Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we look at verse 174, which reads as follows.
Which means,
Blind andabhuta.
Blind is this world.
Few here see clearly.
Vipassati comes the same as vipassana means to see clearly.
Sakuno jalamutova.
Just like birds that free themselves from a net.
Not so many.
A bird caught up in a net is well caught.
Few are those who go to heaven as few as those birds that are able to free themselves from a net.
So this story, this verse was told in regards to another fairly famous story.
It's the story of the
Pesakara Dita, daughter of a weaver, a weaver's daughter.
But it was dwelling at Alawi.
And in Alawi, he was invited for the meal.
And he was invited to teach.
So after eating, he began to teach the Dhamma.
He happened to be teaching on that day because it was a general audience, I guess.
He was teaching on death.
So he taught them practice meditation on death.
My life is unstable.
As you don't know, it's not going to last forever and death could come at any time.
My death is certain.
In the end, for me, I must die.
So you would have people actually meditate on this.
Of course, you can do it in English because the Pali is probably not very meaningful for most people.
Death is the end of my life.
My life is uncertain.
Death is certain.
And he said, practice this way.
Cultivate this.
And then he left.
And in the entire audience, I guess it was a large audience, only one person was affected by it, was moved by it.
Everybody else went back to their daily life.
Oh, that's interesting.
Back to the same old thing.
But there was one young girl, and she was the daughter of a weaver, as the story is about her.
And she took it quite seriously.
And so from then on, she remembered the Buddha's words, and she would repeat that to herself.
And so on.
Every day, constantly, for three years.
And it so happened that three years later, the Buddha, and they say that every night the Buddha would enter into some kind of higher state of mind and send his mind out and get a sense of who was able to understand his teachings.
Every night he would do this.
Three years later, on one night, the Buddha was reflecting and he thought about this girl and he thought, by now she is well able to understand my teaching.
And so he went back to Alawi.
Of course Alawi wasn't where he was living most of the time.
Most of the time he was in Jetavana.
But he traveled back to wherever Alawi is.
And again he was invited for a meal.
People remembered and thought, oh, this is a wise man.
They hadn't done anything about his teaching, but oh yes, well, what he says is true.
People who believe in, have faith in teaching, it's a lot more than those who actually put it into practice, as far as religion goes.
So they had faith in him and confidence and appreciation and so they invited him and again invited him to teach.
Buddha sat down and he didn't teach.
He just sat there.
They invited him for a meal and then after the meal was over he just sat there.
So it turns out this young girl who
had diligently practiced his teaching for three years, turns out that she heard that the Buddha was coming and she was very excited.
But then her father said to her, I need more, I need you to fill this shuttle, they call it.
Shuttle is the thing you send back and forth between the loom.
I need you to fill it up with thread.
And she thought, oh no, I'll miss the sermon.
If I don't, my father will beat me.
The commentary says her father wasn't a nice guy, I guess.
Or maybe she was
I don't know.
Anyway, this is what she thought to herself, that he would beat her.
So I better go and fill it up.
So she went to the workshop, I guess was far away from the house.
She had to walk some ways through the town, get to the workshop and fill up the shuttle.
And on her way back, she took a detour.
But this took her some time.
And during this time, the Buddha waited for her.
He thought, I came all this way just to teach her because these other people
Well, we know what happens when they hear the good teaching.
So he waited.
And it says that everyone else, when he didn't speak, no one else spoke as well because when the Buddha is sitting quiet, nobody dares to speak.
So they all just waited.
Finally, this young daughter of a weaver arrives at the congregation, stands in the back and looks and
tries to get an idea of what the Buddha is teaching.
And the Buddha looks, turns, and he looks at her.
And she knows right away the Buddha wants to talk to me.
I guess everyone else probably saw this and turned to see, oh, who is this person the Buddha is looking at?
Either way, so she walks up.
to where the Buddha is sitting.
Stands right in front of him.
Maybe sits down.
No?
What does she do?
No?
Ah, she stands.
She stands in front.
The Buddha was probably on a higher seat.
They tended to put religious teachers up a bit high, so she stood in front of where he was sitting.
And the Buddha asks her four questions.
young girl, where are you coming from?
And she replies, where are you going?
I don't know, Venerable Sir.
Na janasi?
You don't know?
Janami bante?
I know, Venerable Sir.
Janasi?
Na janami bante?
I don't know, Venerable Sir.
And the whole crowd starts to get quite upset and says, Who is this girl?
What kind of answers are these?
The Buddha asks her where she's coming from.
She says, I don't know.
You know where you're coming from.
You're coming from your father's workshop.
You've got this shuttle here, clearly.
He asks you where you're going.
You say you don't know.
You're going home.
Obviously you know where you're going.
And then what's this?
Don't you know?
Buddha challenges you and you say you know.
And then he asks you to confirm that you know and you say you don't know.
Don't you know?
I do know.
Do you know?
I don't know.
What a crazy young girl, what an impudent little brat.
And when the Buddha holds up his hand or something, he gets them to be quiet.
And he asks her, what did you mean?
What did you mean by those answers?
She says, well, I know Buddhas don't just ask idle questions.
So clearly, you're not asking about me coming.
You know where I'm coming from.
And I know how you teach.
I've heard you teach before.
And so I know when you ask, where are you coming from?
It's about reality, about life, and I don't know where I'm coming from.
Before I was born, that's all I have.
That's the only memory I have.
I don't even remember my birth.
But before that, no idea.
And where am I going?
I also don't know.
It depends very much on my state of mind, as you've taught.
And then the other two, when you ask me, don't I know?
I have to admit that I do know that I will die.
I do know something.
But then when you challenge me, do I really know?
And actually, about my death, even about my death, I don't know.
I don't know where it's going to be.
I don't know when it's going to be.
I don't know why it's going to happen.
I don't know where they're going to throw my body.
I don't know where my mind's going to go.
I don't know much about anything at all.
Nothing is certain.
And the Buddha says, sadhu.
Does he hold up his hand?
Sometimes he holds up his hand.
Sadhu karang tatva.
He said sadhu three times.
Oh no, he says sadhu after every one, every time.
And then he asks her about the second question.
What do you mean about this one?
And then he turns to the people and he says, all of you, all of you had no idea.
All of you, you couldn't understand my questions just like you couldn't understand my teaching because of your delusion.
What does he say?
Because you're blind.
And you scolded her because you're blind.
Because only those who have the eye of wisdom, only they can see.
And then he pronounced the verse.
So there's a few lessons here, or two lessons, I guess.
The lesson of the story, I mean, the big lesson that the story gives us is about mindfulness of death, which is a curious thing as to why the Buddha taught mindfulness of death.
You might ask, is that really the Buddha's teaching?
In fact, mindfulness of death is quite useful.
It's a very useful gateway to bring people to understand about impermanence.
I mean, it is a teaching on impermanence.
We live our lives often as though we're going to live forever.
Maybe we don't have the view, I'm going to live forever, but our short-sightedness and our narrow-mindedness is such that we, everything we do is only for our present gratification, is for building up results that are
that are in conflict with our death such that when we die we're going to lose it all.
Suppose you become smart, you learn a lot, you forget it all when you die.
Suppose you amass all sorts of wealth and security.
This house and I look at my security and you put money in the bank and you've got a good retirement.
It's not wrong to do that, but if that's all you're living for, it's in conflict with the fact that you're going to lose all that security and have to start all over.
If that's your goal, to start over and do this again and again, that's one thing, but mostly we do it with the idea that it's going to bring us satisfaction, which of course it can do.
It's only temporary.
So mindfulness of death is a great eye-opener.
It reminds you that there's something more.
If you're going to do all this,
You're missing out on the most important aspect of reality.
I mean, life is much more than being a human in this life.
It's much more than this person that I've been born as.
And we live our lives as though we are this person, which is kind of funny from a Buddhist perspective, because it's more like a role we're playing for a short time.
Yeah, we've got them giving us this funny name.
We've got this funny-shaped body with all these funny things in it.
And all these, not so funny actually, a lot of suffering and stress.
But it's not us.
It's just a short temporary occupation.
In the whole scheme of things, it's only a very short stint at being this person.
So that's the first.
It's useful.
If you want to talk to people about Buddhism, I mean, one of the first things you can do for people who are, it doesn't mean new to Buddhism, but people who aren't thinking spiritually, to get them to start thinking spiritually is that, well, you know, you're going to die.
Are you ready for death?
Are you living in accordance with this fact?
Or are you, are you living,
ignorant of the fact that the things you do might be taken away from you at any time.
And that the things you obtain or attain are going to be obliterated, are meaningless.
The lesson from the verse is a little bit different.
It talks about
blindness.
So I think there's two things we get from the verse.
The first is a sense of urgency, a reminder that Buddhism is not a simple teaching.
It's fine if you are a sort of person who, I mean it isn't evil or wrong to be a person who appreciates the Buddha's teachings and reveres the Buddha and calls yourself a Buddhist because you have such faith in the Buddha.
I mean there's wholesomeness there
But that's not really, it's certainly not all the Buddha taught.
And it's not even necessarily enough to help you to go to heaven or to go to a good place.
to have a good future.
There are Buddhists who do very rotten things.
Nowadays you hear a lot of rotten things that Buddhists do.
There's apparently a lot of violence in Buddhist countries these days, which is very bizarre.
Not totally.
If you've been to these countries, you understand how religion becomes institutionalized and then it becomes corrupted.
So that it's much more important to hold on to your institutions than to actually adhere to the teachings.
So a reminder that most people are blind.
Few are those who actually see clearly.
It's not enough to just be an average, ordinary person.
Buddhism isn't about living your life in an ordinary way.
There's much more, and coming to see clearly is really what needs to be done.
If you want to go to a good place, the only real reassurance is to have clear insight into how things work.
Without that insight, you're in so much danger of doing the wrong thing, of building the wrong habits, of concentrating your mind in the wrong way because of your ignorance.
So it's not about teaching you or believing in certain teachings.
It's about seeing for yourself.
And the other side of that is, for those of us who are practicing, this is an encouragement.
It's an encouragement to this young girl.
It's an encouragement to everyone who undertakes to practice Insight Meditation, that you're doing something that's quite rare, quite valuable.
quite worthwhile, quite powerful.
It has the power to bring you a good future, a guarantee of happiness, of peace, freedom from suffering.
So at the end of the verse, the young girl became a sotapanna.
She was primed for it, quite a special person, just standing there listening.
Standing up, she became a sotapanna.
That's what the commentary says, believe it or not, as you like.
But then she apparently went home.
And when she got home, her father was asleep.
And so she closed the door.
She banged something.
And he woke up, and he was startled.
he jerked something and the loom went stabbing something in the spindle, maybe, I don't know, whatever it is, went stabbing into her chest and she died.
And immediately was born in one of the high heavens, Dusita heavens, if you're interested.
Her father,
was so upset and he went to see the Buddha apparently and having gone to see the Buddha he became a monk Buddha taught him this teaching of because he was so sad he taught him the teaching of all the tears and all the waters and all the oceans are nothing compared to all the tears you've cried over your daughter over the death of your daughter how many lifetimes
Point being, there's no benefit from crying.
You don't get anything out of it.
Better ways to spend your time.
Life is uncertain.
Death is certain.
And Disa became a monk, and he became enlightened, apparently, eventually.
So that's the story.
That's verse 174.
That's the Dhammapada for this week.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Wish you all the best.