Hi and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 83, which reads as follows.
sabbathave sapurisa cajanti nakamakamalapayanti santo sukena vaputtha atavadukena na ucavacham panditadasayanti Which means,
Sabhata ve sabhurisa ca janti.
Sabhurisa, good people, are always renounced, are everywhere.
In every instance, on every occasion, renouncing, giving up, giving up.
Nakama kama lapayanti santo.
They don't mutter or blather or chatter.
as though they were enamored by sensuality, in love with love, or lusting after lustful things, desirous of the desirables.
When touched by either happiness or suffering, they don't exhibit, the whys don't exhibit highs or lows.
So ordinary people, when touched by sukha or dukkha, happiness or suffering, they are affected.
They are elated.
They rejoice about their good fortune.
They become somehow dependent on it.
They step into it and they come to expect it.
And when touched by suffering, then they lament and bemoan their state.
But asapurisa is ever cajanti, is ever renouncing, letting go.
So that's the verse.
It's in regards to a story about, it says 500 monks and 500 beggars.
So in the time of the Buddha, after the Buddha was recently enlightened, he was staying in Vairanja.
He lived there for the rains.
He had been invited to stay in Vairanja.
If you read the beginning of the Vinaya, tenako panasamayena buddho bhagavave ranjayam viharati
The Buddha was dwelling in Virenja.
And this Brahmin invited him to stay there and then forgot about him.
And so the Buddhist and his 500 monks dwelt in great hardship.
And they only were able to survive because of some horse traders who gave them horse food, gave them oats basically, something like oats, some kind of grain.
And they were able to live off this grain.
But it was great hardship, so they went on alms, but I guess didn't get much.
And this Brahmin who invited them to this area where they weren't able to get alms totally forgot about them until the end of the rains.
But it says here that there were a bunch of beggars living with them.
By the kindness of the monks, 500 eaters of refuse lived within the monastery enclosure.
or it doesn't even say that, but what it does say is that, the point is, these beggars were before, so they weren't living, I was wrong, they weren't living with the Buddha at Vairanja.
But in Vairanja, the monks, these 500 monks, were all at least Sotapanna, maybe all Arahants.
And they were all living with the Buddha and they were content with their poor fare.
They were at peace, even in great hardship.
Later on, they came to great wealth and prosperity.
Not wealth in terms of money, but they were very well cared for.
They moved to Savatthi and they lived there.
But they were still the same.
They were still at peace.
So whether they lived in hardship or whether they lived in great comfort, they were the same.
And then you had these 500 beggars who appeared after there was great wealth and, because of their own hardship, decided that they would hang out at the monastery.
And so, through the kindness of the monks, these 500 beggars
sort of lived off the leftover food because everyone was always bringing food to the monks and coming to hear the monks teach and supporting the monks in different ways and so there was lots of leftovers and so these beggars would come
And it says they would eat the choice food left over by the monks and then lie down and sleep.
And then when they got up from their sleep, they would be full of energy and they would go and wrestle.
They would shout and jump and wrestle and play.
Misbehave both within and without the monastery.
They did nothing but misbehave.
And so the monks were discussing this and they noted the difference.
The difference because
Ostensibly, a part of the problem for these beggars was the opulence.
Once they got great food, they got strength and energy, and they just started acting rambunctious.
Whereas the monks, whether they were in hardship or in opulence or affluence, were unchanged.
And so the Buddha, for that reason, he told a Jataka story about horses, which is actually quite interesting because it points out that even, it's a story about some donkeys and horses.
And these thoroughbred horses were fed, it was an accident or something, they were fed wine of some sort or some kind of alcohol.
and were unaffected by it.
But these donkeys who were hanging out with the thoroughbred horses drank the same wine and started braying and carrying on.
The point being that alcohol, even alcohol, even though we rail against it as being a terrible, terrible thing, all it has the power to do is remove your inhibitions.
So if you don't have any harmful intentions in your mind, it doesn't actually hurt you.
Unfortunately, for most of us, that includes delusion, it includes ego, and so on.
So if you have none of that, then you're fine, but
Anyway, he makes the point that there's a difference between people.
For an ordinary person, it's actually an interesting point because for ordinary people it's sometimes the other way around.
Sometimes when things are fine, people can be quite moral and ethical.
When you don't need to steal, when you don't need to kill,
when there's no adversity, when there's no danger.
But when the going gets tough, many people will abandon their ethics, abandon their goodness, their generosity.
And for other people, it's the other way around.
In hardships,
they are forced to behave themselves.
They have to act in such a way that other people respect them and so on.
But when things are good, they get lazy.
For monastics, this is very much the case.
When things are rough, you're forced to be mindful because there's lots of physical pain and physical discomfort and hunger and thirst and heat and cold that you can't escape.
But when you have the pleasure and the luxury, then it's very easy to get lazy.
It's very easy to become indulgent and so on.
It's actually quite an impressive thing, impressive feat that these monks, having been in such hardship, going to such opulence and not being affected by it.
But the point still stands that it works both ways, and it seems more to me about change than anything.
That after a while you become sort of stable in your situation, and if things don't change, you may become complacent, thinking that everything is okay, but then when things change, you see what you couldn't see because of the stability.
Part of it points out the nature of impermanence or the importance of impermanence.
The harm, the danger of change to one's psyche.
And also the usefulness of impermanence for that very reason.
When things change, you're able to better see your defilement.
When you have the rug pulled out from under you, right?
When everything's going stable, whether it's difficult, if it's difficult you plod along.
If it's good, then you feel calm and at peace.
But when things change...
You can be quite upset.
A person who is living in opulence, if they fall into hardship, would have a very hard time coping mentally with it.
So it goes both ways, and this is continuing this theme in this verse.
We've seen this recently quite a bit.
We talk about how wise people, touched by either happiness or unhappiness, happiness or suffering, show no change.
Na ucha wacha tasayanti.
Ucha means a high, and awacha means a low.
So they experience no highs or lows.
Which is interesting.
People often think of that as being a terribly dull and uninteresting state.
Certainly not something to be strived for.
The highs and the lows are the spice of life, they would say.
It gives life meaning, I guess.
It gives meaning to your happiness.
But it's actually quite the opposite.
We find people who are stuck on happiness and suffering, these are the ones who are like zombies.
They can be very depressed and
colorless in their constant aversion to suffering or in their constant obsession with happiness.
A zombie is someone who is constantly seeking out pleasure.
It's by seeking out pleasure that you become this zombie that consumes and consumes.
Or you're a zombie working just to survive in great hardship, just to cope with suffering.
A person who has had great loss becomes a zombie.
A person who exhibits neither highs nor lows is actually quite at peace, has quite a calm and uplifted mind, a light mind, a mind that is flexible, a mind that is kind and compassionate, because they aren't caught up in their own emotions.
So they're able to approach life with great zest and vigor and clarity and goodness as well.
So their intentions to help others and that kind of thing are pronounced.
Their happiness and their peace are much pronounced.
So they're anything but a zombie.
The zombie is the one who is caught up in likes and dislikes.
They become tired and they get into this trance-like state, zombie-like state of consuming pleasure and coping with suffering.
It's a warning for all of us not to become complacent.
It's easy to think that you're moral and ethical.
If you don't look closely, it's easy to think, well, I'm not a bad person, I'm living fine.
But so much of that is often dependent on our pleasure.
And when you start to meditate, you start to see, ah, yes, actually I'm quite intoxicated by this pleasure.
And many of the things that I thought were harmless are actually building me up to take a fall.
Because when I'm not able to indulge in sensual pleasures anymore, I'm going to get angry and upset and frustrated.
It's what leads us to fight and quarrel and manipulate others, our indulgence in sensuality.
That's really the crux of it.
reactions to pleasant experiences and our reactions to unpleasant experiences.
This about sums up all of the problems that we have, or the problems of the mind that we're working to overcome.
We have these two.
There's a third one that's not really explicitly mentioned here, and that's delusion.
We consider these to be the three evils in the mind, the three things that lead us to suffer.
But they're not equal.
Happiness and unhappiness lead to greed and anger.
Liking and disliking are reactions to these things.
These are, you could say, the surface problem.
But the underlying problem, the third one is the underlying problem.
Our delusion is how we approach these things.
The reason we get angry about unpleasant things, the reason we become attached to pleasant things, is because of our delusion, because of our ignorance, our perception that this one's going to make me happy, this one's something that I... The only way to be happy is to avoid it.
If I chase after this one, I'll be happy.
If I push this one away, I'll also be happy.
Not realizing that the more we push this one away, the more unhappy we will become.
The more we cling to this one, the more needy we will become, and so the more unhappy we will become.
and shameful you'll become.
If you ask yourself, who would you rather have as a friend?
Who would you rather associate with?
Someone who wants a lot?
Or someone who has great wanting?
Or someone who has little wanting?
Who has great desires?
Strong, strong desires?
Or someone who has simple desires?
Or is free from desire?
I don't know, some people might say they like people who have great desires, but if you think about it, when people have great desires, then they end up wanting a lot from you.
Friends who have great desires can be great burdens.
Friends who are hard to please.
Or people who have great aversion to suffering.
So this is the sort of situation we have here, where part of the implication here is that these guys are acting improper, or acting in an unsuitable way.
eaten as this food that that was meant for the monks and sort of living in close quarters with these spiritual people they're acting like well like ordinary ordinary individuals you get that a lot in monasteries when when they get big in in thailand you'd see this a lot where the workers in the monastery is not so very moral someone i uh
I don't know, I was talking to one of the workers about cockroaches and she... I think she pulled out a can of cockroach spray and was trying to hand it to me.
And...
Yeah.
I remember going, we went on this parade once.
The monks, we were up in this boat.
They had us up on this float with a boat.
It was like a boat and people were putting food in the boat.
It was a means of supporting, I don't know actually what it was, what the food was going to be for, but it was a parade with monks, which was kind of nice.
But then the board of directors for the monastery was surrounding it and going on with us.
And then they started pulling, they pulled out alcohol and started drinking whiskey while all around us they were holding on to the edges of the boat and riding the float.
It's a shame, really, that sort of thing, that living so close to such goodness and
such spiritual teachings that they don't bother to put them into practice.
And part of it is this problem of having things too good.
When things are good, people may tend to misbehave.
It's part of the reason why monks are encouraged to go off into the forest and live in simple
accommodations, to live more or less in hardship.
Because it does, it can keep you honest.
It forces you to be mindful.
In terms of the monastic life, hardship is quite often important.
for spiritual development, because it's very easy to get lazy, as we can see here.
Anyway, so a simple teaching.
The verse itself has some interesting points.
The idea that what makes a good person is their practice of renunciation everywhere, whether they're happy or unhappy.
And they never blather on lapayanti, it's an interesting word, they chatter.
The implication is that people who are intoxicated with sensuality will blather on about it.
Something we should catch ourselves in, talking about food or clothing or music or art or this kind of thing.
But one who is
wise, when touched by other happiness or by sorrow, is at peace, is content.
Their happiness, their peace, their contentment is not dependent.
Anamisa sukha is a happiness that is not based on an object.
It doesn't require this or that.
It isn't affected.
It isn't disturbed.
It isn't disturbed and it isn't dependent on external senses, external experiences or phenomena.
This is why meditation is so important.
It's important to understand change and to become familiar with change and to see that change is a part of life so that changes don't affect us, so that our happiness can be our peace of mind, can be undisturbed by change.
Anyway, that's the teaching of this Dhammapada verse.
That's all for now.
Thank you for tuning in.
Keep practicing.