Hello, today we will continue our study of the Dhammapada, continuing on with verses 7 and 8, which read as follows.
Subhanupasingh viharantam indriyesu asanghutam bhojanam hi chamatanyum kusitam hi naviriyam tangve pasahati maro vato rukham vadubhalam
So two verses, and they're parallel, so they're almost the same.
It sounds like I said the same thing twice, but they're a little bit different.
Number seven is translated...
For one who dwells seeing the attractive side of things.
Who dwells with senses unrestrained.
Who doesn't know moderation in food.
Who is lazy and of inferior or low effort or energy.
Such a one is overpowered, overcome by Mara, by evil.
Just as the wind overcomes a tree of little strength, or a weak tree.
And number eight, asubhanupasingviharantam, for one who dwells seeing the unattractive side of things, or the unbeautiful side of things.
Indriyesususangutam, who dwells with senses restrained.
Bhojanamityamatanyung, who knows moderation, who does know moderation in food, in eating.
Who has confidence and faith and has fortified or strong effort and energy.
Mara doesn't, evil doesn't overcome such a person.
Just as the wind cannot overcome a mountain made of rock.
So we have a contrast here.
One type of person is like a tree, a rotten tree, that the wind can overpower.
And the other is a mountain, which of course the wind has a lot more difficulty overpowering.
So these two similes were given in regards to two brothers.
One verse for each brother.
And these two brothers were merchants in the time of the Buddha.
And one of them went to hear the Buddha's teaching and realized that this is...
sort of true that we can chase after beautiful things and riches and luxury and money and it really doesn't do us any good.
So he thought to himself there must be a better way and maybe this is the way.
And he saw that this was true, that chasing after sensual pleasures doesn't really lead to happiness.
So he decided that he would follow after what the Buddha taught and maybe find a better way, a way to find true peace and happiness.
And so he went and asked permission to ordain.
And the Buddha said, well, go ask your brother permission first.
And he went to his brother and said, I want to become a monk.
You can take all the wealth you want.
You can take all of my wealth and do what you want.
The other brother said, what, are you crazy?
You have wives.
You have property.
And he tried to make all these reasons why he shouldn't ordain.
But the older brother was convinced, was firm in his idea.
So the younger brother thought to himself, well, the best way to stop this is if I go and become a monk with him and slowly try to convince him, try to reason with him and bring him back to the lay life.
So the younger brother ordained as well.
And so these two brothers ordained under quite different circumstances.
The first one was intent upon practicing the Buddha's teaching and practicing meditation and developing wisdom and understanding and overcoming his attachments and his desires and being free from suffering.
And the younger brother was still totally caught up in sensual pleasures and thinking about his family, his wife and his relatives and his wealth and his home and his money and so on.
and always thinking of ways to get the other brother out.
So they thus, as a result, lived their lives as monks quite differently.
The older monk, Mahakala, and the other one was Chulakala, Mahakala lived his life quite seriously, as a monk quite seriously, took it quite seriously.
So he went to the Buddha and he asked the Buddha, what are the duties in the Buddha's religion?
And the Buddha said, there are two duties, as I've talked about before.
The first duty is to study and teach, and the other duty is to practice and become enlightened.
And the monk said, well, I've become a monk when I'm old.
It's probably too late for me to learn all of the scriptures and all of the suttas and all of the teachings of the Buddha, or to teach to be able to remember all that.
But I can practice meditation, and I would like to undertake that duty.
So he asked the Buddha for the teaching on how to contemplate the foulness of the body and how to live in a cemetery.
How to undertake the practice of one who lives in a cemetery and contemplating death.
I guess because he thought he was old and this is something that was really important to him, the ability to understand death and what does it mean to die and to be able to see people who were dead and to
reflect upon his own mortality and to be ready for death.
So he undertook this practice.
The other monk, the other brother, you know, saw him and he said, boy, well, that's, you know, he looked at it as some kind of, you know, troublesome.
This is what the text says.
This was something that, you know, his older brother was doing something that was, you know, what a bother that is.
And so instead he spent all his time gossiping and talking and eating and, you know, sleeping and being lazy and probably breaking all sorts of rules.
But at any rate being not a very good monk or not at all interested.
in the Buddha's teaching.
So as a result, what happened, the older brother, it came that the woman who was looking after the cemetery, she came to know that the monk was there and he would come late at night and leave early in the morning so no one would see him.
But she found out about him and so she brought a beautiful woman who had died, the body of a beautiful woman.
She brought it and laid it out and called him and invited him to come and look at it.
And so he came and looked at this beautiful, young, attractive woman's body and he said, okay, now light it on fire and call me back when the flames have reached the body.
And so he went back to his kurti and he started meditating.
And so when the flames were approaching the body, she called the elder over, the monk over.
And he looked at it and he, you know, so he watched his body burning up.
First the skin changed color and then the skin blistering and cracking and then contorting and becoming charred and burnt in the face.
And as he looked at it, the things that went through his mind were, they say, like the realization that this is something before this, viewing this body would have caused people to forget the truth and forget about reality.
It would cause them to go crazy in the mind.
All of the chemicals, of course, that start to work, you become intoxicated.
People would look at this body and become drunk.
on the chemical lusts.
And he said, but now look at it.
He said, truly, everything is impermanent.
And then he said, he reminded to himself something that the Buddha, of course, had taught in regards to death.
And that is, And he thought of this verse, which is in the Dhammapada, I believe.
Anyway, it's somewhere in the... I have to remember exactly where it is.
Quite sure it must be in the... We'll come to it, I think.
Anicca vata sankhara, all sankhara are impermanent.
They arise and they are of the nature to arise and cease.
Having come, they go.
Having arisen, they cease.
The final stilling or being free from this incessant arising and ceasing, that is true peace, true happiness.
And so he thought like this and he realized that actually this is how it goes.
You're born and then you have to get old and sick and die.
And this arising and ceasing, this coming and going, this incessant birth and death that we have to face, this is really the problem.
And so he took this as something that woke him up and something that allowed him
to create a kind of a paradigm shift, a different way of looking at things inside.
And so then when he started meditating on this, all the time coming back to this, all of his attachments to the body were given up.
And his ability to practice then vipassana meditation, to see things clearly, as he was looking at his own attachments to the body, he was able to look at them in a new light, obviously.
And so this helped his meditation, and he was able as a result to become anarahan, enlightened.
This is what happened to Mahakala.
Chulakala was another story.
Now it so happened that because of all of his antics and his way of living his monk's life, he obviously wasn't very mindful and wasn't very prepared for anything pleasant.
And this is, you know, we're going to get to when we talk about the verses, what the difference is here and what the importance is.
And so it happened that one day all of the monks were invited to the house of Mahakala and Chulakala.
And so Mahakala sent Chulakala back to the house to prepare the seats and to make sure that the Buddha's seat and the chief disciple's seats and then the senior monk's seats and then the lower monk's seats, it has to go in order and make sure it was all orderly.
And so he went, and when he got there, no one took him seriously, because these people weren't really religious anyway, but at any rate, he wasn't a very serious monk.
So they didn't take him seriously, and they joked with him.
They put all the seats in the wrong position.
They put the younger monk's seats at the front, and the senior monk's seats at the back, and put the Buddha's seat in the wrong place.
And so he was saying, no, no, no, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
And they looked at him and they started making a joke of him.
They said, who are you?
Who do you think you are to come and tell us and to order us around?
And they said, who gave you permission to go forth?
And then they took his robes, they pulled his robes off, stripped him naked and put white clothes on him, surrounding him.
There were two wives, you know, outnumbering him.
And I guess all the servants or whatever, they all kind of ganged up on him.
He put white clothes on him, put a wreath of flowers on his head and sent him off.
He said, okay, now go and get the Buddha.
Go and bring the Buddha.
They disrobed him.
And the text goes that he wasn't really concerned about this.
He was like, you know, whatever.
Okay, I'll go back in white clothes.
Because he had no interest in being a monk anyway.
And the text also says that this is the nature of monks who have recently gone forth.
And I've seen this before.
Where they don't have this sort of idea that, oh, now I'm a monk.
Now I have to...
kind of be a representative of the monastic order and so on.
And so they don't see a difference.
They go back.
They're able to go back and forth.
I think after you've been a monk for some time, it would be more difficult.
And you'd have a more difficult time wearing pants and a shirt and so on.
I would anyway.
So anyway, then he goes back to the Buddha and he says, you know, now the time has come for the meal.
And so everyone's like looking at him, you know, what happened to him and realizing that he had been disrobed by his wives.
And so they came back and they ate the meal and the Buddha gave the blessing and so on.
Finished and did all the ceremony of the giving of the food.
and went back to the monastery.
Now, as a result, the younger brother was no longer a monk, and he stayed at home, and he went back to his home life.
And this got the wives of the elder brother thinking.
In India, I guess, rich people had lots of wives, because according to the story, the younger brother had two wives.
Their middle brother, who wasn't with them, had four wives, and the older brother had eight wives.
This is how the story goes.
So the eight wives of the elder brother, who was now an enlightened being, decided that, hey, this is a good idea.
They got their husband back, these two wives, so what if we get our husband back?
So they invited the Buddha to come again with all the monks.
And this time they were hoping that it would be Mahakala who would come and prepare the seats.
But unfortunately for them, another monk was instructed to come and do the seat arrangement.
So they didn't get the chance.
Now the Buddha came and they had the whole ceremony and at the end the Buddha said, okay, we're going to leave Mahakala, the older brother, he'll stay and give the blessing, give the desana, the talk, he'll give an instruction to the people.
Because after they give the meal, the monk will always, as a tradition, would give some kind of teaching as a kind of a thanks or appreciation of the gift.
And so the Buddha said, leave him alone here to give this blessing, which was like, you know, all the monks are looking at each other like, is he serious?
Is this, you know, is this for real?
Because, you know, the day before or recently before, the other monk had been disrobed by these two wives.
So what was going to happen with these eight wives?
So on the way back, they're all talking about this, and like, you know, did the Buddha realize what he was doing?
Or, you know, is there something he knows that we don't?
What's going to happen with this guy?
Is he going to be disrobed, or is he not going to be disrobed?
And I think we can all guess the outcome of the story, that there's no way for him to be disrobed.
But apparently what happened, and this is the story, I'm not going to dispute it, I'm just going to tell it.
The story goes that he was surrounded by his eight wives, and he's trying to give this discourse, and they're like, oh, what are you doing, talking, trying to preach to us?
Who are you?
Who gave you permission to ordain?
And they tried to grab his robes and so on.
But of course he wasn't at all the same as his younger brother and he wasn't at all interested in playing their games.
So he entered into a meditative state and floated up into the air above their heads and actually popped the top off the roof.
It would have been straw roof, not tile or anything.
And flew back to where the Buddha was.
So the Buddha was talking to the monks at the time, and he heard the monks talking about it.
He said, what are you talking about?
They said, well, we're kind of confused.
The Buddha surely is aware of that.
Chulakala was disrobed by his wife, so we're just wondering what's going to happen to Mahakala.
I mean, isn't it dangerous to leave him alone with his wives?
And the Buddha said, what, do you think these two are the same?
My son and that useless man who disrobed?
And he said, they're as far apart as a rotten tree in a mountain.
And this is when he gave these two similes.
He said, Subha Nupa Singh and so on.
He said, a person who is intent upon beauty, upon the attractive nature of things, who has their senses unrestrained, who doesn't know moderation in food, who is lazy, who has little energy.
such a one is overcome, Mara, evil overcomes such a one, overpowers such a one, just as a tree, just as the wind overpowers a weak and rotten tree.
But on the other hand, a person who sees the unattractive side of things and who guards their senses, who is restrained in the senses,
who knows moderation in food, who is confident and has faith, who has strong and established energy and effort.
who, such a person is not overcome by Mara.
Mara doesn't, evil doesn't overpower such a person.
Just as the wind cannot overpower a mountain made of rock.
And as he said these last words, Mahakala landed at his feet and bowed down and prostrated to the Buddha.
And that ends the story.
So I think this is a rather important verse.
It gets a little closer to the core than I think we've gotten with the other verses.
It gets closer to the practice, I think, in the sense that it gives us some fairly specific practices or aspects of our practice, guidelines for our practice, and sort of a way of establishing whether we're on the right path or on the wrong path.
so the first one the first part I am
Well, for the first, let's talk about Mara, I think.
We should talk about what this means.
The word Mara means, as I said, it means simply evil.
But we can understand that there are five kinds of evil in Buddhism.
And as I understand this is, if I remember correctly, this is somewhere in, I think, the Book of Fives of the Anguttara Nikaya.
I'm going to have to check it again.
But I have read it.
So the five kinds of Mara, the first one is Khanda Mara, our...
our aggregates, the physical and the mental part of our being.
This has some evil to it, or there's an evil side to it.
There is a danger there.
And the danger is, of course, in clinging.
Because old age, sickness and death are inherent in them.
So there is an evil there.
The evil comes
When you get old, when you get sick, when you die.
It comes for people who have sicknesses, people who have disabilities and so on.
People who have something, some kind of... Or when these things change.
And they cause us some kind of difficulty.
When they change in a way that we don't want them.
Because actually there's nothing wrong with old age sickness and death.
But the truth is it's because of the change.
We're used to being powerful and exercising and running and jumping and playing and so on and now we can't do that.
We're used to a pleasant feeling in our body and now we don't have that.
We're used to freedom from painful feelings.
Now we have painful feelings and so on.
So because things are changing, and they're changing in a way that we are partial against, we would rather things be a different way.
We're attached to a specific way of being.
When this arises, it becomes an evil thing for us.
I mean, it's a real problem for so many people.
I don't think we need to argue about that.
So that's the first kind of mara.
The second one is kilesa mara, the evil of defilements.
So that in our mind we have certain things that we can understand to be evil.
Greed is evil, anger is evil, hatred, conceit, fear is not a good thing, worry.
distraction, doubt, these are all things which are evil in the sense that they cripple us.
And really that's how we should understand evil to be in this sense.
We're not talking about immoral in the sense of being outside of a code of what is proper.
It's improper, it's immoral, as I've said before, because it cripples you, it does bad things to you, it causes suffering.
It's a utilitarian sort of doctrine or idea.
The concept of evil here is in a utilitarian sense.
It means it has a function to disable and cripple us.
So anger is something that cripples the mind.
Greed is something that cripples the mind.
These are things which infatuate you, which intoxicate you, which give rise to chemical reactions and addictions in the mind, whereby you're unable to separate right from wrong, where you're unable to be impartial and wise and to understand what is in your benefit.
So you end up, you know, this is why people become addicted to drugs and so on, why people fall into many great problems.
So this is an evil.
The third evil is abhisankarama, which means our karma.
Abhisankara means formation.
But in this simple definition is our karma, our deeds.
As our deeds can be a great evil to us.
If you've hurt other people, it can be a great danger to you.
If you've
done things that get you in trouble with other people.
It can get you in trouble with the law.
It can come back to haunt you.
It certainly comes back to haunt your mind and the guilt that you feel because of the bad things that you've done.
But it can haunt you in many ways.
It can come back at the moment of death where you remember it and where it leads to some kind of clinging or aversion or fear or anger and a bad rebirth.
as well, so it can have many different consequences.
Obviously if we develop bad thoughts and as a result do lots of bad deeds, it's going to come back and haunt us.
When we've hurt other people, they're going to come back and hurt us.
We'll feel guilty about it and when we die our mind will be impure and as a result we'll continue on in an impure way.
So that's number three.
Number four is machumara.
Machumara means just death.
So different from kandamara is in regards to the changing in the aggregates in the body and the mind.
Machumara is the fact that we all have to die.
And this is an evil thing.
Again, it's not evil.
It's only evil in the sense that it cripples you.
For a person who is keen on
being wealthy and rich and powerful and so on.
I mean, this is the ultimate crippling, the ultimate end to your power, end to your devices, to your design.
You know, your intention is this, this, this, this, this, be this, this, this, you know, then death comes.
It can even come when your plans aren't fulfilled.
It can come tomorrow.
I could be gone tomorrow.
Any of us could be gone.
We could be dead on a moment's notice, without notice.
So this is something that is an evil that we should keep in mind.
Again, it's just something that can cause difficulty for people who cling, and it's only really for people who cling.
And that's the difference between these two verses, as I'll come to.
The fifth one is Devaputtamara, which I don't think is really... No, it does come to play, I suppose.
Devaputtamara means an angel, like Satan, a fallen angel, much in the same way as Christian Satan.
Mara is someone who is said to have followed the Buddha around trying to find some way to get the Buddha to fall into some kind of defilement or to do the wrong thing, to trick the Buddha in this way and that way.
He is said to have come around to all the monks and tried to trick them and there are stories about how he tried to trick this monk or that monk.
and how he was able to trick certain monks and how he was not able to trick those monks who had been practicing.
So clearly it's the same issue here.
And this one does come into play actually because many meditators talk about hearing voices, seeing visions and so on during their meditation.
It comes into play with other religions where people say they have seen God, where God came and told them this and that or where...
angel came and told them this, or a voice came and told them this and that.
And it's a very important answer that has to be stated, and we should all hear and it should be clear in our minds.
We should be aware of this fact, or at least as a question to ourselves, that
The question is not whether you heard or saw or experienced something.
The question is not even whether that experience came from an external source.
Those are two questions people ask.
Was it really God talking to me?
Did someone really come or did I imagine it?
and then the question of did you really experience it or are you just lying to us these two are two questions that people ask but those aren't really the question the question is whether you can trust the voice that you heard you say it was God but that's where we can't trust you because how do you know it was God how do you know it was not Satan posing as God
And I think this is a very important question.
It's one that many meditators in modern times, non-Buddhists and so on, wouldn't even think of.
But as Buddhists and as open-minded people who are open to the idea that, yeah, maybe there are spirits out there and angels and gods and so on,
It's something that we should incorporate into our understanding of these things, or our open-mindedness.
It's another question we should ask.
Not just, is he lying to us, or is he just imagining it, but also, is the voice he's hearing coming from a good place?
Is it something that can be trusted?
Because we had a monk once in Thailand,
who tried to commit suicide on several occasions.
And why?
Because voices were telling him to.
Voices said to him if he killed himself he would be something like the phoenix or something like that.
He set himself on fire and tried to burn himself.
He would be reborn as a bodhisattva or some ridiculous thing.
He was a little bit... He's much better now apparently but at the time he was quite
wound up and all because of voices that he heard in his head so the question doesn't just have to be oh he's just making it up that doesn't have to be the answer the answer can be
Just because someone's telling you something, whether it's in your head or whether it's in your ear, it doesn't mean you should listen to them.
And this is the story of deva-puttamara.
The importance of it, I think, is that it can come to people.
So you don't have to question whether it's real or not, but you have to question whether it's worth following or not.
Because people's... Unless it's someone you can really trust and you've lived with a long time and who has led you in a good way...
You wouldn't go listening to a stranger on the street just because they told you to do this or that.
Why are you listening to a stranger in your head?
What's the difference?
Okay, so these are the five Maras.
So Mara can overpower one type of person and not overpower another type of person.
The type of person that Mara can overpower is a person who sees the beauty and the attractive side of things.
And this is something that, of course, is...
unacceptable to many people, the idea that we should give up the beautiful side of things, that we should cease our attachment to the beautiful side of things.
And I'm not going to say anything to that.
If you're still the type of person who likes to follow after these things, then well, just listen on and you'll get to hear our understanding of what's in store for you.
because there are disadvantages to it.
But to each their own, and obviously not everyone is going to follow the teachings that I teach, not going to follow the Buddha's teachings.
There are many different paths and people go in many different directions.
In this case we have two separate individuals, one who went one way and the other who went the other way.
The problem with a person who goes the one way
It's not that we're going to say bad things about them.
It's not that we're going to look down upon this person.
But the problem with following that way is that Mara overpowers you.
These five evils will overpower you.
And they will have influence over you.
All five of them.
And you can see this.
There are examples I could give.
I don't want to go on and on and on, but I think it should be quite clear, because I'll just say in brief why it occurs.
A person who looks at the attractive side of things is then partial.
They're developing partiality towards this experience.
As a result, when they get old, sick, and die, they'll be upset.
When things come that they don't want, the defilements will arise.
The khandamara, the...
They will do bad deeds as a result of these things.
People fight.
Why do people fight over dead people, their inheritance?
People fight when they're alive.
Husbands fight with wives.
Children fight with parents.
Friends fight with friends.
This you see constantly all over the world.
And why?
Because people see the beautiful side of things.
Because people are attracted to this and attracted to that.
This is the danger.
This is what we don't see.
There's many dangers.
We could go on and on.
The reason why this is, is because the person is indriyesu asamhutam.
A person who doesn't guard their senses, who doesn't restrain their senses.
So when they see something, they let themselves...
give rise to partiality.
They look at it, oh, that's beautiful.
They look at it, that's ugly.
And they don't try to go deeper.
They don't try to penetrate and see actually the truth.
That in fact, well, that's no different from that.
It's seeing.
It's light touching the eye.
The reality of it is the same.
The reality is one thing.
Our
the brain functioning and however our brain has been set up and the chemicals in the brain and so on and the mind's attachment and the mind's tendencies to
remembering how this brought pleasure and so on, are another thing, because in fact one thing is no different from another.
The reality is actually quite impartial, and thus true experience of reality is actually quite neutral in the sense, but in the sense of being natural.
You know, there are the ups and the downs, and there's the rain, and there's the sun, and so on.
And there's the change, but it's natural, and there's no attachment.
It's not like it's just always the same thing.
When you're clearly in touch with reality, it changes, it moves, but you change with it.
It's interacting rather than reacting.
That's all.
But this has to come about through guarding and through restraining the senses.
In the sense of when you see something, there should be a filter.
Because unless you're enlightened, unless you're already clearly aware of reality as it is, there's constantly a filter of a different sort, the filter of partiality, liking and disliking.
When you see something, right away there's the reactions to it.
So instead we have this kind of filter to purify it, to get rid of the partiality.
And that's simply to see that this is seeing.
So when you see something, you remind yourself that's seeing.
Instead of saying, oh, that's beautiful, or oh, that's ugly, and so on.
you come to be impartial.
This is seeing, that's seeing.
This is hearing, that's hearing.
And you find that yourself... You know, people talk about this as being kind of boring or the kind of thing that makes you...
totally a robot or inhuman or so on, and that the ups and the downs are a part of humanity, the likes and the dislikes.
I've talked about this before.
But in the end, the answer is, well, try for yourself.
You know, you've tried partiality and your likes and your dislikes and they haven't made you truly happy.
Try this for a change.
See what happens when you just know this is seeing, this is seeing, this is hearing, this is smelling, this is tasting, this is feeling, this is thinking, this is walking, this is standing.
And so on.
And see what happens.
I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Many people have a sanghutang, so, guarding the senses.
So we guard them with mindfulness, basically.
It just means to, when you see something, it should only be seen.
Bhojanam hi chamatan yung, a person who doesn't know moderation in eating.
Now this is important because food is really the one thing that we need to survive.
And it's
It's really the biggest deal for all people.
It's the one that is totally universal.
You can't go without food.
No one can go without food.
Not easily, anyway.
So it's something that we have to be very careful about, and it's very easy to...
abuse it.
If you abuse it, it leads to your physical discomfort and sickness.
It also leads to mental defilement, where a person who engages in overeating or indulgence in sweet foods and salty food, delicacies, their likes and so on, their attachments, something which intoxicates the mind, it takes away your ability to see things clearly.
A person who is lazy and hasn't the energy, who doesn't get up in practice, who doesn't push themselves to develop themselves.
Because it's very easy to suffer actually.
It's very easy to let yourself go in a way that is painful and unpleasant.
People do it all the time, right?
People who are depressed can stay that way for years.
It takes effort.
It takes work, actually.
It's something that we should be aware of.
It takes work for us to actually purify our minds, to be clear and to see things as they are.
It's something that you have to work hard at, actually.
And we should be always working on it.
It's something that should be continuous.
So the work here is reminding yourself again and again, now I'm meditating, now I'm seeing, now I'm hearing.
When you're eating your food, you can be mindful of chewing, chewing and tasting and swallowing, being aware of it.
The mindfulness should be continuous and this takes effort, it takes work to remind yourself again and again.
When you want to go back to your old ways to pull yourself up out of the mud,
Like you want to fall back into the mud and pull yourself up and keep pulling and pulling.
And it's like, it's really like, you know, in the beginning you just fall back into the mud all the time.
You're pulling, you're working hard to change your mind, to change your habits, and the habits keep coming back.
You keep falling into the same old habits again.
And so people get discouraged by this.
I was talking about it.
It's like lifting weights, right?
Eventually you get stronger.
You keep pulling.
keep pulling and pulling yourself really out of the mud eventually you get stronger that doesn't move you're pulling this cart out of the mud the cart keeps going back in but eventually you get stronger and eventually you get so strong that you can actually pull it out so we should never be discouraged just because we fall back into defilement this is one great thing about the fight with Mara it's eternal you can take forever and as long as you're building up strength eventually you'll get strong enough to fight
There's no defeat.
Here we say Mara overpowers this person.
But the great thing is that Mara has to work forever to keep us in samsara.
All it takes is once to get free from the mud.
And once you're free, you're free.
Mara has no power over you.
We see how this works.
very clearly, I think, in the monastic community because there are monks who are totally corrupt and something that I think should be clearly stated.
Not all monks are truly practicing.
I'm not going to hide that.
I'm not going to try to pretend that we're all holy or so on.
I think there are
There are incredibly terrible things happening in the monastic community, if you can call it that anymore.
There are people who are wearing robes but acting as whatever.
Business people are engaging in total immorality in so many different ways.
And then there are people who are in the robes who are pure and are really practicing.
These both you can see today.
I would like to make it clear that you shouldn't think that just because someone is wearing a robe that it means something.
It has a meaning for those people who give it meaning, for those people who give it meaning.
It's like a vehicle.
You have a car, if you just leave it parked on your lawn, it has no meaning.
It has no purpose.
It just looks good.
It's something that people come and say, wow, what a powerful car.
And you can say, yeah, yeah, powerful, but you don't know.
The engine could be rotten inside.
It looks good.
But when the car is actually out driving, when you drive around and people can say that car is well tuned, that car drives fast, that car is smooth and so on.
Then you can see how it goes.
The monk's life is like this.
If you don't use it, it's meaningless.
But what we can see is the incredible importance and the danger
in regards to these dhammas.
That a person who cultivates bad habits, who gets caught up in entertainment, who gets caught up in indulgence, who gets caught up in laziness, sleeping and eating and worldly things, it grows on you like a creeper.
Buddha would say it's like a vine.
You have this great tree and
The tree, there's a vine growing up and the tree says, ah, it's just a little vine, you know, it's just a seed, what's the deal?
And then they say, no, no, no, you don't think of it as just a small thing.
Eventually the vine comes up and strangles the tree and kills it.
And the Buddha said it's like this, it creeps up on you.
In the beginning you think, ah, just a little bit here, a little bit there.
And before you know it, it's years and years have gone by and you've gotten yourself in a rut.
And then Mara comes, boom, you get sick, you get old, and you're not ready for it.
And Mara overpowers such a person.
I've experienced, I have different experiences with this.
So many things have happened since the time I was ordained.
I've been threatened with physical violence.
I've been threatened with the opposite, which is women proposing to me and so on.
And so this really resonates with me, the importance of our state of mind, the importance of being ready.
There's a story in the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, he talks about how a master is always ready like a warrior in enemy territory.
And you kind of have to be like that.
You don't have to be always worried and paranoid, but you have to always be ready and you have to be strong.
And this is really the wonderful thing about mindfulness, how it prepares you for anything.
and how you really do become strong like a rock, so that anything that comes, nothing that comes can blow you over, just as the wind can't blow over a mountain.
I had this woman come up and she said, can monks get married?
No.
And she was like, oh, are you going to be a monk for your whole life?
And I was like, yes.
And I walked away.
staying strong when these things come up.
I was threatened this monk was going to hit me with a broom once.
These are just tests.
Actually at the time it wasn't a big deal, but afterwards, when your mind goes over it and how it did, it can really cause you suffering.
When you're thinking about this beautiful woman who proposed and wants me to marry her, or when you think about this monk who was an idiot and did this, how much suffering it can bring to you.
and how dangerous it can be for your mind, how it can lead you on the wrong path.
I know many people who have disrobed because of difficulty, because they weren't able to take it.
This isn't, of course, totally reserved for the monkhood.
All of these things apply to ordinary people living in the world.
It's very easy to get on the wrong path.
and to be taken unawares and off guard by the evils of life, by the problems of life.
We don't see it.
If we live our lives and everything's going well, we think, ah, yeah, no problem, let's just eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die.
But the question is, what's it going to be like when you die?
Are you really going to be ready for it?
What if you don't die right away but you get really sick?
You get cancer or you get this or you get that.
What are you going to do then?
You're going to whine and complain and suffer because you're thinking about all the wonderful things that you're addicted to.
It's clear it shouldn't be something that's hard to understand.
Now a question might arise as to why then it's good to look at unpleasant things.
Why did this monk go off and look at this horrible burning body?
I think actually in this case it's easy to understand because the burning body is such a shock.
And it helps you to let go, you realize this is just like wood.
It's not me, it's not mine, it's just I'm carrying around this sack of wood that's just going to be fuel for the fire at the end of the day.
But I guess really the point in general in looking at the repulsive side of things is just to balance the scales for some people.
Because there are some people, many people, let's say most people, who are attached to the body, who think of it as something beautiful, something attractive.
And so as a result, when it changes, when it's no longer beautiful and attractive,
they become upset and worried.
So many people, how many people out there have eating disorders or obsessions with makeup and plastic surgery and all of these things?
How many people, an incredible number of people, have this obsession and suffering?
How many people suffer because their teeth are in the wrong position, because their nose is too big or their ears are too big or they're too...
fat, or they're too short, or they're too tall, or so on.
How many people suffer from that?
Because of the attachment to the body.
The attachment to a beautiful body.
You want your body to look like a movie star and so on.
And you're so attracted to these beautiful people.
Well, when you start to see that actually the body is full of all sorts of repulsive things, and it comes back a little bit more in perspective, and you see that actually the body is just the body.
If it's tall, it's tall.
If it's short, it's short.
If it's big, it's big.
If it's small, it's small.
If it's this color, it's this color.
If it's that color, it's that color.
It's really pretty meaningless.
Having large breasts or having a large behind or having hips or having a large belly, all of these things are just...
just what they are, having a faceless shape or this color or so on.
It's all just like wood, carrying around this big sack of wood.
Or as one teacher said, he said, this portable toilet full of urine and excrement.
This is what he said.
You can think of it that way.
It's something that does help.
It's not a replacement for true insight and impartiality, but it helps to balance the scales.
For some people it doesn't work.
For some people it just makes them depressed and upset and angry.
For such people they should go the other way and practice loving-kindness.
I've talked about this before.
These kinds of meditations
are suitable for different individuals.
For a person who is angry and negative by nature, they should focus on positive things like love and kindness.
It's a different kind of meditation.
But ultimately, in the end, we focus on insight.
When your mind is clear with insight, when you're able to see things as they are, when your eight wives surround you and they want to strip you of your clothes, how do you deal with that?
When you can see things as they are, nothing can harm you.
There's a story of an Arahant who was raped by her cousin, an enlightened nun, a female monk, raped by her cousin.
And it didn't faze her at all.
You know what she said?
She said, don't do this, it's bad for you.
She said, beware to him.
And indeed, when he left, after he'd finished, he left her kuti.
When he put his foot on the ground, it sunk.
The earth couldn't bear his weight because she was enlightened.
It wasn't just rape, it was rape of an enlightened being.
Rape is a terrible thing, but to rape an enlightened being?
The earth couldn't carry his weight and he sunk and fell straight to hell, goes the story.
But for a person whose mind is, for the arahant, for the person whose mind is strong, nothing can overtake them.
And the comparison that the Buddha made is for a person who is like the rotten tree, well, evil overpowers them just like the wind.
And for a person who is like the mountain standing strong, nothing can overpower them, no matter how strong the wind.
Even a hurricane can't overpower the mind of an enlightened being.
So...
This is the teaching on verses number 7 and number 8.
Thank you for tuning in and hope this has been of some use.
All the best.