Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 96, which reads as follows.
Santang tasa manang hoti, santa wajat cakamma ca, samma danya vimutasa, upasanta satadino, which means calm or peaceful,
is his or is that person's mind peaceful their speech and their acts who with right knowledge is freed such a one who is such a one for such a one no such a one who is
at peace themselves.
So one who is delivered through right knowledge, who is at peace themselves.
Something like that.
So talking about the three doors of karma, the mind door, the speech door, and the body door.
These are the three ways we can perform karma.
And such a one who has become free is peaceful in all of these.
This story is one of the more heartwarming stories.
Not a long story.
It's a story about a certain monk who seems to have practiced well, learned all of the rules of the monkhood,
he was known as Kosambiwasi Tissa.
His name was Tissa.
Tissa was a common name like John back then.
It's a very common name.
But Kosambiwasi means he dwelled at Kosambi.
And he stayed there for the three months of the rains retreat.
And at the end,
the layperson who was looking after him came to him and offered him a set of robes and some medicines.
So the kind of medicines like sugar or honey or ghee, like butter.
The kind of medicines that actually you can only keep for a certain amount of time.
And so the monk didn't immediately receive them.
because monks can only have one set of robes, and they can only keep these medicines for a short time, and can only use them when they're sick, and that kind of thing.
So he says something that's actually quite interesting from a monastic point of view.
He asks, what are they?
And the lay disciple says, oh, these are the offering that we give to the monk whenever they, whoever stays with us.
Please accept them.
And he says, I'm sorry, I have no need of these, because he can't reasonably take them and use them.
And he says, why can't you take them?
And what he says is interesting.
He says that he has no novice to perform the usual duties.
And I think the meaning here is that the novice would take the robes and offer them to the elder if the need should arise.
So they were using the novices.
It's kind of odd to sort of get around the rules by having a novice carry these things for you.
And I'm not convinced that it's the best reading of the rules, but
These stories tend to have those sorts of practices in them that don't seem exactly to be how it was laid out by the Buddha.
But anyway, who am I to know?
But that's sort of how it went, whether right or wrong, I don't know.
And so the layman says, oh, well, if that's true, take my son.
Take my son with you and have him ordained as a novice, and he'll look after you and, I guess, carry your sugar and your butter around for you.
Because novices don't have those kind of rules, that they can't keep this, they can't keep that.
And so he accepted, and his son, who was seven years old, he gives him over to the elder and says, please accept him as a novice.
So the elder takes the boy, wets his hair, teaches him the tajja panchaka kamatana, the five-fold meditation with the skin as its fifth, meaning
Kesa, hair on the head.
Loma, hair on the body.
Naka, nails.
Tanta, teeth.
Tajo, is the skin.
Kesa, Loma, Naka, Tanta, Tajo.
These are what you teach a new monk.
It's the tradition because it's a basic meditation.
It's focusing on the parts of the body to help see them as they are and not be partial towards them or against them.
useful for monks if they find themselves getting into thoughts of lust about the body, lust for the body.
And as soon as the razor, it says, as soon as the razor touched his head, the novice became an arahant.
The boy became an arahant.
He was ready.
He was clearly someone who had been cultivating perfections and cultivating good things for a long time because that was all it took.
Just this click with the teaching of this meditation and changing the recognition.
Probably he was a monk in his past life.
And so he became an arahant right away and didn't tell the elder.
The elder had no idea.
Because the elder actually, being a good monk, he was, but he wasn't enlightened.
He was just an ordinary worldling.
And so he stayed there for another two weeks, and then he decided to go back to see the Buddha.
He thought, well, I'll bring this novice to go and see the Buddha.
That'll be a good way to introduce him to the Buddha's asana, and maybe the Buddha can teach him something.
Maybe it'll help him on his own prath, because who knows, maybe one day this novice will become a good meditator like me, or something like that.
And so on the way, they stopped off at this lodging at a monastery, but they only had one kutti.
And
because the novice spent all his time looking after the elder.
He got a kuti for the elder and he spent his time doing all these duties that the novice would have to do, sweeping it out, opening windows, closing windows, putting the bed down and so on.
And by the time he had taken care of the elder's needs, it was too late for him to get a kuti for himself, a hut for himself.
And so the elder said, oh, don't you have a kutti for yourself?
No, I'm sorry, no opportunity.
So the elder said, well, then fine, you just stay with me.
You can just stay with me, and in the morning we'll look after it.
It would be better to stay with me than elsewhere.
And then the elder goes and lies down on the bed and immediately falls asleep because he's just an ordinary worldling.
But the novice, thinking,
novice realizes something and that is that this is for the past two nights he has also spent the night with novices have a rule he's not a full monk a novice takes on 10 precepts so they're allowed to wear the robes but they haven't yet become a monk so they haven't they are not considered to be in the inner circle i guess you could say but the point is
they still don't fit in with the monks and so to be in too close association can lead to problems and
difficulties for the monks.
So they are only allowed to stay with the monks for a maximum of two nights.
After the third night, it's not that they're not allowed to, it's that the monk commits an offense if he stays with a non-ordained person three nights in a row.
Because the idea is monks have to stick to themselves, have to not get in too close association with people who are not keeping the rules because it can drag them down and so on.
People who haven't yet been trained as monks can often criticize unjustly.
Well, the story went that the monks were snoring or something, and the lay people started getting critical of them, overly critical or that kind of thing.
They lose any sense of respect.
So anyway, there's some sense that they have to be a bit separate.
And the novice realized this, and he realized, if I stay in here overnight, as he told me, he'll be breaking a rule.
Can't have that.
So the novice sits up,
sits cross-legged and comfortably because he's an arahant, just does meditation, practices sitting meditation all night.
Because the loophole to the rule, again, it's all about loopholes, it seems, is that if he's sitting up, it's not considered to have slept, have stayed together overnight.
Don't ask me, but that somehow helps to fix his things.
And he stayed there all night, and the elder just snored away, totally oblivious.
But the elder did wake up in the morning and was actually conscientious enough to think about this.
And he woke up in a completely pitch dark, still the night, still not a full night,
and so he he picks up his he's on the bed and he reaches over and he picks up his fan so in those times the monks would have a fan to blow drive away mosquitoes and to cool themselves off in the heat and that kind of thing different uses for a fan and he
He took the fan and he pounded the mat where he knew the novice was.
And he said, hey, wake up.
We have to go outside.
And then the novice didn't say anything.
So he threw the fan at the novice.
He didn't see him.
He didn't know where the novice was.
He thought the novice was lying down.
So he said, okay, maybe aim towards his feet or something.
And the novice, because he was sitting up, the fan hit him square in the eye and poked his eye out.
Destroyed his eye.
And the elder had no idea.
The elder had no clue.
The novice, knowing that his eye was poked out, what does he do?
He says to the elder, what did you say?
Because I guess he was a little distracted.
He says, get out, get out, it's time to go out.
So the novice, what does he do?
Covers his eye, whichever eye it was, covers his eye with one hand, and gets up and walks out.
doesn't say anything about it, completely quiet.
And on top of that, not only is he totally neutral, totally composed, having just had his eye poked out, he goes and does the duties of a visiting monk.
So he goes and sweeps the paths, sweeps out the outhouse,
sets out water for the elder washing.
He sweeps, you know, he's got one hand, and so he's sweeping with one hand with the broom, sweeping out the outhouse and putting out water for washing and water for drinking.
And then he even goes and gets a tooth, you know, they had these sticks that they would use to brush their teeth.
You can still get them in India.
It's kind of neat.
On the Buddhist circuit, you can, I got a whole bunch of them when I was there last year.
And so he brings a toothbrush to the elder monk.
And it's kind of dark, so the elder doesn't really see, but he sees the novice come with one hand and offer him a toothbrush.
And apparently another one of the customs when offering to an elder in order to cultivate respect is to offer it with two hands.
So this is protocol between monks and junior monks, senior monks, novices and senior monks.
For lay people they can do as they like, but there's a kind of a protocol in order to keep humility and not get arrogant and not...
So we go, if someone's senior, then you offer to them with two hands.
And so the elder got kind of miffed at this.
He said, What kind of a novice are you, not properly trained, offering toothbrush to your teacher with one hand?
What kind of novice does that?
I thought I taught you better than that.
The novice says,
Venerable Sir, I know full well the rules that are to be performed, but my one hand isn't free.
My one hand isn't disengaged.
What?
What's wrong?
Why can't you use your other hand?
And then the novice has to tell him.
So the novice relates to him from start to finish.
I was sitting up.
Because I was sitting up when you threw the fan at me, you poked my eye out.
And the elder is understandably upset, moved, shaken by this.
And he bows down, he goes down on his knees and says, the novice, please forgive me.
I'm so sorry.
Please spare me, kind of thing.
Be my refuge, is what the Pali says.
And he crouches down on the ground in front of him and begs him for forgiveness.
And the novice, what does he do?
Just perfection after perfection.
This is a wonderful way of describing the arahant.
Because remember, the seven-year-old kid is a fully enlightened being, or an enlightened being, not a Buddha, but an arahant.
He says, Venerable sir, it isn't your fault.
It was not in order to shame you that I spoke.
I just wanted to let you know what happened.
I knew I had to ease your mind.
But I didn't tell you also to ease your mind.
It's not that I wanted to keep it from you.
It's that I knew you might get upset.
And so in order to spare you that, I didn't.
Say anything.
It's not your fault.
You're not to blame.
This is the fault of samsara, he says.
This is the fault of the rounds of rebirth.
If you're going to be reborn, these things are going to happen.
And he leaves it at that.
This seven-year-old kid, can you imagine?
And so the elder is even further moved by that.
And the novice tries to comfort him, but he won't be comforted.
So he takes the novice to the Buddha.
He picks up the novice's bowl and requisites and carries them for the novice and brings him to the Buddha, shaking his head and weeping the whole way.
And when they get to the Buddha, he goes straight to the Buddha and bows down and prepares to tell the Buddha.
And the Buddha says, Oh, Bhikkhu, is everything okay with you?
How do you answer that?
He says, I trust you have not suffered any excess discomfort.
And the monk says, Bhante, I indeed have lived quite at ease myself.
But here I have this novice with me.
Take a look at this novice.
He is beyond anything that I've ever seen.
And the Buddha said, why, what has he done?
And the elder told the whole story to the Buddha.
And he said, I don't understand Vande.
When I asked him to forgive me, he said, it's not your fault.
It's the fault of samsara.
Don't be disturbed.
Don't be upset.
He tried to comfort me when here he is with his eye poked out, holding it with one hand, offering me a toothbrush.
And the Buddha says, oh, those who have freed themselves from defilements have neither anger nor hatred towards anyone.
On the contrary, they are in a state of calm, their senses, their mind, their speech, and their body.
And then he taught this verse.
His thoughts are calm, his speech is calm.
The mind of such a person is calm.
Speech is calm.
His deeds are calm.
What sort of person is this?
One who has freed themselves with right knowledge.
Someone who is tranquil or peaceful.
So what can we learn from this?
It sets the bar, right?
It doesn't hold any punches.
This is telling us how far we intend to go, how far we can go, how perfect we expect to become through the practice, how far we believe it possible to go.
Maybe not in this life, but eventually through the practice, our understanding
This isn't some simple thing where, oh yes, you don't complain about a toothache anymore.
Or when you have a stomachache, you're okay.
You're okay skipping lunch now because you've let go.
It's not like that.
Where we're going is to the end of suffering, where one really doesn't react, really doesn't get upset, where one is really and truly able to experience things as they are.
So the mind and the speech and the body don't become tranquil because you don't encounter bad things.
It's not about building up such good karma that you never experience bad things.
It's not that kind of invincible.
It's the invincibility of the mind
where you have seen clearly.
And the wonderful thing is that it comes simply from seeing clearly, which is the point of this verse.
That true peace, the kind that can see you through losing an eye, or a limb, or even your life.
That kind of peace and tranquility.
It's only to be found through wisdom, and is to be found simply through wisdom, with no other requirement whatsoever.
Because when you see things as they are, there's no reason to get upset.
There's no benefit to getting upset.
There's no benefit to be had from this novice yelling and screaming and wailing and crying.
It's reasonable.
It would be reasonable if he did.
You'd think, well, he's only human.
But somehow this is the idea, is that an enlightened being goes beyond the ordinary state of a human.
You're able to attain a state of greatness, a state of profound peace and tranquility
So this is again something for us to emulate.
But I think more here is something for us to compare.
How would you fare if you lost an eye in that way?
Sometimes it's good to think about these things.
It's good to imagine the situation.
It gives you a chance to see your own defilements, to get a taste of what you have left to accomplish.
What is left inside of you that will cause you suffering?
Because losing an eye doesn't cause you suffering.
It's only when you react negatively to it.
Oh, that's not what I wanted.
When you had expectations for that eye, right?
Wanted to use it for things.
But this novice had no use for the eye.
Losing it was
like losing a piece of trash, meaningless, of no consequence, because his happiness was independent of the I, independent of the physical body, independent of anything in the world.
That's where our practice leads us.
It's not like we want to lose an eye.
How could you criticize this?
Wouldn't it be great if when the most horrific thing happened to us, we could be happy?
Because horrific things do happen to people and they're horrified by them.
They can go crazy because of them.
Wouldn't it be great if that weren't the case?
Wouldn't it be great if we could deal with anything?
That we wouldn't have to live our lives in fear, protecting our bodies, constantly obsessing over them, worried about them.
Worried about wrinkles, worried about fat, worried about this and that.
Well, here we see how far we are and how far we have to go.
And we can see the need for work, that we have work to do, because we really have a long way to go.
It's not enough to say, oh, look at me.
I had back pain, and now I can deal with the back pain.
Can you deal with losing an eye?
You know how far away you are from the goal.
So, that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Keep practicing.