expect in our practice that somehow we're going to... or that the first result should be that we have no anger, we have no greed, and that we have no discontent, that somehow we can be content with things.
We have to understand that the first result is going to be able to see through our discontent.
We're going to have to gain this steadfast faith or confidence in what we're doing, seeing through the defilements, seeing that the defilements that arise in our mind, whether they be lust or whether they be greed or whether they be aversion,
delusion or conceit or so on, that they simply are defilements.
They're something that is not useful, that is not meaningful, that is not beneficial if we follow it, that by following these things we can only come to harm and suffering.
So we acknowledge them and we see them and we let them go and we're patient with them when they come and we remind ourselves and try to develop insight based on them.
This is the quality, the virtue of a Sotapanna.
A Sotapanna still has greed and still has anger and even still has delusions.
But they've gotten rid of the delusion of entities.
They don't see anger as I'm angry.
They don't see greed as I'm greedy.
And so they don't cling to these things when they come up.
When greed comes up, they don't decide they want to disrobe or ordain.
They would never do such a thing.
When the greed comes up, they see it as greed and they let it go.
And they don't act based on these things.
They will tend more to...
to revert back to simply being mindful of them.
And they will be able to see for themselves.
They will be ashamed of these things when they do arise.
And they will be upset by them.
And they can be very upset by them.
And they can even feel like they can't tolerate this anymore.
But the virtue of a sotapanna is that they are able to tolerate it.
And even though it's overwhelming and intolerable anger or greed or lust or so on, they're able to tolerate it.
And they don't act on it.
So they don't do or say bad things based on the defilement.
And they don't, as this man gave the example, once he was a sotapanna, they don't...
get to the point where they disrobe.
So at that point he was able to deal with his dissatisfactions with being a monk and actually put his heart into the practice instead of just sitting around eating and getting fat and therefore able to become an arahant in a very short time.
So that's another two verses from the Dhammapada and another good lesson for us to keep in mind in our practice and for all the people who are listening.
So we're watching this on the internet.
So thank you for tuning in and I wish you all the best and now we can continue with our practice.