Okay, welcome everyone.
Today is, in Thai we call it Visakha Puja, which means the day or Visakha Punami, which means the full moon of the month of Visakha.
Puja means it's a holiday or a time to pay respect, to pay homage, to pay puja to the Buddha.
Of course, in Sri Lanka, we know it as ,, which I assume must come from the Sanskrit for .
I'm not sure, actually.
But it might also come from strengthening of the word .
I'm not sure what the Sanskrit is.
So today we're continuing our study of the Dhammapada.
This is what the intention was, but it's also a special occasion.
So thank you everyone for coming out.
We have a full house today.
And we're recording, we're live on the internet as well.
Which is, I think, somewhat...
somewhat proper because of the... This is the International Day of Peace as well.
Because it's the Buddha's birthday and because Buddhism has always been thought of as a religion of peace, it's been given the name of the International Day of Peace, I think, by the United Nations.
Kind of unofficially or officially, I'm not sure.
And so it's important that we...
think internationally.
So we're acting here locally.
We're not trying to change the world, but we're opening up to the world.
So our little activities here in this small corner of the frozen tundra of Canada, not so frozen now,
actually have an impact on the world, that we are a part of a global village, we're part of the universe, putting ourselves in the universe, as opposed to focusing on this little corner of the
little corner of Manitoba, in a small corner of Canada, in the corner of the globe, in the small corner of the galaxy.
in some small corner of the universe.
Instead of just focusing on this plot and our lives, we're seeing the bigger picture.
We're putting ourselves in this perspective, which is somewhat important in Buddhism, that we shouldn't see reality just in terms of this, what we find ourselves, what we woke up to coming out of our mother's womb.
that would be a shame if that's all that we saw, that our life, our journey was just this one short stint on some remote corner of the, in some remote corner of the universe.
And that's kind of interesting because a corner may not, it's not really a corner of the universe.
So on the other hand,
This is the center of the universe.
Our reality is at the center of things.
And so this is this whole idea of think locally, or no, think globally, act locally.
I would even go so far as to think universally, but act locally.
So that's what we're doing.
We're coming together here.
We're not going out and trying to change the world.
We are doing our thing here and being a part of the global or the universe, part of the universe.
I think that's important to think of.
To think of how this is not just something specific to us.
This is something that makes us a part of the universe.
Rightly so, on this day of Vaisakha, this day of Vaisakha puja, where we pay respect to the loka vidu, the knower of the three worlds, the knower of the universe, the Buddha who is said to have come to understand the whole of the universe, come to realize
all there is to know about the nature of the universe which we get a glimpse of in our meditation or we get an appreciation of through our practice of his teachings we're able to see how we're able to see this we're able to understand the universe in the same way that the Buddha did we're able to see that
No matter how far you go, no matter where you go in the universe, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, reality boils down to some very simple principles, simple entities, very simple concepts of experience and
of the present moment, of the here and the now.
And so we come to see that actually reality is both local and universal.
That the universe is here and everything in the universe is here and now.
This is what the Buddha's teaching teaches us.
So, anyway, I don't want to talk too much about Vaisakha because I am supposed to be getting into the next Dhammapada verse.
So I just want us to have an appreciation of this day and to see it as something a little more than just...
one day in May or just another day in our life.
It's an excuse for us to broaden our perspective on things and look at things, look at our life, look at time in terms of the 2,600 years since the Buddha's enlightenment, which we celebrate on this day as well.
to see our life as just a fleeting moment in the passage of time and to take advantage of this.
We've already missed 2600 years
And so here we are, here we have the time, let's take advantage.
And even today we had many people coming out to meditate, so it's very encouraging to see people who realize this and take the time to come to celebrate the Buddha's birthday in a very real way, very appropriately.
Okay, so anyway, today we get on to verse...
I think it's verse number 48.
I'm not sure.
I forgot to look up the number.
Anyway, the verse goes, Which means,
Yatha Bhamaropupam, just as a bee to a flower, leaves the vanaganda, leaves the color and the scent of the flower alone, untouched, unharmed.
Paleti rasamadaya evangami munichare.
Guarding these, he takes only the essence.
The bee takes only the essence of the flower.
So goes the muni, the wise one, through the village.
So it's a fairly specific teaching, not exactly on the surface applicable to our meditation practice.
It's referring to how an ascetic in India would have gone through the village in search of alms.
And it's quite interesting to discuss and to explain, but it's not applicable to anyone in this room but me, I don't think.
But still interesting.
And the story is even more interesting.
And I think there's a lot that we can get out of it.
But first, the meaning of the verse is how one who is wise, an ascetic who is wise and who is enlightened,
doesn't harm the people who support him or her.
When they go in the village, they go like a bee who doesn't harm the flower and actually, just as the bee helps the flower, there's the sense that the presence of the ascetic or the monk, the wise one, in the sense of their offering teachings and offering an example and offering a view of the higher life
is somehow beneficial to the villagers.
I like this verse particularly because it kind of describes an interesting philosophy of this minimal positive impact philosophy, like how Mother Teresa, I think she was a good person, I'm not quite sure, I don't know much about her, but her saying was, you can't do great things in this world, you can only do small things with great love, which is kind of the idea behind this verse.
that our impact in the world should not we should not try to make our impact great we should this is think locally think globally act locally so do your own thing do things do very simple things don't try to be great don't try to be big just do your thing and do it with love or in our case do with wisdom
So even the ascetic, the monk, the wise one going to the village is able to change the village just as the bee.
And there's this interesting concept that you see in the animal kingdom of how helpful the bees are to the flowers and to the whole ecosystem just by doing their thing.
So you can see a fairly specific verse.
It's interesting.
But the question is, how does this apply to us?
I think when we go through the story, we'll have a little bit more to talk about in that regard.
But first, another warning, one of these health warnings.
The fluff warning, I think, is more appropriate.
The Dhammapada stories are probably the worst in this regard, and so I'm having to apologize many times or give disclaimers in advance.
It's not that I don't believe these things.
I don't know what to think of them.
And I certainly think many of the things that occur in these stories are possible.
Now I'm skeptical as to whether they all occurred as they're said to have occurred, especially because the same stories appear elsewhere with less of the embellishment.
So what I'm saying is there's stuff in this story, as with other stories, that
that seems hard to believe.
A lot of magic in this story.
And my guess, or I'd be willing to be branded a heretic by saying it may not have happened exactly as it is said to have happened.
Probably was a lot less embellished, and I think there are some famous monks who would back me up on that.
So I'm not so afraid to say it.
But still, as with all the stories, I'll say again that
It's not the magic that makes the story.
It's the moral.
If you think of Aesop's fables, well, Aesop's fables are not useful because they teach you that animals can talk and so on.
So in that sense, I'm not trying to say these stories are allegorical.
I'm just saying the funny stuff isn't the important stuff.
The important is the moral and the sense behind the story, which seems very much in line with the Buddhist teaching.
So there's the disclaimer.
And that's important, because otherwise there's many people who will give rise to this agati, which is this
judgment, they have a prejudice, and that gets in the way of your appreciating the good things.
Remember, we're not so concerned about being right or being exact or being precise in terms of concepts.
Did this happen?
Did that happen?
I don't believe this.
I don't believe that.
This is true.
We're trying to be precise in terms of experience, in terms of reality.
So if you're sitting here hating everything I say,
and saying, this is useless, this guy is not teaching me anything, it's all just a bunch of meaningless garbage, then the problem isn't what I'm saying, the problem is your attitude towards it.
The problem is those very states of anger.
So if I am speaking, spouting garbage the whole time, which is useful, you know, when your parents are scolding you and stuff.
Um...
then that doesn't change the appropriate response, which is to be mindful, to be present.
So even when I'm giving this talk, the most important thing is not what I'm saying.
The most important thing is what's going on in your mind, what's going on in your experience.
How are you receiving it?
How are you receiving sitting here?
Surrounded by people with the pain in the legs and the back and with the thoughts and with the chaos going on in the mind, chaos in the mind and so on.
How are you dealing with that?
That's what's most important.
So, but to cut that off, to head that off,
give this disclaimer to help you see what's most important.
It's so important whether any of this stuff really happened.
It's an interesting and a funny story.
And I think, anyway, story goes, there was a man in, where was he?
Maybe he was in Varanasi, I can't remember.
Maybe someone can tell me.
He was, anyway, 45 Yojana away from
Savati, which maybe puts him in an environment I'm not sure.
His name was Macharya Kosya Sethi.
Anybody know this story?
The scholars in the room know this story.
Many of you have heard it before.
Macharya Kosya, that was his name.
Macharya means niggardly or stingy.
What does Kosya mean?
That's where he was.
That's his name.
And he was so stingy.
He had, what, 80 koti of wealth.
He was the richest guy in, I'm going to say it was in Varanasi.
Was he in Varanasi?
Let's say he was in Varanasi.
And he was the richest man.
He was in cahoots with the king.
He was probably, you know, kings and rich people go wealthy together.
But he didn't even spend, they say, he didn't even spend the tip of a drop of oil on the tip of a blade of grass, something like that, on himself or on other people.
And so he dwelt like someone who was, he dwelt like a beggar.
He was so, so stingy.
He was one of these people who didn't even indulge on himself and he was so afraid of losing his wealth that he didn't spend any of it on anything.
He just hoarded it up and lived like, lived as though he had, lived as though he had nothing.
Now one day he was,
Now the Buddha saw him, I think the order of the events, right?
But anyway, that morning the Buddha saw him in his eye of wisdom, in this net, the Buddha net.
See, every morning the Buddha would send his mind out through the universe.
And you see this in the Dhammapada, they talk about it quite often.
He would send his mind out throughout the whole universe and then back to Jetavana.
and back out to the whole universe and looking for someone to looking for who would be able to receive his teaching on that day who would it be appropriate to teach on that day and so on this day on a certain day his mind focused on this focused on this rich man
and said, well, this is someone who I think could very much use my teaching and will actually benefit quite well from it.
Now, on that day, anyway, on that day, this man, he had gone to see the king, and on his way back from seeing the king, he saw some worker eating a pancake.
And for some reason, he got a real...
strong craving for pancakes.
I guess it was kind of a delicacy.
Pancakes were kind of a delicacy in India.
And so he gave rise to this strong craving for a pancake.
He wanted to have a pancake.
And he went home.
And he sat down and he thought, but if I have a pancake, if I tell anyone, hey, I want a pancake,
then everybody will know we're making pancakes, and everybody will come over and I'll have to give pancakes to everybody.
It'll be a big thing, you know how this goes.
You can't just make one pancake for yourself, but then everybody wants one.
And suddenly you're giving pancakes out to the whole village and so on.
I mean, this was his fear.
He had this great fear, and he thought, well, that's going to be very expensive to have to feed everyone.
So he don't want to do that.
That's the one thing about being rich, you know, that you do always have people asking for money.
People always think how great it would be to be rich and all the wonderful things you can do with it.
But the more money you have, the more responsibility you have.
And you do find this, that you have people always... You become surrounded by people who are...
There's always people appealing to you for money, appealing to you for this, to that, or mooching off you, or so on.
So this rich man knew this very, very well, overly well.
I mean, it's not to say that you should be stingy, but he reacted very badly to this, and as a result was able to keep his money, but dwelt in such suffering, such poverty.
This was safe.
that he he he said to himself i can't tell anybody that i want a pancake what am i going to do and so he just repressed this desire and as a result of repressing it and he couldn't stop himself from thinking about it he just kept thinking i want a pancake oh i wish i could have some pancakes and uh he got very sick as a result and this happens of course with desires
they affect both the body and the mind.
You know, this one story about the Bodhisatta, who was an ascetic, and he was an ascetic with magic powers, and he thought he was pretty hot.
He was able to fly through the air, and he lived up in the Himalaya mountains, but every year he would have to come down to get salt, I think it says, and get necessities from the
from the town, from the city.
And so one day, one time he came to the city and the king saw him and the king wanted to take care of him.
And the king spent the three months of the reigns, or I can't remember, spent some time looking after this ascetic and then looking after the Bodhisattva.
And then he had to go off and kill some people and fight a war and do the kingly things.
And he left his queen in charge.
He left the Bodhisatta under the charge of the queen and said, well, you take care of him, make sure he gets food, and so on.
And the queen was fine with that.
And so every day, the Bodhisatta would come and get food from the queen.
And then one day, the queen had just had a shower or something, and she was lying in her room, and her robe was kind of loose.
And the Bodhisatta, his superman kind of thing, he flew in through the window.
and landed there and when he touched the floor or cleared his throat or something the queen startled she got up and her robe came came apart and she was there naked and of course she was a very beautiful woman and he lost his tapa he lost his his jana I think dissipated his tranquility
was gone, and his mind was seized, like they say, by a snake.
There was a snake in the grass, and when you don't see the snake, the grass looks very calm, and then when you go walking through it, and then the snake senses you, the snake comes up and bites you, so it was like being bitten by a poisonous snake.
And the queen was in her robe, and then she gave him the food, and he's just standing there, like, fighting with this lust that had arisen.
and he tries to give her a blessing and kind of fails at that, and so he turns around and tries to fly out through the window, and he can no longer do it.
And so he walks out through the door embarrassed, and then he goes back to his hut where he's living, and he can't eat, and he can't sleep, and he ends up getting very, very sick as a result, and eventually the king comes back, the king finds out,
And he talks to the queen and says, what are we going to do?
And so she says, I'll fix this guy.
And so she says to the king to give her as a present to him.
So the king goes to the ascetic and says, look, I understand your problem.
You can have my wife.
She's yours.
And so he gets all excited and he takes the queen off.
And the king gives them the house.
And they go and they go to the house.
And then the queen starts her plan and she says to him, okay, now can you go back to the palace and get me my pillow or something?
So he goes back and gets the pillow.
Oh, and get me this from the palace.
Can you get me my mirror?
And he goes back and gets the mirror.
Can you get me my jewelry?
Oh, he goes back and gets the jewelry and back and forth about ten times until finally she grabs him by his beard because he has a beard at the side.
Gives him a couple of slaps and says, look,
Don't you realize how ridiculous you're being?
Or something like that.
Gets him back on track.
Which is an interesting, it's actually the exact same ploy that works here in the case of our stingy rich man.
The only way to overcome craving is not to deny yourself.
Obviously this doesn't work.
It's to become bored of it.
To overcome the craving in terms of
seeing that it's useful, seeing how much suffering it's bringing to you, becoming, working it out.
So in this case, this queen worked it out and showed him how ridiculous he was being and gave him the opportunity to become disenchanted, I think is the word, dispassionate about it, to give up his passion by seeing the negative side of it.
Now this is what happens with our friend, the rich man.
He starts to get very sick, and this is the beginning of his understanding of how his stinginess and his greed is hurting him.
This realization of how sick it is to cling to things.
So his wife comes up and she strokes his back and says, what's wrong?
Are you sick?
And he says, no, I'm not sick.
Well, what, is the king angry at you?
No, the king's not angry.
Is your son, something your son or daughter or your servants or your friends, is something they did to you?
No, none of that.
Is there something you want?
And he just lied there, silently.
Tell me, tell me, what do you want?
No, I can't tell you.
Come on.
And then it says, just as though he was swallowing the words, he says to her, I want a pancake.
What?
I want a pancake.
Wow, what are you doing, busting about that?
What's a simple pancake?
I'll make enough pancakes for the whole kingdom.
We've got no problem with that.
I'll make enough pancakes for everyone.
And his eyes go wide, and he says, what is this, crazy?
What have they done for us?
What have any of those people done for us?
He says, what are they to you?
Can't they work for their own food?
And I'm raging.
I seem to think that my wealth is nothing, and so on.
way to guard my wealth.
He just goes crazy on her.
He says, okay, okay, well, we'll just make enough for our street.
He says, what are those people to us?
He says, okay, well, fine, just make it for them.
Our own house will have some pancakes.
He says, what are those people?
What are our family members to us?
What have they done for us?
What are they going to do for us?
He said, okay, well, enough for you and me.
And who are you?
He said, that stings you.
Really, his own wife, he says to her, what are you to me?
What have you done to me or something?
What will you do?
Okay, I'll make you a pancake if you like.
And he said, it's not going to work if you make me a pancake.
Everyone will know.
Here's what we'll do.
We'll go up to the seventh floor of our
mention, bring some broken rice and oil and whatever, ghee or whatever, and all the pots and so on and make and fire one and so on and arrange it all up at the seventh floor on the seventh story and we'll lock all the doors and just you and me and you'll make me a pancake and no one will know.
So she does that, and he's waiting.
And she goes up and she arranges it all in secret, and she sends away all the slaves, all the servants, and tells them to go tell him that he's ready.
He goes and locks all the doors of the mansion, and the door at the bottom of the stairs.
He goes up the stairs to the seventh story, locks the door, and sits against the door and waits.
And there she starts.
lighting a fire and making the paintings.
Now we zoom over to Jetavana where the Buddha is staying.
It's the early morning and the Buddha has someone called Moggallana, Superman.
Moggallana is our Superman.
Moggallana is the Buddha's chief disciple on the left side.
The Buddha had a right-hand man and a left-hand man.
And the right-hand man was Sariputta who was
ultimate, supreme in knowledge.
Besides the Buddha, there was no one with as much wisdom as Sariputta.
And Moggallana was supreme in terms of magical powers.
So he had great mental strength, mental fortitude.
So apart from the Buddha, no one had such great mental strength and ability as Moggallana.
Or maybe Sariputta, I'm not sure.
I think Moggallana was special enough.
He was the highest in terms of mental fortitude, magical powers.
So he calls Moggallana because he says, well, this is a job.
Wisdom isn't going to work here.
We've got to scare this guy.
So he says to Moggallana, Moggallana comes in.
He says, Moggallana, Moggallana is one of the monks.
He says, Moggallana, today we're going to eat pancakes.
Me, you, and the 500 monks in Jetavana, 500 of the monks in Jetavana, we're going to stay here today.
And we're going to sit here and eat pancakes.
And what the Buddha says always comes to pass.
This is the majesty of the Buddha.
There's no question in Moggallana's mind that this is going to happen.
He's like, OK.
Most of them would be like, dude, where are we going to get pancakes?
But not Moggallana, and not the Buddha, certainly.
And so he told them that 45 leagues away, there is a stingy, rich man trying to make a pancake.
And that's all he has to say.
But I think he says, bring him here, or something like that.
But really, he doesn't have to, because Moggallana's
very clear.
He understands exactly what's happening and what to do.
He says, go to.
And Moggallana looks up in the sky.
Up, up and away, like a bird.
It's a bird.
It's a plane.
No, it's Moggallana.
And he flies the 45 yojana, which is about 45 leagues, so 45 times 16 miles, I think, something like that, which is a lot of miles.
four hundred something seven hundred six seven hundred miles that's a far ways away I wonder where he was anyway and again the distances are also often exaggerated as with the number of monks there may not have been five hundred five hundred just generally means a lot but okay for the story's sake let's say there's five hundred monks because you're like this guy doesn't have enough pancakes for five hundred months even if he did make more than he's just making one pancake right
Moggallana goes to, and he comes outside of this rich man's palace or mansion, flies up to the seventh floor and stands outside the window.
Just stands on the air.
And the rich man looks out the window.
And he sees Moggallana standing there.
And his heart stops.
Or his heart starts shaking.
As you imagine, this guy is so
It's not from fear.
It's like he doesn't even think.
He doesn't even seem to be fazed by the fact that there's a guy floating outside his window.
He's just like, there's someone who wants to take my pancake away from me.
He's got a bowl, right?
This guy wants my pancake.
And he starts freaking out.
And he gets this anger.
And he doesn't even realize how angry, but he becomes very, very angry.
and he starts stuttering, and there's this Pali phrase, that does something, he becomes, like he says, stuttering, that's what they mean.
Sputtering, sputtering is the word.
He starts to sputter and he says, oh, I know what you think.
You think you're going to get a pancake?
Well, even if you were to walk back and forth in the air, you wouldn't get one of these pancakes.
So Moggallana starts walking back and forth in the air.
Even if you sit down in the air, you won't get one of these pancakes.
Walking back and forth isn't going to do you anything.
Even if you sat down in the air, you won't get one of these pancakes.
So he sits down, crosses his legs, puts his legs in the lowest position, just on the air.
Sitting in the air isn't going to do you anything.
Even if you were to stand on the window ledge, you wouldn't get one of these pancakes.
You wouldn't get a pancake.
So he comes in and stands on the window ledge.
Even if you come in and stand in the... No, even if you were to... Right.
Even if you were to start smoking, even if you were to start smoking up, I wouldn't give you... Burst into smoke, I wouldn't give you one of these pancakes.
So Moggallana starts emitting smoke.
His whole body starts smoking.
And the whole palace, the whole mansion fills up with smoke.
And yeah, his eyes are stinging and he's coughing and
And then he thinks, because the next thing he's going to say is, even if you were to burst into flames, but then he's like, oh, wait, this mansion is made of wood.
He says, I can't help it.
He's like, ah, ah.
He starts to get afraid for the mansion.
And so he says, I better give him this guy.
This guy is really stuck on this.
He's greedy.
He's got this greedy, greedy recluse who doesn't take no for an answer.
Better give him one of the pancakes.
And so he says to his wife, all right, make the aesthetic.
Take a little bit of dough and make him a little, little pancake.
She takes a little bit, takes a spoon and just makes a little one and fills the whole pan up.
Makes the biggest pancake, huge pancake.
And he looks and he says, no, no, don't give him that one.
Don't give him that one.
Put that aside.
Make a small one.
Here, I'll do it.
He takes the spoon and he says, just a little bit.
And pours it.
It's even bigger than the last one.
And he tries again and tries again.
And then he's stacking those.
He says, no, don't give him those.
Don't give him those.
And then he just loses it.
And he finally gives up his... No, he says, okay, well, fine.
Give him one of those pancakes.
He's got a stack of pancakes, no?
Give one to the reckless.
It's fine.
We'll make it up next month.
The price of the pancake.
And so she tries, and she says, they're stuck together.
The pancakes are all stuck together.
What can we do?
And he says, oh, you're useless.
And he starts to pry them apart, and he can't pull the pancakes apart.
They won't come apart somehow.
They're all stuck together.
And the commentary says, even if they had 80 million...
koti of people or something.
Even if they each brought 80 koti of people.
No, I can't.
The translation is not clear.
But something like that, they wouldn't be able to break it apart.
There's no way they could have gotten those pancakes apart.
And you can see how this building up, what's going on here is this building up in the rich man's mind.
He's just getting more and more stressed about this until finally he does give it up.
And this is how it relates back to that other story I told from the Jataka of this Bodhisattva who gets told by the queen, gets smacked around by this queen.
The stress and having the stress build and seeing the stress of the craving, because as he was going back for the queen's things, he would have been having this craving, this desire, and, oh, I get to go and na-na-na with my queen, with this woman.
And he's, you know...
back and forth, back and forth, dealing with this desire until finally she smacks him and he realizes, not just from the smack, but also realizes, yes, what a fool he's been and how much suffering there is in his desire.
So this rich man is going through this, even on a far worse level.
All he wants is a pancake, right?
And it's getting more and more complicated, more and more difficult, more and more suffering.
And so this is just too much for him, and he gives up.
And he loses, he actually loses his appetite.
I don't know how people say when they lose their appetite because of something that happened, they just become disgusted by it.
And this is very much, very similar to what happens in meditation.
For the meditation, this happens with just about everything.
You have to deal with your desires, your cravings, until you see that really the craving is causing you stress, is causing you suffering, because you can't act on it.
and so you become disgusted by it, or where does it disgust you?
You become bored of it, I think, tired of it.
It's a good way, it's kind of like feeling tired and fed up with the craving and attachment, and so you give it up.
So this is what was happening to him, and finally he just gave up, and he says, give him them all, give him all the pancakes.
He says, come in, sit down, we'll give you all these pancakes, you can have them.
So he puts them in the bowl and really kind of fed up.
And he just sits down and is totally defeated.
And Moggallana gives him a blessing.
But his blessing, of course, in the Buddhist time, the blessing would be a teaching.
So he started to talk to him about there is what is given, there is what is sacrificed.
starting from the idea of giving, which is somewhat important.
Giving is the beginning of giving up.
If we are like this rich man, if we're worried about our wealth, concerned about our belongings, concerned about anything, it can be your possessions, money, people, it can be even your own physical well-being.
As long as you're concerned with these things, worried about your health, worried about your
If you're worried about anything, as long as you're clinging to anything, not just money, not just possessions, but all things, you're going to have this difficulty.
And so you're never going to progress.
You're never going to become free from suffering.
You're always going to have something that will set you off.
Your experience is based on partiality and your reactions to things are partial.
When you meet with something pleasant, you enjoy it.
When you meet with something unpleasant, you can't help but feel disappointment.
even though you'd want to be happy we all want to be happy even sitting here in this room we want to be happy that we're here and yet we find our minds going back and forth from happiness to suffering based on our partiality our inability to center ourselves and to just be here and now and be objective so meditation is very much about being objective which
allows you to let go, allows you to experience all things equally.
So the practice of giving is a way of approaching this sort of objectivity, of taking the things that you're incredibly partial to and giving them up.
It also means taking the things you're partial against and accepting them, allowing them to come, allowing the experience to happen.
So this is a good way to enter into the Buddhist teaching through charity.
Charity is not, of course, a principal virtue in the commentaries.
But it certainly is in the Buddhist teaching, and especially for people who maybe even don't think about meditation.
Charity is a good way to begin this shift from wanting, getting, needing, to letting go and giving up.
Giving is the first step to giving up, which is important.
So he started talking about charity, and he would have given some talk along these lines, of course.
As a chief disciple of the Buddha, it would have been profound and incredible and given great faith to his listeners.
And as a result, both of them became quite appreciative and happy and acquired great faith in this monk.
And they said to him, okay, wow, that's really profound, this idea of giving up, letting go, and how our suffering doesn't come from what we don't get, it comes from wanting.
Not getting what we want, the problem is the wanting, not the not getting.
I'm starting to realize this because, you know, I've really had great suffering, not because I didn't get what I want, but because I was wanting.
And she said, please, thank you for that teaching, please, please
eat your pancakes.
So what do you think?
You think he's going to sit there and eat his pancakes?
Why not?
What's left to do?
Yes, we have to fulfill the Buddha's wish.
Not the Buddha's wish, the Buddha's prophecy.
What did the Buddha say?
He said, we're going to sit here in Jaipur, 45 leagues away, and we're going to eat pancakes all 500 months.
So Moggallana says, right at this moment, he says to the rich man, right at this moment, there is a fully enlightened Buddha sitting in his kuti, waiting to eat pancakes.
And he says, where?
Where is the Buddha?
And with your permission, if you're okay with it, I'd like to bring you
both there to serve him pancakes, where he is to serve him pancakes.
And he says, okay, where is he?
He's 45 leagues away in sovereignty, which is what, 45 times 16 is lots and lots of miles.
And he says, I don't think we'll get there before lunch.
And Moggallana says, well, if you're okay, I'll take you there by means of my magical power.
He says, okay.
I guess it was a big deal back then to have people teleport to places.
Kind of like Star Trek.
And so what he did, what Moggallana did was interesting.
I thought he would lift them in the air, right?
What do you think he did?
What would he have done?
How would he have gotten these people 45 legs?
He could have lifted them up in the air.
That's what I would have thought.
But no.
What he did is he opened a wormhole
And he put one end at the gate of Jetavana near Savatthi.
There's still a gate there even today.
They made a new gate.
And he put the other end at the bottom of the staircase on the seventh story of this, the bottom story of this guy's mention.
So that when he opened the door at the bottom of the staircase, there was the gate of Jetavana.
I can do that.
I wouldn't have to fly to Toronto.
Hi, Dad.
So they walk down, and they walk down, and suddenly they're at the gate of Cape Devon looking around.
They walk in, and there's the Buddha.
And they walk up to the Buddha, and then Moggallana takes them and says, this is the Buddha.
This is a fully enlightened Buddha.
This is a rich man and his wife.
And
they offer pancakes to the Buddha, and the Buddha takes the pancakes, or they offer some to the Buddha, and then they go on and they start offering to the other monks, and then they realize how many monks there are, and they're like, okay, I'll give as many as we have, and somehow they find they're not running out of pancakes, and so they're giving pancakes, and they end up giving pancakes to all 500 monks, and then some of the monks want more pancakes, and so they go and give more pancakes to those monks.
and they're still hungry, so they get another pancake, and they're still not running out.
And finally, all the monks had eaten their fill and had enough food for the day.
And there's still pancakes left.
There's a huge mass of pancakes.
And so they go to the Buddha and they say, what are we going to do with these leftover pancakes?
They're just not running out.
And the Buddha says, well, go and dump them down the hill.
There's this hill or something.
It's not clear what it is.
I think it's some kind of sloped incline.
Throw it over that
that hill or else it's a hill or something.
Probably it's going down, make a landfill kind of thing.
And so he did that and to this day, or to the time of the commentary, to the time of the commentary, it was still called the Pancake Hill.
That was the name of that hill.
Anyway, that's the story.
Then Moggallana brought them back to their palace, their mansion, and then the monks were thinking about it and they were so amazed at how
Moggallano is able to do that, just by going for alms, special alms, just by walking, looking for breakfast, he was able to bring this rich man over to
Sorry, I missed the most important part, of course, is that then the Buddha, after the meal, the Buddha gave a talk to the rich man, rich woman, and they both became sodathans.
They both had a realization of Nibbana as they were sitting listening.
So meaning they would have sat listening, not thinking about the teachings, but actually practicing them.
And as a result, they were able to let go and become free and enter into cessation and realize the truth.
and to see that it's possible to be free from suffering, and so as a result they were called Sotapanna, which means one who has entered the stream to enlightenment.
Right.
And then Moggallana brought them back, and then the monks were so amazed at this, and look at how Moggallana is able to do this, and Buddha came and said, that's just the way of the sage, the Muni,
and then he gave this verse, and he said, So this is how, just as a bee goes, because if you look at this story, you think, it's kind of greedy, no?
Like, is that all you're going to do with your enlightenment, is to sit around and say, hmm, this guy's making pancakes, I'd like some of those.
I'll just sit here, and when Duxit is making pancakes,
I don't dare say any poo because I know that if I do them tomorrow, someone's going to bring it to me because I think, oh, he must like that.
So I don't dare even give an example.
Ducks, it is making kitty butt.
I go, oh, ducks, it's making kitty butt.
Wow, I feel like some kitty butt.
And then call my assistant to go and get me some.
It seems like I'm doing it for a fairly greedy reason.
So this is a charge that's leveled against monks.
We go walking through the village, kind of expecting people to give us food.
And so it's a challenge.
And this is a response to that challenge, that you know a deed by its fruit.
If something is hurting people, if something is causing suffering, then it's wrong.
So when people call monks beggars, they actually don't beg.
A monk is not allowed to beg.
They're not allowed to ask.
But they're allowed to go and see if someone wants to give.
And why is that?
Because giving is an important practice.
It's the beginning of giving up, which is the essence of Buddhist practice.
So this is what the bee does to the flower.
This is also what the sage does in the village.
They don't go looking for giribat.
They just go into the village and take what is given to them.
They go away with the essence, the pollen of the flower, and that doesn't hurt the flower at all.
So when a monk goes to the village, they look, and if people have leftover food or people have made food especially as a gift, as an alms distribution, which is common in Egypt, they don't go looking for sports cars or widescreen television or something.
They only take what is of necessity and nothing more.
And the Buddha said, Moggallana has always been this way, and he told one of the Jatakas.
And so in the Jataka, the same thing happened, and I think it was the same guy in a past life, Moggallana once.
Which is another interesting point, because the Buddha must have seen this, and so he would have seen that these two had a relationship.
He saw this rich man, and he thought, wow, Moggallana's done this once before, let's get Moggallana to do this again now.
reenact what they've done in the past life.
So apparently the exact same thing happened in the past life without the Buddha getting involved.
And Moggallana wanted to show him, I think it was Moggallana who just wanted to show him in the past life.
And so they said, let's get him to do this again, only bring Dhamma into it.
Bring him to see the truth.
And that's how the story goes.
So what is the lesson that we can take?
I think there's that key lesson here, and it's
This is a very good example of that reason.
If you look at the story on the surface, it seems like pretty useless, pretty meaningless, but if you go deeply into this aspect of craving, it actually is quite key and an example of the essence of what happens during meditation, which is that we
give up our craving.
We come to see the stress involved with craving by having to see it again and again and look at it again and again, which is really the only sustainable release from craving that exists.
And you can see this in life.
When people become fed up with something and just have enough.
I was reading this book written by a neuroscientist who used to be a drug addict.
Very good book.
He was a Canadian.
from Ontario.
He was a drug addict and he was a thief.
He was breaking into people's houses to steal drugs and breaking into doctors' offices to steal drugs.
And then one day he just realized, or not realized, but he just had enough.
Nothing was working.
No treatment was working.
There was nothing that could get him off these hard drugs, heroin, and so on.
And finally he just saw that this is endless.
This is never going to end.
And if you read the story, how he describes it, it's very much the
Realization of how pointless it is, not how bad it is.
Of course, hating yourself for your addictions doesn't overcome them.
But realizing how pointless it was, how it was just repeating itself over and over again.
And so just one day out of the blue, this came to him and he stopped.
It wasn't that he wasn't addicted anymore.
It's that he didn't want... It wasn't...
wasn't afraid of the addiction or wasn't attached to the addiction, I guess is the best way of putting it.
And so every time the addiction came up, he just said, no, he said, no, I really don't see the point anymore.
I really don't want it anymore.
So, so you can see how this carries out in real life.
And it's, it's an incredible freedom to know that you don't have to hate yourself because of either your addictions or your aversions because of any of your mental states, you just have to understand them.
And this is how meditation works.
You don't hate yourself.
You don't chastise yourself.
You don't repress any of the states in the mind or any of the qualities of mind, even the bad qualities of mind.
Just see them for what they are.
Just understand them, study them.
And this is why we have meditation.
This is why we sit down to
focus on something, on mundane reality.
We're not sitting down, closing our eyes to try to drift away and see heaven, see hell, remember our past lives or so on.
This isn't the point.
The point is to see ourselves, to see the truth about what's going on in our mundane reality.
So
And so as a result we get this much quicker, much clearer, and much more detailed than these examples that I'm giving of ordinary life.
We start to see this about everything.
We start to see it about every aspect of your life, all of your likes and dislikes.
Simple dislikes like the pain in the legs, or the pain in your head, or the pain in your back.
simple desires like the desire for food or the desire for excitement, for entertainment and so on.
This is really the essence of meditation, allowing us to become objective, to live here and now, to live unattached or independent of any clinging
So it's a model for our practice, this kind of process that we can go about on a moment-to-moment level.
We can approach everything in this way.
Look at our obsessions and see how we're obsessing about them and begin to change our reaction so that we simply see things as they are.
So we have this tool of reminding ourselves when you see something, instead of letting yourself get excited about it, you just remind yourself that scene
The Buddha was very clear about this.
Seeing, the most important thing, the essence of the practice is that seeing should just be seeing.
So we remind ourselves that's just seeing.
When you hear something, you remind yourself that's hearing.
Even when you like something, you remind yourself that's liking.
When you dislike something, dislike.
When you're afraid of something, afraid.
When you're walking, walking.
When you're sitting, sitting.
When you're bored, bored.
and you're excited, excited.
Just seeing things as they are allows this process of boredom to occur, of disenchantment to occur, where the things that excite you begin to bore you, begin to see that happiness doesn't come from clinging.
See what we really already know, because if happiness came from clinging, then we would all have been happy by now, right?
We spend so much time chasing after the objects of our desire, and we're no closer to being satisfied.
You don't see any discernible change except more wanting.
So if you look at the levels here, we have these little meters where we could assess the level of certain things.
So a little bit of wanting comes up.
Well, something arises.
You get something, and so there's a little bit of pleasure comes up.
Or maybe even a lot of pleasure.
Let's say the first time it's kind of exciting, so there's a lot of pleasure.
And so as a result of all that pleasure, some wanting arises.
Just a little bit of wanting, because you've never had it before.
The next time you see it, you've got this wanting there, and you're like, oh, cool, so you get it.
The wanting increases, and the pleasure is actually less when you get it.
But the wanting, because it's habitual, it increases.
And you can watch the brain, and you can actually assess these levels.
The wanting increases each time, and the amount of pleasure you get decreases.
And this has to do with, well, you can view it on a physical level in terms of the cycle of addiction as they study it in the brain.
This book I was mentioning, because this guy eventually gave up his addiction, eventually he became a neuroscientist.
And so he's describing his own life from the point of view of neuroscience.
So dopamine, this chemical makes you want to get it, and when you get it, something else is released, and that releases more dopamine.
except then there's fewer receptors or something, so less pleasure next time.
Interesting stuff.
So we know this is something that is not difficult to see.
What I think may be difficult to see is how it's addictive, the nature of addiction.
we're not able to see that our wanting is increasing because there's a nature of wanting.
Wanting is like focusing on that, on the object, not focusing on the wanting.
And so you might even go further and say that's the problem.
The problem in all cases in our lives is why we fall into suffering is we focus much more on the object than we do on the subject.
Instead of focusing on
Our wanting, we're focusing on what it is that we want.
So we never actually see the nature of the wanting.
We never actually see that it's building and building and building and increasing.
We don't see the problem.
We just see the result.
And this is how dopamine works.
There's very much this excitement that arises.
Anyway, the point being we never look at our own state of mind.
When you dislike something, when you're angry at someone, you never look at your anger.
You always look at the other person, how angry they make you.
You made me angry, and the focus is very much on them, never on your anger.
So meditation fixes that.
It readjusts, and it helps you to see yourself.
It helps you to see what's really going on, because the other person is just a concept in your mind.
If someone's yelling at you, the idea that there's a person yelling at you is just a concept.
The reality is just sound arising at the ear.
and the anger arising in the mind.
This is what's really going on, what you're really experiencing.
So you're not really, when you, when you, when you, when someone's yelling at you, you're not really experiencing someone yelling at you.
You're just experiencing sound, you're interpreting it.
And as a result of all the stories that you tell yourself in your mind, you're getting upset.
When you like something, when you want something, you're not really attracted to that thing.
You're attracted to the chemical reactions in the brain, the pleasure that arise.
arises it's still it's it's just another drug addiction you can talk about all the sublime pleasures of life and so on but in the end it's all just chemicals in the brain you don't really experience a sunset you just experience a light touching your eye and and and pictures the fantasy the the illusions the dreams that you create or the concepts that you create in your mind oh it's sunset oh beautiful
And that gives rise to pleasure and poof, you're addicted.
You get your drug, you get your happy drug.
And so again, I'm not trying to say that there's anything wrong with looking at the sunset or anything wrong with any of these pleasures.
I'm saying that rather than chase after them again and again and again,
we should look and see what they're doing to us, and see whether it's actually satisfying, whether it's actually making you a better, nicer, kinder, happier person.
And it's surprising in many cases, even in the most sublime desires of life, sublime pursuits.
We see that they're actually not qualitatively different than a drug addiction, unfortunately, sorry to say.
But the bright side of that is...
that happiness doesn't depend on any of these things.
You don't need your happiness to depend on X, Y, or Z, on anything in the world around you, or even inside of you.
Your happiness can be independent of those things, and that's why we understand Nibbāna to be special.
Nibbāna is not a thing, it's not something that arises, it's not something that you experience, it's a cessation.
It's this freedom or this release where your happiness is independent of everything.
You fly like a bird independent of the tree.
So that is the latest talk on the commentary of the Dhammapada, which does lend itself to some interesting teachings and always gives you a good story to tell.
So thank you all for waiting patiently, for listening patiently, and for everyone for tuning in both live and to our YouTube channel.
I hope this has been somehow beneficial and helped you to open your mind and at least consider a new way of looking at certain things in your life.
And as a result, it might bring you closer to peace, happiness, and true freedom from suffering.
Thank you all.
And I wish you all to find peace, happiness, and freedom from suffering.
Thank you.