Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse 125, which reads as follows.
Yo apaduthasa narasa dusati sundasa posasa ananganasa tameva balang pacheti papang sukumorajo pativatam vakito
Which means, who should attack or offend against dusati?
A person who is without fault, apadutasa narasa.
One posa, a man or a person, who is suddha, pure, and anangana, without fault, without blame.
Such of that evil, papam,
But chedi goes back, goes back upon tamevabalang, that fool.
The evil goes back upon that fool.
Sukumurajo pativatam vakito Just as raja, dust, that is sukum, that is fine, just as a fine dust that is thrown against the wind.
So if you throw dust against the wind, it comes back into your face.
In the same way, evil done to someone who is blameless comes back to bite you.
Quite memorable words.
This is one of those things for us to keep in mind.
It's a description of the law of karma.
That's what this refers to.
But it's even more because the idea is that evil doesn't harm the one who is the object of evil.
Evil harms the one who performs the evil.
in sometimes in seeming magical ways which is sort of what this the story behind this verse is about so the story goes that there was a hunter named Koka and
this hunter was accompanied by a pack of hounds so when he would go hunting he would take dogs with him and the dogs would pick up his prey or maybe even help him kill it and drag it down for him to kill and so he trained them to be quite vicious one day when he was doing his hunting in the forest he came across a monk
And somehow he had this idea that seeing a monk was a bad omen.
Seeing a monk in the morning, this idea had been spread about maybe by enemies of monks or enemies of Buddhism.
At any rate, he thought this was a bad omen to see a monk.
And so the monk went on his way for alms in the city.
And the hunter went on his way to try and catch prey.
And sure enough, the whole day he caught nothing.
Meanwhile, the monk came back and ate his lunch and was perhaps meditating in the forest.
And the hunter on his way back through the forest, having caught nothing, caught sight of the hunter, caught sight of the monk again and was furious and thought, this monk, the reason, this monk is the reason why I caught nothing.
Somehow he had this idea.
And so he yelled at the monk and accused the monk of being the cause of his bad luck.
And he brought his hounds out and he was ready to set his hounds on the monk.
And the monk begged and pleaded for him not to do such a horrible thing, that he was innocent, that he had not done anything against the hunter.
Part of it may have been because Buddhist monks were known to be against killing.
They taught people to give up killing.
And so as a result there was this idea that somehow they were bad luck as a result.
because it was something that they believed was wrong.
Anyway, this hunter refused to listen to the monk and set his dogs on the monk, and the monk immediately climbed up a tree and was standing on one of the branches.
And so what the hunter did, he was so angry, he was really out to get this monk.
And so he took one of his arrows and he poked up at the monk's feet.
And first the monk's right foot and the monk lifted up his right foot and put his left foot down instead.
And the hunter poked his left foot and really, you know, gouged his feet.
And so then the monk pulled up both feet, but he was in so much pain.
And he started to lose mindfulness, awareness of what he was doing.
And he dropped his outer robe, the big robe that would act as a blanket.
And it fell on the hunter and covered him.
And immediately the dogs turned and looked at the hunter and thought, the monk has fallen out of the tree.
And they turned on the hunter and ripped him to shreds and killed him, thinking they were following their master's orders because they smelled this robe.
And the monk looking down at what was going, he picked up a stick and he threw it at the dogs and the dogs looked up and saw that the monk was still in the tree and scampered off into the forest, confused or maybe embarrassed at how foolish they'd been.
You know, that's the story.
And the monk actually felt bad about this.
He thought, well, it's because of me that this hunter died.
It was really my fault.
It was because I dropped this robe on him because I was unmindful.
Do I have any fault in that?
And of course, the Buddha said, no.
No, Bhikkhu, you are blameless.
And moreover, he said, this isn't the first time.
And he told the story of the past that apparently in a past life, this guy
had the same sort of thing happen to him.
He was a cruel, terrible person and the same sort of thing happened.
He was a physician and he was trying to sell his cures and sell his services and no one was buying it and no one was sick and he thought, well maybe I'll just make people sick and get them to, then they'll need me, they'll need my help if they're sick.
So he took a poisonous snake and he stuck it in the tree and he told these boys to go and fetch him this, that there was a bird in there, in this hole and they should go and fetch it for him.
And so one of the boys stuck his hand in the tree and grabbed the snake, thinking it was this bird that he was going to catch.
And when he realized it was a snake, he threw it, freaked out and threw it really quickly.
And it hit the physician in the head and wrapped around his head and bit him and killed him.
Kind of silly stories.
But the story of the hunter and the monk in the tree is a memorable one of how evil can go wrong, how our deeds sometimes turn back upon us.
Now, there are different reasons why we can say this happens.
I mean, the most obvious reason
For our evil deeds to bring evil upon ourselves is the effect that they have on our minds so Anger and greed and delusion the three defilements make you careless When you're obsessed with something when you're angry it It's bad karma first and foremost because of how it affects your mind and
because of how it changes you and changes the actions and the choices that you make.
Furthermore, it does affect the world around you.
The second way it does, I think, is in how others look at you.
So in this case, there were no other people involved.
But by disrupting the monk, he brought upon himself, at least you could say, some sort of chaos in which many things are possible.
And when you attack someone, sometimes they freak out and it disturbs the order.
But, you know, you see, I'm trying to get to the point where you could actually say, well, this is a result of his bad karma because it doesn't seem like it is.
It seems like it was just a freak chance and nine out of ten times or 99 out of 100 times
999 out of a thousand times, the hunter would have killed the monk in the tree.
What we want to say is that there is potentially things protecting people who are good, people who are blameless.
I don't know that you can actually.
I don't know that it's actually proper and true to say that.
We want to, and Buddhists like to try and say that, that there are things protecting you.
I'm not so sure.
I would agree that there are probably beings, like, who knows, maybe there was some angel or spirit involved with this that pulled the robe off the monk and dropped it on the hunter.
That makes sense to me, if such beings exist.
Of course, many, many people think it's ridiculous that such beings would exist.
I'd agree that it seems kind of fair-fetched that such a being would just be there and get involved, but hey, who knows?
There's that kind of thing.
And so that's a direct result of karma.
Other beings don't appreciate when you're cruel to people who don't deserve it.
And that sort of thing really is a part of karma.
Good people attract others who will protect them, attract good friends.
And so if you try to harm a harmless being, you're less likely to succeed just because they're surrounded by good people.
But I think you could also argue that the power of goodness
has some sort of, you know, um, reverberations in the universe.
Like it sets things up in a certain way.
I think you could argue that.
Um, I think, I think you could point to ways in which it's true that a person who does lots of good deeds, a person who's never done evil deeds is somehow, um,
in a different sort of train or groove, you might say, from a person who is intent upon evil.
Like they're so opposite that they're almost living in different universes and it's very hard for them to come together.
Now it's possible, but I think you could point to that as being a reason why it takes really great amount of effort to harm someone who is harmless.
I mean, I don't want to say it's certainly not magic,
But I think there's much, much more going on and we often will, it's common for people to underestimate the power of goodness and the power of evil.
Evil is something that...
shrinks inward or like comes back upon you good is something that's expansive and it spreads so you can't spread spreading evil is not the same as spreading good it's much more likely to come back upon you
But I think at any rate, I would argue that there's room for that.
I think it's something that's very hard to find proof or evidence even for.
But I would say that there's room for the idea that goodness protects good people.
And people who try to do evil towards good people
for various reasons, have a harder time of it.
And it's much more likely to come back and bite them in the face.
I mean, absolutely, even when they get away with it, it's far worse.
There's no question that it eventually comes back far, far worse on the person who's done an evil deed towards someone who doesn't deserve it.
who hasn't done anything to instigate it, who is blameless.
Like if this monk had gone around setting animals free, well then you could say maybe he's somewhat meddlesome, or if he had purposefully wished, or if he had done everything he could to ruin this hunter and to do harm to him.
if we had done something to warrant even the littlest bit of malice, then it would be different.
You could argue, and it would be less of a weighty crime.
But to harm someone who's harmless, I mean, you know it in your bones.
You don't have to be Buddhist to believe this.
It's just far more horrific to harm someone who has done nothing to deserve it.
And for that reason, for sure, it's going to affect your mind and make you blind to the dangers that you're facing and blind to your actions and blind to the circumstances and so on.
But I think you could argue moreover that it's such a powerful act that it jars with the universe.
As a result, it's harder to perform.
I'd like to think that there are things that protect people's lives, just aspects of the universe that are fit together in such a way that it's not as easy to kill someone as we might think, especially if they don't deserve it.
Like the idea that
to some extent, most killing, most deeds for good or for evil have something to do with past karma, right?
The idea that there is some sort of connection there.
I don't think all.
I think it seems possible to create new karma with someone.
So if someone is innocent,
you can harm them it's a very weighty karma but you're starting something new and it's quite possible that they will come back and harm you even unintentionally like in this case usually it takes lifetimes to do that but anyway these are aspects of karma that are kind of magical and hard to understand or hard to believe or people don't think of them as true
But this isn't so important for our practice.
What's important for our practice is, as with all of these sorts of stories, the consequences.
No question, there are consequences to our evil deeds and our good deeds.
I think that's exemplified here in both.
If you're a good person, you don't deserve to be harmed.
It's harder for people to harm you.
It's harder for people to want to hurt you.
It takes a really base and evil person to do it.
And you've got to wonder whether this monk was pleading with this hunter to stop for his own benefit or for the benefit of the hunter because certainly even death by dog, by wild rabid dogs,
is preferable.
We don't think of it this way, but it's actually far preferable than to torture an innocent person.
Because the Buddha said many things like this.
He said you should rather be killed or tortured than to do an evil deed.
Because being killed and tortured doesn't lead you to a bad future, doesn't hurt your mind, doesn't affect you.
in the way that evil does.
So I mean it's a big part of meditation that a beginner has to come to understand that pain
in the meditation, right?
When you're sitting and meditating and you feel pain, pain is not your enemy.
Unpleasantness of all kinds, whether it's itching or heat or loud noise or thoughts, nightmares, visions, etc.
This is not the enemy, this is not the problem.
The problem is evil, what we call unwholesomeness.
So greed, anger and delusion, these are problems.
They bring about things like pain and stress and suffering.
So coming to see that difference is very important.
To see that it's the evil
that we have a problem with.
So this quote is describing a very extreme sort of karma, the evil deed that is performed towards someone who doesn't deserve it.
But it brings up all these issues of who is the person who should be, who really receives the
the effect of a deed.
If you try to harm someone, well, they might be hurt or even killed, but that's it.
It's actually quite insignificant compared to the evil that comes back upon you.
So this is throwing dust in the wind.
If you throw dust in the wind, it comes back on you.
Evil deeds are very much like that.
Don't think of it, right?
We think if you could get away with it, hurting someone else is really bad for the person who you hurt or kill.
That's actually very much the other way.
That's what this verse teaches.
This is the claim that's being made.
And I think there's evidence, especially for meditators, that this is very much, I know there's evidence, this is very much the case.
I was just trying to get the idea that maybe there's even more than just the obvious, the scars it leaves on your mind, because that's the worst.
But it seems that actually there are cases of being protected, where you harm someone and it actually physically hurts you right then and there.
That's considered to be that gives results in this life.
right here and now as opposed to the indirect where it changes you and as a result you make different life choices and other people make different choices in regards to you and so on how they think of you and so on and eventually it harms you in an indirect way
Either way, this is all part of the concept of good and evil.
In Buddhism, in our meditation practice, we strive for good.
And we do it rationally, not because we
we're told it's good or because it's good in and of itself and because we really believe that it's the way to peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
That's our practice.
And that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you for tuning in.
Wishing you all good practice and peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
Thank you.