Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we will continue on with verse number 28, which reads as follows.
PAMADHANG APAMADHENA YADANU DATTI PANDITO PANYA PASADA MARUHA ASOKO SOKINING PAJANG
pabhata-theva-bhumma-theya dhiro bhale avikati Which means, yadanudati pandito, when a wise person discards negligence in favor of heedfulness, panya-pasa-damaruhya, having ascended the tower of wisdom,
Asoko Sokining Pajang looks upon the sorrowing people or the suffering people as one who doesn't suffer anymore.
It's like a person who has climbed a mountain and is looking at the people on the ground below.
So the wise person looks upon foolish people.
Like a person on top of a mountain looking down at the people below, so the wise person sees foolish people.
It sounds actually like what it's saying is that the wise person looks down upon foolish people.
But we should understand the context here.
The story is of, this verse is told in regards to the venerable Maha Kasapa.
Maha Kasapa lived actually up on top of a mountain.
He declined to live in the city even when he got old.
He would walk all the way up this mountain every day to live in the forest.
And when we were in India, we actually walked up these stairs, and it's quite a ways.
Now they have stairs there, but I suppose in the time of Mahakasava, it would have just been, maybe there were rock stairs or something.
But anyway, quite a walk.
It's amazing that he was able to do it every day and go on alms round every day.
But this he did, and on top of that he had great magical power, or great mental powers.
And so he was able to, as with many of the yogis in that time, and of course many of the Buddhist disciples, he was able to see things that ordinary people can't see because of the clarity and the strength of his mind.
And so one morning he spent this morning, after he went on alms round and came back and had eaten his daily meal, he spent the morning looking out at the beings in the world, beings who were born in the earth, on the earth, in the water, in the air, beings who lived in all sorts of births or all sorts of realms.
And
He was looking at them, watching them chase after things and chase after their desires and ambitions and becoming this and becoming that and setting up goals and purposes and societies and governments and ideas, looking at the people.
And it was really actually the case where he was sitting up in the mountain and much of this was going on down below him.
And so this verse was told by the Buddha who came to see him and
and commented on this state of affairs where we had this person who was free from suffering and who was free from negligence and who was alert and aware and seeing reality clearly in a way that ordinary people can't see and so he was in a peaceful and a straight or a pure state of mind
as opposed to all of these beings down below who were running around chasing after so many things being born and die born and die again and again coming and going and wishing and wanting and hoping and dreaming and building up their lives saying this is life this is happiness and trying to get the things that they want and then dying again coming back and trying it all again and suffering and the anguish and the work that they went through
and so it's this comparison and it's an expression by the Buddha and sort of a teaching in a sense of the difference between these two how a person living in the world is like these creatures running around chasing after things living in the world like people live in cities down on the level ground
And then you have this one person up on the mountain, in peace and quiet and in a tranquil environment like this, looking down at them and saying, wow, like a game or like a movie.
Looking down and just seeing like ants crawling along.
So the point isn't that a wise person
looks down upon these people and says, oh, I'm much better than them or something.
But it's this state of being withdrawn or being in such a better situation, really.
Because objectively it is a better situation.
It's not that the person in the situation will disdain these people or look at them, oh, those fools kind of thing.
They might be amazed, or not amazed, but they find it quite interesting, I suppose, to watch.
As Maha Kasaba just spent the morning watching this go on, watching these people, watching people and animals chase and kill each other, of course.
Well, in any realm of existence we see this.
We see the humans building up societies and rules and having wars and politics and treaties and diplomacy and families and societies and religions, all of these things.
And then you have, of course, the animals.
And if you look at the animal realm, it gets even worse, where you have life as a struggle, life as a fight.
Eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.
And then you have in the angel realms, you have them, they're watching out over the world, some of them guarding the earth and guarding humans, some of them living in great luxury and enjoying their time in heaven and in these paradise realms and so on.
And so looking at all of this, it's this state of being removed from it all.
Because you're no longer a part of it.
A person who has given it all up sees it as one who sees people down below up on the mountain.
If you've ever been up in a tower, right?
It says, Panya Pasada.
Then it's...
If you've ever been up in a tower, you look down and you see all the beings and it looks quite peaceful, actually.
Suddenly the world, with all this craziness and all of the stress and anxiety, looks quite peaceful.
You see little dots moving.
And this is, the Buddha said, this is how it is for a person who has become free from suffering.
Because actually you can be among this.
A person who has become free from suffering could walk, as Maha Kassapa would walk through the village on alms,
but he wouldn't get involved with anything.
Like in another verse the Buddha says, like a bee that takes the pollen and leaves the flower unharmed, without any connection with the flower, but just takes the pollen and leaves.
Same as with a person who is mindful, goes through the village.
As they go through the village, they don't cling to anything, they aren't attached to anything.
delighted by anything and so they come in and even there may be craziness so when we go on alms round sometimes people are fighting sometimes there's yelling sometimes there's parties sometimes there's funerals sometimes there's traffic and accidents and so on and all of the stresses of the world by people who have goals and ambitions and who want to be rich and want to be powerful and want to have stability in their family and want to be healthy and
seeing all of this going on but at the same time even walking through it being as though you're way up on a mountain looking down on it it's not that you it's not looking down in the English sense of thinking badly of those people but it's as though you were actually up on the mountain looking at it from above
like little specks as you walk through the village everything is just craziness but it's very peaceful to you this is the tower of wisdom it's not actually a tower but it's the
The mind is so far removed from all of that and has no thoughts of desire for this or that.
So this is what this verse means.
How it relates to our practice, I think it really points out the contrast between the path that we're following to try to become free from suffering and the path that
most of the world, most of the universe follows.
If you think of the goals and really the framework in which most of the universe works, the actual framework is quite different.
And so this is how the Buddha explained this teaching of paticcasamuppada, the dependent origination, how
When a person has these beliefs and these ideas that there is some purpose, so people who believe in God and that God has a purpose for them or so on, or that society is the purpose and people want to build up society and believe they have a duty in society to build up and to be politically active and protest and so on and demonstrate and express their opinions and get involved and create and build and organize,
that this is what leads to, for one, it leads them to do things.
Sometimes they will do good things, sometimes they will do bad things.
When they are angry at people, they will hurt others, and there's wars and conflicts, and even people who are
into good things can get very angry and passionate about it, and as a result can hurt other people and create conflict.
And when there is greed or the desire that comes from commercialism and materialism, wanting this and wanting that, seeing these new electronic devices and wanting them, seeing beautiful people dressed
attractively and seeing movies and having music, all these music players where you can always be listening to something intoxicating, something attractive.
and then having good food and all of these things.
The doing of all, the creating of all this builds up a huge system in order to fulfill the requirements.
The need for food, the need for good food, the need for special food, the need for
good sound, the need for beautiful sights, when you want to be able to see things, when you want to obtain a family or a husband, a wife, children, when you want to be rich, the things you have to do to get rich, this is all creating and going on.
And so the clinging, the ambition in order to gain all of this,
This is the teaching on paticcasamuppada that goes from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next, where the desires, they lead to craving, the craving leads to addiction or attachment, and attachment leads us to build, to create.
This is what we see going on when you stand up on the mountain.
This is what you see going on in the city down below.
You see constantly building.
and rushing around and business, all busyness.
You see the markets, you see the cars rushing around and you see so much activity.
When you go up on a mountain and you look down on it, you can see how crazy actually it all is and how much stress.
If you look at it as a whole actually, if you think about it in a Buddhist sense, if you were up on a real mountain, looking down, it would actually give you some intellectual insight, not meditative insight, but it would allow you to say, wow, this really is the case, that we really are so much stress and so much activity.
And what we come to see in the meditation is how this in the end just leads to suffering.
It leads to dissatisfaction.
It leads us to try and to attain and to not be satisfied and to want more.
And as with what Maha Kasaba saw, it leads to old age sickness and death and the end of it all.
So anything that you build up, anything that you create, in the end you have to let go of.
You have to be
deprived of and you have to leave behind and so when someone can see this and these special powers that no one wants to hear about because it's like we don't have them and so we therefore think that they probably don't exist and there's no proof and so on like that but when you have these magical powers not magical when you have this clear vision that allows you to penetrate into the very fabric of reality
you can see the beings being born and dying and so you see oh look at them building building building and then dying and then born again and trying the same thing all over again now for most of us this is impossible right so as I said people have a problem with this because they don't believe they think this is silly why talk about this and basically how can we believe in these sorts of things
So it might be good to address that as well here.
If we talk about understanding, say, paticca samupada, it talks about getting old, sick and dying and being born again, no?
And so people say, well, how can you... You're just accepting this on blind faith.
How can you accept this teaching when you yourself haven't experienced that?
If you practice meditation, maybe you'll never gain these magical powers.
But you see, what you gain in meditation is much more important.
What you gain in meditation is the moment-to-moment understanding of how this works.
You see how from moment-to-moment
we cling and it leads us to create when something good comes up we hold on to it and we want to gain it and so we create more you do this every moment not just talking about in your life how you have plans and ambitions and goals and hopes and dreams and how you get caught up in family life and in debt and so many different things and conflict with others it actually occurs moment to moment every time you
you get angry or you attach to something, you change who you are.
You become more coarse and more stressed, more
in a more active state and so more creative really so creating this creating that causing trouble for yourself making plans and ambitions and wanting more and getting in debt and so on and so on and this is really why I think
There's really no problem with even with understanding, with talking about this idea of getting old, sick and dying, being born again and of people who can actually see this and of rebirth and so on.
Because in the meditation practice you can see reality working from moment to moment and you can see how it leads in this direction, how it leads to creation.
and then how the creation leads to wanting more and eventually how it all collapses.
And it collapses on a moment to moment basis.
The thing that Maha Kasipa saw was on a grand scale.
He was able to extend this out and to see how it was working all around him from moment to moment and to see how beings were giving rise to these mind states and going on and having their dreams destroyed.
you don't need to understand you don't need to have a realization of a past life or of a future life or so on and you don't need to have these powers yourself to understand how it works because in practicing meditation you're actually playing with them
observing, interacting with the very fabric of reality.
And so you can see how this works.
You can see how with a strong mind you can penetrate into it.
And you can see things far away and see things in the past as people remember past lives.
You can see other people far away and so on.
But the other thing to say is that the magical powers isn't really the point of the verse here.
And it's not the point of any of the Dhammapada, any of the verses at all.
The verses aren't about the magical powers.
These background stories are just providing some context.
And so whether or not you believe in these powers that Maha Kasupa had,
it has no bearing on the actual teaching itself which is that through seeing this whether it's in a meditative sense or whether it goes further than that and you're able to see all beings arising and ceasing and coming and going as the Buddha was able to do or even somewhere in between where Maha Kasab was able to see some beings arising and ceasing even though he's not a Buddha
is that it changes your ambition, it changes your drive, it changes your goal and your path in life.
And it turns you around in the opposite direction.
And this is where the contrast comes in.
That most people are, through their ambitions and their goals, are creating more and more and more and building up their stress and suffering and going on and on and again and again.
chasing after and building up and thinking that they've finally found true peace only to have it taken away from them through calamity or disaster or finally through old age sickness and death and then building it up again and again having to learn the same lessons again and again and again and if not learning them then falling into disaster and suffering
as opposed to going the other way, where when a person sees this, and when a person sees what this is leading to, how it's not leading to peace and happiness and freedom from suffering, how they start deconstructing, and they give up their desires, they give up their attachments, they give up their aversions.
And they simply see everything clearly as it is.
They come to straighten their minds so that they're able to see the experience, whether it be a positive experience or a negative experience, to see it clearly.
So to have a powerful mind that is so sharp that it's able to see just the bare reality and to cut to the very core of experience.
So then they don't give rise to desire or addiction and they don't have ambitions and they don't want to become something.
And so they don't chase after and they don't create.
And because they don't create, they don't have all of this burden to carry around and all of this suffering.
And they aren't in amongst the suffering and the stress.
So when an ordinary person goes into the city, a person who has never practiced meditation, is not interested in mental development and who is really keen on materialism, when they go into the city, they go crazy.
They see beautiful things and they chase after them and they want this and want that, go out to the restaurants and get food and maybe alcohol and dancing and buying things here and there and really get caught up in it.
But when a wise person, as I was saying, goes even into the big city, they go in looking at it like a person up on a mountain, because they're actually standing on the mountain of wisdom.
So for our practice we understand these are the two paths.
The path towards accumulation and the path away from accumulating.
The path towards becoming busier and busier and getting involved in creating and taking the reality that we have and making something out of it as opposed to letting it go and letting it be and not creating and simply seeing it for what it is.
People sometimes ask why, if they've never practiced meditation, why do we just do walking back and forth?
What is the point of it?
Why do you just do sitting there?
Why are you wasting your time?
They don't understand what is the purpose of it.
Because in their mind, everything has to have a purpose.
You do something in order to get something in the future.
It has to create something.
What you do has to bring some result.
So they see you're walking back and forth and there's no result.
And well,
That's the point.
The point is that by walking back and forth, I'm clearing out the results.
I'm doing something that is not bringing results.
And it's not just walking back and forth, of course.
Because the truth is when an ordinary person walks back and forth, they do create results.
walking back and forth they're thinking about oh tomorrow I've got to do this and oh wouldn't it be great if I did that and so on and so even just walking back and forth they're still creating plans and ambitions and after they finish they'll go off and enact those plans but the wise person or the path that we're trying to follow here is to go in the opposite direction that the more we walk
the closer we come to just walking.
So that when the foot moves, we know the foot is moving.
When a thought arises, we know that the thought arises.
And all of our ambitions and our attachments are washed away, are given up.
As we see the stress and we see the suffering.
The idea is to be able to see them clearly.
and see them for what they are, see them that these are pointless and meaningless, that have no benefit and no purpose for us, and to be able to let go of them and see them for what they are.
So this is really the core of what we're practicing.
We're practicing to rise above all of the reality that we find around us, because really it's all
It's all contrived.
All of the beauty that we see, all of the wonder that we see, it's all just formations.
It's all artificial.
All of what we call natural is really just century after century.
As time goes on, it's just been built up.
And it's been built up based on our desires and our attractions.
We've built this.
We've created this state, this body that we've created.
we've created it out of a desire out of an attachment out of partiality and it's all just artificial it's this the result of the craziness that we've fallen into and so by following after it and developing it
we build up more and more stress and more and more suffering.
What we're doing here is to let go of it, to give it up and to even come out of this body so that we don't need any particular contrivance or any construct to bring us peace and happiness.
Even being a human, even the state of humanity, we come out of that.
And in the end, you can't say that an enlightened person is a human or a god or an angel or...
or anything because they've come out of it and they have no attachment they have no desire or no ambitions in regard to any of that so they stand above the world like a person who stands on a mountain looks down at the world below so that's the meaning and the significance of this verse and that is another teaching on the Dhammapada thank you all for tuning in and see you next time