Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse 181, which is as follows.
Ye janapasutadheera, nekamupasamerata, devapitesampihayanti sambuddhanam satimatam.
Which means those who cultivate meditation, who are wise, delighting in renunciation, and delighting in the peace of renunciation,
Even the angels, even celestial beings, divine beings are envious of them.
The self-awakened ones who are mindful.
So this verse was taught in regards to a very famous story in Buddhist circles.
There's even a day of the year where Buddhists will celebrate the event that inspired this verse.
It's called Devo Rohana.
It's on the day of the end of the rains retreat, which is coming up.
So we're going into the rains.
So four months prior to the full moon of Asalha.
So this month is Asalha.
The rains retreat will be starting soon on the 16th of August.
Four months before that, there was a, is where our story starts.
It's a long story.
I'll condense it.
The story is not the most important, but there are some interesting aspects to it.
You can hear me fine?
Okay.
So the story starts with a piece of red sandalwood.
As we know in India, sandalwood is very rare and that's very expensive.
And this man found a piece of red sandalwood in the jungle or in a river actually.
And he thought to himself, big piece of sandalwood, what am I going to do with it?
And he was a fairly religious person and so as a result he decided what he would do with this rare and expensive piece of wood is he would create an alms bowl.
And see it wasn't just a Buddhist tradition.
This was the religious tradition in India and one that continues in Buddhist countries even today, even continues in India to some extent.
where religious people would give up all wealth and luxury and survive just on food.
So their main possession was the bull because their main possession or material goods that they would acquire was just food.
And so they would rely upon people who wanted to support them to not give them money, to not give them wealth or possessions, but to give them food to keep them alive.
So with this in mind, he thought, I will
give this as a this wasn't a buddhist person i don't think but he said i'll give this as a as a present but i want to give it to a holy person who is worthy they should be an arahant means one translation is it just means one who is worthy
That's probably a good translation.
It means a worthy one, one who has become accomplished, who has become enlightened.
And so of course that's construed differently in different traditions, but that was the basic meaning.
One who has come to some ultimate realization of freedom from suffering, we would say in Buddhism, but wisdom, people might say, we would say as well.
And he thinks, how am I going to do this?
So he takes the bowl, makes a sandalwood, red sandalwood bowl, alms bowl, and he puts it up, sets up this bamboo rigging of something, way, very high, tall bamboo, and puts the bowl on top of the bamboo.
And he spreads the word around, whoever can fly up and take that bull is worthy of it and is an arahant.
This will be the arahant.
And the story goes that, of course, most of the religious people were not very spiritually advanced, so they didn't have magical powers to help them levitate up.
And so they tried to convince this guy, oh, we're worthy.
That's not a part of our teaching.
We can't fly up there, but we're worthy.
Give it to us.
Come on, you respect us.
And the leader of one sect of naked ascetics came up to the man and heard about this and thought, I want that bull.
And so he said to his students, he said, here's what we're going to do.
I will go to the place where this bowl is and I will lift one arm and one leg.
I will say, I will fly up there and I lift one arm and one leg and all of you grab me and stop me and say, no, teacher, don't do it just for the sake of a bowl.
Don't prostitute yourself in this way.
And then I'll say, I would, but my students won't let me.
So that's what they did.
They go and he lifts one arm and they grab him.
And he says to the man, I would.
I would go up and get the bowl, but my students won't let me.
And the man shakes his head and, no.
No, if you want it, go up and get it.
And for many days, no one came forward.
until word sort of got around and this man got said in his heart, there are no enlightened, there are no arahants in the world.
It's worth noting of course that from a Buddhist perspective, having magical powers is not equivalent to being enlightened.
Non-enlightened beings
can apparently levitate.
And enlightened beings exist that cannot levitate.
So they're mutually exclusive.
However, many of the Buddha's disciples had both.
They had these magical sort of supernatural powers and also were enlightened.
Now, another warning about this story is that it's quite fantastical.
So as I've said with many of these Dhammapada videos, it's not important that you believe all the facts.
And I'll try and explain why.
You should see that it's not the most important point.
So we go along with it, even if you are uncomfortable with the idea that someone might physically levitate.
It doesn't pertain to the importance of the story.
So the two Buddhist monks, Moggallana and Pindola Bharadwaja, they heard this.
And they thought to themselves, we can't allow these people to all think that there are no spiritually accomplished beings.
And so Moggallana says to Pindola, you should go get that bowl.
And Bindola says, what?
You're Maha Moggallana.
You are the Buddha's chief disciple in regards to spiritual powers.
I don't remember why Moggallana doesn't do it.
But in the end he says, he convinces Bindola Bharadwaja to do it.
So Bindola
does some amazing feat and goes up and grabs the bowl and takes it down.
And then everyone wants to see him do it so he does it again and he does it again.
There's a little part in there that hints at what comes next because the Buddha hears about it.
He hears about what happened and how excited everyone is to see this and he orders
orders.
Buddha didn't order ordinary people around, but he did order the monks around sometimes.
Tell them, don't do this, do this.
He said, destroy the bowl and grind it up into paste and use it for sandalwood paste, whatever they use sandalwood paste for.
And Pandola did.
Immediately heard that the Buddha told him to do this, broke the bowl up, ground it into dust and turned it into sandalwood paste, making it much less valuable, getting rid of the object entirely.
And the Buddha laid down a rule.
He said,
From now on, anyone who, any one of my students, any monk who displays psychic power, some spiritual potency, even just in terms of exhibiting
the jhanas, I suppose, I suppose not, exhibiting mental power, like this sort of thing, levitating, reading people's minds, that sort of thing, is breaking a rule.
It's not to be done.
This is like prostitution.
This isn't what the goal of the... This isn't what Buddhism is for.
This isn't what my teaching is for.
And so the other sects, these other
religious groups who are often portrayed in a not very flattering light were already quite upset because their trick hadn't worked and they were kind of put out that the Buddha would or the Buddha's disciples would display these powers when they had their whole argument had rested on not displaying them even though they didn't have them they pretended that they did
Well, we can't use them because it's not really good to do that.
And so now they criticized the Buddha's disciples for doing that, for showing off.
And now the Buddha said and stated a rule that they should not.
And now they thought, well, now we're safe because now the Buddha's disciples won't do it.
Now nobody will do it.
So we can just all claim magical powers.
And so this is what they did.
They said,
we are completely up for displaying magical powers if Gotama, the recluse Gotama, which is the Buddha's name, if he displays psychic power, we will too.
Which they figured was quite a safe bet because the Buddha had already instated this rule not to.
And so they came to the Buddha and said to the Buddha, oh, these people, they will display a psychic power when you do.
What did the Buddha say?
The Buddha said, okay.
He said, I will display a psychic power.
I will display some miracle or some psychic potency, something miraculous, something magnificent.
And they said, what?
I thought you laid down a rule not to.
This was the king, actually.
King Pasenadi, I think.
And he said to the king, he said,
Well, he basically told the king, the laws don't apply to you in your country as the king.
And the same, I am the king of the Dhamma, the king of religion, and it doesn't apply.
And I mean, that may sound a bit like a cop-out, but there is an important point there, that the rules are for the purpose of supporting the Sangha and supporting the practice and the
development and growth of the students.
There's no real benefit that the Buddha has in keeping that rule.
It's quite on a different level.
And so he says, four months from now, and this is where we get this four month time, four months from now on the full moon of Asalaha, which is coming up quite soon for us,
So we'll have an anniversary of this special day.
And the Buddha said, I will perform a feat.
And he said, in Rajagaha, no, no, no, in Savati.
So this would not be King Pasenadi, because Pasenadi was the king in Savati.
Anyway, details.
And I think he was in Rajgaha or something anyway.
So he walked all this way in four months.
And they say he did this because he wanted to give people time to get together.
He was going to display this fireworks, this magical feet.
Anyway, so he traveled to Savatthi or else he was in Savatthi, I don't know.
But he said, I will on the full moon of Asalaha, I will perform this magical feat underneath a mango tree, outside the gate of Savatthi.
And so all these other religious people, they heard this and they went around buying up all the mango trees and cutting them down.
And they cut down all the mango trees within a mile.
And they thought to themselves, now, he's given this prediction, now it can't possibly come true.
So, okay, these are the details.
This gardener to the king found a mango in the forest, very big and ripe and delicious mango.
And he thought, wow, give this to the king.
And so he brought it back to the city.
He was heading off to the royal palace and there he saw the Buddha sitting in this place where he'd said he was going to perform this magical feat.
And this man said, wow, if I give this mango to the king, the king will reward me with riches.
But if I give it to the Buddha,
That would be real merit.
And I wouldn't get riches in this life, but it would feed me for many lifetimes to come.
A greater benefit to my spiritual life.
And so he gave the mango to the Buddha.
Buddha ate the mango, Ananda crushed it up and made some kind of, what do you call, sorbet or whatever, some kind of crushed mango, whatever it is, whatever you call crushed mango.
He ate it, put it in his bowl and ate it, and then said to the farmer, the gardener, plant that mango seed right there.
and he planted it, and immediately it grew into a very tall mango tree.
So believe it or not, this is the story.
It's actually quite a bit more fanciful than this, and definitely, regardless of whether you believe what I'm saying or not, it was much more fanciful, and I think quite a bit embellished.
And then he proceeded to, at the foot of this mango tree, perform all sorts of miracles and the big one is this thing that, this is what the stories say, the Buddha was able to enter into
You see, there's states of psychic potency that one can enter into based on elements.
So the fire element, the water element, the earth element, the air element.
But the Buddha could enter into very quickly the fire and the water element.
And as a result, he was able to exhibit flames and water almost at the same time.
It seemed like at the same time.
This is what they say.
Again, I'm sorry, this story is quite far afield, but we'll get to what's important about it.
It's quite far afield from what we're doing here.
And I think what you see in this sort of story is the greatness, trying to exhibit the greatness of the Buddha and open our minds, I guess, in a way to greater things.
Anyway, it's just a story.
Then the Buddha did something interesting, and this is where we get into where this verse comes from.
It's a whole other part of the story.
So that's the story of how the Buddha came to exhibit psychic power, but then
I think because once he's done that, once he's made this great show of himself, to stick around would be crass.
It would be going against the spirit of what he had taught, which was don't prostitute yourself for gain, showing off your spiritual potency.
And so he flew off to heaven.
And the story goes that he spent the three months, because that was the beginning of the rains, he spent the three months of the rainy season in a heavenly realm, teaching the Abhidhamma.
So this is where they say the Buddha taught the Abhidhamma Pitika.
He taught it to the angels in heaven, first of all because his mother had died and was reborn in heaven and he wanted to give something to her.
But also because human beings can't sit long enough to really listen to the deep Dhamma of the Buddha.
So even sitting here listening to me is challenging.
It can be painful and you get restless and so on.
Hard to be mindful, hard to stay present and stay focused.
But to listen to the Abhidhamma apparently you have to sit still for three months.
And so the Buddha
through various means was able to teach continuously for three months and then after three months he came down from heaven and that's what this verse is based on that's what that special holiday festival is the monks there's some places where they have monasteries up on the hill and long staircases that are meant to represent
symbolize this coming down from heaven with the Abhidhamma to teach.
And as the Buddha came down, all the angels surrounded him and one of them holding a parasol, another one holding a fan and kind of just acting as attendants and really respecting and revering the Buddha, all of the powerful angels and celestial beings.
And then Sariputta remarks to the Buddha, he says,
It's amazing.
Gods and humans are both adore you and hold you dear and see your greatness.
All of these celestial beings, it's quite incredible that they should... He didn't say it actually.
He just stated the fact that these beings all revere you.
And the Buddha said, yes.
And he focused it, you know, all this stuff that was going on with magic and angels.
And he said, what's important?
He taught what was important.
And that is this verse.
He said, even the angel, even celestial beings, even the divine beings, hold dear those who are mindful, really, is what this verse is saying.
So that's the story behind it.
What does it mean for us?
Just why this story might be helpful and useful, besides giving us a reverence for the Buddha, which is always good.
Even if you don't believe these stories or don't believe all this stuff happened,
It's nice to think of the Buddha in a good way, but I think more practically, one thing about Buddhist stories, and you'll see it in this story, that sets it apart from just a story, some other stories, is the goodness involved.
There's always an attempt
maybe not an attempt, but there's a theme of goodness involved.
These monks were not displaying their magical powers for the purpose of gain.
They were doing it out of a sense of reverence for the buddhasasana, hearing that people were believing that there were no more arahants in the world, and they thought, well, that can't do.
We have to stop people from thinking that and have them be aware that enlightenment and freedom from defilement and freedom from suffering is possible.
And so that's why they showed off their magical powers.
And then the Buddha immediately shut them down and said, don't do this.
The goodness involved with not being greedy, not being manipulative.
It gives us a narrative idea of how to behave as monks and as lay people, as meditators.
to not be caught up in magical powers or caught up in gain, caught up in manipulating each other and greed and so on.
And we have the Buddha's focus on teaching, his leaving behind.
Immediately after he puts on this big show, he just runs away.
Everyone's wondering, where did the Buddha go after that display of fireworks?
He left.
no trace, didn't come down to meet anyone.
He came down to see Sariputta to teach him the Abhidhamma, but he stayed in heaven, away from people, as though he didn't want to create this association that people should be obsessed with this sort of a display.
And what did he do?
He taught.
And this focus on the teachings.
I mean, there's qualities of this story that make it a good story.
Maybe a good bedtime story you can tell the kids.
I don't know.
A good story to hear and a good story to think about.
And it's a very important story culturally for Buddhists who revere the Buddha.
And many people who do believe these sorts of things happen and maybe have seen or experienced these things themselves, so they say.
But the verse, the verse I think gives us the real lesson.
And it's not a very complicated lesson.
But there's two things I think involved here.
The first is this idea of reverence.
And so the important point that's being made here is that there are many paths in the world.
There's the path to becoming rich, famous, powerful, and even a path to becoming divine, becoming a god, a Brahma, or a deva, an angel, a celestial being, something greater.
Many things you can do to
improve your situation in samsara.
But at this point that all of those paths, whatever ambition you might have, whatever goal you might have, is inferior to goodness, is inferior to enlightenment and wisdom and freedom from suffering.
It's inferior to the state of Buddhahood.
And so the Buddha is pointing this out, the Sambuddhanam.
These people are envious.
These angels are envious.
And the commentary explains it's not just that the Buddhas are dear to them, it's that they all wish that they could be Buddhas.
They realize, because until that time the Buddha came, angels and gods were like
We are the bomb.
We are the, we are it.
And feeling proud and happy and saying, we made it.
This is the pinnacle of existence.
And then the Buddha comes along and says,
No, there's something greater.
Because the word angel doesn't really work for celestial beings because they're not entirely angelic.
They tend to be better than ordinary people.
They've got pure minds.
That's how they got there.
But they can be manipulative and upset.
They can suffer and they can hurt each other.
Sometimes get angry and if they get angry then they die and come back as human beings again.
but none of them are necessarily enlightened.
The other part of the verse is describing what it means to be enlightened and what is important.
You'll notice that in the verse there's nothing about magical powers and well it's just a verse but this is
sort of exemplary of the Buddha's teaching, that magical powers are in there.
There is this talk, there is a claim of the ability to read people's minds, fly through the air, go to heaven, go to hell, see far away, hear far away.
And apparently shoot fire and water out of your body and that sort of thing.
Strange things.
We don't see happen, so I can't... Most of them... I once had an experience that was very much like someone reading my emotions.
It was really disturbing, actually.
Many years ago I had an emotion and someone right next to me just commented on it.
I think that one is possible, being able to read people's minds and feel their emotions.
You mentioned this, no?
Absolutely.
I've had, I've experienced that with someone.
I was standing very close to them and felt, and they felt it immediately.
But what is important, we have these qualities.
The first one, jhanu pasama, jhanu pasama, jhanu pasama.
Ye jan upasuta dhira.
Jan upasuta means one who practices meditation, jana.
Jana literally just means meditation.
There's two types we call aramanupani jana and lakhanupani jana.
Aramanupani jana is when you fix and focus on an object.
Lakhanupanijana is where you fix and focus on reality, on the characteristics and things that are impermanent, suffering and non-self.
So the salient quality of it is not a fixed object.
Like a fixed object would be a color or a flame.
If you focus on the flame and you enter into the fire element and it's fixed, it's the concept of flame.
But if you focus on experience, you see you can't.
grasp it.
You can't fix on it because it changes.
So what you're fixing on is reality.
You're becoming very much entranced or fixed on the nature of reality which is impermanent suffering and also just the
inconstancy of everything and inability to satisfy and those things that we cling to or clung to, those things that we thought would bring us peace and happiness, they can't.
We realize they're only causing us stress when they change, when they come, when they go and so on.
So that's what jhana means and dhira means wise.
And you'll notice the Buddha putting this in many places.
He doesn't want to say just do meditation because there are meditations that he practiced and other people practiced that don't lead to enlightenment.
Why they don't?
Because they don't have wisdom.
And so he's pointing out this important quality of really Lakhan Upanijana, seeing reality.
It's not just meditating to calm your mind and to find pleasant, peaceful sensations.
It's about going deeper and understanding the nature of stress and the nature of peace and the nature of reality.
And the next part is is rejoicing in the peace of renunciation.
And so some translations talk about or explain this as leaving home.
What I have done is renunciation, becoming a monk.
What you have done by coming here you could say is a type of renunciation.
When you come, you've renounced, you've left behind for a temporary period, you've left behind the worldly life, you've left behind your jobs, your family, your home, your luxuries.
And you've come to live an austere and content sort of lifestyle, trying to be content and at peace with just being without any objects.
But that's not, the commentary points out that that's not the highest form of renunciation because of course there's the other type of renunciation that you're both engaging in.
It's nothing to do with where you are or what you've done physically.
It has to do with what you're doing mentally as you renounce
your obsessions, your compulsions, your addictions, your likes and your dislikes, you renounce your defilements and your poisons.
The things in your mind that cause you suffering and cause other people suffering, you're renouncing them.
That's what you're doing.
It's not saying, I renounce this.
It's giving them up.
You're seeing that as you practice, it can be discouraging at times, but as you practice, it can be quite encouraging.
You see that these things that you thought were you and who you are and maybe even important and good are actually much the opposite.
You see how unwieldy our habits can be and how unmanageable, unpleasant even they can be, stressful.
the same thing over and over again, reacting in the same way over and again, and realizing how little control we have over the process.
If we feed it, it gets out of control.
So we stop feeding it and give it up.
Delighting in that, this is very special.
Delighting in the world, not so special.
Delighting in sensuality, very not special.
It leads to addiction.
It leads to attachment and stress and suffering.
Third part, there's about the angels.
The fourth part of the verse, sambuddhanam satimatam.
These two words are quite, it's quite a special sort of phrasing, I think, because it puts sati at the fore.
Some Buddha is just a self-enlightened one.
It actually doesn't refer to any of us.
He's referring to himself, but we take the Buddha as an example.
He's not, he said once that he's not any different.
He just got there first by himself.
But what was important was sati, the one thing that was important.
Out of everything else he could have said, he described a Buddha as being one who has sati, sati maa.
And so what is sati?
Sati is this quality of remembering.
It's actually, it's funny because it's such a mundane word.
It's kind of appropriate that the Buddha should use this because it's a boring word.
It's not fancy like flying through the air or reading people's minds.
It's not even a word like wisdom or even mindfulness, which it's often translated as.
It literally just means to remember and it's used in the sense of, oh, you can remember things that happened a long time ago.
That's sati.
But that's not what the Buddha meant by it.
It's the use of the word remember.
Because even just sitting here you'll find yourself forgetting sometimes, right?
You're off thinking about something else, off daydreaming or thinking about
What I'm saying may be thinking about what you're doing here, that sort of thing.
We forget ourselves, we forget our experience.
So remembering and reminding ourselves, which we do when we say pain, pain, or thinking, thinking, even stepping right, stepping left, or rising, falling.
All of that is reminding ourselves so we remember.
So our mind comes back and, ah yes, here I am sitting, seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling, and so on.
Satima.
So you have it from the Buddha's own words that what we're doing is the salient quality of what it means to be even a Buddha.
And you should see as you practice it gets easier, you get better at it, you get stronger and mindfulness becomes more a part of who you are and that is the salient quality of enlightenment.
It should be quite encouraging and quite motivating and focusing.
And all this other stuff about magical powers you don't need.
And if anything you learn from this story is how little they mean to the Buddha.
He said don't show them to other people.
People wanted him to and bragged about it.
So he showed them and then he just took off.
What did he do?
He went and taught.
When he came back, what did he say?
All this magic stuff, angels coming down, the earth.
He said the heavens opened up and that sort of thing.
What did he do?
He said be mindful.
Meditate.
Most important is meditation, wisdom, mindfulness and renunciation.
some very good pointers and good qualities.
We're going through these verses in order, so there was no specific reason why I brought up this verse, but like all the rest, it's a good lesson for us, something for us to think about, and hopefully useful and helpful, at least in motivating us in our practice.
So thank you for listening.
Thank you all for tuning in.
We wish you all the best.