Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we look at verse 175, which reads as follows.
Which means,
Swans go by the path of the sun.
The powerful go through the air.
The wise go out from this world.
The wise go out from this world, having defeated Mara and his armies, together with his armies.
So three different paths or ways of going.
The story behind this is one of the very short stories in the Dhammapada.
There's not much to it.
The story goes that there were 30 monks who came to see the Buddha.
And they came just as Ananda was going to see the Buddha.
So Ananda saw that these monks were coming and he thought, okay, I'll wait and let them have a private audience with the Buddha and then I'll go.
And I think Ananda was going to go wait on the Buddha, help him bathe or provide him with whatever he needed.
So he thought, well, I'll just wait.
And he waited and waited and
but they never came out and so he went in.
After quite some time and the monks were gone.
They just disappeared.
And the text explains what happened.
While Ananda was waiting, they listened to the Buddha teach what they call Saraniya Dhamma, which is actually a specific Dhamma, but something memorable.
Saraniya is memorable.
So I think it just means he taught them some memorable Dhamma.
Having listened to this, they became Arahants.
Having become Arahants, become enlightened.
They flew through the air out of the forest, I guess.
Where was the Buddha?
He was in the Jetavana, so he was in the forest.
And these 30 monks, after hearing the Buddha's teaching and becoming enlightened, they flew out.
So Ananda came in, didn't see them, and said, where did those monks go?
What happened to those monks?
Where are they?
Kata, they've gone.
He asks, by which path did they go?
Ananda, they went by the sky.
Ananda said, what?
They became Arahants already?
That quickly?
So having destroyed the taints, he says, in my presence, having heard the Dhamma, they became arahants.
And at that moment it said that there were some swans flying through the air and the Buddha said, Ananda, those who have well developed the four iddhipada, iddhipada is the roads to power, the path to power, fly through the air, go through the air like a swan.
And then he taught this verse.
So I guess there's a lot we could say about magical powers like flying through the air.
I'd rather not talk too much about it.
I've sort of fastidiously or dedicatedly avoided talking about the more magical parts.
And I have explained earlier in this series about how it's not really the point and doesn't really matter if you don't believe in such things.
I think a sort of a cop-out we have is that oh nowadays it's much less common near unheard of to have someone gain magical powers being able to fly through the air.
But of course it's more important to note that it's not necessary and there too are related in the sense that they both
They both deal with the mind, but the path to become an Arahant and the path to gain magical powers are quite divergent.
And one is not necessary for the other.
Now Ananda makes an interesting, his question is interesting because it almost sounds like he assumes that if they gain magical powers they must become Arahants.
which I think is a fair assumption, because that is what the Buddha would have led them towards.
I think what's more fantastical about this story is how quickly people could become enlightened in the presence of the Buddha.
That's really an amazing thing.
And I think, open to some skepticism, people would think, how is this possible?
It takes me so long to even gain a little bit of insight, and yet these people, they just heard the Buddha speak.
We don't know exactly what the Buddha taught these monks, but we have this idea that the Buddha was very good at giving people exactly what they needed.
And people who had the great fortune to meet with the Buddha were fortunate in such a way that they already had quite a good deal of development that those of us who are still stuck in samsara thousands of years later probably didn't have.
So there's that as well.
But there's a lot of interesting discussion about how it could be possible to, for example, fly through the air when physics appears to show that that's not possible.
So I guess there's some sense that the laws of physics are circumscribed or are limited and are separate from the realm of the mind and in fact manipulatable by the mind.
in ways that it's not really possible to detect with physical instruments, the mind being outside.
Take, for example, how quantum physics works.
I mean, first of all, the example that quantum physics really threw a monkey wrench in the whole deterministic concept of reality, or at least the physical.
concept of reality that we're not really sure anymore what reality is made of or there's debate.
There's more debate because clearly it's not just billiard balls anymore.
Billiard balls of matter bouncing off of each other.
But more than that, it showed that apparently you can... I mean, one interpretation at any rate is that there is this dependency of physical reality on the mind or an interaction.
Of course, it's hotly debated and a lot of people would deny that, but there is a way of understanding it.
Anyway, it's quite... The point being that
reality is a lot less fixed or certain than we might think it is.
And I don't want to dwell too much on this because I think there's of course much more important things.
regardless of your appreciation for the ability to fly through the air, I think the most important point of this story is that the Buddha appears to, in a way, put ānanda, or remind ānanda of something, or make clear to redirect the conversation.
So ānanda associates flying through the air with enlightenment.
And the Buddha is
fairly quick, it seems, to remind him or to make clear the point that it's those who have gained mental power, sort of this mental fortitude, which is useful for becoming enlightened, but not sufficient.
You might say it's necessary to become enlightened as well, but when directed in a certain way, the four itipada, which are your appreciation or your interest in something, the effort you put out for the task, the focus of mind that you put on the task, and your reflection, your ability to adjust and adapt and
Keep a wise look on, a wise view of what you're doing.
These four things are the roads to success, the roads to any power in any kind of activity.
But particularly they relate to magical powers.
They gain, they help you gain fortitude of mind.
And
The Buddha says, those who fly through the air have gained that power of mind, iddhi, power.
But he reminds Ananda that the real path, the real going, is not whether you go through the air or go on land.
Most important is the going out, niyanti.
Yanti means they go, niyanti, it's like nibbana.
Niyanti, they go out from this world, lokamha.
So the real lesson here is about the path.
It's about the way.
And it relates to things like gaining magical powers because magical powers or fortitude of mind is one spiritual goal.
Even the great calm and tranquil states are desired and pursued by a great number of spiritual people in the world.
But the Buddha makes clear that this going, this path, following, whatever it may be, whether it might be the ordinary way of going here or going there, becoming this, becoming that, or even the spiritual way of being able to fly through the air or read people's minds or remember your past life, so many different magical powers that are claimed to be possible.
But the real path is internal.
It's about leaving the world, which can never be done, no matter how fast you fly or no matter how fast you run.
But it's done by inner, an inner movement, an inner travel, traveling from the defiled state
to an undefiled state, traveling from impurity to purity, from darkness to light.
Because it feels very much like we're traveling, like we're going a long way.
You practice a lot of meditation, days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes.
It really feels like you've taken a trip.
If you think about who you were before you started practicing, you've come a long way, we would say.
It is a real path.
The Buddha described it as such.
And he would chastise the monks if they were talking too much about external paths.
He said, This is the path, the only path.
Not those other ones.
There are no others.
When you begin to practice mindfulness, your perception of the world changes.
Rather than thinking about, oh, now I'm here, now I'm there, you realize that actually you're always here.
Wherever you go, it's here.
And this is because our ordinary activity in a conceptual sense is never here.
It's always somewhere else, or thinking about conceptual places and things.
But when you're mindful, you're truly here and now.
You realize that before you only thought you were here, here or there, but now you can see where you really are, because you're in tune with what's really happening in the present moment.
So the question then is, well, what is this path?
What is this path that we talk about being mindful, and what is the way
And the Buddha provides, and we obviously give many answers.
This topic forms the core of a lot of what I teach and what the Buddha taught, what we teach in Buddhism.
But in this verse, the Buddha offers an interesting
example or interesting description.
Having conquered Mara.
This is a way that we often talk about the path.
Mara is the evil one.
Mara means evil.
Having conquered evil together with its armies.
And so Mara, when we talk about evil, I mean, here it's being personified.
And there is a sense that one type of Mara is actually a heavenly or a supernatural being, supernatural being living in some high state of existence that has
what they call the delight over the creation of others.
So there are beings out there that delight in our creations.
They're probably having a field day with all the things that humans have created.
And so they are supposed to try and manipulate.
They spend time manipulating humans to make them create more.
And they're very much displeased by people like the Buddha who encourage people to stop being creative and to stop chasing after things, stop building up, really in a sense tearing down and building up internally.
something that they don't really delight in.
And so the Buddha called them Mara, whether that's actually what they call themselves.
He labeled these angels, these heavenly creatures or ethereal beings, Mara.
But the evil that we really talk about and the Buddha's really, I think, focusing on here is the evil of defilement.
The Buddha talked about ten armies of Mara and so here he says Mara and his armies, Mara and its armies.
He's really talking about the evil of defilement and also the evil of suffering.
There are many things in the world that create for us problems and cause us to be distracted and diverted and
trapped in the world.
So the first, of course, sensual pleasures.
I'll go through the ten armies of Mara because I think that's quite useful.
Sensual pleasure, this is an army of Mara.
It gets us so trapped and caught up.
Think about how much of our life is spent, how much of our energy is spent pursuing sensuality.
How much of our economy and our activity as a human species is caught up in just trying to see beautiful things, hear beautiful sounds.
Take what we call the music industry.
So it's a huge industry and how much money goes into it and time and energy.
I walk around university and at least half of the students walking around have these earbuds in their ear now.
It's such a thing where we're constantly trying to hear beautiful sounds.
To really define it very simply, it's just trying to hear beautiful sounds.
You put so much more into it and turn it into such a thing.
What type of music you listen to and how the music calls to you and all these descriptions of it.
Ultimately,
The core of it, you know, there could be a message and certain singing and so on, but the core of it is our desire to hear something pleasant.
Smells, tastes, how much energy goes into food, how obsessed we are over good food, how much of our lives is caught up in flavors.
and feelings, so pleasant feelings, warm, cool, how obsessed we are with the cold.
When it's cold, we complain.
When it's hot, we complain.
A nice, pleasant touch of soft and hard and the feelings that come from sexual and sensual touch and that sort of thing.
That's the first one.
The second one is discontent.
These are armies and they're sort of things that contribute to our defilement, to our impure state, to the state of mind, states of mind that cause us suffering.
We're not trying to be... It's not about sin or evil or so on.
It's particularly about things that hurt us.
Discontent is a big one.
contentment, the Buddha said, is the greatest gain, and it's discontent that drives us.
We can't sit still, we can't be alone, we can't be, we can't just be caught up in so much discontent.
Number three is hunger and thirst.
Hunger and thirst are not evil, not impure, right?
It's not an impure thing that you need water and food, but it's evil.
It's an ancillary evil in the sense that it drives us to so much stress and diversion.
If we weren't hungry and didn't get thirsty, how much we would save on our ambition and our drive to attain and obtain.
Number four is craving.
Of course this is a big one.
Really the root of it all.
We want things and it turns out that nothing we want can bring us happiness and so it just brings us more and more wanting.
Now of course the overcoming of all these things, this is the
conquering all of these.
The process is what we go through in meditation, especially craving.
So we overcome craving by realizing that the things that we crave are not worth craving.
There's no good in them.
Number five, sloth and torpor.
We're caught up by this unwieldiness of mind that comes from sleeping a lot, comes from living our life in laziness, keeps us from being awake, being alert, being alive.
We're very much caught up and enslaved by laziness.
Number six is fear.
Of course, fear drives us to so much what we might call evil.
We might kill or steal or lie or cheat simply out of fear.
It prevents you from being at peace.
Fear causes us to do irrational things.
Doubt as well, number seven.
Doubt is a big one.
You might say, what's wrong with doubt?
Doubt stops you from doing what is right.
If you doubt something, it doesn't mean that just because you doubt it, it's wrong.
It's very easy to doubt what is the right thing to do, what is good for you.
And doubt can also cause us to do evil.
We are unable to
unable to find the right answer, crippled by our doubts, and so we do the wrong thing.
Number eight is conceit and ingratitude.
To put these together, which is curious, conceit is, I guess in this sense, not being able to appreciate others.
So conceit here would be an over-appreciation.
It would be a raising yourself up.
But in relation to ingratitude, I think it means not being able to appreciate others.
So ingratitude is not being able to appreciate what others do for you.
Appreciate the goodness of others and...
These are not the core evil, but they're a cause for great evil, because if you don't think about the good other people have done to you, it's very easy to then become greedy and conceited.
You only think about yourself, and it's very easy to then become attached to sensuality.
without realizing the cause and the benefit that other people have given to you.
Number nine is gain renown and honor that are falsely received.
So again, it's not wrong to have gain, renown, or honor, but often we receive them without being worthy of them.
So someone might be very much praised as a teacher, but it turns out that they're corrupt.
Someone might be praised as a meditator, but it turns out they're just sleeping all the time.
But gain, so someone gain renown and honor, they can all be gained falsely.
You can cheat and manipulate others, steal and so on.
But gain, when you didn't work for it, you know, if you work for it, there's an appreciation of it.
When you meditate and you work for the peace and the happiness that you get from it, and then people appreciate you, well, there's not such a big problem there.
It's not as likely to lead you to become conceited about it.
But when you gain things unwillingly, when people appreciate you, it's a problem for new monks nowadays because monks, in Asia anyway, because monks have been for a long time treated quite well by lay people.
In some countries, in Thailand it was like that especially.
So new monks would often become quite egotistical, especially Westerners who aren't used to it.
And when everyone's esteeming them, they get the sense, oh, I must be something special.
It's kind of subconscious, really.
There's a story, we've been through the story of Bhadia.
Bhadia was a man who thought he was enlightened because he was shipwrecked and he lost his clothes and so he was naked.
Because he was naked, he found, tried to find something.
And I think he found, I don't know, a piece of bark or a piece of wood to cover up his private parts.
And people saw him and thought, oh, this must be some kind of saint because he goes without clothes.
So at first he pretended and he was like, yes, yes.
And they brought him food and he was like, oh, good.
But eventually he started believing it.
And he had this sense because of the gain that people were giving him.
So it's a cause for great distraction and delusion.
I can mislead you just by the fact, you know, when we often look to other people for confirmation that we're doing the right thing, and if everyone's praising you, it's easy to start to think that you're on the right track, but it's quite possible that you're being wrongfully praised.
And number 10 is self-exaltation and disparaging others.
So again, this is really related to conceit, but it's in the topic of how we relate to others, when we disparage others and hold ourselves up.
It's a very bad habit, obviously.
I mean, this is evil in itself.
But it's a bad habit.
that leads to other defilement, or it becomes pernicious, right?
Because even meditators can have this.
You might say that all ten of these are things that meditators particularly have to deal with, or meditators still have to deal with, even though they might do away with some of the coarse ones.
These are things that Mara tries to throw at meditators.
So you begin to gain insight and clarity and peace of mind.
And then you look at the people who don't meditate and you think, I'm better than all those people.
quite pernicious and it can really distract you and get you off track.
It can be a real problem, especially for monks who are often held in a higher regard.
Because they're held in a higher regard, they find it hard often to receive criticism.
Who are you?
I'm a monk.
Meditators can
have that as well, right?
If as a meditator someone who doesn't meditate criticizes you.
It's a very hard pill or bitter pill to swallow.
Someone who's not meditating points out how unmindful you are.
These are the ten armies of Mara.
You could say they're just part of the larger picture of defilement.
It's a good list.
So Mara himself really just refers to all of the stuff inside that is impure.
And it's impure and we consider it impure because it leads us to suffering.
It's not so much what it does to other people because they should be able to take care of themselves.
They are responsible for their own happiness and suffering.
But if you hurt other people, if you relate to other people
clingy or stressful way, you're just going to create bad habits.
And you're going to create a sadness, a sense of low self-esteem, or guilt.
Guilt is the word.
You'll feel guilty afterwards.
You'll feel bad about it.
And so it will cause you stress and suffering.
And as well, even if it has nothing to do with other people, if you just sit around desiring this or desiring that, or if you live your life craving this, craving that, chasing this, chasing that, you'll never be at peace.
You'll always be wanting and never be free from suffering.
And so the practice of meditation is, this is the path.
This is the way one gets out of the world.
The world is all of the things that we create and get caught up in.
When you stop being caught up, stop chasing after, you free yourself from the world.
You go out of the world.
You leave behind the world.
That's the real teaching, I think, in this verse.
So that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for tuning in.
I wish you all the best.