Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 127, which reads as follows.
na antalike na samuddha-majhe na pabhat-tanang-vimarang-pavisa
which means not up in the sky,
or in the middle of the ocean, not having entered into a cave, a cavern in a mountain, entered into the middle of a mountain, the center of a mountain.
It cannot be found such a place on this earth.
One cannot find a place on this earth, on the earth.
One might be free from evil karma, evil deeds.
There's nowhere.
Not up in the sky, not under the ocean.
not in the deepest, darkest cave.
There's nowhere on earth.
That's the quote.
So an interesting story, actually three stories that goes with this verse.
Seems there were three groups of monks.
And so we have three stories.
The Buddha was living in Jetavana.
A first group of monks set out to meet the Buddha.
And on their way, they entered a village, a certain village for alms.
And while they were sitting or after they'd eaten, or while they were waiting for food, someone who was cooking food in the morning
made their fire too hot and suddenly the flame burst up and lit the thatch roof of their hut and the thatch went flying up in a ball of flame or floating through the air being carried away by the wind and at that moment a crow was flying and so this tuft of thatch
caught the crow and immediately burst into flames.
It was on fire.
So the crow burnt to a crisp, fell to the ground dead right in front of the monks.
And they thought it was kind of remarkable because just one tuft of thatch flew up and caught the crow squarely as it was flying by.
And so they wondered to themselves, sort of monk talk, wonder what the karma of this bird was, that this would happen.
And they said, who would know besides the Buddha?
So when we get there, we should ask him.
And so they continued on their way.
That's the first group.
A second group of monks also on their way to see the Buddha I mean it seems like probably this was a thing where monks would come to the Buddha with these sorts of questions so I think we shouldn't be surprised that there were three groups of them.
The second group on their way to see the Buddha they took a boat
across the ocean somehow.
Not sure where they were.
Maybe they were in Burma or Burma's attached.
Maybe Thailand.
Maybe they were in Sri Lanka.
Who knows?
Probably not.
It's interesting to think of them being on a ship because there was not much record of monks outside of India.
But I'm really not
I'm not clear about that sort of thing, but it happened that in the middle of the ocean, their boat stopped, the wind stopped, and they couldn't sail anymore.
And this was a thing for sailors that if the wind stopped for a long period of time,
they would get superstitious and they would think somebody on board is their karma is not allowing us to continue.
And so they throw that person overboard.
If they could figure out what it was, and the way they did it was they found the scientific method, they draw lots, and whoever drew the shortest straw would get thrown overboard.
Seems reasonable, no?
So they did this.
And we thought, well, whoever gets the shortest straw gets thrown over.
That's just the way karma works, I guess.
Except, lo and behold, the captain's wife drew the lot.
Now, the captain's wife was loved by everyone.
She was young, she was pretty, she was kind, she was great.
Just an all-around, not the sort of person you want to throw overboard, to say the least.
Especially since she was the captain's wife, and so everyone agreed they couldn't throw her overboard.
So they said, well, we'll draw lots again.
again they drew lots and again for a second time the captain's wife drew the shortest straw and they still couldn't they said there's no way we can't do this and so a third time they drew straws and a third time the captain's wife drew the shortest straw so they went to the captain and they said
we, uh, you know, this is what happened three times.
It's gotta be her.
She's the one with the bad luck.
We have to throw her overboard.
And so they grabbed her and the captain said, well then, yes, I guess that's how it has to go.
We've scientifically shown that she's the one she's to blame for the wind.
And so
he said, throw her overboard.
And as they started to throw her overboard, she started screaming, reasonably.
I mean, she doesn't seem to be that confident in the scientific method that they'd used, but she certainly doesn't seem to have wanted to be thrown overboard.
So...
Interestingly, the captain has them take her jewels away, says, well, there's no need to.
When he heard this, he saw and he said, oh, there's no need for her jewels to go to waste.
So he took her jewels and had them wrap her up in a cloth and tie a rope around her neck.
so that she couldn't or wrap her up in a cloth so that she wouldn't scream and then tie a rope around her neck and tie it to a big heavy pot of sand so that they wouldn't see her so that he wouldn't have to see her because he was you know fond of her
And so they threw her overboard and as soon as she hit the ocean, sharks and turtles and fish and so on ate her, tore her to bits and she died.
Now the monks on board were watching this and of course didn't really have a say in it all.
But they were shocked as well, they couldn't believe
that this sort of thing could happen, that she could really be at the mercy of these people, because it was a bit of a coincidence that she drew the short straw three times.
That's quite, unless there were only like a few people on board, that was quite a coincidence.
And so they said, I wonder what karma she did to deserve such a horrible fate.
And likewise, they said, well, let's ask the Buddha and find out.
It's important to point out as we go along, because I'm sure the question coming up in people's minds is, well, what about the people who did that to her?
I mean, it's not karma, it's those people, but
And it has to be mentioned that karma isn't like one thing in the past, you blame things in your past life.
That's not true at all.
Those people who threw that woman into the ocean did a very, very bad thing.
There's no question about it.
That was an evil deed, and Buddhism doesn't condone that.
But how she got herself in that situation, you see, where
the likelihood of her being subject to that.
Because these people were not doing it out of hate for her.
They were doing it out of ignorance and superstition.
but they didn't just randomly pick someone.
So how did she get herself in that situation?
The theory is that there's more behind it, how our life comes to these points.
Anyway, that was the second one.
The third story,
there were seven monks who likewise set out to see the Buddha and on their way they came to a certain monastery and they asked to stay the night and the seven of them were invited to stay in a special cave in the side of the mountain that was designated for visiting monks and so they went there and they settled down and they fell asleep for the night
During the night, a huge boulder, it says the size of a pagoda, which would be very, very large, fell down the mountain and covered the entrance to the cave where they were staying, just out of the blue, blocking their exit and making it impossible for them to get out.
When the resident monks found out what happened, they said, we've got to move that rock.
There's monks trapped in there.
And so they gathered men, strong people from all around the countryside, and they worked tirelessly for seven days to remove this rock, but the rock wouldn't budge.
Until finally on the seventh day, after seven days, the rock moved as though it had never been stuck there.
The rock moved very easily.
I think it even says that it moved by itself away from the entrance.
Just suddenly became dislodged.
And so these seven monks had spent seven days without food, without water, were almost dead.
And yet when they came out, they were able to get water and food and survive.
But they said to themselves, I wonder what we did.
It seems a very strange sort of thing to happen.
I wonder if this is a cause of past karma.
And so likewise, they decided to ask the Buddha.
So these three groups of monks met up, and this is the story.
And then the Buddha tells three stories about their pasts.
the first, the past of the crow, they go to see the Buddha and the Buddha says the crow is suffering for past deeds and it seems like the story is kind of suggesting that it's not just one past deed but it's sort of a habit of bad deeds but he gives examples so he says a long time ago the crow was a farmer
And he had an ox, and he was trying to get this ox to do work for him.
But try as he might, he couldn't get the ox to, he couldn't tame the ox.
He'd get it to work, and then it would work for a little bit, and then it would go lie down.
And then he'd get it to move, and it wouldn't move.
This ox was just terribly, terribly stubborn.
And so he got increasingly more and more angry, until he finally got angry enough
that the ox just lay down, that he just covered it up in straw and lit it on fire.
And the Buddha said because of that evil deed, cruel evil deed, he was born in hell actually.
And after being born in hell, he was born back in the human realm, and was born back in the animal realm as a crow, and still suffering from it to this day.
In fact, it says he was seven times in succession, more reborn as a crow.
And then we have the story of the woman on the boat.
This woman in the past, she was a woman who lived in Banaras, Varanasi as it's known now.
And she had a dog.
She was a housewife, and so she did all these chores, but there was a dog in the house that would follow her around everywhere.
And for some reason, people would tease her because this dog was following her like a shadow and very, very much, very, very affectionate, actually like normal dogs are, but people were joking about it because I guess it wasn't a big thing for women to have dogs following them around.
In fact, it was a common thing for hunters to have dogs, as we learned in our previous story.
So these young men joked about it and said, oh, here comes the hunter with their dog.
We're going to have meat to eat tonight.
There'll be meat coming, you know, joking, just joking about her looking like a hunter having this big dog go along with her.
And this woman was, I guess, of a cruel bent.
And so...
getting angry and feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
She picked up a stick and beat the dog almost to death.
But dogs, being the way they are, have a funny resiliency to these sorts of things and so the dog was actually unmoved and was still very much in love with this woman.
It turns out, actually the commentary says that this dog used to be her husband.
And so that was recently her husband in one of her recent births.
And so even though it's impossible to find, they say, you can't find someone who hasn't been your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your mother, your father.
But recent births, there tends to still be some sort of affinity or
enmity in cases when there was enmity before.
And so she beat this dog and it still came back.
And so she was increasingly angry, irrationally angry at this dog.
And so lo and behold, when it came close, she picked up a rope and she made a loop and waited for the dog.
When the dog came close, she wrapped the loop around the dog and tied it to a pot full of sand and threw the pot of sand into this big pool and it rolled down into the pool and the dog was pulled and was dragged after it into the pool and it drowned.
And that was the karma that caused her to be thrown overboard.
as well as spend many years in hell.
That's story number two.
Story number three, he tells these you monks also have done bad things in the past.
And so at one time you were cowherds and you came upon this huge lizard
And I guess it was something that they would like to eat, people would like to eat.
And so they ran after it, trying to catch this big lizard.
But it ran into an anthill that had seven holes.
For some reason, seven is a big number.
I think it probably just means there were a bunch of holes.
And so they plugged up all these holes.
And then they, you know, thinking that they could catch it at one of the holes, but then they said, you know, we just don't have time for this.
We'll plug up all the holes and we'll come back tomorrow and we'll catch this lizard because there's now no way out of this big, I guess a termite mound or something, something with lizards.
I don't know, something that lizards like to stay in.
Big lizard though.
So we'll come back tomorrow and we'll catch it.
And so they went home, but then they forgot all about it.
And so for seven days they went about their business tending cows elsewhere, but then on the seventh day they came back and they were tending their cows and they saw the ant till again and they realized, oh I wonder what happened to the head lizard.
And so they opened up the holes and the lizard at this point starved and dehydrated, not afraid for its life at all.
basically at the end of its tether, had to come out.
And so came out and they said to themselves, they took pity on it.
They said, oh, let's not kill it.
This is this poor thing.
We tortured it terribly.
So they nursed it and they actually brought it back to life.
And he said, the Buddha said, see, because of that, you were able to escape because you came back for this lizard.
If not,
That would have been it for you.
I think these stories are interesting, whether you believe them or not, but they give some idea of the nature of karma according to Buddhism, and some of the ways, they're just examples.
It doesn't mean, they're not law, like this has to be like this, but apparently the way things sometimes turn out, like our past deeds influence, both in this life and the next, they influence the things that happen to us.
And then they said, but is it really that way that you can't escape your karma?
Isn't there somewhere you can go to escape it?
Couldn't you run away?
And the Buddha said, no, you couldn't run away.
There's no place on earth that you can go.
to run away from your karma.
There's another Jataka that talks about this.
There's a goat that this Brahmin, the goat talks to him and the goat says, you know, it's this crying laughing Jataka where he cries and then he laughs.
Or he laughs and then he cries.
And he's about to be killed and the goat starts laughing and then and he says, why are you laughing?
He said,
Because this is my last life.
I was a brah I'm now this is the last life that I have to be Born as a as a goat for 500 years.
I've been a Sacrificial goat this is it and then he starts crying and the guys the Brahm brahman says why are you crying and he said?
Because I'm thinking of you
Why I was a goat for 500 years, being sacrificed, having my head cut off, is because before that I was a Brahmin just like you who killed goats.
So I know this is where you are going to go.
And the Brahmin said, oh, then I'll protect you.
I won't let them kill you.
And he said, there's nothing you can do.
There's no way you can stop it.
And sure enough, the Brahmin tried to protect him and made sure nobody came near him.
But a rock fell actually on this goat.
There was some really strange coincidence.
He ended up dying.
Karma is like that.
You see potentially these sorts of things in the world.
Very strange things happen.
There was a woman once, the wife of a top Monsanto exec.
Not that that means anything, but it's interesting.
Walking down the road, I read this in the paper some years ago, walking down the road and was suddenly hit by a car.
and pulled under the car and dragged screaming for several blocks before she died.
Dragged under the car.
Turns out the woman who was driving the car was an old lady who could barely see above the dash and had no idea what she'd done and probably to this day has never been told what she did.
The story said they hadn't told her.
So, it wasn't a bad karma, she didn't have the intention to kill.
Probably some bad karma involved with driving when you shouldn't be driving, but that's a bit different.
But it's the kind of, sort of, I mean we have no idea why that happened.
Modern people would say it's just a coincidence, but
It's interesting to look and see.
I mean, if you think in terms of sort of cause and effect,
The problem I think is that people focus too much on physical cause and effect and they call the mind, there's this term epiphenomenon, that the mind is at best just a byproduct that is ineffectual, that has no consequence, that the mind can't affect the body, can't affect reality.
So mind is just this thing that happens sort of like
They're just a byproduct, a side product that is meaningless.
But if you think of the mind as being powerful, as being potent,
then it makes sense to think that such a powerful experience should have some cause.
Like physical things don't just happen coincidentally.
An explosion takes gunpowder.
A supernova takes a lot of energy.
And so the idea that these experiences of being dragged under a car should not just happen randomly.
I think there's something to that.
I think there's something that we're missing often when we say it's just random, it's just coincidence.
I think there's an argument
Even not from meditation or so on, that it would take some kind of structure, some kind of cause and effect.
But for meditative purposes, this is of great importance to us.
The idea that our intentions, our minds have consequences.
This is something that moves people to meditate.
It moves meditators not to do unwholesome deeds.
Meditation for this reason will change your life because you start to see how powerful and how poisonous the mind can be, how harmful the mind can be when misdirected, how dangerous it is.
You can see these things building.
You can see how poisonous.
You can imagine what it's like to do these things and you can remember the things that you've done and without any prompting, like anyone telling you it's wrong or it's bad, you just start to feel really bad about the things that you've done, bad things you've done.
It doesn't take someone to tell you that's bad karma or so on.
That happens as well.
People feel guilty because they're told that things are bad.
But you just can't abide by it because it's so powerful.
This is where you start to feel the power of these deeds.
That's karmic, and it's built up inside of you.
It's why our life flashes before our eyes.
Our life doesn't really flash before our eyes when we die.
The things that have had an impact on our mind, that's karma.
Those things flash before our eyes.
So this has importance in our practice and to remind us and to reinforce the things that we see during our practice, but also to encourage people to meditate, to learn about these things.
If you want to become a better person, look at your mind, learn about your mind.
These things occur throughout our lives.
People do evil things, evil things happen to people who don't seem to deserve them, who don't seem to ever have done anything to deserve them.
But through meditation, we see that there actually is this cause and effect relationship.
And it's quite reasonable to suggest that it continues into the future.
It's quite reasonable to think, whether you have evidence or proof of it or not, it's quite reasonable to think that it's going to have an effect on your next life.
It's going to have an effect on your choices of rebirth.
It's going to have an effect on how people react to you in the future.
That things don't go away.
The key to this verse is that they don't just go away.
You can't outrun it.
The only way to outrun it would be to become an arahant, enlightened being, before it's going to catch up with you.
And if you die as an arahant, then future karma doesn't have an opportunity to bear fruit.
Anyway, so some stories about karma, some ideas of karma.
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Wish you all good practice.