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Hello everyone and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.

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Today we continue on with verse number 108, which reads as follows.

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yankin chitam vahutam valoke saṅvaccharam yajetam punyapekho sabampitam nacatubhagam eti abhivadana ujjukatesu seyo

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Which means, it's actually a bit difficult because the grammar doesn't really work in English.

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So whatever sacrifice or worship there is in the world, if for 100 years, one desiring punya, desiring merit, should perform such a sacrifice or such a worship,

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And yes, it's actually a very, very similar verse and story to the last two.

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It doesn't come to a quarter of the value.

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All of that doesn't come to a quarter of the value.

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The hundred years of sacrifice or worship that one pays.

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Abhiwada na ujugatesu seyo.

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For the greater, in comparison to the greater abhiwadana or respect or reverence that one pays to, and today our word is ujugatta, in regards to those who are ujugatta, gone to or become straight.

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Those who have gained rectitude, moral or ethical or mental straightness, uprightness.

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Those who are upright.

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So same story, we have Sariputta and it's becoming apparent that he was really instrumental in helping a lot of his relatives and now his friends become enlightened.

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So now we have Sariputta's friend, Sahayaka Brahman, a Brahmin who was a friend of Sariputta, friend of Sariputta's from before.

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And so Sariputta went to him and asked him, do you do any good deeds?

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And he says, oh yes, what do you do?

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Oh, I offer sacrificial slaughter.

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And of course, Sariputta doesn't see that as being a wholesome deed.

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This is about really the crux of these three stories, is the idea that good deeds, our concept of good deeds is often quite misled.

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And this even occurs in Buddhism.

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You'll see Buddhists performing deeds that they think are good deeds, when in fact they are perhaps useless.

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So the case of, I've told this story before, but once we had a Katina ceremony where I was staying.

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And all the villagers came together to do the Katina ceremony.

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And so what they did is they had this very important... I was in a rural area, so it was an area where people didn't have a lot of money.

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And there was one man who had built a house in the area from Bangkok and he was quite rich.

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And so he got his rich friends from Bangkok to come up.

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And they put together a bunch of money and they put the money up on a tree and they brought this money tree to the monastery.

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and they wanted to do a Katina ceremony.

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Well, it turns out half of them were drunk.

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They had been drinking, and the funniest part was, and what sort of made it a bit ridiculous, was that they didn't have a single robe.

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uh with which to do the katina so they brought this money tree thinking well that's katina katina is a money tree because that's really what it's become it's all about money trees trees that have are literally the made of money the leaves are are folded up bits of money or just money sticking up on sticks um and so i said i said okay we're ready to do katina what do we do and i said well where's the robe

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And they didn't have a rope.

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So I said, oh, well, can we borrow one of yours?

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And they said, okay.

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And I took off, I actually took off.

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Anyway, I don't want to talk about it.

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I'm sure it wasn't, yeah, you know.

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Point being, not really what I would call a wholesome engagement, especially considering the alcohol involved and the fact that after it was all over, they took the money back and half of the gifts that were supposed to go to the monastery, they took back for the village.

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It was a bit of a system that they had set up.

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This happens in Buddhist circles sometimes where we lose sight of why are we doing this.

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I think while we're doing it, often they're doing it just because they're excited to have their village and their community grow.

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So the money goes to the community, I think.

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the staff goes for the community.

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And they don't realize the great benefit to actually giving a gift.

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And in fact, they aren't really interested in giving gifts.

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On the other hand, that very same village ended up being quite awesome about giving alms.

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Another funny aspect of being there, I was staying with an old monk, two old monks.

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So this was later when I was staying with a second old monk, but I was staying with a first old monk deeper in the forest.

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And he told me, when you go on, he said, well, you can go on alms round to the village, but you won't get anything.

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You might get some dried noodles or canned fish, but that's about it.

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It won't be enough to eat, but you can go.

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And it was three and a half kilometers walk along a dirt gravel road that was actually somewhat painful to walk.

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But I did walk three and a half kilometers and often had to walk three and a half kilometers back, but not always.

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Sometimes someone going to the park, there was a national park near where the monastery was, would give us a ride back or give me or eventually us when I had followers.

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But the great thing, once I went and they could see that I was interested in meditation and wasn't some crabby old...

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monk, they were really keen on and eventually the whole village began to give and they really got the sense of the greatness.

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People who I think had never really gotten into it.

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And there was one man who was a really devout Buddhist and very interested in the Dhamma and very knowledgeable about the Dhamma and we used to talk about the Dhamma and he was really impressed and he said, you know, this is a great thing.

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People who have never seen these people give before are now into giving.

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So there was that.

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But that's really what it's about.

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It's the difference, these verses are about the difference between spiritual practices.

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We have this idea of spiritual practice in many Buddhist cultures of paying respect to gods or angels, and they've started making up angels.

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They've taken them from Hindu myths like Ganesha.

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People worship this monkey, no, sorry, the elephant god, and they have all these myths about

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Ganesha and Hanuman in this same village.

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There was a woman who claimed to be an avatar.

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An avatar is a big thing in Thailand, in Thailand anyway.

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An avatar for Hanuman.

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And of course, Hanuman is this legend.

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It's a story, really.

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I mean, there's not even any ancient religious texts, I think, that have Hanuman in them.

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It's this tale of the Ramayana, which is a fairly modern tale.

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And yet, in India as well, they worship Hanuman, or they seem to.

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They have monkey statues in front of their fields to ward away evil demons and stuff.

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But yeah, these sort of things not worth a quarter of the, she says, not a fourth part.

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Na chatu bhagam eti, chatu bhagam eti.

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They don't come to a quarter, they don't even come to a thousandth part as we were talking about in the earlier ones.

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Anyway, so he tells him this.

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It's a little bit different.

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He takes him, he says, he says, look, you have to come to see the teacher.

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And he takes him to see the teacher.

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And this time he actually says, Bhante, please tell this man the way to the Brahma world.

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But the Buddha says the same thing.

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The Buddha asks him what he does and he says, you could do that for a year and yet it would not be worth the smallest piece of offering.

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And here he says something also a bit different.

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If you were instead to give to the populace, if you were instead to give to poor people, for example,

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that one thing would be of greater value.

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So he distinguishes there and it's an interesting point because here the Buddha sort of seems to be advocating giving of alms.

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That's what the English translation says and that looks like what the Pali says but it's something to do with giving gifts to worldly people.

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It's much better because here he's slaughtering animals which of course is actually unwholesome.

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But then he goes on to say, to pay respect to my disciples, the Buddha says.

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Yeah, the the wholesome mind that comes is far more powerful.

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I mean, I think he's quite understating the truth here, because honestly, sacrificing animals is not only a portion, it's not only a fraction as good, it's actually harmful.

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There's nothing good about offering slaughtered animals, slaughtering animals as an offering.

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So the Buddha is, I think, going a little bit easy on him, because probably if he were to say, that's actually an unwholesome thing, then it would perhaps set the guy off and make him upset at the Buddha.

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So he couches it a bit nicer.

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He doesn't say how much less good it is than a quarter, but it's less than a quarter as good.

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It's actually harmful.

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And that's true of many spiritual practices.

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So again, as I've talked about, we have to be aware of the true benefit of our spiritual practices.

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We can't just think, I'm doing this and this is what people tell me to do, this is spiritual and therefore it's good.

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Spiritual practice can actually be harmful.

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This was a spiritual practice that obviously was offering, killing animals in the name of God, that kind of thing.

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Sometimes people have the idea that taking drugs is spiritual.

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I'm not going to go out and say that that's harmful, but my suspicion is that it has a great potential for harm, if not being outright harmful.

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I think a lot of people would say that taking even psychedelic drugs and hoping that it's somehow as beneficial as a spiritual practice

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I think some people would say that that is outright harmful.

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I'm not sure that I'd go quite so far, because there is an argument to be made that it opens up your mind to alternate states of reality.

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But I think there's a lot of delusion involved, like the idea that those states have some meaning or purpose or value, when in fact they're all messed up with delusion and

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I've been there, done that, and it's just a mess of our mind, what our mind can come up with when it's doped up and it's high.

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So these kind of things.

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And you compare that, for example, taking drugs as a spiritual practice to a Buddhist spiritual practice, like giving charity, or even just holding your hands up and paying respect to someone who's worthy of respect.

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Who would think of that?

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It shows how far many people are from true spiritual practice.

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Many people say, oh, taking drugs, that's a spiritual practice, or doing expansive rituals, or offering copious sacrifices, or this kind of thing.

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Doing very complex or very mystical things, maybe dancing, people say.

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In the West we become very hedonistic with our spirituality, so maybe people say group orgies and karmic sects and that kind of thing, these are spiritual.

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Contrast that to the Buddha's idea of what true spirituality is, holding your hands up and paying respect, that is far more spiritual.

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It's such a mundane seeming thing, but far more spiritual and far more beneficial, even just for a moment.

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than a hundred years of dancing, spiritual dancing or spiritual music or spiritual sex, drugs, you know, all these things.

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So for someone looking for punya, which we all are, punya is goodness.

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Even if we're just set on meditation, it's important not to become self-centered, you know, in the sense of me, me, me, I want to become spiritually enlightened.

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Enlightenment is about letting go.

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It's a lot of self-sacrifice.

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An enlightened being would be able to give up anything.

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If someone asks them for something, they would have no sense of self, of helping themselves.

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They have no qualms there.

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They consider what is proper to do, and they do it without any attachment, without any greed.

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And they're very respectful.

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They honor those who have helped them.

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They're grateful to those who have helped them, that kind of thing.

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And they're very down to earth.

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So noble spirituality is like this.

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What's spiritual?

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Well, paying respect to those who are worthy of respect, giving gifts to those who are worthy of gifts, and mostly just being aware, being here, being present, being with mundane reality, understanding truth, true reality, and not being concerned with mysticism or altered states of existence or that kind of thing.

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Astral travel, anyone who's obsessed with astral travel, I mean, it's not to say enlightened people can't practice it, but people who are striving for that are really missing the point.

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Mahasi Sayadaw tells the story of a woman who he knew who was working very hard to try and see out of her ears.

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This was she was trying to gain the spiritual ability to see out of her ears.

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And he said in this one her eyes worked perfectly fine.

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So we get often on the wrong path.

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True spirituality is, heart is often easy to mistake for

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ordinary reality.

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I always say that enlightened people are what we think we are.

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We all think of ourselves as living normally.

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We think of ourselves as normal.

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But we're not.

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Our defilements take us away from what we think we are, take us away from mundane reality.

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So, I've made much of this very simple verse, which is very much like the other two verses, and I promise the next one is different, still along the same vein, but it's a totally different context and story, everything.

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And it's a very, actually one of them, probably the, if not one of, one of the, if not the most famous verses in the Dhammapada coming up next time.

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And then after that we have the story of Sankiccha, which is a very nice story, and so on and so on.

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Not all the stories are long.

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Some of them are very short, as you can see.

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Some of them are very long.

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I think the longest ones have already gone by, so we're not going to have great storytelling.

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Not all of it is going to be great stories.

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But always something new and some new message to be found in the Dhammapada.

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And of course the verses themselves are things you can reflect upon.

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What is important, this is the Sahasravagga, which is the thousands.

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So it's contrasting single things to thousands of things, for the most part.

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A thousand of something useless, better is one thing that is useful.

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So that's the Dhammapada for tonight.

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Thank you all for tuning in.

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Keep practicing and be well.