Hello again.
Today I will continue my series of videos on the Dhammapada with the verse number two.
But first I'd like to talk a little bit more about the stories even though I did try to set the context in the first video.
I was surprised that I received so quickly some skepticism in regards to the stories because in fact the story that goes along with the first verse is
rather on the end of the stories that are more believable in this set of texts.
And in fact, you'll see as we go along that there are far less believable stories from the point of view of a strictly physical, experiential or...
something that we can experience on a mundane level as ordinary human beings.
So before I go any further, I think it's important to talk a little bit about this, the idea of accepting things that you haven't experienced yourself, accepting things on faith, so to speak.
And I think many people go quite a bit too far in their unwillingness to accept things that they have never experienced themselves, to the point where they shut themselves off and refuse to acknowledge or
engage in any sort of dialogue with this sort of this sort of topic is something that they themselves couldn't in their present state come to experience.
So even to the extent of thinking about a man who lived 2,500 years ago who practiced so intensely that his eyes burned out or his eyes
failed him or the fact that at the same moment he became enlightened and in fact this is incredibly believable and this is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect if you've practiced a lot of meditation because you come to realize that these are the exact moments where a person is most liable to let go and to become free are these moments of intense loss and intense sacrifice
where the clinging becomes so clear and the very deep clinging is uprooted or becomes evident and is able to be uprooted.
So the point here really is that you don't lose anything or you don't risk anything by believing this story.
It's not like you base your practice on this story and then you find out later that it's false.
and therefore you're ruined.
It doesn't really matter whether this monk, this really happened to this monk.
At the outset, it's a great example for us that we can put into practice, that we can exert ourselves to this extent.
And when we have physical ailments, we shouldn't let them get in our way.
So regardless of whether it's true and it really happened, it's a wonderful example for us to keep.
And moreover,
it really has no bearing on our practice whatsoever whether this
Because it's not a fundamental doctrinal principle that Chakupala lost his eyes.
Now if I said to you there was this man who prayed to God and as a result he became enlightened or so on.
Or if there was someone who wished for something and it came true and as a result and that's the sort of practice that we should take.
If our practice rested on the truth of
of the story.
But it doesn't.
Our practice rests on the core principle that the mind is chief and that suffering comes only from the mind.
And it's actually a totally different part of the story that the verse is based upon.
And that's the...
The part where Jakapala is stepping on all these insects and the monks come and complain and then the Buddha says, no, he's not guilty, which is a very core principle of the Buddha.
And that's where we rest our practice on.
And not on the parts of the story that may or may not have happened or the details of the story.
So this is one thing.
The second part is our inability to accept things which defy the laws of physics, let's say.
So the idea of believing in an existence which is outside of the laws of physics as we know them.
And these would be an existence as an angel or an existence in hell, the existence of magic or the existence of making wishes and having them come true and so on, the existence of ghosts.
All of these things on the surface would appear to be going against the laws of reality as we know them.
They go against everything we
we know and believe.
And so, asking us to believe these things, you know, when I tell a story, as I'm going to, about angels and so on, and, you know, many, many stories in here that probably many people are, no matter what I say, are not going to be able to swallow and are going to be turned off by them, which is unfortunate.
But
And our inability to believe these things is really what gets in the way.
It's not the story itself.
You know, I will tell you these stories, but I'm not going to ask you to base your practice on whether or not these are true.
So if it turns out that there is no such thing as angels, it's really not going to make a difference, as you'll see.
The core principle is still the same, and it really never has anything to do with
your belief or not belief in whether the details happened as they did or whether such things could actually occur.
And I'm willing to believe, willing to accept and
sort of agree with the idea that many of these stories have probably been embellished and so I'm trying to water them down or dull them down actually and try to bring them back to what I think is a little more reasonable because some of them can be a little bit outrageous.
But the way it looks is that they've just been embellished, and maybe some of them have been created, some details have been added, and that really doesn't mean much to me.
What's important is I understand the core principle, and I think it's not hard to understand that core principle.
But I want to say one thing about this idea of not believing in things that go outside of our understanding of the laws of physics and so on.
is that we should really throw the laws of physics out the window.
There's no... They themselves have no bearing on our practice and no bearing on reality.
The laws of physics are a set of theories that are well grounded in a certain set of experiences and repeated experiences.
But those experiences are totally subjective.
They're totally based on our...
our mode of contrived existence as human beings.
Now,
It could be that the only reality possible is the one that we live in, but physicists don't believe this anyway.
They don't know, and they're not willing to speculate.
Some of them are, some of them are not willing to speculate.
But they actually do speculate, and some of them speculate that the only way, and this I like actually, the only way this reality and this universe could exist...
is if every reality, every type of universe, every type of existence imaginable and even maybe unimaginable also exists.
Otherwise it makes no sense that this universe could exist.
And I like this because I think it mirrors some of my own beliefs and some of my own understandings.
Maybe not that everything exists but
at least that everything could exist.
And the logical argument is that, given that I exist, and I'm pretty sure that in some sense this reality exists, in a certain sense, if this exists, then I see no reason to doubt
that some existence of an angel or a ghost or any kind of existence imaginable could exist.
So when I hear these stories, no matter how outrageous they are, I think, well, it's certainly possible.
I mean, this is possible.
And there's nothing... See, we get into this, we get caught up in this conventional and contrived set of laws and set of principles which are only applicable to our own existence.
And that may be the only existence that there is, but it really is meaningless to... It's really... It says nothing about...
whether or not other realities could exist, because we're dealing with our own contrived existence.
So I hope that has helped, and I hope that helps people to at least open their minds up and say, well, you know, it's certainly possible that all of these things could exist in some other time and place.
And there could be angels all around, there could be ghosts all around.
It really, you know, it doesn't make much difference to my own practice, except
except where it does.
And it certainly does play some part in our practice, the existence of these realities.
Because if they don't exist, then the experience that we have as meditators of reality
The first verse, that when we do evil, when we get angry, when we get upset, when our mind is defiled, when we're greedy, when we want things and so on, that suffering comes to us.
really, in the end, is pointless.
Because if that's the case, then all that can happen when we die is we die.
And that's it.
There's nothing else.
Now, the existence of angels, of ghosts, of...
All sorts of different, in fact every type of being, let's put it this way, is really the only way to come to terms with what we're starting to open up to.
And this is an experience of reality on a fundamental phenomenological experiential level.
instead of a conventional one where we say, yes, what goes up must come down and humans are born and die and there's the genes and there's the sperm and so on.
And all of this which is totally contrived and it's true, but it's only true of this very small sphere of what is possible, small portion of what is possible.
And because all of our actions and all of our ethical volitions and so on are so manifold and so diverse, it only makes sense to think that the existence of beings, the types of beings, the types of places, the types of destinations and the types of futures that we might have are equally diverse.
That when we die,
It's really not the end.
And it really makes no sense for it to be the end.
It makes no sense that it possibly could be the end.
It's a nothing.
It's something that has come to grip us.
And we have this terrible fear as a result of death.
There's great fear, or actually some people have gone to the extent where they don't fear, and they're just, you know, that's it.
When I die, that's it, and I'm done and gone.
And it's such a dismal thing to think about.
And so totally off base from reality.
But...
to each their own and there are many people who don't see this and are not practicing to see this and are probably not going to see this.
There are people who practice meditation but are still keeping their heads in the sand and still clinging, I have to say clinging, to this idea of the fundamental reality of certain concepts like death, like humanity, like
physics and the physical reality even though physics have come to physicists in general have come to throw these things out the window where you know the whole theory of relativity for example the theory of quantum physics you know some of the things that these some of the issues that they've had to come to terms with that three-dimensional physical reality is really not all there is and it doesn't describe reality it doesn't describe
all of the aspects of reality adequately.
So, but okay, so I hope that has helped.
And I really, I could go on about that, but I don't want to, because I have a verse to get to and a story to get to.
And it's a wonderful story.
They're all wonderful, but it's one that is probably going to
receive mixed reviews.
So finally, I'd say again, reiterate that the important point here is not the story.
The story is the context.
And in fact, the verse, in this case especially, goes far beyond the story itself.
But nonetheless, we have a story and it's a good story.
So the story goes, there was a man named... First I'll tell the verse.
So the verse goes, number two.
This...
This group of verses is called the Yamaka Vagas, as I said.
And Yamaka means pair.
So it's a pair of verses.
And in this case, we have a pair that has a different story for each of the pairs.
So the first verse has one story that it was given, but it was mirrored by another verse that the Buddha gave that was almost the same, but has a different story associated with it.
So you are going to recognize this verse actually.
In the first one.
In its similarity the first one.
To the first one.
So here we go.
Manopubangama dhamma manose thamanomaya Manasache padute pasannena Manasache padute pasannena Vasatiwa karotiwa Tattonam sukhamanveti Chayava anapayini
There we go.
It sounds almost the same as the first one, when it's changed.
So manopubangama dhamma manoseita manomaya.
We should be familiar with this.
Manopubangama dhamma.
All dhammas are preceded by the mind.
Manoseita, they are governed by the mind.
Manomaya, they are created by the mind, formed by the mind.
All of this reality is formed by the mind.
All of our ideas about physics and existence and humanity, it's all formed by our experiences which are based on the mind.
It's the same as in the first verse.
There's no change there.
This part changes.
manasa je pasannena manasa je pasannena
If one acts or speaks with a pure and radiant mind, with a beautiful mind, with a pure mind, happiness follows therefrom like a shadow that never leaves.
Another good simile.
The first one we had, the ox pulling the heavy burden of the cart.
The idea of how heavy the cart is and this burden of suffering that follows a person who does bad deeds.
Here we have something much lighter, a shadow that never leaves.
Shadows are not, the imagery that we have of shadows is dark.
But in this sense, it's actually quite uplifting because a shadow isn't a burden.
No one has ever been harmed by their shadow.
And in fact, it's something that we don't often give enough credit to.
Our shadow is something that follows us.
It's loyal.
It never leaves.
It never causes a burden.
It never stresses us.
It never harms us.
And when we turn around, it's always there.
It's something that we can depend upon.
Good deeds are the same.
When you do a good deed, good things come.
Anyway, I'm getting ahead.
I don't want to explain it yet.
I want to tell the story first.
So the story goes, there was a man called Adinapubaka.
And his name, if this was really his name or not, this is what he was known as.
Or he was a man who never gave anything to anyone.
So he was a miser like Ebenezer Scrooge.
So here's a story like The Ghost of Christmas Past, in a sense, or The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
And he had a son.
And his son got very ill.
And his father was so stingy that he didn't want to send for a doctor because he didn't want to have to pay the doctor.
It wasn't that he really didn't love his son.
but he was always scheming and you know doctors are expensive and some doctors may charge a lot and you know going to hospitals I've had the same sort of experience anyway I'm not going to condone what he did because what he did is he went around to all the doctors and he said oh
You know, just talk to them sort of generally.
What sort of treatment do you give to a person when this happens, or when they're like this, when they have this condition?
And so he asked around, and he got some ideas about what might help his son.
And so he went, and he tried to administer this treatment to his, sort of treatments to his son.
And because he really didn't understand the condition of his son, his son got worse.
And his son got so bad to the point that he was on his deathbed.
And in fact, it was quite clear that he was in danger of his life.
And so at this point, his father woke up and realized that something had to be done.
And so he called for a doctor.
The doctors came and no one wanted to help because no one could help because it was too late.
And so the father put the son outside in a bed under some shade like this.
thinking that people who came to visit him, because his relatives would come and visit the sick child, wouldn't come inside and see all of his wealth and whatever.
He had this crazy idea that he should put his son outside, and it was the miser in him.
He was terribly warped.
Unbelievably so, in fact.
This is one part of the story that's
I think, hard to believe.
But, in fact, you do find people who get this warped.
You find people who are even far worse, who abandon their children and so on.
Anyway, he put his son outside and...
As luck would have it, this was a good thing.
And it may have been this son's karma that his father put him outside because his son was blessed thereby to have an opportunity to see something very special.
And what was it that he saw is one day the Buddha was walking by and the son turned and saw the Buddha coming.
and was so overjoyed to see something like this, because here he had lived all his life in his father's house, and it was a very dismal existence, having a father like that, that's so miserly, and teaching you to be miserly, and not, you know, even when you're sick, to not call a doctor, and so on.
His life had been quite miserable, and quite dull, and void of any kind of pleasures.
And so when he saw this monk, it was such a wonderful experience to see the Buddha.
You know, of course, this is the Buddha.
And there are a lot of stories like this, where people would see a monk who was mindful and...
and walking on alms round and it would be such a great sign for them such a great sight for them and give them great faith and so this is what it did to this young man when he saw this it was something that he said this is the way it should be this is the way people should be this is the path and he was so upset that his father
had never given him the opportunity to see the Buddha before, to have a chance.
And he said, if only my father had been less of a miser, I might have had a chance to go and follow this path, learn from the Buddha and come to follow after him and be his disciple.
And he said, now there's nothing I can do.
And he was so sick that all he could do was look at the Buddha.
He couldn't even raise his hands up as people do to pay respect to the Buddha.
As people would do to pay respect to any sadhu or monk in India.
And they still do today.
But nonetheless, in his mind, he invested his faith in the Buddha.
He said, this is a holy man.
And he thought like this.
And as a result, his mind was quite pure.
And the Buddha saw him and realized what was going on in his mind and said, that's certainly enough for him.
And the Buddha kept walking.
And this son, this boy died thereafter, maybe at that moment or sometime after.
And was born as a result in heaven.
Let's not say in heaven.
He was born as an angel.
He was born as a being who was radiant because his mind was radiant.
I don't want to quite give that away.
Let's continue on with the mundane part of the story.
And that is that the father was quite upset and rightly so.
He was rightly so.
Rightly he should be upset.
He should be sad.
He should be quite upset with himself that he was such an idiot and
didn't help his son.
And so he couldn't get over it.
It really distraught him.
And this is another example of how evil leads to evil.
And so he spent all his time in the cemetery at his son's grave weeping and crying and saying, oh my son, where are you my son?
Oh, I wish that, I wish, you know, he was still, and he was just out of his mind.
He couldn't come to terms with his son's death and couldn't believe that he had lost his son.
And what a fool he had been to be the cause, really, of his son's untimely death.
And so he was mourning and weeping.
And then it happened that his son came to him.
Just as we hear about people, their deceased relatives coming to them.
His son came.
But his son didn't let him know right away who he was.
So his son came.
And at first his father thought it was just a young boy.
And the father said, who are you?
No, the father didn't say...
No, he came to him and he was crying.
So the son came and he would of course not quite look the same because he was born again and he was born based on the image or based on the state of his mind when he died.
Not necessarily, no longer based on his father and mother's genes.
It was no longer that connection.
So he came to his father crying.
And his father said, why are you crying?
And the son said, oh, I have this bicycle, and I got this wonderful golden bicycle, but I need wheels for it.
And the father actually, it's funny how his fatherly instinct took over and his guilt kind of led him to say to this young boy, he said, it came to him as a great opportunity to make up for his stinginess in regards to his son who had passed away.
And he said,
oh, please let me help you, based on his guilt and the idea that maybe here he could do something for someone where he had been such a miser before and as a result his son had suffered.
He said, I'll find you the wheels.
What kind of wheels do you need?
What sort of wheels do you want?
And the son said, well...
What I really had my eyes set on is the sun and the moon, and I would like you to get me the sun and the moon as wheels for my bike.
And the old man said, what are you, crazy?
You must be a real idiot to think that you could possibly, I mean, gold, jewel, whatever.
getting the sun and the moon as wheels for your bike, you're an idiot.
And the sun looked at him and said, oh, who's the idiot?
He said, here, you can see the sun, you can see the moon, but here you are sitting crying for something that is gone, something that has passed away.
Your sun is no longer, his body is lying dead in the ground.
That's going to go back to the worms and go back to the soil.
And yet here you are crying for that.
Crying for something that is no longer, that you can't see, you can't hope, you can't wish for.
It's never going to come to you.
For me, it's possible that the sun and the moon might come to me.
They're here, you can see them.
Your son, it's not possible.
And the father was shocked.
He said, you're right.
He said, I've been an idiot, more of an idiot than you.
He said, more of an idiot than someone who's looking for the sun and the moon.
That's how much of an idiot I've been.
And he realized that, and he said, wow, that's really the truth.
And this is how this dialogue went.
And as a result, he woke up and he was able to overcome his sorrow.
But the interesting thing was, the father became... Sorry, first the father asked the son, he said,
Who are you?
Who should I know you by?
You have given me such wise words.
He said, I'm your son.
I was your son before.
Now I'm an angel.
He said, how did you become an angel?
You've never done anything good.
I never let you out.
They had a belief then that when you do good deeds you go to heaven.
He didn't have any chance, but then it would have been more ritual.
His idea would have been, you never performed these Hindu rituals, you never paid obeisance to the gods and so on.
How could you possibly become an angel?
And he said, how it went actually, as I was lying there, as you put me outside on the porch,
I had the good fortune to see the Buddha, an enlightened being.
And that gave me such faith and tranquility and happiness in mind that when I died I was born in a pure place based simply on that mind.
And the father was like, that's totally unbelievable.
The idea, because they had this belief, of course, in karma, that you have to do something, some kind of ritual, build an altar, pour the butter, whatever, tend to the fire, pay obeisance to the gods and so on, give sacrifices of meat or whatever, whatever kind of sacrifices.
He said, how could you possibly go to heaven just by placing your faith in the Buddha or simply by giving rise to a clear mind?
And so he was quite confused.
And so he went to the Buddha and he asked the Buddha, he said, look, I saw this angel and he was actually quite a wise and intelligent young angel.
But he said to me that he became an angel simply by seeing you and by giving rise to a pure mind.
How is that possible?
And the Buddha said, as a result, it doesn't matter really what you do, it's not what you do, but he said, thousands, millions, uncountable are the beings who have gone to heaven simply by a pure state of mind.
He said, it's not what you do, it's not a, you can give, and you'll see there's more verses about this, you can do all sorts of rituals and all sorts of good acts.
But none of these compare to one single act of mental goodness where the mind is pure.
And then he said, Because deeds that are done with a pure heart,
When your deeds are done with good intentions, no matter what you do, if you speak or don't speak, if you act or don't act, it's the pure mind.
When you have a pure mind and you have this intention, you set yourself in a good way.
Then you build happiness up like something you can carry around with you.
that has no weight, which is like a shadow, like a shadow that never leaves.
And this is really the truth, that, as I said in the first verse, when we do evil deeds, we can see through the meditation practice, most especially, that those evil deeds lead us to suffering.
They are creating this mind, they're building up habits and tendencies,
When we get angry again and again and again, when we continuously cling with greed and with anger and obstinance and views and opinions and conceit and ego, it changes our mind, it changes who we are.
So even when you cling to your idea, I'll believe it when I see it,
talking about even these stories as an example, the state of mind which clings is actually what is leading to suffering.
And so I don't cling to this story, whether it's true or not, but to me it serves as a great reminder that
That's exactly the sort of thing that I would expect to happen, that when your mind is pure, when you practice you can see for yourself that it leads to happiness.
When you act and speak with the pure, this is the good side, you know, we have the bad side when you do bad things and so on.
But here's something encouraging, that when our mind is pure, it changes our mind in a good way.
And it will change everything you do.
In fact, our deeds and our speech are dependent on this.
Even simply sitting still not speaking, not acting.
Here the verse actually doesn't tell the whole story.
And in this sense actually the story itself tells something that the verse doesn't.
And this is certainly a part of the Buddhist teaching that
Even though the Buddha said when you act and speak with the pure mind, the important point is the pure mind.
And even if you don't act and don't speak, simply sitting in meditation with a pure mind, when your intentions are pure, when you are not clinging to anything, when you're seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and simply experiencing things, and when you're able to overcome your addictions and your attachments, even that,
without having to do or say anything, as we can see, if you happen to believe this story, can lead you to heaven, can lead you to happiness in this life, can lead you to fix any arguments, any problems you have with other people, any disputes or war or so on, can all be, all of the problems that the world is in right now can be solved in this way.
I think there's no better example of the truth of these sayings than what we're seeing here and now today.
That we're a clear example of how this works.
With all of the problems that are going on in the world, it's clear the truth of this, that you can lead yourself to hell and to great suffering through your mind.
And this is what we're doing.
We're developing and cultivating these minds that are bringing us back again and again and again to
more and greater suffering and is actually destroying our conventional and conceived reality that we keep coming back to again and again and again.
So, these two verses are among the most important of the Buddha's teachings.
Wow.
In the sense that they set the framework for our understanding of reality and our understanding of what's important.
What's important is the mind.
And as the Buddha said elsewhere, the trained mind, the tame mind.
leads to happiness, or brings happiness.
So, I'd like to thank you all for tuning in.
I hope this has been helpful and beneficial for your own practice, and that you're able to use this as a reminder.
And think of the young angel, his name was Mata Kundali, because Kundali is
I can't remember how it goes.
Kundali is, I think, a spiral.
His father was a goldsmith.
His father had him given some earrings made of gold.
That's where he got his name, Mata Kundali.
But his story is a great reminder to us that the most important is the mind.
And if we have a pure mind, we don't really have to do anything.
even in a situation like his, where his father was a terrible miser and where his life was not as great as it might be, as some of our lives are, where we might live in a place that is depressing and, you know, people talk about how their lives are so devoid of spirituality and the people around them just don't understand
Well, there are many examples in here of people who also lived in that sort of circumstance, and were able to overcome it, because it's not the physical, it's not our surroundings, it's not our environment, it's our mind.
When our mind is pure, good things will come.
And when our mind is impure, bad things will come.
So if we have bad things now, we can think,
could very well be because I have been negligent and I have led myself to this because we didn't start when we were born and we've been going a long time and this is because of how the mind is and reality is totally based on our experience, on experience and that experience never changes it just goes on like the ox carrying the cart
or the person carrying their shadow.
So you can choose.
You want to carry a cart, pull a cart, or carry a shadow, whichever is lighter.
So all the best.
Thanks for tuning in.