Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verse 141, which reads as follows.
Which means,
Not by practicing nudity, going naked.
Not by having dreadlocks.
Not by smearing oneself with filth.
means not going without food, or lying on the ground, sleeping on the rocks.
Rajojalang practicing wearing dust.
So there are people who practiced by
smearing themselves with dirt.
Or being dedicated to squatting, which is apparently a practice.
None of these things can purify a person who has not overcome doubt.
And so this is a very important teaching for meditators.
The story actually has little to do with the verse, except indirectly.
But those of you who like stories will go through it.
So it happens that in the time of the Buddha there was a certain Kutumbika, which means just a lay person, some man.
When his wife died, he decided to become a monk.
He wasn't really, it was more just because he had nothing else to do with his life and because I guess he heard that the Buddha was somehow a great teacher and so it would be good to become a monk under him but it seems like he didn't really practice the Buddha's teaching much because
Before he became a monk he had a hut built for himself and he arranged his servants as a fairly wealthy man, he arranged for his servants to come and take care of him.
Stocked up one of the rooms with all sorts of food and condiments and so on and had his servants cook food and take care of him and he kept a great number of robes and all sorts of belongings
None of which was allowed as a monk.
So the monks found out about this and they came and they said, you know, whose are all these things?
These are mine.
And he said, well, don't you understand that as a monk you're only allowed to have three robes and that none of these things are in line with the practice of the Buddha's teaching?
And here you've left the world and yet you've brought it with you.
This sort of thing happens, you know.
It's kind of interesting how people, their understanding of what it means to become a monk and how easily people slip back into the role of a layperson, wearing comfortable clothes and sleeping on comfortable beds and asking for special food and so on.
We're only allowed three rooms.
We sleep on the floor.
You have to be content with whatever food we're given.
So they brought him to the Buddha.
They chastised him and brought him to the Buddha.
And the Buddha asked him, is this true?
And he said, well, how is it that you, in spite of the fact that I've expressly taught that you should be satisfied with little, that you possess yourself with so much?
Why are you so caught up in all these luxuries?
And so the Buddha was actually quite a mild chastisement and the monk got really angry, which really showed that he didn't have much spiritual progress whatsoever.
So he got up and said, fine, you want me to be content?
And he pulled off his robe and threw it to the ground and was wearing just his under robe, his lower skirt robe.
And he said, there, now you see I'm content.
And the Buddha just shook his head and said, that's not how one is content.
And then he says, you know, in your past lives, even as a water spirit, and so we're going to get one of these magical stories, even as a water spirit, you practiced
You practiced modesty and fear of evil.
You practiced good things.
You practiced heavenly, divine teachings.
The teaching of the gods.
How is it that now as a monk and me as a teacher, surrounded by all these wise and spiritual individuals that
You get angered at so little and then you don't know contentment or modesty and you don't know what's in your own best interest.
And so the monk feeling ashamed and moved by the fact that the Buddha wasn't upset or didn't react to his anger, he started to sort of get a feeling for
the greatness of what he was involved in, and the importance of what he was failing to accomplish.
And so he sat down, put his robe back on, sat down, asked the Buddha for some details about his past life.
So I have a story of a past life, which I don't always relate these, but this one is actually somewhat interesting.
It goes, if a bit fantastical, so it goes that there are these
these three princes.
This king had a wife with two sons, and then the mother died, and he took on another queen who had a third son.
And he was so happy with the third son that he said somewhat carelessly, I grant you a boon.
He granted the mother some kind of boon for giving him a son.
It's a thing that kings do.
And so she waited, and as they grew up,
when they were starting to get in their teens, she said to the king, she said, I'd like that boon from you.
And she said, I want you to give my son the kingdom.
And the king said, well, but I have these other two older sons.
I can't give your son the kingdom.
And she said, well, that's my boon.
That's the wish.
And he said, I'm sorry, I can't give it to you.
And she was kind of upset and somewhat seemed to be somewhat
unaccepting of the king's wishes and so he thought he thought to himself he called his two sons and he said look I grant that my new queen is not the pinnacle of virtue that I may have thought and she may hurt you she may cause some harm to you so what I want you to do is go and live in the forest
And when you come of age, then come back.
When I die, you come back and you take over the kingdom.
For now, there's nothing for you to do here anyway.
You go and live in the forest as ascetics.
I guess that was also a thing that kings do.
In those times, it was, I think, common for people to go and live in the forest as ascetics.
And so on their way out, they found the third son, and he said, the third prince, and he said, hey, where are you guys going?
He said, well, and they related to him the problem, and he said, oh, well, I'll come with you.
I'm not going to stay here.
I guess he wasn't all that attached to his mother, or maybe he was just aware of her evil nature.
And so they all went to the forest.
And they lived in the forest for some time, but it so happened that there was a water sprite living nearby.
And the water sprite is kind of like a water demon, this sort of potentially malevolent being who preys on innocent travelers through the forest.
And he had to deal with one of the gods that anyone who came and drank from this pond that he was haunting, that he could eat them.
And so these three unwittingly came and set up a camp near this, just not so far from this pond.
And so the oldest son, who was actually the Bodhisatta, the Buddha to be, sent the youngest son down to the pond to get them some water.
When he got to the water,
He bent down to get some water and the sprite came up and seized him.
And it turns out there was a stipulation to his granting of this power over the pond.
This angel who had granted it to him, I think it was Uesawana.
Uesawana was one of the sort of a demigod or one of the gods, one of the angels.
He had a stipulation.
He said, you can eat anyone who comes unless they know devadhamma, unless they know the heavenly dhammas, unless they know what is devadhamma.
So the idea was you can't eat people who are righteous and holy and understand the truth, understand what is right and pure.
You can eat normal people, ordinary people.
So this angel grabbed, this sprite grabbed the youngest son and asked him, do you know what is the heavenly dhammas?
And he said, the youngest son said, or sorry, it's probably better to translate devadhamma as that which has the nature of heaven, that which is heavenly, that which is godlike.
And he said, well, the sun and the moon are godlike, are devadhamma.
These are things that are of the nature to be, the nature of a heavenly nature.
And the sprite shook his head and said, you don't know what is the devadhamma, what is devadhamma.
So he grabbed him and he imprisoned him for eating later.
And the elder son, not hearing back from the youngest, the eldest brother, not hearing back from the youngest brother, sent the number two son, the number two brother, off to see what was going on.
And when he got there, same thing.
Sprite came up, asked him, what is heavenly?
And he said, well, the four directions, those are heavenly, those are godlike.
He didn't really have a clue.
You don't know.
And so I put him in prison as well.
You know, these two tasty meals to eat at a later time.
And finally the Bodhisatta came down looking for his two brothers and he saw that these two sets of footprints were going towards the pond and realized that there must be some evil spirit dwelling here that's eating my brothers.
Some kind of monster that's eaten my brothers or taken them.
And so he picked up his sword and his bow and he sat by the lake and he waited, the pond and he waited.
And the sprite, seeing that he didn't go into the pond, came out of the pond and turning himself, disguising himself as a hunter or someone living in the forest, said, hey, why don't you come and drink?
You must be thirsty.
And right away he knew that this was the monster and he said, what have you done with my brothers?
He said, why did you do that?
Why did you seize them?
He said, well, I take all that descend.
I take all that come to the lake.
He said, everybody?
He said, well, except those who know what is godlike.
Except those who know what is dhamma, what is nevadhamma.
What are those things that are truly godlike?
And it seems that this sprite was really concerned about this and actually didn't know.
It had been something that he had been looking to know, looking to learn.
And so the Bodhisattva said, well, I can teach you what is heavenly.
So he had him prepare a seat and he sat down and he gave what is actually a fairly well-known quote.
It's something that we chant in the Thai tradition from time to time.
He sat down and he taught him what is heavenly.
What is that which is truly good?
This is really the best part of the story is that we have this teaching
that changes people from evil to good.
And with this teaching he was able to
convert this evil monster to goodness.
So he said, Someone who is endowed with hiri, which means a disinclination to do evil deeds based on the nature of the evil deeds, which we normally call shame.
When a person thinks of doing something evil, hurting someone else, or even getting upset, and they feel ashamed of it, or they feel disinclined toward it, they think that wouldn't be a good thing to do.
Otapa, which we normally translate as fear or dread, but it's not actually fear.
Otapa is when you think of the results of the evil deeds.
You think of the results of hurting other people.
And you're averse to those results.
You don't do something because of the results.
They go together.
They're really the same thing.
When you understand what makes things good and evil, the disinclination to do evil, which we normally look at in someone as shame and fear of evil, you know, God-fearing, as they say in theistic religions.
So one who is endowed with these, sukha-dhamma-samahita, someone who possesses pure truth or pure teachings, means they have wisdom and they understand what is right and what is wrong.
They know the truth.
And they have a pure code.
Dhamma is actually, in ancient times, it meant code.
So their code of conduct, their way of life is pure.
Santo, they are calm and tranquil, so they've practiced meditation and they've come to see the raging mind and tame their mind and free themselves from the restlessness and the stress of an ordinary untrained mind.
Sapurisat, they are a gentle person, they are a good person.
They are a good person in this world.
Such a person is called godly, heavenly.
So even as a bodhisattva, he knew these things.
.
And this moved the spirit.
And the spirit said to him, well, you truly know what is God like.
And he said, as a reward, I will free one of your brothers.
You pick one of your brothers, and I'll free one of them as a reward for telling me what is God like.
And the Bodhisattva said, well, very well, then free my youngest brother.
And I think it was a test because the spirit scowled at him and said, yeah, you know the truth, but you certainly don't practice it.
You know it is godlike, but you certainly aren't godlike yourself.
And he said, what do you mean?
He said, well...
You have two brothers and you pick the younger one to save when you don't respect seniority.
You don't respect the elder of your two brothers.
It's an important thing and it's an important sort of an important moral code.
I'm not sure how seriously that's taken in Buddhism, but there is a sense that someone who is senior should be respected.
Someone who is elder should, to some extent, be respected for being elder.
It's not really a teaching in Buddhism, because someone can be old and foolish, or young and wise.
Like the Buddha, when he came to teach, all of his peers were very senior to him.
And so he said this,
He said to this spirit, he said, no, I know it is right and I also practice it.
He said, here's the deal.
And he explained to him the situation.
He said, we came to this forest because of our youngest brother.
If we come back, the two of us, without him, you think anybody's going to believe us that a monster ate him?
He's our trouble.
For sure they would think that we killed him and left his body in the forest.
And the spirit was very much impressed by the wisdom and quick wit of the Bodhisatta and so he freed all three of them.
And the Bodhisatta said, look, you know, this isn't really a wholesome thing you're doing.
This life of evil, this life of eating whoever comes to your pond is not really a way to live.
It's not a way to become heavenly.
Do you not want to be happy and do you not want a good future?
Do you not want to find a path to greater things?
And the Spirit said, yes, of course.
That's why I was looking to learn what is God like.
Well, now that you've heard it, don't you think it's time you should practice it?
And don't you think it goes against these teachings to harm others?
So they managed to convince the Spirit to come back to the palace with them and
They gave him his own space and he ended up protecting them.
That's the story of the past.
So I mean, it's a nice little fairy tale.
But like all, whether it may have actually happened, I'm not discounting the fact that there might be spirits and they might actually gobble up wonders and forests.
So this may very well have happened.
I mean, we're supposed to believe that it happened, and I don't mind believing that.
It's not really important.
What's important is the teaching.
We have the deva-dhamma from this.
Hiryotapasampana.
And so that's a good one for us.
But the big teaching here is the Dhammapada verse, which is very important for us as meditators.
But it doesn't matter what practices you have.
I mean, monks are really bad about this.
We get caught up in the fact that we're monks.
We get even more caught up in our practices.
There's so much ego that can arise from wearing rag robes or even just wearing monk's robes at all.
That's sort of a feeling that
that comes with being a monk, there's a sense that that's how it appears to people.
Living here in the West, anyway, it appears to people that it's just a way of showing off or exhibitionism, that kind of thing.
When, in fact, the idea of the behind the robes was something nondescript, something unassuming, something that makes you look like a bum, like a homeless person, which, in fact, we are.
But it happens for meditators as well.
It's easy to get caught up in, when you put on the white clothes as a meditator, you can even get caught up in that.
You see this in places where people wear the white clothes like a badge, and where people sit, and they can sit very straight, and they're able to sit for long periods of time, and you can become very much attached to that.
that ability.
Even, the Buddha said, even concentration, even when you're able to focus your mind and still your mind, you can even become attached to that.
The Buddha discounts everything.
He says, in this verse he specifically talks about practices that Buddhist monks are not really supposed to do, but the relationship with this story is he says to the monk, he says, you know, just because you put on a robe doesn't make you a monk.
And he talks about, you know, any extreme practice you can do.
You could even lie on the ground.
You could, you know, any of these practices that other people do, they're...
They're all really not the path, not the way out of suffering.
And he actually brings up a teaching that isn't at all related to the story, which is sort of the way, because he's not really interested in the details of what's been going on.
He's not there to just admonish the monk.
He's already done that.
He's there to enlighten.
And so I guess he must see something deeper in this monk that his real problem is doubt.
And that's really the real problem with all of us.
The condition that we come to meditation in, we come full of doubt.
Doubt about suffering.
Why do we suffer?
Doubt about what is really good for me.
We know that we have problems.
We're just not sure how to fix them.
Sometimes even not sure we want to fix them.
When we hear the Buddha teaching about giving up sense pleasures, that's the most fearsome thing.
There's so much uncertainty about spiritual practice, about Buddhism.
We're not sure that we want to become free from suffering.
We're not sure if we're able to.
We have doubt about ourselves, doubt about our ability to follow the path.
We have doubt about the path entirely.
What am I doing here?
Why am I walking back and forth?
Why am I sitting?
Why am I wasting my time with this?
We have doubt about good things.
We have doubt about bad things.
We doubt about what is right.
When something's right, we still doubt about it.
We can even realize that something's right through the practice and then later doubt about it.
Doubt is very dangerous.
Doubt of the five hindrances is the most problematic because it's the one that's going to get you on the wrong path.
It's the one that prevents you from seeing right from wrong.
Doubt allows you to create a false dichotomy, sort of, of two things, a false equivalent between two things.
You're unable to see when something that's better, you're not able to see that it's better.
Something that's worse, you're not able to see that it's worse.
Doubt is what confuses you.
Doubt is the worst enemy in meditation.
When people come here to do meditation courses, it's what causes you most problems.
All the rest we can deal with.
It's painful, it's stressful, having to deal with anger, having to deal with desires.
But until you give rise to doubt, you can deal with them, right?
If you're confident, then you just be patient.
And it's not pleasant.
but you work it out and eventually you overcome it.
But doubt is very difficult to overcome.
In fact, doubt is very easy to overcome.
But unless you have the right tools, sort of the key to unlocking the doubt, it's near impossible.
Something that is very, the biggest problem for meditators.
Don't ever let yourself give in to doubt.
So how do you overcome it?
But that is actually very simple to overcome.
And the practice that we do makes it incredibly simple.
Like everything else, when you see doubt for what it is,
When you look at doubt as just doubt, and you free it from the object that you're doubting about, it disappears.
You see, the answer to doubt is to find a practice that gives you confidence, right?
Find a practice that you can be sure about.
Well, what practice could possibly give you certainty?
Some people are resigned to the fact that they're never going to find that, that you can never be sure of anything, right, they would say.
And so the elegance of the Buddha's teaching is that it simply allows you to practice on the doubt and to see the doubt as it is.
When you say to yourself, doubting, doubting, the doubt disappears.
Once the doubt is gone, you ask yourself, do you feel better?
Of course you feel better.
You feel more at peace.
You feel calmer.
You feel less stress.
That in and of itself is the practice.
You don't need to go any further.
You don't need to believe anything else.
When you give up doubt,
you're on the right path.
If you can say to yourself, doubting, doubting, and suddenly feel confident, then you've learned all there is really to know about the path of the Buddha, the path of Buddhism.
Because that very technique helps you overcome doubt, helps you overcome greed, anger, all kinds of delusion, helps you see things clearly, helps you let go, helps you free yourself
So it works with everything else.
With everything else you be patient and whether it goes away or not, it keeps you objective.
But we forget to do it with doubt.
And with doubt we get caught up in it.
We get lost in it.
Because if you doubt, you know, should I really do it?
How could you possibly say doubting, doubting?
And so that's all you have to do is forget about your practice.
Forget about whatever it is that you're doubting yourself.
What's right, what's wrong.
Focus on the doubt and you can be sure of that 100%.
Because as soon as you say doubting, doubting, it disappears.
You feel better.
You freed yourself.
So that's the lesson we take away from this, the reminder that the Buddha says.
You can't be pure no matter what your practice is until you overcome doubt.
You overcome doubt about what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's false, because in the end there's very little that we can know for ourselves, and there's very little that we need to focus on to see the truth for ourselves.
There's so much that you'll never be able to get a clear answer on or a certainty on.
And so if you get caught up in those things, should I do this, should I do that, there's so many questions that don't have clear answers to them.
But the most important aspects of who we are and what we are and the nature of reality, what is truly real, because it's truly real, we can find answers and we can have certainty.
We can see for ourselves because it's right there.
It really does exist and it really does happen in a certain way.
And as you observe it, no one can tell you that it's wrong.
No one can tell you that you're wrong.
No one needs to tell you what's right and what's wrong, what's true and what's false, because you've seen for yourself.
Quite simple.
And if you keep it simple, don't bother with all these other practices and so on.
Don't focus your attention on finding a shortcut or a better way.
If you're just patient and methodical, you practice to overcome doubt in this way.
Eventually you'll become free, you'll find peace.
If you get caught up in other goals and expectations and desires, very easy to get lost in doubt and lose your way.
It's really the only thing that will cause you to fail.
And why it causes you to fail is because you stop practicing.
This type of meditation, you can't fail.
It might take a long time.
It might take lifetimes.
But you can't fail unless you stop.
And the only thing that's going to cause you to stop really is doubt.
When you start to doubt it and you decide that it's not of any benefit, which can happen even though you see that it's beneficial.
If you let doubt overwhelm you, it clouds your mind.
Be very careful with this one.
It's also a defining factor for an enlightened being, of course, because someone who has become at least a Sotapanna has no more doubt.
No more doubt because they've seen the truth.
They've seen absolutely that this teaching leads to freedom from suffering.
Because they've experienced freedom from suffering for themselves.
So, that's the Dhammapada verse for this evening.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Wishing you all the best.