Hello.
Today we continue our study of the Dhammapada, along with verse number six, which goes, parechana vijananti maya-meta yamamase ye jatatha vijananti tatto sammanti medhagah Which means, there are some who don't see clearly,
that we will all have to die.
But those who do see this clearly, for those who do see clearly, because of that, because of that, they settle their quarrels or settle their disputes.
So people who don't see clearly or don't fully understand vijananti, many people don't see this.
For those who see it, see clearly that we all have to die, that nothing is permanent, they're able to settle their quarrels when they realize this truth.
This was told in regards to one of my personal favorites, which is kind of odd, but it's an interesting monk story.
It's about a quarrel that arose between two monks who lived in Gosida Rama, a monastery in the Buddha's time.
Gosida Rama, there were two monks.
One was very famous for teaching the Dhamma, which is the meditation practice and the things that the Buddha taught us to do.
we should do.
And another one was very famous for the Vinaya, the Buddha's teaching on the monk's rules and the things that one shouldn't do.
And so they were both very famous.
They each had a very large group of students.
And one day, the one who taught the Dhamma was coming out of the washroom, and the one who taught the Vinaya was going into the washroom.
And the one to the Vinaya looked and saw that the one who teaches the Dhamma had left some water.
in the bucket in the washroom, which you're not supposed to do because mosquitoes will lay their eggs.
And so he said this, he said, hey, that's an offense, you know, to do that.
And he said, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize.
Then please let me confess it to you.
Because when there's an offense against the rules, then you have to confess and say, promise that you'll try your best not to do it again.
And just make it clear that you're aware of the fact that you did it.
And the one who teaches the Vinaya said, but if you didn't realize it was a, or if you didn't do it intentionally, then it's not an event.
And the other monk said, OK, then, and he left without confessing it.
And the one is Tattaviniya.
Tattaviniya went around telling all his students that this other monk had an offense that he hadn't confessed.
And so they went and told the students of the other teacher this story.
And those monks told the teacher.
And the teacher said, well, first he tells me it's not an offense.
Now he says it is an offense.
That monk's a liar.
And so his students heard this and they went and told the other students, hey, your teacher's a liar.
And then they told their teacher and their teacher got more angry and said nasty things until finally they were split up into two different groups.
As a result of that, the novices and the bhikkhunis, the female monks, were split into two different groups as well.
The lay people who supported the monks split up into two groups.
The angels who guarded the monastery split up into two groups.
The angels that were their friends who lived in the sky and in the various heavens, they all split up into two groups.
And the story goes that this part of the universe split up all the way up into the Brahma or the god realms.
And the gods themselves were split, believe it or not.
over some water being left in a bucket.
Now the story goes on and on about how the Buddha tried to convince them to change their ways and
And they wouldn't listen and actually they said to him, oh you please don't bother yourself, we will take care of this on our own.
And they wouldn't let the Buddha even get involved and so the Buddha left and went and stayed.
And there's a story, this whole side story about how the Buddha stayed in the forest with an elephant and the elephant gave him food.
and took care of him, and then after that he came back, and then at the end he got all these monks.
What happened, sorry, the best part, when the Buddha left, all of the lay people said, well, where's the Buddha going?
They said, oh, well, we told him not to get involved with our quarrel, and so he left.
And all the lay people got very angry and upset and said, how could you, now we don't have the opportunity to see the Buddha because of you.
And so they stopped giving food to the monks.
Because of that the monks had a very hard time getting alms food and just surviving.
And they went and they apologized and the people said, well you have to get forgiveness from the Buddha.
And because it was the rain season they couldn't do that so they had to wait three months and they were very hard up for three months.
And after this the Buddha came back and then he put the monks who were quarreling in a special place and didn't let any of the other monks get involved with them.
When people came and asked where are those quarreling monks, the Buddha would always point to them and say there they are, there they are.
And they were so ashamed that eventually they came and asked forgiveness from the Buddha and felt really ashamed for what they had done.
And that's when the Buddha told this verse.
Now, the verse has, I think, two important lessons that we can draw from it.
The first one is in regards to death, which I sort of went into last time, but I'd like to talk a little bit more.
The second one is about the importance of wisdom and understanding, and how understanding is really the key in overcoming quarrels and overcoming all suffering and all unwholesomeness, all evil.
So first in regards to death, it's interesting how the theory or the ideology, the teaching on rebirth and how the mind continues, actually makes death more of an important event.
And this verse kind of makes that clear in a way that we might not think of.
The Buddha is telling us how important death is.
And we think, well, if the mind continues, then how is it really so important?
And the way it works is this.
The body and the mind have two... They work together, but they have two different characteristics.
The mind is very quick.
The mind in one moment can be here, the next moment can be there.
It can arise and move very quickly from one object to the next.
The body, on the other hand, is very fixed.
And so our state of being in this life, on a physical level, is quite fixed.
But on a mental level, it's quite fluid.
So your mind can change, and if your mind becomes more and more corrupt,
It can do that very quickly and it can change from good to evil or from evil to good relatively quickly.
And there can be quite a disparity, therefore, between the physical realm and the mental realm.
You can be surrounded by good things and get lots of good and wonderful pleasures and luxuries and have a very corrupt and evil mind that one would think this person doesn't deserve all of that luxury.
But the truth is this is because of the difference.
The body is a coarse construct and the amount of energy that is involved in simply the creation of a human being or of a physical construct is immense.
And so it has a great power, this power of inertia.
where you can't just stop that inertia.
Now some people, if they do really bad things or really good things, they might wind up cutting it off by dying.
You hear about really good people who are killed because of their unwillingness to do evil and so on, or die because they're not willing to do evil in order to live on and so on.
And you of course hear about evil, evil people who do bad things and as a result are killed.
or die in unpleasant circumstances because of the way their minds are.
But for most people, or for many people, the inertia and the power of the physical prevents the repercussions.
until the moment of death.
Now at the moment of death the body is totally reconstructed.
There is a period that goes where the mind leaves the body behind and begins this immense activity or work required to rebuild another body or to create another human being starting at the moment of conception.
Now that of course is much more mental and the nature of that is going to depend almost entirely on the nature of the mind or the set of the mind.
What sort of work is the mind going to undertake?
For most people we're caught up in this programming of creating a human being and a human life and so as a result
will be reborn as a human being, but you can be reborn in many different ways based on your mind.
And therefore, the importance of, as we've seen in the past stories, the importance of settling our disputes in this life, and settling them in our mind anyway.
Sometimes we can't stop other people from being angry at us, but of greatest importance
is that we are able to settle them in our own minds.
And this is the word samanti, samanti, samatti, which means to stabilize or to tranquilize them in our minds, to make it so that they're no longer a source of clinging.
We no longer cling, we no longer regurgitate and go after and recreate this in our minds.
So, which was obviously the case, the problem in the case with these two sets of monks, which was a real danger.
And so the Buddha pointed out to them that this is really useless, this is really futile.
And the reason people do this is because they don't see.
They don't see clearly.
So this is the importance of death, because it frees the mind to make choices again.
on a level that it's not free to in this life because of the inertia of its previous work in creating this being.
And the second part is that importance of understanding and how understanding things like death is important.
On a meditative level, understanding the truth of birth and death as occurring on a momentary level.
is far more important and crucial, in fact, in freeing ourselves up from strife and quarrel and disputes and suffering.
And I've said it before, but it's worth reiterating that this is really all you need to do to overcome your suffering, to overcome quarrels and so on.
You don't have to go and apologize to the people.
I mean, that's always a good way to overcome it.
And on a general level, in regards to our clingings, in regards to our cravings, in regards to our attachments, all that needs to be done is to see it clearly.
When you're addicted to something, you don't have to force yourself to stop or try to convince yourself that it's wrong or remind yourself again and again how bad you are for doing it.
All you have to do is see the addiction clearly for what it is.
See it objectively.
Let it be.
Let it come up.
And when you see it for what it is, you'll let go of it.
You'll have no desire to cling to it because you'll see that everything ceases.
So this Buddhist teaching on death was only the introduction.
It's this reminder to bring the monks back
to this idea that everything arises and ceases.
Because once they can see that we die, they can see how futile it is.
Why are we fighting?
What are we hoping to gain?
We can come out on top, as I said in the last video.
But what does it mean to be on top?
Because eventually we all die and we're put on bottom.
So, and once they start to do that, then you can start to see that really why would we cling to anything?
And you start to be able to look at your clinging and see that when you cling to something, you hold on to it, it maybe brings you pleasure temporarily, but then it disappears.
And what is the benefit?
What is the...
gain that comes from that when you see on a phenomenological level experiential or moment to moment level how everything arises and ceases how this happiness this pleasure that you're hoping to get is really actually bound up with suffering and stress because it conditions the mind to want more and to
strive more and to be stressed and you can make yourself sick and uncomfortable, unwell as a result of the clinging.
So when you practice meditation, when you look at the objects of awareness on a moment to moment basis,
you're able to see that everything arises and ceases.
Simply that seeing allows you to, you know, it changes your whole way of looking at things.
You no longer look at things in terms of the universe, in terms of us and them and I and me and mine and so on.
All of the, so many of the points of reference that we take on an ordinary,
run-of-the-mill frame of reference are gone, are lost, are given up by someone who takes up this practice.
You really change your whole way of looking at the world.
And this is, I think, it's important to pick up this word in this verse, vijananti, which is really the same word as vipassana.
Vipassana means to see clearly.
Vijananti means to know clearly or to understand clearly.
But it's really the same word and it has the exact same meaning.
And it's really the core of Buddhism.
And it's so easy when you read this verse to just skip by that and say, oh yeah, yeah, we have to think about death and death is the most important.
No, the most important is the knowing, the understanding.
When you see, with death as an example, when you see that everything ceases, when you see our quarrel, why are we quarreling, why do we have to die, it helps you see that everything ceases.
When you see on a momentary level, I'm clinging to this thing, why would I cling to it when it has to cease?
When you're able to see things arising and ceasing, this is what the meaning is.
When you're able to understand clearly that there is nothing in the world that you can hold on to that lasts more than an instant.
When you're able to see that it's futile to cling and it's useless, it's unbeneficial, and actually it's a source of
Great stress and suffering by its very nature, by the stress caused from clinging, from wanting, from craving and so on.
And the building and building up of more and more craving.
and suffering when you don't get what you want and so on.
So this is another important verse and another good lesson for us.
This is the Dhamma for today from the Dhammapada.
So thanks for tuning in.
All the best.