Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 90, which reads as follows.
Which means...
For one who has completed their journey, completed the going.
One who is free from sorrow.
One who is liberated everywhere.
Who is everywhere free, everywhere they go.
One who has abandoned all fetters, all forms of clinging, every object of attachment.
No fever can be found.
No distress.
Distress is probably the best translation.
Parilaha.
Very beautiful little verse.
It talks about the fever.
Barillaha is often translated as fever.
That's probably etymologically fairly correct.
Burning, right?
But in this specific instance, because of the story and because of the context of the verse itself,
It's not a fever, it's a mental fever, a mental burning.
So we would translate it as distress or fever of passion.
But literally it means burning, I think.
Daha.
Paridhaha becomes parilahaa.
So the story, this was told in regards to a question posed by Jivaka, who was a doctor, the doctor who looked after the Buddha.
And his story is not told here.
I can't remember if it's actually told in the
in the Dhammapada, I don't think so.
Maybe in the Jataka it occurs, but in the Vinaya definitely you find his story.
He was a master doctor, an exceptional medicine man.
They say that the final task given to him by his teacher
was to stake out a 16 kilometer by 16 kilometer square piece of land, which is a league, a square league, yojana, of land.
and bring to his teacher every plant in the entire square league that had no medicinal properties.
and this was the task.
So he set out to accomplish this task, came back sometime later and said to the teacher, there are no such plants.
There are no plants in that 16.
I couldn't find any plants that were without medicinal properties.
And that's how his teacher knew that he passed, because he was able to identify medicinal properties in all plants.
That's the story.
So he was exceptional.
He got...
He caused a little bit of trouble, or he got into a little bit of trouble, not on his own.
He was actually an awesome, wonderful person.
He donated a mango grove to the Buddha.
And you can still go and see the place that's supposed to be where this mango grove was, right at the bottom of Vulture's Peak.
Vulture's Peak was difficult to go up constantly to take care of the Buddha, so in order to make it easier for him to take care of the Buddha when the Buddha was sick, and also to make it easier for the Buddha to go on alms round when the Buddha was ill, he gave him this mango grove at the bottom of the hill, the bottom of the mountain.
But as he was looking after the Buddha, he also took on the role of looking after the monks.
And as a result of paying so much attention, taking so much time to look after the Sangha,
his other patients started to miss him.
And so people who were sick would actually ordain as monks, just to try and get this
level of care.
And this was actually the reason why the Buddha instated the rule that someone who is sick, someone who has this sickness, has any terrible sickness, shouldn't be allowed to ordain.
I mean, there are other reasons for it, obviously, it's problematic, but
it's one of those things that leads people to ordain for the wrong reasons.
And this happens in Buddhist countries where they become lax about this.
And really these people become a burden on the monastic sangha rather than actually promoting Buddhism and doing good things.
So there's a few stories about him.
But this story actually concerns Devadatta tangentially.
Because the story goes that Devadatta was trying all sorts of ways to kill the Buddha.
Devadatta was the Buddha's cousin and he got upset and jealous of the Buddha and he wanted to be the leader of the Sangha.
Just kind of an all-around mean and nasty sort of fellow.
So he sent an elephant after the Buddha, and the Buddha tamed the elephant.
It was this mad elephant that was supposed to trample the Buddha, and the Buddha tamed him with loving kindness.
He sent some archers after the Buddha, some mercenaries after the Buddha, and they all converted to become monks.
And finally he just got fed up and as the Buddha was coming down from Vulture's Peak, he dropped a rock, a big boulder on the Buddha trying to crush him from up on high.
And as the rock was falling down, it hit some sort of outcropping, of course, because you can't kill the Buddha.
It just doesn't happen.
His karma is too good.
But a little splinter, a small splinter, broke off.
The rest of the rock veered out of the way and didn't come close to the Buddha.
But a small splinter came and hit the Buddha's foot.
And Jivaka looked after the Buddha.
The Buddha lay down, and Jivaka bandaged him up.
put some poultice on the wound.
I think the commentaries try to say that he didn't actually bleed because it's impossible to make the Buddha bleed, but it's about the translation as to what exactly is meant to happen anyway.
Whatever, the Buddha was injured and he put some herbs on it, something strong that would take the pain away and make the swelling go down, but it was quite strong.
And then Jivaka had to go into the city to look after his patients in the city.
And he was late.
He was looking after some rich person or maybe even the king and he was late coming back and they closed the gates to the city before he could get out.
And so he had to stay all night in the city and he was worried all night and concerned because he had to go back and take this poultice off of the Buddha's ankle.
or else it would actually cause harm to the Buddha.
So he was unable to let the Buddha know.
Fortunately, that's the benefit of having all sorts of supernatural powers.
The Buddha was able to discern that it was time to take the poultice off and had Ānanda help him take it off.
and waited there for Jivaka to come.
So no harm done.
But harm was done to Jivaka, who was worrying and fretting, who was distressed.
Now, Jivaka was actually a sotapanna.
I think at this time he was already a sotapanna, though I'm not sure of the actual timeline.
I'd have to look deeper into that.
But I think he was already a sotapanna at this point.
So he was already an Aryabhukala, but he was still subject to distress.
And so he fretted about this for the long time, that he was kept in the city.
And finally, when the gates opened in the morning, he ran over, ran, sprinted his way over to Vulture's Peak and came to the Buddha and asked him,
I'm sorry, Venerable Sir, that I wasn't able to come.
Were you distressed by the pain?
Were you distressed by your illness?
And that's where this verse comes from.
Jivaka asked him this simple question.
And the Buddha said, For one who has gone to the end, who is free from sorrow, one who is free everywhere,
become liberated everywhere who has abandoned all ties there is no fever to be found
No distress to be found.
The word fever is too ambiguous, but one never becomes distressed.
So this was, I think last night we had the question whether an arahant can suffer, whether it can actually be called suffering when an arahant feels pain because
They don't have, and this is what they don't have.
The translation that we've got in the book actually says, it translates parilaha as suffering, but that's probably not accurate.
It's again too ambiguous, too general.
The specific meaning is burning up.
So it's often referring to the body, but here it means burning up in the mind.
Were you distressed?
Did it distress you?
Upset?
Did it upset you?
Were you upset by it?
Were you distressed by it?
Were you vexed by it?
And the Buddha said there is no vexation for one who has become free.
And so that's the answer to that question, that they do actually feel dukkha vedana in the body, but they're not vexed by it.
A very important point that all of us as meditators, hopefully by this time, have heard or have come to be familiar with.
But it's a point that has to be made, especially for people who are new to the meditation.
The difference between not only physical suffering, but external conditions, like the state of Jivaka, who was stuck in the city, was incredibly vexed and disturbed and distressed.
He had a good heart, but he wasn't helping the Buddha by being vexed and distressed, by being upset.
And in fact, he was simply doing damage to his own mind.
And so to some extent, the Buddha was using this as a lesson to Jivaka as well, not only to reassure him, but also to remind him not to get upset.
I wasn't upset.
Why did you get upset?
And so this is because of the difference between the physical, the external, and our reactions.
Pain doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Excruciating pain doesn't have to be a bad thing.
Situations don't have to cause us anger and frustration and upset or boredom or worry or fear.
When people do things to us, when others hurt us,
We do the worst thing when we respond with anger.
When someone gets angry at us and we respond with anger, we are creating the worst evil, Buddha said.
But this is a clear indication of the difference between our experiences and our reactions to them.
So what do we have?
One who has gone to the end means, actually I don't know, it's translated as one who has gone to the end of the journey.
Well, that's what they say here, but let's see exactly what it means.
Adin.
One who has, right, one who has gone the distance.
So who has completed the path.
I have to get meditators asking how you know how far you're progressing, and it's all this idea of the path and
I'm often cynical about whether we should really focus too much on the idea of a path.
It's misleading, I think.
I think it's fine to talk about the idea of a path, but when we are concerned about our progress, it can become quite obsessive, as we're worried about where we are, wondering when we're going to get there, that kind of thing.
On the other hand, having the idea of the path is a reminder that we can't be complacent, that we do have to walk and journey.
But it's important as a teacher and as a meditator to not be too focused on progress.
So this idea of the path or the journey, it's poetic and it's useful to know that there is a journey.
But when you're walking a journey, you don't want to be the person in the backseat saying, are we there yet?
Are we there yet?
That part of the mind should be silenced.
The walking has to continue.
All you have to do is put one foot in front of the other.
You know that there's a path and you follow it.
It's much simpler than we think.
We think of it as being some kind of
like a paved road with road signs telling you 10 kilometers left or something like that, but it's not really.
It's a path we've never gone and a path that has no clear signs that we can distinguish because we have no frame of reference.
So our job is, yes, to follow the path, but that simply means putting one foot in front of the other, metaphorically speaking.
So an enlightened being has no soka, no sadness, no sorrow.
They don't long for anything.
They don't pine away at loss.
They don't worry about losing the things that they have.
No soka, no sadness.
In all directions, on all sides, everywhere, freed, liberated.
Completely liberated.
having abandoned or destroyed or gotten rid of all binds or ties, severed all ties.
So people talk a lot about detachment, how Buddhism is a clear indication of how Buddhism does
encourage the idea of detachment.
But people get the wrong idea that it somehow translates into a sense of, or a state of zombie-like nothingness or meaninglessness.
All it means is to not cling to things as they go by.
Because the problem is we have this idea that things exist constantly or in some stable form.
And so we're talking about shying away from them.
That people think non-attachment means it's there, don't go near it.
But that's not it.
It's not there actually.
What is there is a moment and that arises and ceases.
That's fine.
Be as close and as clearly...
aware of that as you can be.
That's the point.
But when it's gone, don't go with it.
Don't let it pull you into the past.
Don't let thoughts about the future pull you into the future.
You end up like this, being pulled to both sides, past and future.
And you're never really here and now.
That's what non-attachment means.
It would make sense if there were things here that were stable to attach to them, because you could depend upon them, right?
But there's nothing like that.
Nothing is of that sort.
Everything arises and ceases, comes and goes, is uncertain.
Even all the possessions that we have, that we think we have constantly throughout our lives, the people who are with us,
The reason we're so sad is because we take them as some stable entity that can be controlled and that is long-lasting and so on.
And so we bind ourselves to them with this attachment.
Non-attachment or detachment.
Non-attachment is a better way of phrasing it.
Non-attachment means experiencing, but experiencing as experience, seeing people as individual experiences, seeing things as individual experiences, because that's what they are.
That's what you really are.
How can you say you have a car when you don't see it, when you don't hear it, when you're not in front of it, when it's not in front of you?
How can you say that you even have people in your life when they're not here and now?
All you have is a thought that arises and ceases.
Even when they're with you, all you have is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling and thinking.
So non-attachment just means seeing things as they are and being with things.
So being with, there's people around you, there's people around you.
If there's no one around you, there's no one around you.
It's not pining away after something that isn't there or clinging to something that is.
For such a person who is of this sort, there is no fever.
So what it means is they have no likes or dislikes.
They have no vexation and no upset when things don't go as expected because they have no expectations.
they're perfectly at peace and perfectly flexible I think flexible is a very important aspect just naturally flexible because they have no preference they're content the way things are however they are so that's the Dhammapada for tonight thank you all for tuning in and keep practicing and be well