Good evening and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse 147, which reads as follows.
Which means, come and look, come and see,
this painted body, or painted image, this painted image, the body, that is a mass of sores, mass of festering sores, or wounds, or sufferings.
Samusitang.
Samusitang I think should actually mean bloated, but compounded is the word, the common term.
Maybe compounded is better.
Aturang.
Diseased.
Pahusangkapang.
Bahusankapa, which means many thoughts with many intentions or purposes.
It can be used for many purposes is maybe what the idea is here.
Yasanati luangti kiti.
Out of which there is nothing that stays permanent, nothing that stays stable.
a rather harsh denouncement of the body.
It's the story told of Sirima, the death of Sirima.
Sirima has quite a colorful story.
She was a courtesan, which I guess means a prostitute or maybe similar to a geisha.
So people would pay money to spend the night with her.
Or they'd hire her for whatever purpose.
I think that's where the bahusankapa comes from.
A beautiful body can be used for many purposes.
A healthy body, right?
So she was bought, the back story to this is she was bought by Uttara.
Uttara was a Sotapanna, I think.
She was a disciple of the Buddha and she really wanted to spend all of her time taking care of the Buddha and the monks and listening to the Buddha's teaching.
The problem was her husband was taking a lot of her time, requiring her to please him.
Because she was interested in the Dhamma, she wasn't really interested in sleeping with her or engaging in sensuality with her husband.
She hired this courtesan for her husband, beautiful Sirima.
And she was so beautiful that her husband didn't even complain.
And so she would go about, Uttara, the other one, the wife, would go about making all these preparations for the Buddha and spending all of her time making food for the monks and so on.
And her husband spent all of his time with this prostitute, this courtesan.
Until eventually the courtesan came to feel like she had some, you know, she started to feel some sort of ego in regards to her situation, like the husband preferred her to his wife.
And she started to cultivate this sense of jealousy towards the wife, thinking, you know, I'm the one who takes care of him and so on.
And so one day the husband was watching Uttara, I think her name was Uttara, watching her do all these, prepare all this food for the monks.
And he smiled and thought, he thought to himself, what a ridiculous woman.
She spends all her time when she could be enjoying life.
She works really hard to give food to these beggars.
And so he smiled, just smiled at how silly it was.
And Sirima saw him and thought he was smiling at his wife and said, I do all this for him and still he's attracted to her.
Well, I'll take her out of the picture.
went over into the kitchen where Uttara was boiling or heating up some butter on the stove and she picked up this cauldron of hot butter and threw it and poured this scalding hot butter onto Uttara.
Uttara was, of course, a practitioner of the Buddha's teaching, and she saw, she turned and saw this butter coming at her, and immediately she entered into a jhana of loving-kindness.
She thought to herself, she immediately recognized this violence against her, and thought to herself, wished her happiness and well-being for Sirima.
And as a result of the incredible power of her mind, they say the butter became completely cooled.
And it was as though a cool water was washing over her, or a cool butter, I guess.
And so she wasn't hurt at all.
And the servants who saw this happening, who were helping in the kitchen, immediately jumped on Siriman and started beating her.
But Uttara pulled them off and said to Sirima and picked Sirima off the floor and started tending to her wounds and asking her if she was okay.
And Sirima became completely converted and ashamed of what she had done and asked forgiveness.
Eventually, I think Uttara sent her off to ask forgiveness of the Buddha.
Eventually she became Buddhist.
She became a Sotapanna.
The story isn't actually about her.
It's actually about a monk.
So she became Buddhist and spent a lot of her time listening to the Buddhist teachings, practicing meditation, became a Sotapanna and would often provide food for the monks and listen to their teachings as well.
And so the word got out, and this one monk heard about Sirima.
And he went and asked these monks, what's the deal with this Sirima?
He'd heard how incredible she was.
And this monk said, oh, wow, the food, yes, the food she gives is wonderful.
She's very good, and she gives the best and the most highest quality of food.
But apart from that, she's also quite beautiful and pretty to look at.
It's funny to hear monks having this conversation, but that's what the text says.
And immediately he became attracted, and he thought he should go and see her.
And so he found his way to get into the queue to go and receive alms from this Siri Mai in her great alms house.
But the night before she got very sick, or the day before she got quite sick.
And so she took off all of her makeup and jewels and she lay down and she had the servants prepare the food.
And then as the monks were sitting to receive the food, she came out, they carried her out on a palanquin or whatever it is, those things that you carry, a stretcher I guess.
And she was able to, lying down, she was able to give food.
And this monk saw her and he thought to himself, she's this beautiful when she's sick, imagine how beautiful she would be when she's perfectly healthy.
And he became completely enamored and the text says this lust that
This lust that he accumulated during many millions of years arose within him.
He became indifferent, was unable to take food, and he went back to his kuti and shut the door and didn't listen to anyone, didn't go out, and just laid sick on his bed, sick with lust, sick with attraction to this woman.
Now as nature goes, as things go, nature took its course and Sirima passed away that day, I believe, unbeknownst to this monk.
And because she was such a great lay disciple, she was actually the sister of Jivaka, it looks like, the Buddha's physician.
And so the king sent word to the Buddha that Sirima had died and
The Buddha sent word back that he said, please tell the king not to bury Sirima.
Not to cremate, I guess.
They wouldn't bury, right?
Burn, yes, right.
Do not cremate her.
Instead, put Sirima's body out in the charnel ground and set up a guard so that the crows and the jackals, so that the animals don't eat her.
And just leave the body there.
And so the king had this done, and he had a guard set up.
And after two or three days, after four days, three days passed.
And on the fourth day, the body got all bloated, of course.
And from the nine openings of her body, there oozed forth maggots.
So they couldn't keep the flies away, and the maggots began to pour out of the nine openings of the body.
And then the king caused a proclamation.
The king understood what the Buddha was doing here.
He didn't know about this special case of this monk, but he understood what the Buddha was doing in general.
And so he called for everyone to come and see Srimad.
He said, everyone in the city besides
those who are busy working on some official business.
He called an order that everyone should come and see.
If they don't, except for the watchman, the police, everybody should go.
If not, they would be fined eight pieces of gold.
And then he sent the message to the Buddha that the monks should come and see Sirima as well.
And that's how the proclamation went out.
And it came to the monks and the monks started talking about how they were going to see Sirima.
And this monk heard and immediately thought to himself, I'll get to see Sirima.
I'll get to see this beautiful woman again.
And he just had to go and see her.
Or they even came and asked him, they said, will you go to see Sirima?
He said, of course I'll go.
And
They set out with the monks.
Of course, when they got there, the situation was not as he expected.
And the king and the Buddha came up to Sirima and saw her lying there and he said,
He said, King, who is this woman?
This is Sirima, Jivaka's sister.
Is this Sirima?
Yes, this is Sirima.
He said, well then, send a drum, a guy with a drum.
This is how they have those proclamations.
This is how they spread word in those times.
And make a proclamation that we will give Sirima to anyone for a thousand pieces of gold for one night.
Whoever wants her can have her for a thousand pieces of gold.
Not a man said hem or hum.
That's the English translation.
I don't know what the Pali is.
Nobody said anything.
Nobody even cleared their throat for fear of being considered interested in taking up the offer.
And he said, well, then ask for 500.
And then 500, nobody said anything.
250, 200, 100, 50, 25, 10, 5.
And they reduced it to a penny, a half penny, a quarter of a penny, an eighth of a penny.
And finally, the Buddha said, tell her they can have her for nothing.
And no one said anything.
The king said, no one will take her even as a gift.
And the teacher said, monks, do you see the value of a woman in the eyes of the multitude?
The value of the female body which is so well, so sexualized, right?
And so highly esteemed for its sexual attraction.
Such was her beauty who is now perished and gone.
subject to fading away, subject to loss.
Come and see the corruption, the disease, the affliction of the being, of the self, of the body.
And then he told this verse.
So for us, obviously we're not practicing Marananusati or Kayagatasati or the cemetery contemplations.
But it's still a good reminder to us of the idea of death.
It's a good example of
the misunderstanding that comes.
This monk, there's many things in here, there's the monk's lust and his desire, which interestingly it mentions, which is a fairly rare sort of thing to say, that it's something that he'd had for countless lifetimes.
But this is the truth, you know, a lot of our attachments, a lot of our habits are habitual not in this life, but over lifetimes, so they can be quite strong.
And so if we often wonder, where did this come from?
Why am I so attached or attracted to this or attracted to that?
In fact, it's just a matter of cultivation, and we've cultivated it for so long.
But the big thing here is this misunderstanding, this misconception about things, about why should the healthy body be any more attractive than the bloated body?
It's only when we see the body bloated.
There's nothing actually different from the bloated body with maggots coming out of it, right?
Why isn't that beautiful?
Why aren't we attracted to the bloated body with maggots coming out of nine holes?
Why aren't we attracted to the smell of a bloated body?
I remember once in Thailand, I was sitting in my kuti and there was this terrible smell, just a smell like nothing you'd ever smelled before.
And then I was meditating through it and first looked around the room trying to find what died.
And then suddenly maggots started falling through the cracks in the ceiling.
I guess some animal, maybe a big rat or something, I don't know, died in the ceiling.
And the maggots, all I know of it was that maggots started falling through the ceiling.
If you've never been around a dead body, it doesn't have the most attractive smell, but it's simply our conditioning.
You could argue that there's something, the body is conditioned to react violently to certain smells, but certainly not certain sights.
Maybe in the brain somehow, but
We have senses of symmetry and so on, and when the body is bloated, it loses that.
But that's very much conditioning, whether it's physical or mental.
It all comes from the mind and our buildup of this life.
And so it takes this shock, it took this shock for this monk to snap him out of that.
which is why watching the body, even healthy, watching the body, watching when you walk, watching the stomach, you start to see, you start to lose this attraction, thinking originally that you were so handsome or so beautiful, and as you watch it, you start to see that the body is, you know, it's sagging and it's drooping and it's sweating and it's bleeding and it's infected and it's pouring out, defiled, and it's pouring out
garbage constantly.
I mean, of all things that we can be attached to, there are no diamonds and jewels inside.
There's no sugar and spice.
There's nothing inside that's attractive or should be attractive in any way, but
The greatest point for us as meditators is to learn to become objective, not to be repulsed by the body.
But through seeing how repulsed we get, it's kind of hypocritical.
There's no reason for us to be attracted to the body in one form.
And this is a good example of how our misconceptions arise, not just about the body.
We do the same with feelings.
When we have happy feelings, why are we attracted or attached to those?
Why do painful feelings create such a violent aversion in us?
So it's a bold claim.
It's not that we should try to deny our attractions or attachments.
We shouldn't deny the lust and the desire.
We should just come to see how wrong it is, how silly it is.
The bold claim means you don't have to prejudge.
You don't have to have any preconceptions.
You just have to look and see.
And as you look at the body watching your own body, you start to see that there's nothing attractive or repulsive inherently about anything.
It's us who become attracted or repulsed through conditioning, often through memories of pleasure or pain.
So for example, if you eat some sort of food and it's poisoned and you get food poisoning,
Often eating that food or even looking at it will cause you great nausea or aversion.
I remember one time getting very, very, very drunk on peach schnapps.
And after that, the idea of peaches, the smell of peaches was just nauseating to me.
Sort of details of my past.
But it's conditioning.
And so we don't deny this.
We don't try and deny our attractions and aversions.
We try to learn about them.
And that's the power of this, the wonder of it.
This is perfectly natural, objective.
There's nothing subjective or particular about the Buddha's teaching.
It takes reality and it comes to see it as it is, boldly claiming that when you look at reality, this is what you'll see.
It's a bold claim because it's fully open to investigation.
If you investigate and find out that the Buddha's teaching was all wrong, well, that would be that.
That is something you can do.
There is no need for belief.
There is no need to remain in a state of faith towards the Buddha's teaching.
Once you look and see reality, you will have proof and evidence and perfect confidence in the Buddha's teaching based on your own understanding.
So a little food for thought, especially about the body to make us all see how ridiculous we are with our attachments.
Reminding us, this monk reminding us of ourselves.
So there you go.
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in.