Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verses 73 and 74, which read as follows.
Asantang bhavanami chaiya pure karancha pikusu awa sesu isariyang
Pujaparakulesuja.
Mamevakatamanyantu.
Kihipamajitaubo.
Mamevatiwasaasu.
Kichakichesu.
Kismichi.
which means there's a lot in here may they no one might wish or one would wish a fool would wish for
people to hold them up for the kind of bhavana.
It's an interesting use of the word bhavana.
Bhavana means cultivation.
Cultivation that doesn't exist.
They would wish for people to hold them up high, falsely.
Puraikara, which means preeminence.
Bhikkhusu, among monks.
They would wish for eminence amongst other monks.
So to be number one, be the top.
Awasesu, in regards to dwellings, they want to be isarya, they want to have power.
They want to be in charge of dwellings, in charge of the monastery.
In charge of monasteries.
Pujaparakulesuja.
And they wish to be puja, they wish to be revered by other families, by lay people.
And they think, may they think of it as, may they think that I have done it.
May it be in people's minds that I have done it, that it was done by me.
both lay people and those who have gone forth.
May they be under my power in regards to, may they be under my influence, may they rely upon me in regards to what should be done and what should not be done, so in regards to teachings, in regards to the exhortation.
May they listen to me.
May I be the one to tell people what to do.
Every kind of thing that should be done and should not be done.
May they only listen to me and may my word be the final word on what should and what shouldn't be done.
These are the thoughts of the fool.
and such a person's desires and conceit increase.
So this is dealing with specifically ambition and conceit.
These things that we can recognize in ourselves, I think many of us.
Quite interesting for religious figures especially.
So story goes that there was a lay person named Chitta who was a very nice person who listened to a sutta or discourse by Mahanama, one of the first five disciples of the Buddha, and became a sotapanna just by listening to the teaching and by, of course, practicing in regards to it, in practicing based on the teaching.
and as a result became of course a devout Buddhist and later on heard the teachings of the two chief disciples and so our story begins with him listening to the two chief disciples because once he became a devoted disciple of the Buddha he looked after the monks and he looked after one monk in particular Sudhamma or Sudhamma came to live
in the monastery near where Citta was staying.
So Citta was looking after this monk, Sudamma.
And as things went, Sudamma, of course, became quite content with the arrangement because Citta would have been attentive and kind and caring for the religious followers of the Buddha.
And so he would have gotten good food and nice dwelling and all the things he needed to live as a monk would have been provided for him.
And so you can see where this is going.
Maybe guess.
Chitta at one point listened to a talk by Sariputta.
The two chief disciples came and Sariputta gave this talk.
And again, just by listening to the talk, he became a Sakadagami, the second stage of enlightenment.
by listening and by applying it and practicing it.
And he was so impressed, of course, and just elated that it immediately came to him that he should invite these two chief disciples of the Buddha to take the meal at his house.
So he went to them and he bowed down and he said, please accept the meal tomorrow at my house.
And the two chief disciples accepted.
They accepted by staying silent, which is sort of the way they would accept things and those monks would accept things because they didn't want to seem too keen on it, make it appear like you were going to be a burden.
You wanted to be clear, well, if this is what you want, then we will accept.
But the other monk,
started, I guess, to have this sort of green-eyed monster arise in him.
And then Citta, realizing that he missed something, he turned to the other elder and he said, please, oh, please, you come as well.
Almost as an afterthought, like he almost forgot.
And Citta, the elder Sudhamma, wasn't happy about this.
As a result, he got very angry inside, and he refused to go.
He refused the invitation.
He said, I'm not, you know, no thank you.
I said, oh, please come.
I would like you to come.
I'm sorry.
I meant to invite you as well.
And again and again, he refused to go to the meal in the morning.
So finally Citta, unable to persuade the elder, left and in the morning the elder tried to stay and do his meditation but couldn't get into a meditative state so he made his way down to Citta's house and his intention, he was so angry, his intention was actually to find fault with Citta.
You know, if you
If you aren't a recipient of people's good deeds, then well, let's try and belittle them, right?
If people are
This is a sign of a weak individual that they have to belittle the good deeds of others and feel threatened by them.
So he went and he was looking for fault and he criticized something.
He said he's missing and I don't quite understand the nuance of it but he said you're missing sesame cakes which I guess is a real insult because you don't need sesame cakes.
I mean he had so many other foods that I guess it was meaningless that he had no sesame cakes.
And so Jitta turned around and called him a crow and it sort of devolved from there.
And the elder stormed off and went to see the Buddha and told him that Jitta had called him a crow or something like that.
And the Buddha turns around and blames it completely on the elder because this monk is behaving like a child.
And he said, you're the one who's to blame.
I don't blame Jitta for what he said at all.
He said, you, some silly little monk, have insulted a true disciple.
Because Jitta being even a lay person, the Buddha called him a true disciple.
Because he was a Sakadagami, he was actually an enlightened individual.
And Sudama realized his fault and realized that, oh, jeez, the Buddha is blaming me for this.
Well, I better go and ask forgiveness.
So he goes back to Jitta to ask forgiveness.
Jitta doesn't forgive him.
And he's confused as to why Jitta refuses.
He goes back, travels all the way alone.
He goes to see Jitta and asks forgiveness.
Jitta refuses to forgive him.
He goes back to see the Buddha.
The Buddha says to the Buddha, he refuses to accept my forgiveness.
And the Buddha knows, knew that he wasn't going to forgive him and knows why he didn't forgive him.
and doesn't say anything.
And he says, well, let's just let him stew for a while.
And Sudama goes away, and he doesn't know what to do.
The Buddha is not angry.
The Buddha is disappointed in him.
Not disappointed, but whatever you can say about a Buddha.
The Buddha has disparaged him.
Citta has disparaged him.
He can't go back.
He can't stay in the monastery.
So finally something lets go inside of him and he goes back to the Buddha and he bows down and he pleads and he begs and he says, please, Venerable Sir, I've done a terrible thing, please tell me how I can make this right.
And the Buddha says, take a friend.
Go back to see Jitta and ask forgiveness, but this time take a friend.
And it's interesting that he says this because when he goes back, Jitta sees that there are two of them there and he accepts it.
It's almost as though there's a sense that
the need to make it official like you really have to it has to be clear that you have accepted the fault in this and so by bringing a friend there's a witness you see and it's going to be known by the community what happened like there was a witness to what happened and Sudhamma wouldn't be able to go away and say that it happened like this has happened like that it was as though citta was required a witness
because he had seen how this monk could be.
Anyway, that's the origin story.
It goes on and on after.
Then they go back to the Buddha, and the Buddha then tells these two verses.
And then the story goes on and on to tell about, I think, past life stuff.
But we're not so interested in that.
He talks more about it anyway.
What we're interested in is how these two verses relate to our practice.
Again, it's a good verse for practice because it's dealing with specific mind states.
So we're dealing with, in this case, mainly with desire and conceit.
But it's dealing with those desires in general to become something, to be something, to be special and to be seen as special.
We have this sense of a sort of a need to
to be something we want people to look at us well we want to have special people in our lives who smile when we enter the room and this kind of thing people who look up to us we tend to of course have this part of us that has low self-esteem so we think little of ourselves and as a result need our ego to be boosted
And when, like Sundamma, our sense of importance is challenged, jealousy arises, we get angry and upset.
And so the first thing is the recognition.
In regards to our practice, the first thing for us to do is to recognize these states when they come up.
This is where meditation starts.
It starts not by trying to change anything or to fix anything, but just to realize that we want these things.
Sometimes it's in regards to people's esteem, sometimes it's in regards to leadership.
wanting to be in control, wanting to be the head of the house, wanting to be the head of the monastery, wanting to be the head of the family, head of the company, wanting people to notice the good work that you've done, wanting to become something.
It's really bhava tanha that we're talking about, which is the desire for something to come in the future, the desire for being, or in the present, something you've gotten, to not lose it.
puja, we want to be worshipped, we want people to pay reverence.
Well this is more of course talking about monks.
I think most lay people aren't at that level where they want to be worshipped, but monks fall into this.
It's quite obscene how people can get off on this worship thing, wanting people to bow down and feeling insulted when people don't bow down.
It's hard as a monk you get used to people.
If you live in a Buddhist society you get used to people bowing to you and respecting you and being disrespectful in general.
People will respect religious individuals in Buddhist countries.
And then you come to the West and people are like, hey.
Good people asking all sorts of strange questions like, can monks get married?
I have had women who get to know me and then start asking questions like, can monks get married?
Are you going to stay a monk forever?
No, but I'm a little bit off track.
You're just talking specifically about the sort of sense of... It's quite common.
It's interesting going from Thailand to Sri Lanka.
In Sri Lanka, I think people treat monks a lot more reasonably.
And maybe reasonably is the bad word, but they treat monks differently in Thailand.
There's a real sense of reverence.
Sometimes it's fake, sometimes it's just a show.
But when you go to Sri Lanka, it's quite a shock to have people treat you like an ordinary individual.
Monks are treated like, sort of like how you'd imagine they should be, or they would have been in the Buddha's time.
The Buddha himself was treated like a bum, you know, a beggar at times.
wanting people to know the deeds that you have done.
Lay people fall into this as well.
They go to monasteries and they donate this or they donate that and they have a big celebration and they put themselves up at the front and they make speeches and they tell everyone.
It's hard.
You don't want to sometimes, but you can see people, they somehow make it slip in.
Or when someone else mentions it for them, they feel proud and puffed up.
It's very dangerous.
I mean, we fall into it.
I'm not talking about people being evil.
We all have these things inside of us that we have to work on.
wanting people to be under your power, wanting people to come to you and to have you as the, wanting to be the source of what's right and wrong, you know, to have the last say on things.
So you get to say what should be done and what shouldn't be done in the monastery.
very undemocratic, this sort of thing.
I suppose this is not universal.
Of course, some people are very good team players or don't want to be in charge.
Some people want to hide in the background.
I always liked working behind the scenes.
I think it's so liberating to work behind the scenes because you don't have to worry.
You can't get puffed up in the same way.
You can be proud of what you do behind the scenes and you can boast about it as well, but working behind the scenes is always more enjoyable.
In Thailand they call it sticking gold on the back of the Buddha.
So in Thailand they put gold foil on the Buddha.
So it's just a practice.
But the saying is, it's an idiom, when you put gold on the back of the Buddha, it means doing something without, when no one knows, doing a good deed and not letting anyone know about it.
It's actually interesting because it's not that we shouldn't, all of this is not to say that we shouldn't be
famous or powerful, that we shouldn't do things in front of others, that we shouldn't do good deeds and let others know.
All of this is in fact a good thing.
Especially doing good deeds and letting people know about it.
Letting people know about your good deeds is an awesome thing.
It's just very dangerous, you see.
The question is, why are you doing it?
Why is it a good thing?
It's a good thing because it allows people to appreciate it.
You know, Sudamma here should have been appreciating, he should have been overjoyed that Jitta was, this layperson was inviting these monks who would have, you know, if he had stayed, he could have learned something wonderful, profound from these two enlightened beings.
Instead,
Even then, you know, you see what Jitta, this example of Jitta is still an interesting example because even if it makes people jealous, we're often afraid to, Buddhists especially, I think, can often be afraid to announce their good deeds because people feel jealous or think they're just boasting or showing off.
Even then it's an opportunity for people to see and to come to terms with their own jealousy as Suddhamma in the end had.
We should never be afraid of goodness.
This is a quote from the Buddha, Ma bhikkave bhaita punyanam.
Don't be afraid of good deeds.
And certainly don't be afraid to let others know.
It doesn't mean you always have to let people know.
It's not something that is wrong because it allows others to appreciate and to take it as an example.
Yeah.
It lets people feel what we call mudita.
Mudita is the third of the Brahma viharas.
And it's an opportunity for others to do good deeds themselves.
Being powerful, being famous.
I think sometimes about the internet, it's interesting how easy it is to become famous on the internet.
And I think that's an example of potentially what the Buddha said, asantang bhavanang, in verse 73, where he says this...
false gains or wanting people to pump you up falsely.
So the internet is a chance to become famous when you may not even deserve it.
I always think about these teachers in Asia who work so hard and the world may never know about them because they're doing their thing and then all you have to do is go on YouTube and post some videos and suddenly you're famous.
There's nothing wrong with fame.
There's nothing wrong with power.
There's nothing wrong with being in charge of a monastery.
There's nothing wrong with people looking up to you.
There's nothing wrong with being the boss in a company or this kind of thing.
It's the wishes.
It's your state of mind.
And that's where meditation starts.
And that's where it ends.
Meditation is all about our state of mind.
It's not usually what you do, but how you do it.
So that's what our training in meditation is.
We're training ourselves so that when we walk, we're just walking.
We just walk back and forth.
And the point is to learn how to do something.
mindfully, to learn how to do something with a clear mind.
The idea is you start with just taking steps, you know, okay, that seems kind of silly, but this is where we start.
If you can do this, then the next step, you can take it into your life and you can talk to people mindfully, you can listen mindfully, you can work mindfully, you can live your life mindfully.
You can learn how to do things with a pure mind.
So you can be a boss mindfully.
You can run a monastery mindfully.
You can be famous mindfully.
All of this is possible.
It takes the training of the mind.
Meditation is simply that.
It's nothing more, nothing less than the training of the mind.
Training of the mind to be pure, to be clear, to be calm, to be
clean so that's how this verse relates when we are in these positions all you need is a clear mind conceit is not something that you can easily be mindful of because the conceited mind is unmindful the same goes with desire but desire is something you can actually feel more viscerally
And it's easier to be mindful, wanting, wanting to remind yourself this is just wanting.
If you have conceit, you can sometimes acknowledge knowing, knowing, knowing that you're conceited or so on.
And you get this feeling, this puffed up feeling in your chest, you can acknowledge feeling, feeling as well.
These are not good things.
Conceit is, as you can see, what leads to jealousy, what leads to anger when you aren't appreciated, greed, wanting to be, ambition.
You know, we often get questions about ambition.
People think, well, is it wrong to have ambition?
And I say, yeah, it's pretty wrong to have ambition.
Ambition is habit-forming.
It makes you worry about and cling to good things.
cling to good states.
And you're much better off to just live your life simply.
If you have enough, if you are surviving, if you are alive and well and able to develop yourself, able to better yourself, able to do good things, then that's enough.
You don't need ambition.
Lao Tzu says you weaken your ambition and strengthen your resolve.
This is an interesting saying.
Sounds sort of Buddhist.
Anyway, that's all for today.
Thank you for tuning in.
And we'll try and keep this up and get through the Dhammapada as much and as quickly as we can.
Thank you.
Wishing you all peace, happiness, and freedom.