Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Once more, we continue on with verse number 75, which reads as follows.
Anyahi labhupanisa anya nirvanagamini eva metang abhinyaya bhikkhu buddhasa savako
sakarang nabhi nandeya viveka manubhruhayeti which means the path or that which is a means to gain to gain that which is a means for gain labha
that which is a means for gain, and that which leads to nibbana.
These two are anya, meaning they are different.
They are not the same.
One way is they are other than each other.
They are apart from each other.
eva metang abhinyaya
For someone who understands this fully or in an ultimate sense, deeply, a bhikkhu who is a student of the Buddha should not be overjoyed by sakara, by worship or respect or offerings, should not by gains.
by wealth and so on.
Thinking about or resolute upon which means seclusion.
So a person who is a student of the Buddha should not be inclined towards gain or fame or wealth or so on.
They should be inclined towards seclusion.
The meaning and why these two are put together is because of the story which has to do with a novice who has this obvious choice between great gain and wealth and prosperity in a worldly sense and chooses to leave it behind for the forest.
So the story goes
that there was an aged Brahmin.
In the time of the Buddha, the religion was Brahmanism.
And there were these priests who would oversee rituals, ceremonies.
And so this was a very poor Brahmin, aged and maybe forgetful anyway, not very well known and maybe in a place where
Well I guess with the advent of Buddhism there wasn't much for the Brahmins to do because people weren't all that interested in rituals and ceremonies anymore.
So he never had much food or much wealth but he had great faith in Sariputta, the Buddha's chief disciple.
and so Sariputta would go for alms to this Brahmin's house but the Brahmin had nothing to give him and so when he knew that Sariputta was coming he would hide and avoid the elder out of embarrassment that he had nothing to give and time and again he would do this when he knew that Sariputta was coming and then one day he was able to obtain a single portion of rice gruel and a piece of cloth
And immediately he thought that he had done some ceremony and had gotten this as a gift or payment for his services.
And so he immediately thought that this would make a great offering for the elder who he hadn't been able to support.
And so when the elder came to his door, he leapt at the opportunity and started pouring the rice gruel into the elder's bowl.
And he got halfway done and the elder covered his bowl up, signifying that he didn't want to take all the food from the Brahmin and to leave some for him to eat as well.
But the Brahmin refused and said, listen, my wish for this is to be happy in the next life.
I'm giving this for the purpose of my benefit, even at the expense of my well-being right now.
So he was going to go hungry without eating.
And so...
He pushed the elder to accept the entire meal and then he gave him the piece of cloth and he said, through the power of this offering, may I obtain the realization, the same realization that you have gained, Venerable Sir.
And Sariputta said, may it be thus.
I believe that's what he said.
And went on his way.
Now when the Brahmin died, out of his great reverence and respect for Sariputta, he was born in the womb of Sariputta, one of Sariputta's chief female disciples, lay disciples.
And they say during the time of her pregnancy, she had these strange cravings.
They say pregnant people will have cravings for this or that.
And I guess the understanding is that
It has something to do or the belief I would ever have something to do with the child, the nature of the child.
So they say she had cravings to give offerings to the monks all the time and go to listen to the Dhamma.
She had these strange cravings anyway.
This boy is born and they bring him to the elder and the elder names him Tissa.
And he has such great karma or merit or goodness that he's stocked up just from this one act given with a pure heart.
And the commentary remarks that there's something special about giving when you're hard up yourself.
There's a quote, Jack London, I think.
He said, rich people don't know how to give.
When a rich person gives, they don't really understand giving.
They don't have a sense of what it means to really give.
But a poor person understands what need is and therefore is able to give.
And so there's generally a much higher sense of the import of the need.
So as a result of this great wholesomeness that he cultivated just with the one act of sacrificing his own meal and his own possession, the cloth,
He was reborn with great merit.
Later on he became a novice when he was, I guess, seven years old.
Sariputta ordained him.
And when he went for alms food, he would get hundreds of people coming to offer him food.
So they called him, and then he would give all this excess food that he got from the people, he would give it out to all the monks.
And so they called him the Tissa, the almsgiver, because he was always going around giving alms to all the other monks who weren't as lucky to have as much support as he did.
And so that was his name for a while.
And then in the winter, it got really cold and he noticed that the monks were without blankets and the monks were cold, were huddling around fires and he said, well, why are you rubbing yourselves and why are you warming yourself by the fire?
They said, well, it's winter, it's cold.
And he said, well,
Why don't you just get a blanket?
And the monk said, well, easy for you to say, he of great merit.
Maybe it's easy for you to get a blanket, but not easy for us.
And he said, well, in that case, come with me.
And so he rounded up all the monks.
And he took them into Savatthi.
And immediately, people came and gave him blankets.
And so he got hundreds and hundreds of blankets.
And so then they called him Tissa the blanket giver.
And that was his name for a while.
And this went on and he was able to obtain whatever he wanted, but he was still quite unsatisfied.
And he realized that if he were to stay in Savatthi, he would never accomplish the goal of the holy life because there were too many visitors, too many of his relatives and people coming to see him.
So he ran away and went off to live in the forest.
And then he got a new name.
And so his new name, and so by this time he had three names according to the commentary.
His third name was Tissa the Forest Dweller.
So they had all these different names and they were trying to figure out which one to call him.
Anyway, in the end he was called Tissa the Forest Dweller.
But the story goes that while he was in the forest,
he would say, whenever he came to see the people, he stayed so much to himself that he would never say much to the lay people.
And this is a sort of a common trait, especially for monks intent upon attaining realization.
He would just say, .
May you be happy, may you be well, and may you be free from suffering.
That was all he would say every day, every day, same thing, same thing.
And so they started to get the feeling that this guy was, this was all he was good for, but they were happy to take care of him.
And then one day his preceptor, Sariputta came with a whole bunch of other monks.
Actually, they say he came with all the senior elder monks because this novice was a sort of a very special person.
And then the Buddha came.
And anyway, the only point here is that at one point they wanted to ask him, they asked the Buddha to give a talk.
It was either the Buddha or Sariputta.
I think maybe Sariputta actually.
Anyway, asked to give a talk.
And so they turned to Tissa and said, okay, Tissa, you give the talk.
And the people were like, what's he going to say?
This guy can't teach.
He's never taught since the day he came to live in this forest.
And then he gets up on the Dhamma seat and he gives a long and wonderful sermon.
And everyone's a little bit confused and wondering why half the people are kind of upset because, right, it was just with Sariputta, the Buddha hadn't come yet.
And half the people were upset because they're like, well, why is he staying here just quiet by himself and not talking to anyone, not teaching?
When he can teach like this, why didn't he?
So half the people were upset.
The other half of the people were overjoyed that they had such a wonderful monk staying with them.
They hadn't realized what a wonderful monk he was.
People are divided according to their character types.
And then the Buddha came, because the Buddha saw that this was going to be a problem and so he came to sort it out.
And he pointed out how great it was that they had such a monk as this, someone who was intent upon a solitude.
And as a result of his great qualities and his great devotion to the practice, he pointed out how all these great monks then came to visit him and pointed out to the lay people how lucky they were as a result.
So this is the story of Tissa.
As usual, it's sort of long and there's many aspects to it that don't all relate to the verse, but the verse came about because the monks were amazed that Tissa was able to do this.
for many of them there wasn't a choice to live in such hardship but for Tissa he had relatives and he had friends and people who were devoted to him and so if he had stayed in Savatthi he could have been gotten lots of alms food or blankets or whatever he wanted he had these other names for a reason because he was very full of great merit and was always
able to live in luxury and get whatever he wanted all the time and they said it's a difficult thing that he's done to go off in the forest and live in hardship and the Buddha heard them and asked what they were talking about and when they told him he said indeed he's done a difficult thing and then he told this verse he said there are two very different paths to choose from the path of sakara of gain
and fame and affluence and pleasure and the path to freedom.
It's an important point and this is the point for our practice.
It's a claim that we make that happiness doesn't come from gain, doesn't come from getting what you want, that it doesn't come from pleasure, it doesn't come from worldly pursuits,
There are two different paths, the path of gain and the path to Nibbana.
When one sees this, and the word the Buddha uses is abhinaya, which abhi is like in a higher sense.
So not just knowing this.
It's not about knowing this intellectually.
Because I think for those of us who are at least somewhat interested in spirituality, we all know this, that intellectually that we're never going to be satisfied.
We've seen this.
We've seen that we get and get and get and it never satisfies us.
But this isn't what the Buddha...
points out here what he's talking about is a higher realization you have to realize it for yourself and so in our practice it's not about judging or prejudice it's about observing and realizing and seeing how our wanting for specific experiences wanting to feel pleasure wanting to feel calm wanting
wanting to see this or that, or experience this or experience that, seeing that this isn't the path, this doesn't lead us to happiness, it doesn't satisfy us.
Seeking these things out actually leads to attachment to them, so we'll get a good experience in our practice, and then when we don't get it, the next time we're frustrated and upset.
And we see that this is like a microcosm for life,
by experiencing it firsthand, how this, you know, this pattern of wanting, getting, and then expecting and being frustrated
It starts to change the way we look at the world from a very basic foundational level and as a result that informs our whole life.
We take that out into the world.
When wanting arises we're not as quick to leap and to chase because we've seen first hand the nature of it.
We've watched and observed on a very moment-to-moment level, a very basic level.
So someone who sees this, this sort of person is a true disciple of the Buddha.
And they give up and they are not delighted by gain.
Again, it's not about not gaining anything, although there's something to be said for living a very simple life.
Obviously this novice did a great thing by living a life of hardship.
There's often nothing better for the practice than to live without anything, to live maybe even without a place to live, to stay at the foot of a tree, to allow yourself to be perfectly flexible with whatever comes, eating only one meal a day, eating perhaps very little some days.
and putting up with insects and putting up with hardships of all sorts.
But the point is not to be attached and not to be delighted by these things.
So for many of us, living in the forest isn't convenient, to say the least.
On the other hand, we aren't getting sakara.
Sakara means donations and gifts that religious people might get because people have faith in them.
So for many of us, you can't fit it exactly.
But the word the Buddha used is viveka, someone who is resolute on seclusion.
And there are three kinds of seclusion, and they don't really have anything to do with the forest.
But the point of seclusion isn't really the hardships.
It's that we don't involve ourselves in society because society is where all of the gain comes from.
It's where all of our pleasure comes from.
It's where we become intoxicated with people, with sights and sounds and smells and tastes that are exotic.
So seclusion, first is physical seclusion.
Physical seclusion means taking yourself away from the busyness, away from those things that are going to entice you, are going to overwhelm you.
This is useful especially for calming the mind.
It's not as useful for understanding or as important, but very much in the beginning it can be necessary, even for insight meditation.
You have to seclude your body in order to begin to come to terms with reality.
Some people will say you shouldn't seclude yourself.
You should just be mindful in your daily life because that's real.
If you take yourself away, you're just running away.
But it's not really like that because again we're looking at a microcosm.
We're looking at the very fundamentals of
of reality and those are not people, places or things.
They are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
The problem with being in society and doing this is that we're overwhelmed and we're much quicker to react and interact than we are to observe.
So in order to observe we have to turn the faucet off, turn the water, the metaphorical
source of our experiences off and just turn it on just a little bit, one by one.
And so this is why we start walking because we're walking back and forth and sitting watching the stomach because we're trying to do something very simple to give a very basic appreciation of what does it mean to experience.
How are the different ways we can experience something?
What does it mean to experience wanting?
What does it mean to react with anger and all these things?
You see them one by one.
and through our seclusion.
The second seclusion is mental seclusion.
When we seclude ourselves from the hindrances, liking, disliking, drowsiness, distraction, doubt.
So we do this through the practice.
And this can be done, theoretically can be done anywhere.
But again, it's much easier when you're in a secluded place.
And finally, seclusion from, the second one is seclusion of the mind, so the mind that is secluded, but the third one is seclusion of defilements, or you could say seclusion from arising, seclusion from unwholesome tendencies, which is nibbana, or freedom from suffering.
So the key is to live in these three seclusions.
And so for laypeople, there is this point that has to be made that we should be careful not to be overwhelmed by society or caught up by society.
This was the decision that Tissa came to, that he was surrounded by people, people who were friendly and helpful and wonderful people.
But he realized that he wouldn't be able to go the next step
to rise above this worldly state, which can be quite pleasant at times, but is in the end ultimately unsatisfying.
And so even for lay people we can make this decision to take the time to find a place in our house that is quiet or leave the house to go practice outside or to go to a monastery or a meditation center from time to time.
Even just to close our room and sit quietly alone.
Avoiding the sort of thing that the Buddha is talking about here with sakara.
Sakara is a specific word having to do with offerings.
But the point is any kind of gain.
not getting intoxicated.
And the thing that keeps us in society, one of the things that keeps us is our attachment to things, to getting new possessions and a car and a house, money and relationships and all of these things.
We become obsessed with them.
All of this is in the same category.
All of the things that we shouldn't be delighted with, shouldn't get caught up with, caught up by.
So another simple teaching, but again, quite powerful.
taking a firm stand on the idea that you can't dedicate yourself, you can't consider yourself to be fully following the Buddha's teaching and still indulge and enjoy and get caught up in sensuality.
We have this war inside and this is the understanding we have to come to is they are not compatible.
One way is the way that leads to attaining the things that we desire and the other way is the way to be free, to be free from desire and free from suffering, to be truly at peace with ourselves.
We have to accept it because it's often, people will often try to take the middle way, which is
really having your cake and eating it too.
You want to practice meditation and become enlightened, but you don't want to give anything up.
You don't want to let go.
It's like wanting to fly while the bird is still clinging onto the tree.
Wanting to hold onto the tree and still fly, it's not possible.
You have to do one or the other.
So that's the teaching for today.
Thank you all for tuning in.
See you all next time.