Hey, hello and welcome to our study of the Dhammapada.
Continuing on with verse 179 and 180, two verses today, which read as follows.
yasa cittang na vajiyati cittang yasa no yadiko ciloke
Tāṁ buddham ananta-gocāraṁ apadankena padena nesatā Yasa jālini vi sattika tanhānati kuhinci netave Tāṁ buddham ananta-gocāraṁ apadankena padena nesatā
which means it's one of these couplets that the verses are almost the same, but they change a part of it.
So the first verse, they're referring to the Buddha, whose victory cannot be turned into defeat.
whose conquering cannot be conquered, whose cannot be turned into defeat, whose victory
No one in this world, Kochi Loke, can turn back, can cancel.
That Buddha, who is Anantagochara, whose sphere, whose realm of
Being is without end, without limit, who is limitless, who is unbound.
With no course or track, with no direction, heading nowhere, basically.
By what path, by what direction, by what heading will you lead him?
The second verse.
For whom the craving with its snares and poisons
for whom there is none of it.
There is no craving to lead them anywhere.
There is none.
Nothing.
None that would lead him anywhere.
This Buddha who is without limit, whose sphere of existence, of being, is limitless.
With no path, by what path will you lead him?
Pada.
Again, this word, pada.
Pada meaning here, path.
Or a direction.
You know, we have these, we criticize people who have no direction.
You have no direction.
Well, an enlightened being truly has no direction.
We'll talk about a little bit how that's different.
So this was told in regards to a story about, two stories really, but the story starts with Magandiya.
Magandiya we learned about way back in the beginning with Samavati.
Magandiya was a woman who became queen and she had a grudge against the Buddha for the reasons that we'll learn in this story.
And as a result she ended up killing Samavati who was faithful to the Buddha because she was just an all-around rotten person.
not Samavati, Magandiya was.
But Magandiya had parents, of course, and this story is actually more about her parents.
So, Magandiya was very beautiful, and her parents were very protective of her.
Many men came and sought her hand in marriage.
And they would offer great wealth or great gifts.
In the time it was like buying something, you bought a wife, sort of.
You had to pay, you had to put up.
I think if you want to be charitable, it wasn't so much buying as it was proving your worth.
Because none of them were worthy.
And to be uncharitable, the worthiness was completely decided by the father.
And that was the way instead of considering the woman's wishes.
Of course the man came and made an offer and the father decided whether she would marry this person.
It seems like it was like that.
And of course it probably differed depending on the family and how their biases laid.
But he kept saying, you're not worthy, you're not worthy.
None of you are good enough for my daughter.
And one day, the Buddha looked and watched this and he thought, boy, these two, this husband and wife, Magandiya's parents, they are quite well developed and they're just, they're good people.
They have deep thoughts and they have, deep down they have the ability to
realized the truth.
And so he decided to play a little game with them of sorts.
I mean, the game is not being charitable to the Buddha, but a ruse of sorts, because he knew that they were looking for a husband for their daughter.
So we might say, wanted to teach them a lesson.
You know, use what people are focused on.
This was their .
Their path was heavily involved with finding a good husband for their daughter.
That's the path of many parents in the world for their daughters and sons, I suppose.
So he came and put himself in the path of the Brahmin, the father.
And the father saw him and took one look at him and immediately thought, this is the man.
This man is worthy of my daughter.
And he said,
Monk.
Did he call him monk?
I don't think monk is a word in Pali.
What was the word he said?
Samana.
Samana means recluse.
It's the modern word shaman.
Samana means like a recluse.
So he knew this guy was someone who had left the world, someone who was off living in the forest, but he thought, he knew that many of the Brahmins went off and did this, but if they were young, they might find a good, a nice woman and get married or whatever.
He knew that it wasn't set in stone, so he thought, well, this, I'll convince him.
And he said, I have a single daughter.
She is beyond compare.
I've looked in vain for someone to be suitable for her husband, but you are suitable.
I wish to give you my daughter to wife, for as a wife, wait right here until I fetch him.
And the Buddha said nothing.
Which is interesting because the Buddha usually, when he says nothing, it's a means of accepting.
If there was some objection, the Buddha would speak up.
So you might say it is a bit misleading.
And I think the Buddha purposefully meant to mislead him.
He wasn't going to lie and say, yes, I would love to marry your daughter.
But he allowed Magandiya to believe, this father to believe,
that, yes, he did indeed want to meet his daughter.
And in fact, it's not false.
He did want for it to happen because there was a lesson to be had, as we'll see.
And the Brahmin rushed back to his home and called his daughter and said, I found the man that you're going to marry.
And called his wife and said, I found the man who's going to marry our daughter.
Brought them together.
Meanwhile, the Buddha got up.
looked down and saw the earth, and I guess he found a spot where he could make a footprint, and he stuck his foot in the earth or in the mud and made a footstep and walked away.
Meanwhile, the Brahmin's getting ready, rushing, getting his daughter all decked out with makeup.
And they put such makeup on back then.
It would have been a little bit different from today's makeup.
But she certainly was all decked out with gold and jewels and makeup and probably was quite attractive for the time.
or in the eyes of the world, she would have been considered to be quite attractive.
And they went back to where the Buddha had been sitting and didn't find him.
The wife said, where is this man you're going to get to marry your daughter?
The Brahmin said, I told him to wait here and he agreed.
He said he would stay.
He accepted.
I told him to stay.
He looks down and he sees the footprint.
He said, there, there's his footprint.
He must have walked away somewhere.
And the wife, who was also a learned person, looked at the footprint and immediately knew, there's no way this guy is going to marry our daughter.
They had this palmistry.
They were able to read your feet.
She looked at the footstep and she said, this is a footstep of someone who is free from all craving, has no desires whatsoever.
Somehow they could see that.
And he says to her, he says, look, that's not... He says, you were always seeing a crocodile in a drop of water.
Apparently that was a saying back then.
Now we say mountains out of molehills.
Back then it was crocodiles in a drop of water.
What it means is, if you see a little mud puddle, you might say, I think there's a crocodile in there, which is ridiculous.
Right?
something very small, you see something very big.
And he said, I said to him, I told him, I want to give you my daughter.
And he accepted.
And as we saw, the Buddha didn't say no.
The wife, the wife said, Brahmin, say what you like, but this footprint
This is a footprint only of one who is free from lust, only one who is free from all lust and craving has such a footprint.
And she recites a verse which talks about the different steps, which is quite interesting.
also talks about this.
A person with lustful character will have no insteps.
In the Visuddhimagga, I think it says they walk on their tiptoes because they're excited, they're moving forward.
Or they're lightly stepping because they're keen to go wherever they're going.
They're always keen to go.
But a person who is angry, their footprint will be heavily pressed down because they stomp around everywhere they go.
And one who has a deluded temperament, it won't be unsteady.
The footprint will be kind of lopsided because they're kind of meandering in their steps.
There's the idea you can listen to someone walking and you can tell which they are if they're stomping around and you know, this is an angry temperament person.
Even when they're not angry, they're just habitually stomping.
And if they're very light, then that means they're a greed temperament.
And so, I mean, we don't put too much heat in this.
And the Visuddhimagga even acknowledges that it's not always the case.
And certainly, once you've heard this, it's very easy to mask and to make a proper step now that you know.
Now that you know that you can be found out by your step.
But that's the verse she says.
The husband pushes her off.
He says, do not rattle on this.
Come with me in silence.
Be quiet.
Ignores her.
And they go on following the path, I guess, following the many footsteps where they go a little ways and they see the Buddha.
And he points to him and he says, there's, there he is, there's the man.
He says again, Samana, I will give you my daughter to wife.
Daughter standing right there as well.
The Buddha, instead of saying, I don't want your daughter.
I have no need of a wife.
He says,
Brahman, I have something to say to you.
Listen to me.
The Brahman says, go ahead, say it.
Say it, Samana.
Speak, Samana.
I will listen.
And this is our first story.
The Buddha told them, to them, he told our second story.
So he told them a story.
And this story goes back, this is in the Jataka, I think is where we find it, the other place we find this story.
The introduction to the Jataka, I think.
It's the story of Mara.
Mara is an interesting part of Buddhism.
Generally, and if we want the most practical understanding of Mara is that there are five Maras.
Mara meaning evil.
The earth isn't all bad.
The world isn't all bad.
In fact, it sometimes is puzzling to people why they suffer.
It's hard to understand because you look around and everybody's so happy all the time.
Everybody's so... Look at them.
Everyone is doing great.
When you see that, not everyone sees such things, but many people in the world, you just see people happy all the time.
You look outside, there's a beautiful sunset.
You watch the sunset maybe and you think, wow, what a magical world this is.
You eat a good dinner and you think, what good food we have, how lucky we are, how blessed we are to be born
to have all these wonderful things.
You pick up your iPhone and you think, wow, what a marvel, what a marvel of technology this is and how amazing we are that we can come up with such things.
And you get in your car and you drive and you race down the street, the highway, and you think, how wonderful this car is.
All these good things.
Why the heck am I suffering?
Why am I miserable?
Why sometimes am I very miserable?
Sometimes when we are miserable we think like that.
What's wrong?
I just don't get it.
I'm doing everything right.
I bought all the right things.
I got all the right friends.
I married the right person.
Got a good job.
Got the right education.
Everything right.
I even got an iPhone.
I don't have an iPhone, but you get an iPhone.
You do everything.
An iPhone is supposed to make you happy, right?
No, something's wrong.
That's Mara.
Mara is what's wrong.
Something wrong.
Death, machumara, kandamara, the being, just your very being, like the body and so on.
Getting old, getting sick, feelings, memories, perceptions, judgments, problems.
Karma, karma is a problem.
You do bad things, you get bad results.
Maybe you've hurt other people, now you feel guilty, or maybe they think you're guilty, and they want revenge, and so on.
Kilesa Mara, of course.
Greed, anger, delusion, the defilements, these are evil.
But the fifth one, the fifth type of Mara is this evil being, Devaputta Mara.
This evil being was said to have followed the Buddha around for seven years.
When the Bodhisatta left home, Mara immediately picked it up, picked up on it and chased after him and followed him, followed in his footsteps for seven years.
Of course after six years he became a Buddha.
And there was no chance.
But during those six years, he hounded him, waiting for an opportunity, waiting for him to just get some doubt about himself or some lustful thought that he could manipulate.
Or as this guy who whispers in your ear and goads you on when you want something, he says, go get it.
Good for you.
So believe this or not, I mean, many people will read this and just wonder where the heck is this coming from?
This isn't the Buddhism.
This isn't meditation practice.
Where is he going with this?
Why are we talking about strange mythical beings?
If you believe that way, that's fine because we're not concerned with whether this really happened or not.
The past should all be like that.
Our concern should never be what happened in the past.
That's a very important Buddhist teaching.
Same with the future.
If we're concerned about what happened in the past or what can happen in the future, again, we're out of touch with reality.
So, important here is just the lesson.
We're going to have a lesson out of this.
So we have this being, Mara, who's chasing after the Buddha, goading him on.
Bodhisatta, not the Buddha yet.
And when he became the Buddha,
Mara got all sad and depressed.
He realized there's no chance now.
I don't know what to do.
And he went and he went and sat somewhere.
Where did he sit?
Sat down by the highway overwhelmed with sorrow and
I guess he's just some guy who actually has a body and some angel.
I think the Maras are of the Yamaka realm, one of the high heavens.
And they're of the Paranimitavasavati.
Paranimitavasavati.
which means they are beings who delight in the creations of others.
The Buddha called him a Mara, but I think they thought of themselves differently.
They were just the kind of angel who gets all caught up in the creation of things.
Not their own creations, but they love to watch and observe and encourage and induce other beings to create.
So Buddha thought this, called this group Maras, I think.
Because this is the problem, the creating, the more making.
This is the crocodiles in the drop of water.
These guys, they're the ones who make you see crocodiles in drops of water.
Make you want to make more out of things, want to chase after things and so on.
And he also apparently had three daughters.
Now this seems fairly figurative, but it's taken literally by this story.
His three daughters were craving, discontent, and lust.
These are the names.
So we also have the armies of Mara.
Mara is said to have many armies, but the armies weren't beings like ogres and demons and so on.
They were demons as in the demons inside.
Things like undeserved fame and so on.
There's many armies, ten armies of Mara or something.
There's many armies of Mara.
that are talked about in the text, but they're states, they're aspects of one's life, things that are used by Mara, used by evil, to goad us, to instigate our cravings and our aversions and so on.
And so they're also daughters of Mara, who have the same sort of nature of being qualities of mind,
craving, discontent, and lust, but these are taken to be women.
And they came and saw him, and they said, what's wrong, Father?
Oh, someone's gotten free from us, and he's probably going to spend another many, many years helping other people get free.
I don't know what to do.
And they said, oh, well.
will, will take care of him.
These three are really good at commanding, controlling, especially men.
Lust, craving, discontent.
No, I suppose not just men, that's not fair to say.
But being women, they had their ways of presenting themselves directly to him.
He said, we'll take care of him, don't worry.
He shook his head and he said, nobody can take care of him, nobody can control him now.
It's not possible.
He said, oh, come on.
Easy peasy.
Well, Mara didn't say anything.
Still glum.
So they went off to find the Buddha.
And
came in front of them, dressed decked out gaily and beautiful.
These are angels, so they were very beautiful.
And they said, oh, Samana, we would like to be your slaves, your humble slaves.
We'll do whatever you ask.
And of course, they're posing seductively and so on.
Nope, nothing.
He didn't pay any attention to them, didn't even open his eyes to look at them.
So they changed up their appearance, some of them older, some of them younger, some of them bigger, some of them smaller, light hair, dark hair, light eyes, dark eyes, big, so on.
Big, small, short, tall.
And presented themselves to him.
And he didn't.
They said, Samana, we would be your slaves.
We'll do whatever you ask.
Didn't even open his eyes.
And on and on and on they went until finally the Buddha opened his eyes and said, why are you still here?
Go away, what are you looking for?
That you chase thus, that you strive thus.
And then he spoke these two passions.
Asking them, these two verses, asking them, how could they possibly lead him on?
How could they possibly hope to lead him anywhere?
Someone who is free from any kind of path, any kind of direction.
And then, this is the story he told to Magandhi, then he turns to Magandhi and he says, so having completely eradicated craving and having turned down those three who were just the absolute beautiful epitome of physical beauty, their bodies were celestial.
And then you come and give me this.
And then he goes a bit hyperbolic.
I mean, he wants to impress onto this, onto Magandiya.
He says, you want to send, you want to give me this walking cesspool, this corpse who has these 32 impure parts of the body.
Her skin is oily and smelly if you don't wash it.
Her fingernails turn yellow and they grow out like growths from her fingers.
Her teeth get cracked and stained and crooked.
And they smell bad and taste bad and get saliva all covered over them and plaque and so on.
And her hair, her hair grows like grass out of her head, grows in the oil and blood of her scalp, and it gets oily and smelly.
And her body hair under her armpits and other places is the same, smelly and oily and growing like weeds.
And then he says, she's just like a brightly colored decked out chamber pot.
A chamber pot, if you don't know, is before they had toilets, a chamber pot was a pot that you had in your bedroom to urinate and defecate in and then put outside.
And you can decorate them very nice, right?
A chamber pot is just like any vessel.
If you decorate it, maybe it looks very beautiful.
And people will say, oh, what's in this beautiful pot?
Then they open it up, and oh, that's what's in that pot.
Doesn't matter how you deck it out.
He says, if my foot was covered in filth,
excrement.
And she were, she were to lie in the doorway to my kuti.
I wouldn't touch her with my big toe, with the sole of my foot.
I wouldn't even touch her with my foot.
She's worse than excrement.
That's basically what he says.
That's what the Dhammapada says.
I think this account of it might be a little hyperbolic, but his intention was to be hyperbolic.
He wanted to impress upon
these two Brahmins, that they were totally wrong-headed in seeking out a husband for their daughter.
He didn't have any concern for Magandya, it seems, because she gets quite upset about this, and that's why she starts holding a grudge against the Buddha.
But the Buddha wasn't concerned, he was more concerned with the father and mother.
Because they both, when listening, they both became Sotapannas.
They both, through hearing this, were able to reflect upon this concept of striving, of chasing, goals and ambitions.
It all comes back to that.
That's the lesson of these verses.
Our lesson is about paths, this word bada.
We talk to
recently about Aasawa in our study of the Abhidhamma.
We have a study group every Friday on Facebook.
You can join if you want.
I think it's called Study Group with Yuta Dhamma Bhikkhu.
But we're talking about the Aasawa.
This is like the Aasawa, the streams.
And in this case, it's called Pada.
But here, a pada is any direction you have.
Parents tell their children, you need direction.
Teachers will also tell you, you lack direction.
Because we're brainwashed into thinking that building up society, doing what society dictates, is intrinsically valuable.
Society is intrinsically valuable, we say.
We say that humankind and humanity and so many things, money and power, station, social status, security, all these things are important.
Health is important.
Youth is important.
Life is important.
Pleasure is important.
So many things that we chase after.
This is craving.
So the problem in Buddhism is that we want things, is that we have direction.
I think this is one of the hardest things to swallow for newcomers to Buddhism.
And they can understand how certain things are wrong.
They might agree that it's wrong to kill, generally, they might say.
It's wrong to steal.
There's bad things, but craving, surely.
Surely not all craving is wrong.
But we can say, we can look at it and say, well, why is stealing wrong?
Well, stealing is wrong because the other person loses something.
Well, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with the other?
Well, they don't want to lose that thing.
They will suffer because of that.
Ah, they will suffer because they want that thing or they like that thing.
And you say, isn't that craving?
Isn't that craving in that person?
Oh, well, yes, but surely you're not saying stealing is okay and the fault is in the victim.
No, we're saying actually stealing is wrong because it's involved with craving.
What's really wrong with stealing is what it does to the person who steals.
When you steal, it reinforces a very harsh and extreme form of craving.
One that is going to lead to very coarse states of mind and great future suffering.
It sullies your mind.
Reasons why we kill, reasons why we steal, reasons why we sexual assault and sexual misconduct.
Some of the horrible things people do for sexual gratification.
Horrible meaning they hurt others and break up marriages, relationships and so on.
Commitments.
Why we lie, why we
engage in all number of bad things.
They say, well, there's a lot of craving involved there.
There's this ambition.
Well, yes, but putting those aside and granting that all of those are wrong, what about other kinds of ambition?
What about wanting to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer?
What's wrong with those?
So we have to understand wrong on a different level.
it's quite a sophisticated sort of wrong.
It's not wrong for a person living in society to do all those things, all the various things and to crave even good food and so on.
It's not wrong in the context of being a good upstanding citizen.
It's wrong in a more sophisticated sense.
It's wrong in the sense that it's incoherent.
It doesn't compute.
We want something, so we chase after it.
And we want something because we have a cognition or a perception that happiness will come from it, that good, something good will come from it.
Something good.
Could be many different kinds of good.
If you get a good job, good will come in the form of money.
When you get lots of money, good will come in the form of stability, security, power, influence, pleasure.
Ultimately pleasure.
This is how our brains work, our minds work.
Our minds work with our brains to stimulate.
stimulate us.
We get stimulated by so many different things.
Any kind of experience that the brain gives us of energy of physical sensation.
many different kinds, calmness, quietude of mind.
There's many chemicals in the brain that produce all these states.
And so we get quite good at figuring out which state, what events are going to trigger these sensations and how to excrete the right chemicals.
It's really just one big drug, set of drug habits.
We have all these brain drugs that stimulate our being and allow for smoother workings of the mind that we really like.
So we cultivate liking and craving for these.
The problem with this system is that it's
it's engaged in the sort of diminishing returns.
The more you use the system, the more that's required to
to appease, to satisfy.
And you can study this.
If you study addiction from a physicalist point of view, you can see how the brain works and it's quite well known how the system works.
The same amount of pleasure is not going to consistently bring results.
You need more if you want to.
And that's how drug addictions increase, increase until they become unsustainable because you have to always increase the dosage
in order to be satisfied.
So satisfaction or this illusion of satisfaction only comes from increased and increasingly high dosage
And so, I mean, this sort of thing is the theory in Buddhism that we talk about, how it's just not worth it, and it only leads to dissatisfaction.
Eventually you want and crave so much that you suffer terribly when you don't get, anytime you don't get what you want.
So these are theories that should be familiar.
What's a little more to the point, and maybe a little more interesting,
how the process of meditation changes that.
Because when we sit down to meditate, we'll start to see all of these things.
We'll see our paths, our pada, the ways we're led.
Buddha often used imagery relating to farms and farm animals.
So it's always about cows because it was a big part of society at the time.
And so gochara is pasture.
The Buddha's pasture is limitless.
And a pada is a path that you would lead the cows.
It's a fence that you set up to head them in the right direction.
You can't do that with a Buddha.
You can't do that with an enlightened being.
They have nowhere to go.
They're infinite.
They are unbound, let's say.
They're unfenced.
There's no fence by which you could say, I'll build this fence and that will direct them that way.
There's no rope you could construct to pull them in any direction mentally, physically, but not mentally.
There's no hook you could stick in them to drag them anywhere.
So how we affect this?
Through meditation we begin to see all of this.
We see all these hooks that we have and the pulls that we have.
We're constantly being pushed and pulled by our brains and our minds and you get so tired of it after some time.
And you begin to change.
If your practice is related to seeing clearly, you're going to eventually see so clearly that you just get tired of it.
It's exhausting to always want.
In the beginning it's, oh, this is so much suffering because I can't get what I want.
But if you're diligent and honest with yourself, you say, no, no, this is, it will change.
You'll start to see this is so much suffering because it's wanting.
And you see that deeply enough and understand that clearly enough, you'll get tired of it, you'll get tired of wanting, you'll get tired of suffering.
When one becomes bored or tired, disenchanted with what turns out to be just stress,
Very hard to see.
Very hard to explain this because for those who are new or who are not familiar with this, they are very hard to believe that this is true.
So all I can say is that this is what you'll see.
Buddha said, come and see.
It's a challenge.
It's a making sort of like a...
acclaim and putting it out there.
Putting it out there to be tested.
Buddhism is not something that you have to believe.
We don't say, it's true, believe it, because I'm so charismatic or because I'm so convincing.
No, it's true and go ahead and prove me wrong.
Go ahead and try and see for yourself.
Come and see.
Because when you look, this is what you'll see.
You'll begin to see how it's not that you don't get what you want.
That's the problem.
Or it's not even intellectual like that.
It's just by looking at reality, you'll start to find a different way.
You'll start to see what's real.
That actually this thing that I want isn't real at all.
What's real is just experiences.
And if I break it down to the fundamentals, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, it's all just experience.
And it's these pulls, it's these pada, these directions that we have that drag us here and drag us there, wanting this, wanting that, not wanting this, not wanting that, afraid of this, afraid of that.
They're the problem.
They're the only thing standing between us and peace, between us and freedom.
They're what keeps us tied, bound, caught up in so much busyness.
And so we begin to let go.
You practice meditation enough, your mind will change.
You'll eventually just release.
You'll say, I get it.
It'll be a moment of what we call realizing the Four Noble Truths, where you suddenly realize nothing is worth clinging to.
And then you let go.
So,
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.
The Buddha asked them, I tried to explain to them what it was like to be enlightened.
Enlightened one has no craving.
Their victory, their state, their accomplishment cannot be overturned, cannot be lost.
They've come to see the truth.
So, thank you all for tuning in.
I wish you all the best.
That's the Dhammapada for this week.