1 00:00:02,933 --> 00:00:03,574 Okay, good evening. 2 00:00:06,256 --> 00:00:09,420 Tonight we're continuing our study of the Dhammapada. 3 00:00:11,822 --> 00:00:18,189 Today we look at verse 201, which goes as follows. 4 00:00:23,054 --> 00:00:30,882 Jayaṁ vairāṁ paśabhati dukhaṁ seti parajito 5 00:00:33,055 --> 00:00:53,455 which means victory breeds enmity or vengeance. 6 00:01:00,162 --> 00:01:01,543 Those who are defeated 7 00:01:04,949 --> 00:01:11,417 Those who are not victorious dwell in suffering. 8 00:01:17,085 --> 00:01:26,056 Those who are tranquil or who have found peace dwell in happiness. 9 00:01:28,359 --> 00:01:32,104 Having abandoned victory and defeat, 10 00:01:38,176 --> 00:01:49,152 So this was told in regards, we're told it was in relation to Ajatasattu. 11 00:01:52,877 --> 00:02:00,128 Ajatasattu was a prince in the time of the Buddha and he fell in with the wrong crowd. 12 00:02:01,530 --> 00:02:03,913 He became friends with Devadatta who was 13 00:02:05,362 --> 00:02:22,965 out to destroy or take over the Buddhist congregation and so he teamed up with Ajatasattu and Ajatasattu 14 00:02:25,139 --> 00:02:33,114 Devadatta suggested that he kill his father who was the king and he would be able to take over the kingdom. 15 00:02:34,597 --> 00:02:47,822 And Devadatta would kill the Buddha and he would take over the, I'm not sure what you call it, the religion I guess, religious organization. 16 00:02:53,388 --> 00:02:56,774 And they tried, and Devadatta was unsuccessful, of course. 17 00:02:57,114 --> 00:03:01,661 Ajatasattu was eventually successful. 18 00:03:03,024 --> 00:03:05,568 He tried to kill his father. 19 00:03:06,409 --> 00:03:17,387 He couldn't bear to actually kill his father, so he threw him in the dungeon, had him tied to the wall or chained to the wall. 20 00:03:18,903 --> 00:03:41,265 had him starve to death not bringing any food to him the story goes that Bimbisara was Bimbisara was his father was so happy because his jail cell he was able to see the monastery where the Buddha lived and so he was able to 21 00:03:43,321 --> 00:03:46,307 And he was able to survive for quite some time. 22 00:03:46,908 --> 00:03:47,810 That's a long story. 23 00:03:48,511 --> 00:03:52,659 He would, in jail, he would do walking meditation. 24 00:03:54,222 --> 00:04:00,795 And I can't remember, he was so happy that he wasn't even concerned about being in prison. 25 00:04:00,815 --> 00:04:02,258 Eventually he chained him to the wall. 26 00:04:04,229 --> 00:04:12,178 And the queen brought food in secretly, and eventually he refused to allow the queen to see the king. 27 00:04:13,399 --> 00:04:14,841 Eventually, King Bimbisara died. 28 00:04:15,061 --> 00:04:16,743 I'll make a long story short. 29 00:04:17,784 --> 00:04:18,825 But that's not this story. 30 00:04:18,845 --> 00:04:22,289 This story is about Ajatasattu after he killed the king. 31 00:04:22,349 --> 00:04:32,160 He became quite an imperialist or a colonialist, trying to take over the rest of the world. 32 00:04:33,929 --> 00:04:40,598 and he fought with the king of Kosala, who I guess was Pasenadi. 33 00:04:45,544 --> 00:04:53,254 And it says he was his uncle, so I'm not really sure where the connection is, but he fought with his uncle, and he kept beating his uncle. 34 00:04:53,574 --> 00:05:03,227 And Pasenadi, or Kosala, the king of Kosala was so upset by being beaten by Ajatasattu, 35 00:05:05,232 --> 00:05:09,660 That he refused to eat and he became very ill and very weak. 36 00:05:11,063 --> 00:05:14,269 And he was just tormented lying on his bed. 37 00:05:14,289 --> 00:05:15,591 It's actually quite a short story. 38 00:05:17,755 --> 00:05:19,118 But there's much background to it. 39 00:05:19,739 --> 00:05:24,608 The background of this prince killing his father, of Devadatta trying to kill the Buddha. 40 00:05:26,528 --> 00:05:29,872 of Bimbisara and his greatness at the moment of death. 41 00:05:29,912 --> 00:05:38,202 Ajatasattu tried to actually stop his father from starving to death. 42 00:05:38,522 --> 00:05:41,165 At the last moment, he went to see his father, but he was too late. 43 00:05:42,347 --> 00:05:43,248 His father had died. 44 00:05:50,256 --> 00:05:55,422 But the essence of this is about victory and defeat. 45 00:05:57,359 --> 00:06:13,609 What are the results of our perspective on the world? 46 00:06:14,651 --> 00:06:20,582 A person who strives constantly to 47 00:06:24,595 --> 00:06:28,619 to defeat and to beat others. 48 00:06:30,440 --> 00:06:39,549 So on the surface it appears to just be a good religious advice telling people not to fight with each other. 49 00:06:40,330 --> 00:06:53,742 When you fight, it's what we tell kids, when you fight you end up hurting others, it's not very nice, and you end up breeding enmity and vengeance and so on. 50 00:07:00,016 --> 00:07:01,319 But there's a deeper lesson here. 51 00:07:01,680 --> 00:07:09,476 And the lesson for us as meditators is that this perspective is one that leads to suffering. 52 00:07:10,859 --> 00:07:12,743 dukhaṃ si-diprajito 53 00:07:20,958 --> 00:07:23,401 Buddhism is very much about our perspective. 54 00:07:23,782 --> 00:07:28,288 The Buddha used the word ditti a lot when we talk about our views. 55 00:07:28,648 --> 00:07:38,442 It really refers to the way we look at the world, the way we approach experience, the way we approach our experience. 56 00:07:41,406 --> 00:07:48,315 And it's similar to people who have ambition, like Ajatasattu had ambition, Devadatta had ambition. 57 00:07:50,658 --> 00:07:54,623 even simply approaching reality as problems that we have to fix. 58 00:07:59,589 --> 00:08:15,369 People who fall into this game of vengeance, of victory and defeat, have a sense of what they call a zero-sum, I think it's a zero-sum game, is what it's called. 59 00:08:15,389 --> 00:08:16,210 It means that 60 00:08:17,303 --> 00:08:23,773 In order for me to benefit, someone else has to suffer. 61 00:08:25,956 --> 00:08:27,778 And so in the end it equals out to zero. 62 00:08:27,798 --> 00:08:30,703 It's like the law of thermodynamics or something. 63 00:08:32,245 --> 00:08:37,132 In order to find happiness, it has to be at the expense of someone else. 64 00:08:39,055 --> 00:08:45,184 And so on the face of it, it seems practically or conventionally sort of a terrible outlook. 65 00:08:47,324 --> 00:08:58,399 And yet it is a sort of a conventional outlook that people have, thieves and warlords. 66 00:08:58,419 --> 00:09:08,532 But also ordinary people have a sense of trying to find happiness through manipulating others, through harming others, through defeating others. 67 00:09:08,632 --> 00:09:13,298 It's something we fall into quite easily when making enemies. 68 00:09:15,488 --> 00:09:17,650 We identify people who are in our way. 69 00:09:19,913 --> 00:09:22,235 But it's a deeper psychological issue. 70 00:09:22,616 --> 00:09:24,137 It's our outlook. 71 00:09:24,478 --> 00:09:27,841 And these actions affect our outlook and they spring from our outlook. 72 00:09:29,603 --> 00:09:44,179 Our outlook is a much more basic sense of trying to fix things, trying to force, trying to bring about resolution by sheer force of 73 00:09:46,167 --> 00:10:01,915 Our disliking of the situation doesn't have to be a person, though people, other human beings become galvanizing icons of hatred. 74 00:10:03,751 --> 00:10:12,795 If you stub your toe, you might get angry at the table, but if someone hits you, you can develop a grudge for a lifetime. 75 00:10:13,658 --> 00:10:19,313 If someone says bad things, it becomes galvanizing, very strengthening. 76 00:10:20,710 --> 00:10:47,258 focal point for hatred but ultimately it's the same the same habit we don't like something and so we fall into this habit of reacting trying to get rid of what it is that we don't like change what it is that we don't like force the bad circumstance the bad conditions to become good 77 00:10:51,338 --> 00:11:02,665 And so it leads directly to our understanding of the practice of mindfulness as an antidote for this sort of behavior. 78 00:11:05,480 --> 00:11:11,829 And sort of as an alternative, it shows quite clearly how mindfulness is different. 79 00:11:12,290 --> 00:11:15,374 Mindfulness is not like fixing problems. 80 00:11:16,415 --> 00:11:19,780 It's certainly not like achieving goals. 81 00:11:21,042 --> 00:11:31,977 And it's absolutely not like forcing or controlling reality or other people, especially, to try and be the way we want. 82 00:11:33,593 --> 00:11:36,777 Mindfulness is about experiencing things as they are. 83 00:11:36,817 --> 00:11:42,764 We talk about this and we explain mindfulness as just being aware of things as they are. 84 00:11:42,824 --> 00:12:01,626 But this sort of verse, this sort of teaching, this sort of example of the story of a Jata Sattu or any story of people holding a grudge and fighting and even killing each other over their desire for some beneficial outcome. 85 00:12:04,913 --> 00:12:12,389 This kind of story shows how different it is to be mindful and it shows the contrast with what we're doing. 86 00:12:13,953 --> 00:12:19,986 The contrast would lead to when someone tries to harm you, 87 00:12:24,809 --> 00:12:44,438 to change your perception of the situation from trying to defend yourself and trying to keep yourself from experiencing suffering to being able to see the experience as just an experience and let it happen and let it go. 88 00:12:46,443 --> 00:12:48,871 which is a very radical sort of approach. 89 00:12:49,613 --> 00:12:58,782 It shows how different this approach is from ordinary way of living. 90 00:13:11,215 --> 00:13:18,625 But the difference is quite apparent, quite profound as well, the difference in result. 91 00:13:18,645 --> 00:13:26,296 A person who engages frequently, regularly in hatred, of course, is going to find suffering. 92 00:13:26,556 --> 00:13:30,642 They're going to cultivate enemies and enmity. 93 00:13:32,528 --> 00:13:42,685 And they're going to suffer defeat and they're going to lead to situations where people want to hurt them, want to manipulate and take advantage of them. 94 00:13:47,492 --> 00:13:57,709 And so you see at a very deep level, this sort of approach, this perspective of trying to force, trying to conquer 95 00:14:00,372 --> 00:14:02,194 it has very real results. 96 00:14:02,654 --> 00:14:08,360 This isn't a very, this should be quite obvious that this is the way things are. 97 00:14:09,721 --> 00:14:17,168 When we try to hurt others, it's unsustainable in terms of providing peace and happiness. 98 00:14:22,273 --> 00:14:25,175 Not only does it create enmity, but it changes who you are. 99 00:14:25,956 --> 00:14:30,160 And so, really it's this, 100 00:14:32,317 --> 00:14:36,346 The teaching is that there are two levels to reality. 101 00:14:36,406 --> 00:14:40,396 There's the conventional level and then there's, I guess you could call the psychological level. 102 00:14:42,220 --> 00:14:44,385 And they work off of each other. 103 00:14:46,189 --> 00:14:51,321 So when we act and speak trying to harm others, 104 00:14:52,482 --> 00:14:54,063 It affects us psychologically. 105 00:14:54,724 --> 00:15:04,253 Our psychological makeup, how we relate to experience, how we perceive reality, is going to inform our decisions. 106 00:15:04,453 --> 00:15:12,801 It's going to affect the way we relate to other people, the way we relate to problems and situations in our lives. 107 00:15:15,163 --> 00:15:21,949 So when you take on a philosophy of non-harming that this verse sort of suggests, 108 00:15:24,089 --> 00:15:33,643 of not trying to conquer others, of not seeing situations as something to be conquered, as a zero sum game. 109 00:15:35,125 --> 00:15:44,497 Because of course the reality is not anything like where you defeat others and suddenly you're on top, you've won something. 110 00:15:45,598 --> 00:15:53,248 The reality is that it's a constant changing sort of flux where by sometimes you're winning and sometimes you're losing. 111 00:15:54,169 --> 00:15:55,671 And enmity breeds enmity. 112 00:15:55,711 --> 00:15:58,415 When you hurt others, you make them want to hurt you. 113 00:15:58,495 --> 00:16:00,457 So it's not a zero sum game. 114 00:16:00,477 --> 00:16:02,500 It's an everybody loses sort of game. 115 00:16:03,745 --> 00:16:07,330 When you hurt others, you make others want to hurt you. 116 00:16:08,071 --> 00:16:10,174 And all of this affects our psychology. 117 00:16:10,194 --> 00:16:13,098 It affects our makeup. 118 00:16:13,378 --> 00:16:27,677 When you cease to do that, when you stop wanting to hurt others, when you allow other people their anger against you and you experience the results of 119 00:16:29,513 --> 00:16:33,802 bad blood without reacting. 120 00:16:34,584 --> 00:16:38,091 And this affects your psychology, it affects your mental makeup. 121 00:16:38,913 --> 00:16:50,577 It's a very sort of good practical teaching in terms of the direction we want to be heading of trying to be more peaceful, happier, free from suffering. 122 00:16:53,662 --> 00:17:07,840 But from the other end as well, when we hear about this, when we look at this teaching, abandoning victory and defeat, hitvā jaya parājayam, 123 00:17:10,705 --> 00:17:13,589 we see the deeper teaching of being mindful. 124 00:17:14,491 --> 00:17:32,297 And when you yourself approach reality in terms of experiences to be understood rather than problems to be fixed or challenges to be overcome or whatever, enemies to be conquered, absolutely. 125 00:17:33,198 --> 00:17:34,360 Pain being an enemy. 126 00:17:34,420 --> 00:17:39,227 Even our defilements as being enemies is really 127 00:17:40,625 --> 00:17:42,287 problematic way of looking at them. 128 00:17:42,808 --> 00:18:01,832 If you look at anger as an enemy or greed as an enemy, it takes on an adversarial sort of state of being and there's stress involved and you cultivate this habit of trying to control and force and change reality. 129 00:18:04,315 --> 00:18:05,957 But when you take up mindfulness, 130 00:18:07,675 --> 00:18:16,549 It's no longer just about our actions and our speech, but our whole approach to reality, that pain is not an enemy. 131 00:18:17,591 --> 00:18:26,505 Speech, harsh speech from other people is not something to be conquered, not something to be fought against. 132 00:18:26,885 --> 00:18:28,227 I don't deserve to hear that. 133 00:18:28,247 --> 00:18:31,152 I don't deserve to be spoken to that way. 134 00:18:32,448 --> 00:18:37,554 Instead, experiencing it as sound, experiencing it as sight. 135 00:18:40,478 --> 00:18:42,640 Seeing reality as made up of experiences. 136 00:18:43,301 --> 00:18:53,353 This is what it truly means, I think, to give up victory and defeat, because your whole way of looking at reality is no longer adversarial. 137 00:18:55,996 --> 00:19:01,543 You rise above, I might say, or you change the 138 00:19:03,042 --> 00:19:03,803 the perspective. 139 00:19:04,384 --> 00:19:10,072 There's an old saying, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 140 00:19:11,514 --> 00:19:22,790 And it points out something, what it means is when your outlook is adversarial, you're constantly going to be trying to, you're going to react in a certain way. 141 00:19:24,673 --> 00:19:31,142 And it points out a very important reality that the world around us 142 00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:39,592 Our environment, our experience of the world is very much dependent on our outlook. 143 00:19:41,916 --> 00:19:53,518 And so, I mean, an argument against this sort of passivity whereby you let other people harm you, for example, as it may happen. 144 00:19:54,882 --> 00:19:57,808 Where you are not only non-violent but you're passive. 145 00:19:58,169 --> 00:20:00,153 You're not only peaceful but you're passive. 146 00:20:00,855 --> 00:20:07,549 The criticism might be that you're going to allow people to hurt you. 147 00:20:07,589 --> 00:20:10,275 You're going to be taken advantage of, for example. 148 00:20:13,006 --> 00:20:20,533 And so they would say, well, if you look at it this way, it's not a very good way to live. 149 00:20:21,494 --> 00:20:24,697 But the point is that there's a deeper reality going on here. 150 00:20:24,717 --> 00:20:26,359 You're changing the way you look at things. 151 00:20:28,981 --> 00:20:42,034 A person who is harmed when someone attacks someone else or speaks violently, speaks angrily to someone else, 152 00:20:44,056 --> 00:20:46,539 The reality is still just experience. 153 00:20:46,559 --> 00:20:57,553 Another way of looking at this is rather than an adversarial situation, looking at it as experiences of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking. 154 00:20:57,593 --> 00:21:05,003 If you can see it like that, it doesn't change the situation where suddenly people are nice to you. 155 00:21:05,023 --> 00:21:08,848 It changes the perspective and reality is suddenly 156 00:21:10,212 --> 00:21:23,069 objective, meaning it doesn't matter whether you're being hugged or you're being attacked. 157 00:21:23,089 --> 00:21:27,195 It's a very radical, again, sort of outlook. 158 00:21:29,278 --> 00:21:36,287 And I think this exemplifies, or this shows us clearly 159 00:21:37,887 --> 00:21:45,618 how radical it is to be mindful and the extent to which mindfulness changes our lives. 160 00:21:46,960 --> 00:21:52,609 It doesn't necessarily change our situation, so it can be quite uncomfortable at first. 161 00:21:52,729 --> 00:21:58,377 We don't have to even talk about other people who might want to hurt us, but our own body wants to hurt us. 162 00:22:00,466 --> 00:22:10,502 Because of our reactions and our emotions, we make the body quite sick and we can be quite tense. 163 00:22:11,785 --> 00:22:14,830 When you first come to practice meditation, it can be quite painful. 164 00:22:14,910 --> 00:22:17,975 Your own body can cause you great suffering. 165 00:22:19,137 --> 00:22:26,068 And if you look at that as an adversarial sort of thing, something to be fixed, something to be fought against, something to be controlled or tamed, 166 00:22:29,913 --> 00:22:32,643 You're just going to create more stress and suffering. 167 00:22:33,286 --> 00:22:35,996 You have a never-ending torment. 168 00:22:36,578 --> 00:22:38,927 It can be quite painful and quite unpleasant. 169 00:22:45,252 --> 00:22:49,597 So our way of looking at things when we're mindful is quite simple. 170 00:22:50,138 --> 00:22:52,000 It's not at all easy, but it's quite simple. 171 00:22:52,060 --> 00:22:53,922 It's about seeing things just as they are. 172 00:22:54,903 --> 00:22:58,127 This is why we repeat to ourselves, for example, pain, pain. 173 00:22:58,207 --> 00:23:01,170 If you're happy, you would say happy, happy. 174 00:23:02,372 --> 00:23:05,015 Just trying to see things as they are without reacting. 175 00:23:05,696 --> 00:23:10,281 Trying to cultivate a new perspective, a new way of looking at things. 176 00:23:10,261 --> 00:23:37,703 that is not adversarial not about conquering reality or lives or winning or anything achieving any goal but it's about cultivating a perspective of objectivity of peace that rises above experiences of victory or defeat 177 00:23:39,893 --> 00:23:43,057 So someone might look at you and say, wow, that person is a real pushover. 178 00:23:43,078 --> 00:23:43,939 They're being defeated. 179 00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:46,442 And you won't even see it that way. 180 00:23:47,864 --> 00:23:50,168 In the end, you see it only as experience. 181 00:23:50,188 --> 00:23:58,099 It's quite powerful because, I mean, the practical reality is someone who is mindful is often quite revered, respected. 182 00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:01,764 You'll find that people respect your opinion. 183 00:24:01,804 --> 00:24:07,352 They lose their desire to harm you. 184 00:24:08,952 --> 00:24:24,004 a person who is very mindful often finds that people who they thought were their enemies are suddenly able to come to terms and work towards a more peaceful resolution because the person has changed the parameters. 185 00:24:26,249 --> 00:24:27,231 A lot of our 186 00:24:28,797 --> 00:24:40,334 adversarial conflict, a lot of our conflict as humans depends on both sides continuing and perpetuating it. 187 00:24:42,256 --> 00:24:45,461 Our anger perpetuates conflict. 188 00:24:45,481 --> 00:24:47,464 Our reactivity perpetuates it. 189 00:24:52,451 --> 00:24:55,075 So it's not something that you should be scared of or 190 00:24:56,641 --> 00:25:02,550 perhaps not see it as so radical, because it's not as though you have to suddenly let people 191 00:25:04,758 --> 00:25:05,339 harm you. 192 00:25:06,039 --> 00:25:18,131 It's about changing the way we look at reality, changing our perspective, which also of course means changing our lives and gradually, gradually you come to live a more peaceful life where you work out all your problems. 193 00:25:19,312 --> 00:25:32,385 You start to look at your enemies as just people who have problems and your interactions with them rather than as fights to be won, their experiences to be understood. 194 00:25:36,820 --> 00:25:40,928 You rise above, you abandon victory and defeat. 195 00:25:40,988 --> 00:25:42,632 That's the verse here. 196 00:25:44,055 --> 00:25:50,949 So that's the Dhammapada, a very simple verse, but I think it ties in well with the understanding of what is mindfulness. 197 00:25:50,989 --> 00:25:53,534 So that's, I think, the lesson we take from it. 198 00:25:54,957 --> 00:25:55,959 Thank you all for listening. 199 00:25:56,640 --> 00:25:57,141 Have a good night.