Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Tonight we continue on with verse number 77, which reads as follows.
Which means,
instruct and teach and prevent or forbid in regards to what is harmful, what is asabha, which means not beautiful.
If you do this, sat-tan hi-so-pi-yo-ho-ti, such a person, in fact it's not saying you do it, it's one should.
One should teach, one should preach, one should instruct, one should admonish, and one should forbid in regards to what is harmful and what is not beautiful.
Not beautiful is a way of saying not wholesome, not related to goodness.
The one who does so will be piyo, will be beloved, satang, of those who are mindful or of the good.
Maybe it just means of the good.
Asatang ho tiyapiyo and they will be not beloved, unbeloved.
They will be not loved, not liked by the bad, by the evil.
Asatang.
So this was
has actually quite an interesting verse and another one of these aspects of the Buddha's teaching that teaches its unique piece of the puzzle of the Buddha's teaching.
But it was told in regards to two disciples.
We are told of the two chief disciples who are Sariputta and Moggallana.
And even though they had ordained from the two chief disciples themselves,
They were alaji, means they were without shame.
They were bad monks.
Like the Buddha said, even though a spoon dwells in the soup, stays with the soup, you put a spoon in a cup of soup.
We had this verse already, right?
A spoon in a cup of soup, it can be there for a hundred years, it'll never taste the soup.
And so it is with someone who is foolish and doesn't absorb the teachings of the wise.
They can be surrounded by wise people, even be right next to Sariputta and Moggallana.
What we wouldn't do to have that opportunity and waste the opportunity.
They just wasted it.
What did they waste it doing?
Well, apparently they went off with their followers and planted flowers and flowering trees and many other things besides.
But they did all sorts of things that are considered to be wastes of time and moreover harmful to one's spiritual development because they cultivate this sense of desire and attachment and passion and so on.
Yes, planting flowers does create attachment.
Our spirituality goes higher than beauty.
It goes beyond beauty.
It goes to the ultimate, the highest, which is objectivity, which is this universal, this ability to understand the universe, which is quite beautiful in itself, but it has nothing to do with the appreciation of the smell of a flower or something.
Anyway, so they went off and did this and word came back to the Buddha because they were
acting inappropriately and they were probably doing things to ingratiate themselves with the lay people so it made it hard for proper monks to live there because of course ordinary people who were probably not well versed in the buddhist teaching they would appreciate you know the monks would pick flowers and bring them to the lay people and people like oh look at these people bringing us flowers that must be what monks do so when the monks came with their downcast eyes they would say
Who are these guys?
They don't have flowers.
They aren't fun.
They aren't singing and dancing and playing with our children and talking to us about the weather and so on and so on.
And they wouldn't run errands.
The monks would run errands for them because the monks didn't have jobs.
And that's a big no-no.
I mean, for very much the same reason.
Well, for many reasons.
But one, because it's the monks who are practicing meditation that are expected to run errands for the lay people.
And there's a sense that you have to work for the food that people give you.
Hey, I'm giving you this food.
You better send this letter to this person or do this for me or do that for me.
And then when are they going to practice meditation or study the Buddhist teachings or so on?
So they did all these things that made it difficult for other monks to live there because they just couldn't compete with this.
And people weren't well versed enough in the Buddhist teaching to understand that it wasn't really of any benefit to have these monks running errands for them and so on, bringing them flowers.
But the Buddha called Sariputta and Moggallana.
He heard about this and called them up and he said, go teach them.
And if they don't listen to you, kick them out.
Expel them from the order.
But if they do listen to you, then bring them back and teach them.
Because often it's just because of a poor leader.
If you get the wrong person
following you, you follow the wrong person.
See, you can imagine they had like 500 followers each, I think.
And you can imagine how that happens.
Hey, I'm a student of, oh yes, who are you?
Oh yes, I'm a student of Sariputta.
I'm a student of Moggallana.
Like, oh wow, you must be really a good meditator.
You must be a great teacher.
Let's follow you.
It makes me think of in modern days we get this as well.
I'm a student of Ajahn Tong Sri Mangalo and people, oh yes, you must be a great monk because he's a great teacher.
But it doesn't always hold true.
I think sometimes people will use this to their advantage.
They'll use a teacher's name.
We find this in spirituality.
Especially Buddhism, it's quite common.
I'm a student of the Dalai Lama.
Oh, you must be
Well, it doesn't mean anything, really.
Ajahn Thog has many, many, many, many students of varying degrees of enlightenment.
So don't go by such things.
But you have to at least take such things with a grain of salt, because it may tell you their tradition, but it probably doesn't tell you their level of spiritual attainment.
It may, if they're bragging about it a lot, it may show that, hmm, not a very high spiritual attainment.
But at any rate, so there were many, many monks following these two corrupt monks, and many of them would have just been misled, like the lay people, into thinking that that's how monks should act.
And so the two chief disciples were instructed to go, and they went to see, and did exactly that.
Before they went, the Buddha explained to them why or how they should treat this situation.
He said, gacchata, go,
There's something that he said, which is basically what the Dhammapada quote says.
It says, those who are not wise, those who are not pandita.
you will become unbeloved to them, and undear to them, amanapo, unpleasing.
It will be displeasing to them, but pana, panditanam pana, but for the wise ones, piyohuti manapo, you will be dear, or one will be dear, one will be pleasing to them.
And then he told this verse,
So that's the story.
And then they went and some of them listened, some of them didn't.
Some of them left the monastic life thinking, what?
You've got to meditate?
You've got to keep all these rules?
That's not what I signed up for.
And they left.
And some of them were expelled.
So how does this relate to our practice?
Well, the first interesting aspect is in regards to what is proper practice and what is not.
In Buddhism, it's a fairly straight and narrow path.
There's not a lot of leeway, not a lot of wiggle room.
You can't somehow pretend that planting flowers is part of the Dhamma, though people, I think, try to.
listening to music, these kind of things.
I mean, that's very straight and narrow.
Most spirituality includes music, includes beauty, art, these kind of things, but not the Buddhist path, because we're going so much higher than that.
It's like a science, really, which I think will probably turn some people off, but that's the way this quote, what this quote shows us, you know.
it will not be beloved, it will not be pleasing to those who are not mindful, who are not headed towards true, the truth.
because we require absolute objectivity.
In order to understand the truth, you have to be strict with yourself.
You have to be clear that you're going to be objective.
A flower can be of no more value to you than a pile of dung, because you want to understand the truth of them.
If you turn your nose up at the pile of dung and stick your nose in the flower, forget about being objective.
Forget about understanding the truth.
It's not possible.
Same goes with music.
Music and the sound of nails on a chalkboard have to be of equal value.
You can't place value judgments because that's subjective.
It's not objective anymore.
It forbids you, prevents you from seeing the truth.
But those who understand this, those who are wise and are really keen on truth and understanding, they will appreciate such things.
They'll be interested in such things.
That's important.
It's an important thing to make known at the get-go so people don't have these wrong ideas and end up
bad-mouthing or end up being disappointed and being upset that they were tricked into being objective.
But the other thing is in regards to instruction, and it's something that we have to remember ourselves.
Sometimes when we don't like the instruction, it's not the instructor's fault.
Sometimes it is.
sometimes the instructor is teaching that which is harmful of course this wouldn't have been the case with Sariputta and Moggallana but it can be that a teacher can teach something that's harmful which is what's wrong with this idea that all teachers are equal or all teachings are equal so people say all religions teach the same thing which is not really true because a religion could easily be made up that teaches terrible things
Same goes with teachers.
But this quote, it's unspoken here, but the opposite holds true, that that which is harmful, that which leads one away from the truth, leads one to delusion, would be quite pleasing to those who are asatam, those who are not on a good path.
And it would be displeasing to those who are on the right path.
And so you say, well, how do I know what's right then?
This is the danger of just taking things based on your likes and dislikes.
The whole idea of follow your heart that we often ascribe to in the West.
Follow your heart or listen to your gut feeling.
There's no reason to listen to your stomach or your intestines for that matter.
or your heart, for that matter.
It's interesting, this same saying exists in Asia.
In Thailand, it's tam jai.
Tam jai means follow your heart.
But the funny thing is, tam jai is usually considered to be a criticism.
Or it can be used to say, oh, that person just follows their heart all the time.
As an insult.
Not an insult, criticism.
Because they don't use wisdom.
They don't use mindfulness or discernment.
They just follow their heart.
Which we think, oh, that's a good thing.
Follow your heart.
Not in Buddhism.
Or they'll say, they just follow the hearts of their children, which is also a problem.
From a parental point of view, you can't just follow the hearts of your children.
Heart here means emotional or the mind or the intention of the person.
So you can't just follow your intentions.
You have to use discernment.
In fact, you shouldn't trust yourself.
We've gotten ourselves into this mess.
Any suffering you have, any mental problems, any bad habits you have, addictions, well, you did it to yourself.
So why would you trust your mind?
Why would you listen to your mind?
The untrained mind is your worst enemy, the Buddha said.
Of course, the plus side is that the trained mind is your greatest friend.
But that's the truth, is you have to train your mind.
And this verse doesn't give us any indication of how to know what is the truth and what is not.
It's not talking about that.
It's talking about, specifically it's talking about when you know the truth, don't be afraid to say it.
And don't be worried that people are going to be upset.
That's the third thing that this says.
But before we get to that, just talking about
It tells you not to follow your heart, not to follow what you like and dislike.
That's what I wanted to point out as the second point, is that you have to follow your wisdom, you have to follow knowledge.
You can't circumvent that.
There's no gut feeling that's going to tell you what's right or not.
You have to see it clearly for yourself.
And until you see it clearly, you're very distrustful of your heart and your mind, because they will trick you.
They're not yours.
They're based on causes and effects that are complex, sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful.
Sometimes helpful, but helpful in leading you towards a dead end.
So it seems, oh, well, this is working just fine.
And then you smash up against the wall of bricks, metaphorically speaking.
But the third point is when you do know the truth, which is what the Buddha is really saying, teach, instruct, don't be afraid, just because people don't like it.
But the Buddha often said, don't teach if you know the person is not going to listen.
Sometimes you have to be careful if you're just going to upset them.
But I think the point here is that there was a whole group of monks and it was like what you call triage in medicine.
don't worry too much about those who you can't save worry about those who you can save and if you don't do anything all these monks are lost all these meditators are lost if you do something, well some of them will listen so think about those ones and the rest you just have to let go and so the Buddha told them in this specific case to go and teach all these people it doesn't mean go out and preach to people and then when they get angry say ah that's your fault you're just a useless person
No, there's a time and a place to teach.
And if you're teaching and people aren't getting anything out of it, then you are at fault as a teacher.
It means either your teaching is terrible or it means you're teaching and you don't understand yet how to teach, who to teach, when to teach.
So don't always just go and teach.
But it means don't be afraid.
And if a person doesn't understand the teaching, don't give up the teaching.
understand that, well, I'm not perfect, so I can't know exactly who's ready to understand the teaching.
Obviously that person wasn't, so it doesn't mean I should give up.
There's no reason to think that the teaching's at fault, or the truth is any different.
It doesn't mean it's not true, it just means that person isn't ready for it, potentially.
But again, you have to be sure.
You can't just say, well, I think this is right, and this is my teaching, and therefore they all can get lost if they don't like it.
No, don't follow your heart.
Follow the truth.
So, interesting teaching, quite useful for meditators.
And one more verse.
So, thank you all for tuning in.
That's the teaching today.
Keep practicing and be well.