Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue with verse 221, which reads as follows.
kodhang jahe vipajaheya manang sanyojanam sabhamatikamaya
Which means, one should give up anger.
One should abandon conceit.
that person who has no clinging or who is not hung up on nama and rupa, the physical and the mental.
There arises or no suffering befalls such a person.
there arises no suffering for such a person.
This verse was taught regarding a story about Anuruddha and his sister.
Anuruddha, when the story goes, went to visit Kapilavatthu, Anuruddha was one of the Buddha's
cousins.
And so he went back to Kapilavatthu to visit family.
And when he was staying in Nigrodharama, the monastery near Kapilavatthu, all of his relatives came to visit him except for his sister, Rohini.
And so he asked his relatives.
They came and paid respect to him and greeted him and spoke amicably.
And he asked them, where's my sister?
They said, oh, she didn't come.
She didn't want to come.
And he said, well, call her.
Well, she has this rash, a skin problem.
big boils or something.
Unsightly skin condition.
She doesn't want to be seen.
She's ashamed of it.
And I said, I'll call her over, call her out.
Make her come and see me.
And they, or convince her, no, not make her.
So they went to find her.
They called her and said, look, he wants you to come and see him.
So finally she was convinced to come to the monastery and visit her brother.
And he said, what's wrong?
And she said, oh, I've got this skin condition.
She was all covered up, covered up her face and didn't want to show herself.
And he said,
What was his response?
It wasn't, have you seen a doctor or something?
It was, aren't you doing any good deeds?
Now I'm not sure how that was meant, whether he meant, just because you have a skin condition doesn't mean you can't come to the monastery and listen to the Dhamma and maybe offer food to the monks or that sort of thing.
But the way it's presented is more like,
Is there some good deed you can do to alleviate your skin condition?
And because she asked him, well, what can I do?
And he said, well, you should build an assembly hall.
And all these people coming to visit and monks coming to the monastery, what this place needs, build an assembly hall for the monks and for the people to come in when they visit the monks.
And she said, well, where am I going to get the kind of, how am I going to do that?
And he said, well, do you have any jewelry?
And she had apparently this very expensive jewelry.
And he said, well, sell that.
And do this good deed.
This would be something.
This was his cure, basically, as I understand it.
And so she ironed the details out and Anuruddha oversees it all.
He's in the monastery and he oversees the building and he says to her, as soon as it's finished, you take up the duty to sweep it out and to clean it and to keep it maintained.
And she did that.
And as she was doing that, the story says, her skin got better, started to get better.
Her skin, well, she was sweeping out this hall that she had built by sacrificing what was dear to her, her jewelry.
And her skin cleared, started clearing up.
And then at some point, the Buddha came.
with all of the monks and she organized this great gift giving of the assembly hall and offered food to all the monks with the Buddha there.
But she didn't come out herself because her skin condition was still not cured.
It was better, I guess, but still she was quite ashamed of it.
And so the Buddha asked, where's Rohini?
Where's the donor of this new hall?
And I said, oh, she doesn't want to come.
And he said, well, call her anyway.
And so she came out.
Finally, she was convinced to come to the hall.
And the Buddha said, why didn't you want to come?
And she said, Venerable sir, I'm too ashamed of my skin condition And the Buddha said, do you know why you have that skin condition?
And she said, no, no I don't And he told her a story of the past Once upon a time, Rohini was a queen Well, the way they say the story, once upon a time there was a queen
And this queen was a little bit vain and a little bit subject to cruelty.
And one day she took a disliking to one of the king's dancers.
I guess the thing about kings back then or throughout time is they can do whatever they want.
Not only do they have multiple queens, but on top of the queens, they also have concubines and dancers and
It seems like probably in many cases it was the ultimate sort of debauchery because there's no law higher than you.
You are the law.
You're certainly above the law.
So I guess maybe one of the dancers got the king's eye and she was jealous or it doesn't really say.
She was just angry at the dancer.
And so what she did is she got this Mahakachupala, Mahakachupalani.
And the text I read in English originally said scabs.
She got some scabs.
Which is absolutely not what it means.
So I looked up a different translation and I looked at the actual Pali.
Kachu.
Kachu means scab, but it also means, it's also the name of a fruit that causes skin rash.
It's called something like violet, violet bean or something.
In Africa, they apparently call it devil's bean or
insane or crazy bean or something like that.
Because if you touch this, the bean pods or the flowers, these violet flowers, the oil in it or something, the chemical is very nasty and it spreads on your skin.
And if you spread it on your skin or to your eyes, it causes violent rash and itching and scratching and eventually scabs, I guess.
So she found some of this plant and she made powder out of it.
And she took some of the powder and she spread it all in this dancer's bed, in her sheets and her blankets and all of her clothes and everything.
And then she went up to her and threw some on her.
Nasty, nasty people can be.
And of course, this dancer was struck with incredible itching and
violent outbreak on her skin.
And so she went to her bed to rest.
And when she got into her bed, it got even worse.
That's the story.
And then, having told this story, the Buddha said, anger has great and lasting consequences.
And then he taught this verse.
So from the story we get this similar lesson to last week.
This verse is the first verse in the Kodhavaga, the chapter on anger.
So we're going to see lots more about anger here, but similar to the last verse it talks about, or it points to the idea that the mind can affect the physical world, in this case the body.
And we see that in two examples.
We see that her anger in a past life, again this is classic Buddhist conception of karma, the evil that she had done in a past life scarred her mind and created the potential for her to be reborn, created this sickness in her next life, this skin condition.
And on the other side, we see how the doing of good deeds alleviated it.
So first when she was sweeping and had given this great gift of an assembly hall to the community, how it affected her physical appearance, it alleviated her sickness.
And the story actually continues.
After the Buddha taught the story, her skin condition completely cleared up, and she became beautiful.
She became radiant, golden-skinned or something.
And this is, I think in general, an important lesson.
It's a classic Buddhist doctrine.
The idea that good thoughts are curative, are healing.
And so it stands in sort of comparison to ideas like positive thinking.
I hear a lot about the power of positive thinking.
People ask me about
And it's touted as sort of a healing sort of thing.
It at least heals the mind.
It has the potential, they say, to bring you good things in your life.
If you think I deserve good things, good things will come to me.
That sort of thing, that somehow that brings positive results.
And I can't really refute that.
I don't know what the studies say or the science says of it, but what you can say about it is it's incredibly self-serving.
And so the quality of mind that it evokes is not going to be by a Buddhist standard pure.
In general, the idea of positive thinking is generally greedy or desirous.
It has to do with desire, it can have to do with conceit, and so on.
And so the take in Buddhism is different.
It's distinct.
When you say not positive thoughts, think positive thoughts, think good thoughts in that sense.
Think good thoughts in another sense.
And it's not even think, it's have good mind states.
And so in the doing of good deeds, in charity and ethics and meditation and all sorts of help that you perform to others and that sort of thing, there's such a wholesome and good state of mind that that is said in Buddhism to be curative.
That is an important part of basic Buddhist practice, that we find things to do and ways to act, ways to speak, even ways to think.
that are beneficial, that are good.
Because they have far-reaching benefits, not just in this life but in the next.
It's something the Buddha taught quite often.
It's a basic teaching.
It's not profound or enlightening, but it's a great support in the spiritual path.
And that's really the best way that goodness should be understood.
From a Buddhist perspective, it's a great support for our meditation practice.
So it is very relevant.
The verse has a more profound lesson, and it offers a fairly detailed, for such a brief teaching, it offers a fairly detailed teaching on the path.
First, , one should abandon anger.
In general, the verse is talking about, or the overall theme of the verse, of course, is the overcoming of suffering, the freedom from suffering, which is the Buddhist goal.
And so the first way that one frees oneself from suffering is by abandoning anger.
One should abandon anger.
This is contested, I think, in the world.
People are often
interested in or keen or attached to their anger of the view that anger is at times beneficial if you didn't have anger people might walk all over you if you didn't have anger you wouldn't get things done and so on and it may very well be it certainly is the case that many times anger is what propels people to do even perhaps what you could argue were good things
From a Buddhist perspective, it doesn't have much meaning.
The doing of things, the desire for things to be done, the worry or concern that people might walk all over you, all of those things are ultimately based in attachment.
So on a basic, practical level, getting angry once in a while isn't going to condemn you in a Buddhist sense.
It isn't going to send you to hell or something.
It isn't going to make you unable to practice.
But ultimately anger is, at its very core, one of the things that gets in the way of the practice, gets in the way of seeing clearly.
And on a very practical, basic level, it's something that leads to sickness in the body as well.
It's considered a mental sickness because of it being inherently stressful.
In many cases, anger is the easiest one for us to see as being harmful because of how painful it is, compared to something like greed or desire, which can be quite pleasant.
I often get people asking how they can overcome and be free from anger.
Because it's unpleasant, they can see that and they can also see the results.
The results of anger are incredibly damaging.
People are physically violent with people who they would otherwise wish happiness towards because of anger.
If you want to be free from suffering, both physically and mentally, it makes you sick.
You can feel sick.
You can feel how sick it is when you're very, very angry.
Sometimes people get bloody nose, blood coming out of their nose when they're angry.
There's tension, headaches, strokes can come because people are so angry.
And ultimately, the lasting impacts on the body, even in this life, are certainly...
measurable.
Now the idea is simply that when one dies, that doesn't stop.
And there's some, you could get, if you want to understand how these things work, you get the idea that in the womb, the fetus is very sensitive.
And because we're dealing with fewer cells and a simpler organism, the effect that the mind will have on the fetus, this is speculative, but it's easy to see how this could create states of change in the physical body.
From a Buddhist perspective, I'm sure the materialist people who think this is superstition, there's a sense that that's probably not the case.
That the mind is simply an epiphenomenon and so on.
Anyway, not to get too off track, but how these things happen has a lot to do with the interactions between the body and the mind.
And it's not so much that the mind affects the body, right?
Because that would be talking about a mind and a body.
You see, it's different.
The mind is not a thing that pokes at the body or turns switches on or something.
The mind and the body are concepts that are a part of the same ultimate reality.
And so if you just talk about the body You're only talking about part of the picture And you miss things And you don't understand or can't explain How certain things happen How does sickness come about?
They can look and see genetics But genetics doesn't explain everything Some of it, absolutely But there's more to it than that And the mind plays a part The second one
Vipajyahiya māna Māna is conceit Conceit in Buddhism is the same as what in the West we might call self-esteem And it's often seen again in a positive light You should have high self-esteem If you have a self-esteem issue, it's usually not because you have too much self-esteem
Sometimes people use it that way.
Usually high self esteem is a good thing.
And low self esteem is a bad thing.
In Buddhism, they're both bad because you're esteeming the self, you're creating value, giving a value judgment to a concept really, the idea of who you think you are, which is usually just a snapshot that is often highly inaccurate or moderately inaccurate at the least.
And conceit is in many ways more dangerous than something like anger.
Anger is what causes great suffering.
It's what propelled this queen to do that terrible thing.
But it alone is usually not enough.
Anger alone is not very powerful.
Conceit and views, the delusion, even just simple ignorance, are the scaffold that allow it to grow.
They support it.
You can be angry and let it come and let it go and realize that you're angry.
But if you're conceited, if someone does something that makes you angry and you believe, I don't deserve to be treated that way, that's conceit.
And that is what not only makes you act, but if you're going to act, it's what propels you and
gives you the confidence to act with the whole heart, act with complete conviction.
I don't deserve this.
Right?
arrogance, conceit.
Same goes with low self esteem.
If you have low self esteem, you believe you deserve bad things to happen.
And so you make no effort to better yourself.
Make no effort to help to change situations.
Esteem.
Esteem is not a good thing.
This is why the idea of being worthless is somehow in some ways useful to think about.
The idea that we have no worth.
No value.
And it doesn't mean that we are, and it's not, it could be problematic if you thought of it as, if you think you're worthless in a sense of having low self-esteem, mostly that's how we would look at that statement.
But beyond, it goes beyond that.
It simply means you can't put a value on things.
It's not that we're priceless or with value beyond measure.
It's that putting worth on things is problematic, to say the least.
Conceit is a value judgment about yourself.
It creates and enforces the idea of self and triggers greed and anger.
I deserve this, so you go after it.
Even more than if you just wanted it.
If you believe you deserve it, you'll often do things to get the object of your desire that you wouldn't do with simple greed or desire.
So a great cause of suffering and probably a big factor in this queen, the acts of this queen.
The third part, tang nama rupas mim asadja mana.
Asadja, asadja, not clinging or not having, it's an interesting word, it means to be hung.
To be hung up, hung on.
Hung to, hung by, hung on.
So in English we would say hung up on.
Hung up on nama rupa.
Which in fact is not, I don't think possible.
You don't get caught up on nama rupa.
I don't mean to criticize what the Buddha said.
But it seems to me there's something deeper here that what he's, he may be saying.
he seems to be saying.
Well, he's pointing out that these things that you're hung up on, this body, that you won't refuse to show, covering yourself up, that we're very careful to put on makeup and comb our hair.
I hear one of the most unpleasant things for people during this quarantine is to not get a haircut, which is a bit surprising.
having to clothe ourselves, having to wash ourselves and so on.
These things that we're hung up on, they're only nama and rupa.
And why I say that is because if you see, if and when you see reality as just nama and rupa, there's nothing to get hung up about.
There's nothing to hang yourself on.
Nama means the mental aspects.
When the stomach rises, the knowing of the rising, that's nama.
That knowing arises and ceases.
The rising of the stomach, the falling of the stomach, the movement of the foot, even the sound of my voice, that's rupa.
The sound doesn't know anything.
Sound is just a thing, a phenomenon, it's there.
If you're focused on something else, as you're watching television or reading a book, someone might say something and you don't even hear it.
But the sound is there.
That's rupa.
Nama and rupa.
That's all it is.
That's all everything is.
It's all we can really, truly know.
Everything else that we think we are aware of and experience, this whole experience around us, that's all arising in the mind.
So someone who is not hung up on nama and rupa, absolutely through meditation practice.
Akinchanam nanutapan, nanupatantinukha.
Dukha, all kinds of suffering.
Akinchanang dukha.
Not even the slightest sufferings.
Anupatanti.
Not even the slightest sufferings befall such a person.
So it's again, not so much about, not at all about the experiences that we have.
It's about our reactions to them, how we interpret them,
how they create so much, so much of what we take for granted as a part of who we are, a part of the world around us, is just all fabrication in our mind.
All the relationships we have with people, say what you will, the good, bad, without putting any value and judgment on them or anything like that, they are absolutely entirely
all in our minds.
They're not real.
Our parents, our children, our friends, our family, our loved ones, our societies, our economies, our
our social lives, our belongings, even our own bodies and all the things they're made up of.
Our skin that we take so much pride in, our teeth that we whiten and clean and our nails that we file and clean and buff and paint even.
We paint these ugly nails.
Well, these nails, let's not be judgmental.
Our hair, what we do to our hair, this smelly, oily plant that's planted in the blood and oil of our scalp.
What we do to this strange and organic part of our body.
All of this is just in our minds.
The underlying reality, which is very hard to see if you don't have such a wonderful teacher like the Buddha, such an accomplished and enlightened teacher.
The underlying reality is just experience.
So that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you all for listening.