Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verses 231 to 234, which read as follows.
kāya-pakopangrakheya kāyena samudosya
kāya du caritāṃ hitvā kāyena su caritāṃ ca re vajīpa-gopāṃ rākheya vājāya samudosya vajītu caritāṃ hitvā vājāya su caritāṃ ca re mano pa-gopāṃ rākheya manasā samudosya
Manodu Charitanghitva Manasa Sucharitangchare Kayena Samutadhira Athovajaya Samuta Manasa Samutadhira Teve Suparisamuta Which means
One should guard oneself from performing physical violence.
One should be restrained physically.
Having abandoned physical misconduct, one should engage in good physical conduct, positive physical conduct.
One should guard oneself from performing verbal violence.
One should be restrained verbally.
Having abandoned verbal misconduct, one should engage in good verbal behavior.
One should guard oneself from mental violence, from performing mental violence.
One should be guarded mentally.
Having abandoned mental misconduct, one should engage in good mental conduct.
The wise are restrained physically.
They are restrained verbally as well.
The wise are restrained mentally.
They indeed are well and fully restrained.
These verses were taught in response to not so much a story as a simple event In the Buddha's congregation and in the monastic order there was a group of six monks and they became known as the group of six They made a name for themselves
as a result of their performing all manner of bad deeds, doing all sorts of things that were unbecoming of monastics.
And so on this occasion it's said that they put on wooden clogs and carrying
wooden staves in their hand, sticks, went to this big flat rock area and started walking back and forth on the rock, making an incredible noise.
Clack, clack, clack.
It's an example of the sorts of things they would do that weren't against the rules.
It probably was that they were trying to find things to do that would be wrong, but didn't technically break any rule.
The Buddha asked, what's that noise?
And I think it was Ananda who said, well, it's the group of six.
They're acting up again.
And the Buddha, I think, laid down a rule that you're not allowed to wear wooden shoes.
And he remarked on the event with these four verses.
So they're simple.
It's a simple, very simple story and very simple teaching in the verses.
It's a rather important one, a rather useful one.
Much of the Buddha's teaching isn't esoteric or even profound in its content.
You're talking about the body, speech and mind.
That content isn't very profound.
But it is an incredibly profound teaching in its simplicity.
It works as a very important teaching from a practical perspective because it provides a framework for us to understand our interactions with the world.
The three doors, the bodily door, the verbal door, and the mental door,
These are the ways in which we interact with the world.
These are the ways in which karma is performed.
The inclusion of the mental door itself is a profound teaching.
It reminds us that
the ethical implications of our acts or those acts that have ethical implications are not limited to acts of speech and body.
These are the three ways in which we engage with the world, the ways in which we express our positive, our good and our bad tendencies.
And yet, they're quite simple.
It doesn't require a lot of complicated understanding.
As a meditator, if you remember these three doors, it provides you with a good framework to cultivate mindfulness.
How should you cultivate mindfulness?
Well, there's the physical, whenever I do physically.
There's the verbal, when I speak.
And there's the mental, when I think, when I fantasize or plan or remember.
So the Buddha quite often would remind us of these three doors and use them as a teaching.
We talk a lot about du-charita and su-charita, which the Buddha mentions in these verses.
Du-charita, du meaning bad and su meaning good.
So we have things with the physical, there's the obvious ones of killing and stealing, these would be bad deeds.
And on the other side of charity and generosity and helping others, any action that is performed with love or kindness, compassion.
With speech, again, the obvious ones, you have lying and insulting, you have gossiping, you have idle speech, useless speech.
And on the other side, you have truth telling.
When someone needs to know something, you tell them the truth, useful, instructive speech.
When someone could use advice, you give them advice.
When someone can use encouragement, you give them encouragement.
Even just complimenting people is often incredibly helpful for bolstering their confidence and setting themselves in the right direction, helping them to give up doubt when you remind them of the good that they're doing.
And mentally, obviously engaging in
Fantasy, fantasy about positive things, fantasy about negative things, fantasizing about harming others, harming yourself.
But from a mindfulness perspective, it's not just these obvious positive and negative acts.
And that's where we get to the second aspect of this teaching, and that's the aspect of samvara, or as the Buddha says here, samvuta, which means being guarded, or restrained, sorry.
Guarded, restrained, rakheya, the Buddha says here.
Guarded, samvara, samvuta, restrained.
They mean basically the same thing.
That it's not simply about abstaining from killing and stealing.
It's about guarding these doors.
It's about having restraint in relation to these doors.
It is restrained in regards to walking.
It is restrained in regards to action in general, so that you wouldn't go around making loud noises when you walk, which is, in a monastic community, or in any community really, it's incredibly unrestrained.
It's a sign of a mind that is unrestrained.
A mind that is untrained.
A mind that is wild and untamed.
A mind that is reckless.
And so true good and evil behavior, whether it be through action, through speech, or through mind, it's much more than just keeping precepts, though it involves keeping precepts.
It's also that when we walk, we are guarded, we are restrained.
It doesn't mean you have to be repressed.
Restrained is
a bit misleading sometimes.
It makes you think you should be perhaps repressed in some way.
Now, restrained means focused, means limited.
It means restricted to the objective, to objectivity.
That when you walk, you restrict your mind to the act of walking, to the reality,
When you talk, you restrict yourself to the truth and to the meaning To an objective expression of reality Why many of the Buddha's teachings don't seem so much like doctrinal points trying to convince you of something
It's because they're actually, really on the deepest level, they're an expression of reality.
The Buddha's teachings are nothing more than a description of reality.
And mentally, it means engaging in an objectivity of mind, a clarity of mind.
mind that is purely aware of things as they are.
When you walk and you know that you're walking and not only know that you're walking, but that's all that's in the mind.
The mind is present and only present.
The mind doesn't become lost in judgment or bias or extrapolation about reality.
The pure mind is the mind that is focused on the present, focused on the experience, focused on the reality.
So the Buddha taught these two things.
He taught the framework within which we understand, interact with reality, and that is the three doors.
And he taught restraint, how to behave in relation to these doors.
He also taught five ways by which we practice restraint, which it's worth mentioning to sort of give you an idea of what is meant by this word samvara or samvutta.
So the first is sila-samvara.
This is restraining ourselves using ethical precepts.
This is what I was mentioning about not killing and not stealing, not speaking lies or speech that hurts others.
We can restrain ourselves simply by vowing to keep
our determination to keep ethical precepts.
When we say, I undertake as a rule not to kill.
Sometimes it's out of faith, sometimes it's out of belief.
But just by keeping ethical precepts is a restraint because it stops you, of course, from doing and saying and even intending to do things.
The second is sati-samhara, and this is where our practice comes in.
Rather than just forcing ourselves to keep precepts, sati keeps us so objective that we wouldn't do things that could ever be considered breaking an ethical precept.
You can't want to harm another if your mind is pure.
You can't want to steal or cheat or lie.
The mind is too pure, too clear for that.
Mindfulness keeps and guards the mind.
Mindfulness is the best guard, sati samvara.
It's not the best guard.
It's an active guard.
It's how we engage in guarding our activities as we practice.
We don't repress our desire to do things.
When we're aware of the desire, the desire doesn't lead to a need to fulfill the desire or the aversion, anger.
The best is actually the next one, jnana samvara.
And that's what comes from sati, because as you keep the mind objective, you start to understand.
You get a clearer picture of reality.
Walking is just walking.
Seeing is just seeing.
Experience is impermanent, unsatisfying, uncontrollable.
Our reasons for clinging, for reacting, fall away.
They become meaningless.
And we see our reactions, we see our bad behavior for what it is.
Bad.
We see it as causing suffering.
And that knowledge, jnana samurajnana means knowledge.
The knowledge that comes from mindfulness is the best kind of guard.
Because you really don't need to guard at that point.
You're guarded.
You're restrained by the truth
Someone who knows the truth, it might be surprising, but someone who knows the truth, they say it sets you free, but it also restrains you.
Someone who knows the truth is incredibly restrained.
There are so many things they just can't do.
It seems kind of strange.
But it's not an inability to do.
It's an impossibility for them to ever do it.
Impossible because there are many things that we might do that would require delusion, that require ignorance.
You can't engage in something that hurts you if you know it's going to hurt you, if you really know and understand.
And the other two forms of sammora are kanti sammora and viriya sammora.
And these really have a lot to do with the meditation practice, so they can be included in mindfulness, really.
Kanti means patience, effort.
Viriya means effort.
And you can engage out of patience.
You can be patiently restrained outside of the practice.
But the best type of patience comes from mindfulness, comes from practice, comes from knowledge.
You might say that it's a part of the practice, that you need not only mindfulness, but also patience.
And you need not only patience and mindfulness, but you also need effort.
You can use effort alone to restrain yourself, forcing yourself, repressing your desires as well.
But the best type of effort, just as the best type of patience, is one that is engaged with mindfulness, is associated, accompanied by mindfulness.
When you have this state of seeing things as they are, you use effort to continue and to refine systematically, bringing the mind back again and again to the present moment.
Patience so that you don't get caught up and lost in your bad habits.
patiently bearing with desire, the desire to get lost, the desire to follow after some sensual object or object, the aversion to run away from it, to avoid it, patience to stay with it, patience to be mindful to face it, patience to face it, effort to face it.
This is how you restrain the mind.
So the Buddha said,
The wise are restrained in body.
They are also restrained in speech.
We talk about restraint, being restrained.
How do you restrain yourself?
Those who are well and fully restrained are restrained in these three ways.
Restrained physically, restrained verbally, restrained mentally.
So it means applying mindfulness to our physical acts, walking ethically,
to our verbal acts, speaking ethically, and to our mental acts, thinking ethically.
Pure deeds, pure speech, pure thoughts.
This is very important.
This is a teaching that's very applicable to the meditation practice.
It relates very much to the practice.
Our engagement with the world, it can be summed up under these three headings, physical, verbal, and mental.
And all of them are determined by our state of mind, our intention.
We intend to do something.
We intend to say something.
We even intend to think things.
Our inclination, our state of mind influences our actions.
Not just in terms of killing and stealing and lying and cheating.
But in terms of the quality of our actions, we might intend to help someone, but based on our greed, our anger, our delusion, arrogance, conceit, we express ourselves poorly and we harm the person we're trying to help.
Even when trying to help, if we're not guarded, even just walking down the street, we can do it unethically.
If we don't hurt someone else, we hurt ourselves.
And a reminder that even mentally, we can create violence.
Mano pakopa.
Pakopa is probably something more like anger.
Remember, this is the anger chapter.
This is the end of the anger chapter, but the idea is violence, mental violence.
We shouldn't engage in it, we should guard against it.
What is mental violence?
Thinking.
You can think to hurt others, and you may not hurt them with your thoughts, but it will certainly predispose you poorly towards them, so that later when you act,
towards them.
It can be based very much and will be will be based based very much on your state of mind.
Or you might, you might decide not to help not to engage with someone out of anger or out of greed or out of delusion.
So mental thoughts can prevent you from doing your duty towards others doing what's proper.
can be very harmful to others, just our thoughts.
But most importantly, of course, is how harmful it is to us.
And by harming ourselves, of course, we harm others.
Because we are not pure in mind, we are unable to relate to others properly.
We harm others, we fail to support others or to perform the things that are right to perform.
Our duty is
We don't do the right thing because our minds are in the wrong place.
It's a reminder of these three doors and how they constitute the basis.
I mean, it's really another way of looking at the four satipatthanas.
When you speak even, being mindful when you speak, mindful of the movement of the lips, but mindful also of the intention to speak and the emotions behind your speech.
When you want to say something after you've said something and how you feel about what you've said.
When you're engaged in conversation, listening to others speak.
physically, verbally, mentally, being ready, being present, being confined to what is good and true and right and pure.
That's the teaching here.
And that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for listening.