Okay, hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 72, which reads as follows.
yāva-deva-anatāya-nyatam-bhālasa-cāyati hanti-bhālasa-sukhaṁsaṁ mudham-masa-vipātayam Which means,
Yavadeva anathaya.
Yavadeva, to the extent, to which extent, anathaya nyatam balasa jayati.
Knowledge arises, to the extent that knowledge arises in a fool.
Bala.
To that extent, it arises to that person's disadvantage.
So knowledge arises to the disadvantage of a fool.
For it destroys, kills, or puts an end to their good luck .
It crushes his or her head.
Crushes her head.
His head.
Their head.
Very important verse.
for all of us to keep in mind.
This is the sort of verse that you can think of as exemplary of the Buddhist teaching.
it is indicative of the nature of the Buddha's teaching.
And it shows how the place he gave to knowledge was not being a bad thing, but clearly not being enough, having its limitations and potential disadvantages.
What was this verse told in regards to?
It seems that there's a theme here.
As with the last verse, verse 71, this is told about Moggallana and the things he saw on Vulture's Peak.
So it seems that Moggallana was coming down from Vulture's Peak again, again with the same monk, Lakkhana, who was, I guess, a good friend of Moggallana's.
And again he smiled.
And again Lakhana asked him, what are you smiling about?
And again, just as before, Moggallana refuses to answer and says, ask me again when we get in front of the Buddha.
And indeed Lakhana does exactly that.
And again the Buddha smiles.
admits that he saw and again Moggallana tells him what he saw and in this case he saw a ghost huge invisible ethereal being and this time having his head crushed by hammers so again and again hammers would crash upon his skull
would burst.
And again and again, his head would be rebuilt and rebuild itself.
And again, the hammers would crash down and repeat endlessly.
And he said, I smiled because I've never seen such a being before.
This is what the text says.
So it's an interesting thing.
And then the Buddha says that he saw such a being but didn't want to say anything because people would, if he didn't have a witness, people wouldn't believe him.
And I think such is the case nowadays when I tell these stories.
I risk, we risk people disbelieving it, feeling that such a being could not exist.
So we have a bit of a problem here.
I'd like people to focus not on details.
You shouldn't focus on
historical facts.
Did this happen?
Did that not happen?
It's not really important.
Does such a being exist?
Does such a being not exist?
It's more important to understand the theory and obviously more important to understand this verse which doesn't require the story to be true.
On the other hand, it would be of course much to our advantage if we could understand the mechanics behind such a being, how such a being can arise and be clear in our minds that there's also the potential for us to be born as a huge hulking being, having our head crushed by hammers.
Apparently there is such a potential.
Even if we can't do that, if we can't bring our minds around the fact that beings of a different nature than ourselves exist and the potential for the mind to create existence that is undetectable or seemingly undetectable by physical means, ordinary physical means,
if we can't we shouldn't let it get in the way of our our practice and our appreciation of the knowledge in this verse if you can well there's always a benefit there
The benefit would be that you can then have faith and confidence in your practice.
It gives you encouragement in your practice.
to avoid such states.
Nobody wants to be born such a being.
Anyway, then the monks were all like asking the Buddha how such a thing could occur, how such a being could exist.
What did such a being do to obtain such an existence?
And the Buddha told the story of the past.
So it seems there was once a cripple
and this cripple was very good in one thing and that was using a sling so he had this sling and he would shoot stones at
at these big leaves, whatever big leaves there were.
And he could cut the leaves just by slinging stones.
He was such a sharpshooter that he could cut the leaves in a certain pattern.
And so he would, just for fun, he would cut them into shapes.
And he did this to amuse the children.
And the children would follow him around and ask him to make an elephant or ask him to make a bird or so on.
And he would oblige.
And one day, they were in the king's garden.
And they were telling him that he was making all these shapes and cutting the leaves out in various patterns, when all of a sudden, the king
came to the garden and the children ran away and left the cripple behind.
And the king found out and the king went, of course, to rest in the shade and found that the shade was patched.
The shade wasn't complete and he looked up and he saw these shapes and he said, what is this?
Where is this happening?
How is this happening?
And he inquired and found out that there was this cripple
I thought, wow.
Hey, you know, I could use such a person.
And he asked him, would you be able to shoot these pebbles?
Speaking of the sharp shooting, do you think you'd be able to shoot these pebbles into someone's mouth?
And the cripple said, yeah, I could do that.
And he said, I'd like you to shoot a pint pot of horse dung.
Cow dung?
I can't remember.
into someone's mouth for me turns out the king had a advisor who couldn't keep his mouth shut and would just lather on about anything and everything and the king was annoyed by this and so thought they would teach this guy a lesson and the cripple said yes I could I could do that so the king took him to the court and hid him behind a curtain
And the cripple poked a little hole in it.
And every time this advisor opened his mouth, he would shoot a little pellet of dung into the guy's mouth and shut him up.
Apparently, he got away with this until he completely got a whole pint pot full of dung into the guy's mouth.
And right.
And the king then turned to the advisor and said, you know, you're such a blather mouth, I can't take it anymore.
And he said, all this time you've been sitting there and even when I, you couldn't even keep your mouth shut, even when we were shooting pellets of dung into your mouth or something like that.
It's bizarre, really, this story.
It's quite interesting.
This is the story that's been passed down.
It's a bizarre sort of story, I think.
An interesting way to... But it's a harmless way, I suppose.
I mean, they're not hurting the guy.
So it is kind of an ingenious way to...
get your point across.
It is said that the advisor never was very careful to open his mouth in the future.
But the point is, then this cripple became quite wealthy.
The king showered honor and gain upon him.
And our story comes in, our verse comes in when, the story of our verse comes in when another man saw this and was quite impressed and thought, wow, you know, if I could learn that skill, I could probably gain favor and gain and fame as well.
and so here's the problem when someone does something for the purpose of fame and gain and all this and so his desire was already unwholesome his desire to learn so he approaches this cripple and the cripple doesn't want to teach him and he persuades him to teach him and finally he says fine I'll teach you what I know
And the cripple, he does this, he butters up the cripple and takes care of him and acts as his servant for a while until finally the cripple says, fine, I'll teach you what I know.
And so he teaches him how to use this sling until the man gets quite good at it.
And so
The short of it is that we have this man who's learned how to use a sling and is keen to show off.
And so the cripple says, so how are you going to test?
What are you going to do with this skill?
And he says, well, I figure I'll find something to shoot at so that people can know what a sharpshooter I am.
I'll figure I'll shoot at a cow or maybe I'll shoot at a man somewhere.
And the cripple says, you can't just go around shooting things and living beings.
If you shoot a cow, you get fined 500 gold pieces.
If you shoot a human, you get fined 1,000 gold pieces, something like that.
He says, what you have to do is you have to find something to shoot at that nobody's going to miss, that has no father, no mother, nobody to complain about.
So maybe some of you can tell where this is going.
He says, good idea, I'll find something like that.
So he looks around and he sees a cow and he says, no, that has an owner.
And the owner is going to be concerned about it.
And he looks and he sees a man and he thinks, yeah, right, that's true, this man has a mother and a father and a wife and children and not a good idea.
And he looks around, finally he sees a child, he sees all these, until finally he sees a Pateka Buddha.
And he says, this man.
He sees him going on alms round.
And it's amazing how he could just miss the fact that this is an enlightened being.
But that's the case with people who are so blinded by their own desires and their attachments.
And he says, this man.
No father, no mother, no wife, no children.
This man is the perfect target and no one will miss him.
And so he takes this thing and he shoots the Pachayka Buddha right in the head and the Pachayka Buddha dies.
He thinks, oh, I'm a good shot with that.
And the people of the village, of course, are very much attached to the Pacheco Buddha.
And they find out he hasn't come for alms.
And so they go and look for him.
And they find that he's passed away.
He's been killed, been murdered.
And this silly person comes up and says, yeah, that was me.
Look what a sharpshooter I am.
Killing this guy.
The story is that the text says that he was able to shoot a stone in one ear and out the other ear.
So according to the text, yes, we can agree that's quite a feat.
And yeah, his bragging doesn't quite have the expected result.
They lynch him and I think they beat him and kill him and he ends up going to hell as a result.
And once he's finished his
He is stint in hell.
He is reborn as a ghost on Vulture's Peak and has hammers crashing down upon his skull.
And the Buddha says, so you see, .
Knowledge arises in a fool to his or her disadvantage.
It destroys their good luck.
It crushes their head.
The verse is obviously metaphorical, and so you don't need the story of a ghost having its head crushed, but that's the reference there.
It actually can physically crush your head if you're not careful and be born with hammers crushing your head.
But this isn't the point of the verse.
The point of the verse is that knowledge in the wrong hands isn't useful at all.
We use it to our detriment.
It's important in a worldly sense.
This is an important philosophy, an important
ethical point that knowledge is ethically variable.
It's not always a good thing to have knowledge.
More knowledge isn't always a good thing.
And the variable is whether someone is wise or not.
Wisdom and intelligence are obviously two very different things.
You can have wise people with very little knowledge or intelligence.
In fact, you could argue that to some extent they're inversely related.
The more intelligence a person has, the harder it is for them to be wise.
It's easier to become conceited about your knowledge.
It's easier to become attached to the gain that comes from your knowledge.
And so even you find that professors of religion and even professors who study Buddhism and go all the way to get their PhD and even become teachers in their own right can be very silly at times and have strange and bizarre views and beliefs.
Obviously, in a worldly sense, it's even more clear how knowledge in the wrong hands can lead to suffering.
It's the knowledge of nuclear reactivity, whatever it is that led them to create the atom bomb.
So nuclear power could be used for benefit
could be used for detriment.
In fact, even nuclear power itself, as we can see, has the potential to cause great suffering.
Knowledge is not always a good thing.
Much of our knowledge even today, as we can see now, is because of our lack of wisdom, we're using it to gain
wealth and prosperity in the present moment at the expense of our future, as it seems with the change of the climate based on human activity and so on.
Knowledge in fact seems to be one of those, one thing that's set to kill us.
Before we had engrossed ourselves in this knowledge that has led to our technology,
We were never in danger of destroying our environment and the environment on which we depend.
It's an interesting example.
The same goes with nuclear power.
We were never at risk of destroying our civilizations.
So knowledge is power.
And power, of course, is ethically variable, can be.
It can be beneficial.
It can be used to create great wholesomeness.
It can be used to create great evil as well.
But on the meditation side of things, there's also a point to be made here that knowledge of meditation can sometimes be to our detriment.
If you know too much, it can actually get in the way of your practice.
Certainly it doesn't necessarily help your practice.
Knowledge accompanied by practice, on the other hand.
Again, the power of knowledge can be a great thing if you're actually practicing.
To have knowledge of, of course, the correct way to practice, to have knowledge of background Buddhist theory, like the Abhidhamma, the nature of the mind, of wholesomeness, even knowledge of these stories.
If a person grasps them in the wrong way,
and becomes skeptical, thinking such things could never happen, could never exist.
How is it possible for such a ghost being to be born?
They focus on that aspect of it and become full of doubt.
If they don't have the experience to see how such a thing is possible, how the mind can create such an existence, then it will actually create doubt in the mind and be a detriment to the practice.
If on the other hand one grasps it correctly and sees the message behind it, and moreover is able, even better, is able to understand how such a thing could come about,
able to see how the mind works and experience how it's able to create such an existence.
And it can be to one's advantage, reminding one of the potential for suffering for those who are bent upon the wrong path and on unwholesomeness.
So this is just one more lesson for us to keep in mind, that knowledge and wisdom are two very different things.
And simply studying the Buddha's teaching, even listening to, watching these videos and reading about the Buddha's teaching, this isn't enough.
It isn't a substitute for actually practicing the Buddha's teaching.
So, more food for thought from the Buddha as taught in the Dhammapada.
That's all for today.
Thank you all for tuning in.