Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verse 216, which reads as follows.
tanhaya jayati soko tanhaya jayati bhajan tanhaya vipamutasa nathih soko kuto bhajan
Which means from thirst comes sorrow.
From thirst comes danger.
For one who is liberated from thirst, from thirsting, from craving,
There is no sorrow, whence fear, or whence danger.
This verse was supposed to have been taught in response to a story about a Brahmin householder in the time of the Buddha.
The story goes that in Savatthi there was a Brahmin householder.
Brahmins were the upper class or are the upper class in India.
One of the upper classes.
And he had some farmland and he spent his days farming.
And so one
The story tells us that he was a holder of false views.
So as many people in India at the time of the Buddha, he had views that were unspecified, but contrary to reality.
So probably views about God and views about sacrifice and ritual and all these sorts of things.
Views that there was no result of karma, views that God would protect him, that sort of thing.
And
He went out one day to clear his field So I guess probably he had some help Maybe, maybe not Maybe he was not wealthy But he was spending his day clearing the field Maybe he had a horse and a plow An ox and a plow or something And the Buddha was walking for alms round And he saw the Brahmin And it's kind of an interesting story The Buddha The Buddha
engaged with people in quite unique ways, not ever the same.
But one thing that he often did when he saw potential in someone, which the story says that he did in this Brahmin, is he would ask them questions, simple questions, not even questions really about the Dhamma, but he would often ask people questions about what they were doing.
And so he asked the Brahmin, what are you doing, Brahmin?
And he said, I'm clearing my field.
And the Buddha would ask these questions, obviously not because he was ignorant of what they were doing, but it's a means of not only breaking the ice and creating a connection, which the Buddha seemed to want to do,
But it's also a means of having the Brahmin get a deeper understanding of what he himself is doing.
It's a very good way to get people to become aware of what they're doing, to be more mindful, right?
It's a great way to start a relationship in the Dhamma, to ask people what they're doing, and as a teacher like the Buddha, to impart this sense of presence.
He said, I'm clearing my field.
And the Buddha continued on his way for alms.
And the next day he came back and the Brahmin was, maybe he was still clearing his field, but eventually he started to plant, plant the rice.
And the Buddha asked him, what are you doing?
He said, I'm planting my rice.
And every day the Buddha would go by and ask him what he's doing.
He said, I'm planting the rice, now I'm weeding the field, now I'm, maybe it wasn't rice, I don't think you weed rice, but he was weeding the field and whatever it was, tending it, guarding it.
Every day he told him what he was doing, till eventually he got a sort of a friendship with the Buddha.
And he said to the Buddha one day, he said,
Bo Gotama.
Bo is not very respectful, so he didn't really call him venerable, but he said, Mr. Gotama kind of thing.
Gotama was the Buddha's name.
He said, every day you come by and you ask me about my rice field.
I think
I've decided that you and I shall be partners in this.
You really seem to care about what I'm doing.
And he said, you and I will be partners in this.
And he said, when the crop is ripe, I will share it with you.
I won't eat any of my crops without sharing with you, he said.
You'll be my partner in this."
And the Buddha was silent and continued on in alms round.
Eventually the crops grew and it was the night before the crops were due to be harvested.
And he said, tomorrow I'm going to harvest my crops.
And he was, I guess, quite excited about this and anticipating and not only enjoying it himself, but sharing it with his partner.
And that night there was a great rainstorm, a flood, and it flooded away his entire crop, lost it all.
And in the morning he woke up and went to see his crop, how it had fared, and found that it was gone.
And he was devastated.
He thought immediately, here I promise to share it with my friend Gotaman.
I can't share any of it.
I can't, of course, enjoy it myself.
And he was depressed and wouldn't eat and just lay in his bed all day.
And the Buddha noticed that he was absent and went to his door and
And the Brahmin servants told him that the Buddha was here.
He said, let him in and give him a seat.
And the Buddha came in and sat down and said, where's the Brahmin?
He said, oh, he's in bed.
And the Buddha said, tell him to come out.
And the Brahmin came out and sat down and conversed with the Buddha, gave friendly greetings.
And the Buddha asked him, what's wrong?
And the Brahmin explained that the crop had disappeared.
And because of that, he was devastated.
He was sad.
He was depressed.
And the Buddha said, do you know really why you're sad?
That's an interesting question because the common answer, of course, is, well, I'm sad because I lost my crop.
I'm sad because what I had hoped to happen didn't happen.
I didn't get what I wanted, to put it simply.
And that's why I'm sad.
So why would the Buddha ask such a thing?
The Brahmin, when he heard this, he thought, he said, he responded, he said,
He admitted that, no, actually, I don't know.
He realized it's deeper than just that.
And he said, but you know.
And the Buddha said, I do.
It's because of tanha, craving or thirst.
The literal translation is thirst, but it just means craving.
Because of craving, comes fear.
If fear arises...
It arises because of, sorry, if sorrow arises, it arises because of craving.
And then he taught this verse.
So the lesson here is about that distinction.
This is our final verse in this series of verses that are all the same.
The same verse, just a different word and a different story.
And you can see it's actually quite remarkable.
If you just read the verses, you don't realize it.
If you're reading through the verses, it seems like, oh boy, it's the same verse again and again.
I get it the first time.
Oh, it's just a different word.
But each story gives us a different facet to the dangers of craving, the dangers of what is ultimately the same emotional mind state, but different circumstances, different qualities to it.
So this one is in regards to ambition, really.
Ambition meaning in the expectation of worldly success.
Ambition in the sense of engaging in an activity to get a result in the world, usually an economic activity.
So in this case, he engaged in farming.
Agriculture, that's the word.
He engaged in agriculture in order to make a profit.
Profit for himself and profit to be able to share it with his friend, his partner.
And it's a very common experience in life to have our ambitions, our undertakings not bear the fruit that we had hoped them to
This is something we see acutely in these days with people who are suffering from losing their jobs, from lack of employment, from having their savings depleted and their savings in stocks and retirement funds and so on all reduced.
I mean, that's actually the least of it, but the loss of jobs, the loss of economic ability, capacity to feed yourself even, to pay the bills, is devastating in these times.
With so many people afraid, baya, danger has arisen, fear has arisen.
unable to make ends meet and unable to cope with their circumstance.
This is a reality.
This is something you can't avoid.
This is something Buddhism doesn't really hope to avoid, although there are some guidelines for why it happens.
It doesn't just happen randomly.
And this is
This is a wrong view and it's a problematic view that we see in the world where people believe that
Or not even believe, perhaps, or just have a sense that what happens, be it pleasant or unpleasant, is by chance.
This is a wrong view.
It's not random.
But for all intents and purposes, practically speaking, it is random.
In the sense that we don't know what's going to happen.
We can't control what's going to happen.
It's not because I want myself to only experience good things that good things happen.
The sense that there is some non-random or non-random quality to it is in the sense that it relates to our relationship with the world, karma, our relationship with others, with the world in general, our relationship with reality.
If we're out of touch with reality, we're very much liable to do things that are going to cause us problems in the future, not just in this life, but throughout the moment-by-moment existence in samsara.
be that as it may at this moment in time we don't know what's going to happen and so for some people it's it's simply a matter of hedging your bets people have a general sense in their life that bad things have happened to me but i have pretty good luck
And we get this sense, we may not express it verbally, vocally, though some people do.
I've been pretty lucky in my life, you hear that?
It's quite common.
But we have a sense that, okay, I'm doing okay.
And this is the exact, many of the people who had this, had this exact same sense right up until devastation hit.
This Brahmin was thinking everything was going fine.
And then he was utterly devastated.
We can't avoid.
And thinking that we can avoid is negligent.
It's negligent in the extreme.
Thinking that we're going to get lucky is what everyone who ever experiences devastation thinks because they weren't prepared for it.
Not everyone.
Some people are pessimistic by nature.
They think very bad things are going to happen.
But for those people, interestingly, I would say it's less devastating because they weren't surprised by it.
They weren't taken off guard by it.
So there's an advantage to being pessimistic.
Of course, the disadvantage is quite glaring is that you're all constantly unhappy if you're pessimistic.
So clearly there is some better way to engage with reality.
The first point is that we have to accept disappointment as a part of life.
That disappointment is a part of life.
And this is an important lesson because we often make like it's not a part of life.
It may not be a part of your life.
Acting like it's not going to be a part of your life is negligent in the extreme.
It's what causes devastation.
That is the cause of devastation.
Or that is the root cause of devastation.
Or it's what's preventing us from preventing devastation.
If you act as though it will not come to you, you'll never work.
To ensure that it doesn't come to you, right?
If it's not going to come, why work to solve something that's not going to be a problem?
So understanding, it's a big part of Buddhism, understanding that disappointment
Is a part of life Understanding that it is a potential in our lives It's a big part of answering the question Because you need to ask the question first How do I prepare for it?
And if you don't think you have to You'll never ask the question But the bigger lesson Is the lesson that the Buddha gives And that is That it is not that disappointment
The physical reality of disappointment That is the cause of suffering You don't suffer because you didn't get what you want You suffer because you wanted it in the first place And so this Brahmin was quite excited And you might even say that the Buddha set him up
It may very well be you could say that.
The Buddha made him more excited, right?
Because the Buddha kept asking him and kept making him think, oh yes, yes, I am going to enjoy this.
I don't know if that's true.
I don't want to pin that on the Buddha, but it would be a useful lesson tool if you think that way.
Take people's natural ignorance and obliviousness to potential suffering when you know that something bad is inevitably going to happen and using it to teach them something.
It's a bit cruel, I think.
But this Brahmin was not, he didn't suffer because he wasn't able to harvest his crop.
He was suffering because of this build-up.
Build-up and build-up and build-up.
He built up such excitement.
that has nothing to do with the reality of cultivating a crop and then harvesting it, or cultivating a crop and then not being able to harvest it.
I mean, theoretically, one can do all the work, get no result from it, not because it was never going to bring result, but because of some accident or some unfortuitous event.
And then not suffer from it.
It's possible to have all that happen and be completely at peace.
Or at least indifferent, right?
Indifferent for many reasons.
For example, if it wasn't your crop, if it was someone else's and you were just doing the work and you got paid anyway, then you wouldn't care at all whether the crop could be harvested or not.
But his identification, his investment in the results devastated him.
It's not to say we can dismiss the great tragedy that this Brahmin suffered.
I mean, it sounds like he still had servants, so he probably wasn't destitute, but it was a loss of livelihood on his part.
He was expecting, and it probably impacted his lifestyle.
For people in today's world and throughout history, but what we see today in the circumstances the world is facing now, a lot of people are in fairly dire straits.
And there's no dismissing that.
It's true that there's a profound impact.
That is not the reason why people are sad, depressed, fearful, worried about the future, worried about the present, angry, frustrated, and so on.
All of that is for a very different reason.
It's because of our attachment to results and our attachment to pleasure.
Because it's not just the anticipation of pleasure.
It's the pleasure in anticipating.
This Brahmin, as with all the other stories, as with the last story, the story of this man who made the beautiful golden image of the woman, it wasn't just the anticipation, though that was a big part of it, it was also the pleasure.
Every time he thought of being married to such a beautiful woman.
Every time this Brahmin talked with the Buddha and thought about what he was going to experience, there was pleasure associated with it.
That's what causes greed to be such a craving, to be such a pernicious mind state, such a difficult mind state to overcome.
Because it's pleasant.
It's enjoyable.
It's not just enjoyable getting what you want.
It's also enjoyable wanting it.
There's a pleasure involved.
Not always it can be there can be neutral, especially if you're quite mindful.
But there's often quite a pleasure that encourages the desire.
That's why
it's very, very lightly blamed.
We don't blame people for wanting things, not the way we blame people for getting angry or being conceited and arrogant and so on.
In the world, it's rarer, more rare to scold or blame someone for being greedy.
We do, it happens if someone is very greedy, excessively, but just for wanting things, no, not the same way as when people get angry or
So on.
We don't blame it in ourselves either.
When we get angry, we feel, we don't like that.
But we don't say, oh, I don't like being so, I don't like liking things.
We like liking things.
We enjoy them.
Unless you're, perhaps you've heard Buddhist teachings and you realize, oh, there's danger, and so you get upset with yourself.
That's not very wholesome either, but
In general, we enjoy liking.
And this is what the Brahmin was cultivating, this joy, this excitement that was going to come to fruition.
Now, it's not to praise greed or craving because it's pleasant.
It actually makes it worse because the pleasant feeling doesn't assuage or doesn't appease the craving.
It makes it worse, makes it stronger.
It's not the kind of pleasure that is content.
The pleasure involved with craving reinforces the craving.
When you want something and you're excited or you're happy about what you're going to get, you only want it more.
And so the devastation increases.
This is the danger in craving, the danger in the pleasure of craving.
And so this is the lesson, this sort of mid-level lesson of how it is craving that leads to suffering.
Of course, on a deeper level,
And on a meditative level, this is sort of the lesson that I've been repeating throughout these verses, is that even deeper than this teaching, which is an important teaching on the disadvantages of craving, is the teaching on how even pleasure, even getting what you want, and of course the craving for getting what you want, all of it is unsatisfying.
So the pleasure of wanting, the pleasure of getting what you want, the experience of it, when you experience it as it is, you see that it's not worth clinging to, that there's nothing special or concrete about it.
It's not a real thing.
It's not real in the sense of lasting, in the sense of being something you can hold on to.
When craving arises, it arises temporarily, momentarily.
When pleasure arises, it arises momentarily.
It arises like everything else.
It ceases.
Everything that arises ceases.
And this isn't theory.
This is what you see when you practice.
As you watch, if you like something and you say liking, if you want something and you say wanting, wanting.
If you feel happy and you say happy, happy.
You don't learn anything profound about it.
You don't suddenly get this billboard that tells you that's not worth clinging to.
Nothing happens.
You see, there's nothing to it.
It takes time, but eventually you realize that's what insight is.
That's what vipassana means.
Vipassana is seeing that there's nothing to it.
There's nothing special.
There is no billboard that will suddenly flash and tell you what this pleasure is, what this craving is.
You see, the craving is just craving.
It's an experience that arises and ceases.
It's very simple.
It's not much to it.
But that's how you'll see it.
And when you start to see it that way, you'll see no reason to cling to anything.
No one will tell you nothing will tell you not to cling.
It's not this lesson of, oh yeah, that might lead to problems.
It's the lesson of this is a thing that arose and ceased.
And so craving doesn't have any place.
When you see things just as they are, there's no room for clinging.
There's no room for craving.
So this is the last verse in this series of verses.
We're still in the piya vaga, I think.
So there's a couple of more about the word piya, but they're on different topics.
And so this ends a series of talks that I think are, the teachings are very important.
They give us all the many facets.
As I said, if you read the verses, you don't see this, but by looking at all these stories, you see, oh yes, many different ways that are very common.
We see them every day.
They're such a prevalent reality in our lives.
So we have losing a child, losing a loved one,
losing the potential for a loved one, fighting over a romantic interest, we have the loss of livelihood or the loss of expected livelihood, not getting what you want in the world, and not getting perhaps what you need to survive.
Again, this isn't to belittle that.
It's not to say that it's not devastating, it's not significant.
It's just to say that you don't have to be devastated by
the very real consequences or results of events that are outside of your control.
You have two choices.
You can experience it mindfully and suffer physically,
Or you can experience it unmindfully and suffer physically and mentally.
That's the choice.
You can't choose not very readily how you're going to live physically, but you can choose more readily.
You can work anyway to live in such a way that is free from mental suffering.
No, it takes work.
It's not to belittle it.
But it's much more stable and much more powerful than trying to control the world around you so that you don't ever experience disappointment.
So, verse 216, that's the teaching for tonight.
Thank you all for listening.