1 00:00:00,537 --> 00:00:03,141 Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada. 2 00:00:03,942 --> 00:00:10,651 Today we continue on with verse number 107, which reads as follows. 3 00:00:10,992 --> 00:00:30,139 Which means, 4 00:00:32,836 --> 00:00:48,272 And one might, and a being, whatever being might, aging parikarchare, when they live in the forest, tending to a fire. 5 00:00:49,554 --> 00:00:52,377 So one might live in a forest for a hundred years. 6 00:00:55,159 --> 00:00:58,523 Ekancha bawitatanang, this is the same as yesterday's verse. 7 00:01:00,106 --> 00:01:24,544 If one should pay homage to one who has developed themselves just for one moment, this puja is greater, greater than the one who for a hundred years practices this sacrifice, fire sacrifice. 8 00:01:26,110 --> 00:01:39,828 Now, not a terribly meaningful verse for those of us who aren't familiar with living in the forest, tending to a fire, but we can generalize and talk about it. 9 00:01:40,369 --> 00:01:42,812 The story as well is quite similar to yesterday's. 10 00:01:42,933 --> 00:01:43,914 It's almost identical. 11 00:01:44,495 --> 00:01:50,683 The difference here is that Sariputta, instead of going to talk to his uncle, he goes and talks to his nephew. 12 00:01:53,515 --> 00:01:57,720 And he asks his nephew, so nephew, his nephew is also a Brahmin. 13 00:01:57,780 --> 00:01:59,482 His whole family, of course, was Brahmins. 14 00:02:00,404 --> 00:02:09,375 He says, what sort of king Brahmana kusalangkarosi, what sort of wholesomeness or good deeds do you do? 15 00:02:10,276 --> 00:02:15,102 And so he says, oh, every month, mase mase ekang ekang pasung. 16 00:02:15,875 --> 00:02:32,350 Every month I kill a, having killed a pasu, a livestock, like a pet of some sort, some kind of domesticated animal or some animal, a sheep, maybe a goat, probably. 17 00:02:34,074 --> 00:02:36,178 Aging paricharami. 18 00:02:36,715 --> 00:02:43,223 I use it to tend to a fire or burn it in a fire, maybe make a burnt offering. 19 00:02:44,605 --> 00:02:47,289 It sounds like he just burns it in a fire. 20 00:02:48,710 --> 00:02:53,216 Kind of an Abramaic sort of practice. 21 00:02:53,296 --> 00:02:57,021 It's what the Jewish people would do. 22 00:02:57,822 --> 00:02:58,643 It's very similar. 23 00:02:59,825 --> 00:03:06,233 But fire sacrifice seems to have originally been burning goats and so on. 24 00:03:07,681 --> 00:03:28,204 all over the world somehow this was a a big thing to do and then he says uh why for what purpose do you for what purpose do you do that and he says oh for the same as before oh for the uh 25 00:03:30,513 --> 00:03:38,034 I have heard or it is said that this is the path to the Brahmaloka. 26 00:03:39,699 --> 00:03:41,845 And Sariputta says, who told you that? 27 00:03:41,925 --> 00:03:43,830 Same as yesterday, same as last time. 28 00:03:44,907 --> 00:03:46,390 And again, it was my teachers. 29 00:03:47,492 --> 00:03:54,826 So, for the first one, for the last one, it was easy to kind of get a sense that his teachers were these naked ascetics. 30 00:03:54,886 --> 00:04:05,447 Last time, right, he was giving, every month, giving a thousand pieces of money worth of food or whatever, maybe even just money, directly to these naked ascetics. 31 00:04:06,828 --> 00:04:10,473 And so one would think that they were probably his teachers who were teaching him this. 32 00:04:10,633 --> 00:04:15,079 Now, in this case the question is, why are his teachers teaching such things? 33 00:04:16,121 --> 00:04:22,449 There's various reasons and we can extrapolate this to sort of generalize in terms of religion. 34 00:04:22,529 --> 00:04:24,732 Why do people teach such ridiculous things? 35 00:04:26,134 --> 00:04:29,038 I mean, it's understandable why people believe them. 36 00:04:29,018 --> 00:04:39,417 We just tend to believe things based on tradition or based on the authority of our teachers, even though we ourselves have no sense of the causal relationship. 37 00:04:40,299 --> 00:04:48,534 So this is why religions do such a wide array of practices, because we're just told to by our priests or by our leaders. 38 00:04:49,295 --> 00:04:51,499 The question is, why do the leaders teach such things? 39 00:04:54,820 --> 00:04:57,044 Sometimes it's just for gain. 40 00:04:57,805 --> 00:04:59,208 I mean, I've seen it even in Buddhism. 41 00:04:59,308 --> 00:05:08,725 People come to the monasteries, the temples, and they ask the teacher, what should I do? 42 00:05:08,785 --> 00:05:10,228 Someone passed away, what should I do? 43 00:05:10,268 --> 00:05:19,444 And I've seen teachers, I've seen monks, you can just see the wheels turning in their head, kind of in a bit of panic, like, oh... 44 00:05:19,424 --> 00:05:25,318 scrambling to find something that looks or sounds kind of mystical. 45 00:05:25,759 --> 00:05:37,045 I mean, it really comes down to that, just making something up on the spur of the moment to appease people's desire for some ritual, something to solve their problems. 46 00:05:37,025 --> 00:05:54,135 Sri Dhammika, a very wonderful sort of populist Buddhist monk and teacher from Sri Lanka, someone asked him about these amulets that monks give out. 47 00:05:54,796 --> 00:05:56,599 And he said, well, they have absolutely no meaning. 48 00:05:56,659 --> 00:05:58,442 But he said, sometimes... 49 00:05:58,422 --> 00:06:06,332 Sometimes for people who are new or who don't really have a good understanding of cause and effect, you have to give them something. 50 00:06:06,412 --> 00:06:08,995 So he took a pen and he says, you see this? 51 00:06:09,716 --> 00:06:12,720 I want you to keep it, hold on to it and it will keep you safe. 52 00:06:12,780 --> 00:06:14,282 He says, sometimes you have to do that. 53 00:06:15,123 --> 00:06:19,648 It's sort of like Dumbo and his feather, if you ever saw the Disney movie. 54 00:06:20,289 --> 00:06:22,352 Sometimes people need their magical feather. 55 00:06:23,974 --> 00:06:25,716 So there is a defense of it. 56 00:06:26,697 --> 00:06:28,159 But 57 00:06:29,860 --> 00:06:39,932 I don't think it's a very strong defense, especially when it becomes one's main, absolutely no defense, when it becomes one's main religious practice. 58 00:06:41,053 --> 00:06:51,164 And not only is there no defense, but it's blameworthy when it involves clearly unwholesome acts. 59 00:06:51,224 --> 00:06:57,792 It's one thing to tell people that offering food to a statue 60 00:06:57,772 --> 00:07:05,785 is going to be to their benefit, or pouring water on the root of a tree is going to do this or do that. 61 00:07:05,846 --> 00:07:08,390 I mean, that's kind of innocent. 62 00:07:08,410 --> 00:07:13,659 And who knows, maybe the angels will get involved and help out with it. 63 00:07:13,779 --> 00:07:17,485 There's this interesting thing. 64 00:07:17,465 --> 00:07:25,981 Buddhists in Sri Lanka are very keen to pour water at the roots of the Bodhi tree. 65 00:07:26,001 --> 00:07:29,027 So they pour water to water the Bodhi tree. 66 00:07:29,047 --> 00:07:31,211 They go around and it's a very important ceremony. 67 00:07:31,792 --> 00:07:37,262 And they do this with the understanding that it leads to pregnancy. 68 00:07:37,242 --> 00:07:40,066 And it apparently has some measure of success. 69 00:07:40,187 --> 00:07:47,678 I mean, it's anecdotal and scientists may be able to study it and find that in fact there is no correlation. 70 00:07:47,739 --> 00:07:54,930 But it's an interesting idea that there might be some correlation because how would that relate to the Buddhist teaching? 71 00:07:54,950 --> 00:07:58,255 It's certainly not a Buddhist teaching that such a thing is possible. 72 00:07:58,235 --> 00:08:07,807 And yet we have in the Dhammapada stories, remember the first story that we did, I don't know if I actually brought up the whole back story, but this guy does basically that. 73 00:08:07,947 --> 00:08:19,602 He goes to a tree and he cleans up around this great tree in the forest and puts up banners and flags and a wall around it to protect it. 74 00:08:19,582 --> 00:08:27,909 and then makes a promise to the tree that if he gets a son or a daughter, he'll come back and pay great homage and respect to the tree. 75 00:08:27,969 --> 00:08:32,443 And sure enough, his wife gives birth quite quickly after that. 76 00:08:33,892 --> 00:08:36,558 So people from Sri Lanka have told me that this actually works. 77 00:08:37,059 --> 00:08:43,171 And I was trying to figure out exactly how it might work in reality because there has to be a causal relationship. 78 00:08:43,231 --> 00:08:44,434 It can't just be magic. 79 00:08:44,514 --> 00:08:51,208 There's no such thing and it's not accepted in Buddhism. 80 00:08:51,627 --> 00:08:55,012 So the idea that somehow you could do some ritual and then it could work. 81 00:08:55,513 --> 00:09:01,883 The only way it could work, and I'm thinking it actually could, is if the angels got involved. 82 00:09:01,903 --> 00:09:06,790 Because there's got to be something to do with angels hanging out at the Bodhi tree. 83 00:09:07,972 --> 00:09:16,605 And if the lay people come to the Bodhi tree and they do this and they make a sincere wish, 84 00:09:16,585 --> 00:09:22,196 and they have a sincerely good heart, it's kind of like the angels can look down and say, oh, those are nice people. 85 00:09:22,276 --> 00:09:24,621 Well, my lifespan is almost up. 86 00:09:24,641 --> 00:09:27,987 I think I'll, maybe they even hang out looking for parents. 87 00:09:28,989 --> 00:09:35,282 And when the angels know that their lifespan is almost up, they try to find suitable parents to go and be reborn. 88 00:09:35,342 --> 00:09:36,224 I mean, something like that. 89 00:09:36,264 --> 00:09:39,049 Somehow the angels, the devas get involved. 90 00:09:40,244 --> 00:09:44,931 But I give that only as an example of how there might be some causal relationship. 91 00:09:44,951 --> 00:09:48,657 But there has to be something like that or else it's just ridiculous. 92 00:09:49,518 --> 00:09:51,581 So for the most part it is, especially. 93 00:09:51,601 --> 00:09:59,913 It's beyond ridiculous when it comes down to killing animals, killing your fellow living beings and saying that's somehow the path to the Brahma world. 94 00:10:00,314 --> 00:10:04,580 So Sariputta rightly says to him, he says, who taught you your teachers? 95 00:10:04,640 --> 00:10:06,403 And he says, your teachers haven't a clue. 96 00:10:06,383 --> 00:10:29,387 And so the reason why the teachers might have been teaching, it may have just been because, you see, if you sound like you know what you're doing, but if you set up all these complex rituals, people think, oh, well, this one, this person, we need him because he leads us in these very important rituals and only he knows the right rituals when in fact they just make them up. 97 00:10:29,367 --> 00:10:32,051 And so I think that's what you get. 98 00:10:32,531 --> 00:10:39,922 I'm pretty sure that's what you get in a lot of the rituals at the time of the Buddha and even after the Buddha. 99 00:10:40,803 --> 00:10:43,767 But definitely very much before the Buddha came around. 100 00:10:44,468 --> 00:10:49,755 Like we've studied these in university when I was taking Indian religion many years ago. 101 00:10:49,735 --> 00:10:59,626 And some of the rituals are just silly, like they take, it seems like originally they were horrific, these horrific sacrifices, a lot of killing. 102 00:10:59,686 --> 00:11:05,653 And so they would take a goat up to the altar and cut its head off. 103 00:11:05,673 --> 00:11:11,980 And there was something about burying a live turtle under the altar and just burying it alive and killing it, suffocating it. 104 00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:13,644 under the altar. 105 00:11:13,664 --> 00:11:15,127 I mean, for no reason. 106 00:11:15,408 --> 00:11:18,916 Why would you bury a live turtle under a stone altar? 107 00:11:19,618 --> 00:11:21,763 But it was an important part of building the altar. 108 00:11:21,803 --> 00:11:27,977 And then there was butter that had to be poured into the fire and that kind of thing. 109 00:11:27,957 --> 00:11:43,148 And it evolved so that eventually, probably with the advent of Buddhism, Jainism, and a lot of the movements that were anti-torture, anti-cruelty, eventually, by the time we came to the form that we study it today, 110 00:11:43,128 --> 00:11:48,821 what they do is they bring a goat to the altar and they have to show the altar to the goat. 111 00:11:49,242 --> 00:11:52,430 Like the goat has to see the altar and then they take the goat away. 112 00:11:52,470 --> 00:12:02,132 There's a sacrificial pole, there's a special wooden pole that has to be there as well and they have to bring the goat and show the goat that pole. 113 00:12:02,112 --> 00:12:04,975 So as long as the goat sees the pole, they've done enough. 114 00:12:05,456 --> 00:12:06,457 Then they take the goat away. 115 00:12:06,517 --> 00:12:09,800 And you can imagine some guy saying, oh, well, we can't kill them anymore. 116 00:12:09,820 --> 00:12:14,105 Well, let's just say, let's just tell everyone, oh, it's enough that the goat sees the pole. 117 00:12:14,145 --> 00:12:16,407 I mean, it's something that they just come up with. 118 00:12:18,209 --> 00:12:18,870 Say, oh, no, no. 119 00:12:19,130 --> 00:12:20,732 People say, well, we don't really want to kill the goat. 120 00:12:20,752 --> 00:12:22,313 Oh, well, it's okay. 121 00:12:22,333 --> 00:12:25,977 As long as he sees the post, somehow that's meaningful. 122 00:12:25,957 --> 00:12:27,419 It's no longer about killing. 123 00:12:27,479 --> 00:12:34,749 So, I mean, good on them that their ridiculous sacrifices have become innocent. 124 00:12:34,829 --> 00:12:36,211 That's one step in the right direction. 125 00:12:36,231 --> 00:12:42,640 The other thing is they, instead of burying a turtle under the altar, they take a lump of butter and they bury it under the altar. 126 00:12:42,660 --> 00:12:48,488 It's a substitute for a live turtle, which is a good thing for all the poor little turtles. 127 00:12:49,801 --> 00:12:55,107 But definitely, innocent doesn't mean beneficial, worthwhile. 128 00:12:57,010 --> 00:13:00,634 And in this guy's case, he's got real problems with his killing. 129 00:13:01,035 --> 00:13:04,439 Every month killing a living being and feeding it to the fire. 130 00:13:04,459 --> 00:13:09,004 Like if it was just butter he was feeding to the fire, then you could say, well, that's kind of innocent. 131 00:13:09,625 --> 00:13:11,968 But even still, it's not the way to the Brahma world. 132 00:13:12,028 --> 00:13:17,715 It doesn't have any connection with being reborn as a Brahma, as a god. 133 00:13:18,978 --> 00:13:41,087 It takes him to see the Buddha, and he tells the Buddha what he does, and the Buddha says, you can do that for a hundred years, every month, and it wouldn't be worth a thousandth part if you were to just pay respect to an enlightened being for one moment. 134 00:13:43,177 --> 00:13:44,800 So again, talking about homage. 135 00:13:45,241 --> 00:13:47,766 And the Buddha specifies my students. 136 00:13:50,732 --> 00:13:52,997 So it is a bold claim. 137 00:13:53,037 --> 00:14:00,271 And as I said last time, it seems like a bit of a biased claim at first blush because anyone could say that. 138 00:14:00,291 --> 00:14:03,177 Well, of course, everyone's going to say their own students. 139 00:14:03,157 --> 00:14:05,980 But it has to be true at some point. 140 00:14:06,261 --> 00:14:20,859 If your students are enlightened and if your people really are, if you're talking about a group of people who really are enlightened, then the Buddha wasn't afraid of making these bold and sort of bragging claims, boastful claims. 141 00:14:22,801 --> 00:14:27,747 Because if you look at it another way, of course it's leaving you wide open 142 00:14:27,727 --> 00:14:28,969 to attack. 143 00:14:28,989 --> 00:14:31,072 And the Buddha fully welcomed what he's saying. 144 00:14:31,132 --> 00:14:33,817 He's really, it's called the lion's roar. 145 00:14:33,877 --> 00:14:36,020 He was really putting it out there. 146 00:14:36,040 --> 00:14:41,368 He's making a claim, a boast, and challenge, it's a challenge, you know, prove me wrong. 147 00:14:42,470 --> 00:14:48,840 It's basically saying, it's claiming something very, very boldly. 148 00:14:48,820 --> 00:14:52,747 And that's really what the purpose and the meaning there is. 149 00:14:53,448 --> 00:14:56,754 That's not the Buddha bragging or to get gain of any sort. 150 00:14:56,834 --> 00:15:00,560 I mean, there's no sense that the Buddha even had any need. 151 00:15:00,700 --> 00:15:06,731 I mean, even if you don't follow Buddhism, there was no real evidence to support that. 152 00:15:06,751 --> 00:15:09,816 I mean, he was well taken care of. 153 00:15:11,197 --> 00:15:11,980 well supported. 154 00:15:14,568 --> 00:15:19,384 But what he's doing is instead making just this bold claim. 155 00:15:19,972 --> 00:15:21,955 that could then be challenged. 156 00:15:22,015 --> 00:15:26,902 And of course, the Brahmin would have to be impressed by that because he couldn't challenge it. 157 00:15:27,163 --> 00:15:36,357 And looking at the Buddhist monks, he would have to agree that, well, yes, indeed, there's something special about many of these monks who have developed themselves. 158 00:15:36,917 --> 00:15:44,629 And so that's what the verse actually says, to one, if you pay homage to one or to those who are of developed self. 159 00:15:46,988 --> 00:15:55,697 So again, not to get too much into it, I think the more important aspect of this that differentiates it from the last one is talking about sacrifice, which I've done. 160 00:15:56,457 --> 00:16:01,603 But I think we can extrapolate that to talk about religious practices in general. 161 00:16:02,824 --> 00:16:07,288 It's not enough that we have a religious practice, and I think there's a lot of this in the world. 162 00:16:08,349 --> 00:16:13,975 Just because something is a spiritual practice or a religious practice doesn't make it really all that valuable. 163 00:16:13,955 --> 00:16:20,245 And certainly an understanding that the different spiritual practices have different values. 164 00:16:20,986 --> 00:16:26,495 So it's not to say that either you're practicing to become enlightened or you're doing useless things. 165 00:16:27,376 --> 00:16:31,844 There are certain religious practices that are valuable, but just not as valuable. 166 00:16:32,605 --> 00:16:39,456 So feeding a sacrificial fire is pretty useless, but practicing loving-kindness, for example, is quite valuable. 167 00:16:39,556 --> 00:16:40,958 Practicing charity, 168 00:16:41,393 --> 00:16:43,417 giving money to the poor is valuable. 169 00:16:44,859 --> 00:16:50,409 It's less valuable than, well, for example, paying homage to one who deserves it. 170 00:16:50,449 --> 00:17:00,987 But even paying homage to one who is worthy of homage is far less valuable than actually becoming worthy of respect yourself. 171 00:17:01,027 --> 00:17:01,869 My teacher said that. 172 00:17:01,889 --> 00:17:02,490 He said, 173 00:17:02,470 --> 00:17:25,052 going to see an enlightened being or paying homage to an enlightened being is not worth the smallest part of becoming practicing to become an enlightened being yourself it's one of it's in a very famous talk that he gave on the force of the force of the batana but yeah he's he 174 00:17:25,032 --> 00:17:31,791 He made that very important statement that, yeah, it's good, but it's not worth the smallest part. 175 00:17:32,834 --> 00:17:40,054 It's far less good than actually practicing to become one yourself. 176 00:17:40,034 --> 00:17:41,115 So it's a matter of degrees. 177 00:17:42,237 --> 00:17:56,154 And that's something for us to keep in mind in our spiritual practice, that some people will put a lot of emphasis on chanting, some people put a lot of emphasis on charity or social work, and it's all about our priorities. 178 00:17:56,435 --> 00:18:02,242 Some people put a lot of emphasis on study, and in the end we have to ask ourselves, what is our goal? 179 00:18:02,843 --> 00:18:09,231 And we have to do those things to engage, put primary emphasis on those things that lead us to that goal. 180 00:18:09,211 --> 00:18:13,497 If we're just giving and giving and giving, what is the purpose of that? 181 00:18:13,697 --> 00:18:18,985 If we're just chanting and chanting or this or that, what is the purpose of all these things? 182 00:18:21,068 --> 00:18:26,916 And on the other hand, if we do have a set purpose and we do things for that purpose, 183 00:18:28,955 --> 00:18:33,801 We have to differentiate between those things that actually lead to the purpose. 184 00:18:34,362 --> 00:18:40,850 But then there are a wide array of things that can help us, that can actually be a benefit to help us realize our goals. 185 00:18:41,090 --> 00:18:43,273 Like charity can be useful for meditation. 186 00:18:43,894 --> 00:18:46,237 Morality, of course, is essential for meditation. 187 00:18:47,498 --> 00:18:48,159 These kind of things. 188 00:18:48,199 --> 00:18:50,382 Study is also quite important. 189 00:18:51,543 --> 00:18:53,005 But putting them in context. 190 00:18:53,390 --> 00:19:02,526 So many religious practices have to be taken as a support rather than a main goal or a main practice, a main focus. 191 00:19:04,429 --> 00:19:05,752 Anyway, things to consider. 192 00:19:05,812 --> 00:19:10,420 It's just some of the ideas that arise based on this verse. 193 00:19:11,969 --> 00:19:14,614 and the importance of quality rather than quantity. 194 00:19:15,035 --> 00:19:19,383 You can do a lot, a lot, a lot of deeds, but it doesn't make any of them good or worthwhile. 195 00:19:19,924 --> 00:19:25,354 You can work for a hundred years, work very, very hard, and have nothing to show for it. 196 00:19:26,532 --> 00:19:28,415 or meaningless things to show for it. 197 00:19:29,396 --> 00:19:36,666 Whereas you can just for one moment do the right thing and have it worth far more than those hundred years. 198 00:19:36,726 --> 00:19:38,048 That's basically what's being said. 199 00:19:38,068 --> 00:19:39,049 A very useful teaching. 200 00:19:40,571 --> 00:19:42,534 Anyway, so that's the Dhamma Fata for tonight. 201 00:19:42,834 --> 00:19:43,876 Thank you for tuning in. 202 00:19:43,896 --> 00:19:44,997 Wishing you all the best.