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Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.

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Today we continue on with verse number 116 which reads as follows Which means

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one should be exceedingly swift in doing good things.

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And in Bapachittang Nivaraya in preventing

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or restraining the mind in doing evil.

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So both in doing good and in restraining the mind from doing evil, one should be exceedingly swift, should make haste.

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For he,

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For one who does good deeds slowly, the mind delights in evil.

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So like the English saying, idle hands are the devil's workshop or so on.

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If you don't make haste in doing good, your mind will delight in evil instead.

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This was told in regards to a rather touching story of a Brahmin called Eka Sataka.

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He was called Eka Sataka.

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That's how he's remembered anyway.

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I'm pretty sure that wasn't his name.

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But Eka Sataka.

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Sataka is robe and Eka is one or Sataka is cloth.

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Eka is one.

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So he had one cloth.

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Why was he called that?

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Because the pertinent feature of this story is

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he and his wife each had one lower robe to themselves, meaning so each one of them had a sort of like a skirt to wear, which would have been common clothing to wear at the time in India.

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But among the two of them, between the two of them,

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they only had one upper robe, which would have been something like this that I'm wearing, which would be something to cover their chest.

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And because it was considered proper to, when you go in public, to wear an upper robe and a lower, a lower robe and an upper robe, they couldn't go out together.

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And when one of them went out to the market or when they went to the monastery to listen to religious discourses, when they went to listen to the Buddha or other teachers teaching, one of them had to stay at home.

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They were exceedingly poor.

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They were so poor that they only had one upper robe between the two of them.

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So it became sort of rather an important item in their family.

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Like this robe was all that was allowing one of them to go out.

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And the fact that they didn't have two of them was clear that if they could have afforded a second one, they certainly would have tried to get a second one because it was causing great hardship.

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So one day there was an announcement that the Buddha would be giving a preaching.

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There would be a special Dhamma discourse.

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And these people were lucky enough to be born in a time when there was a Buddha and they were lucky enough to be born in a place during the time when there was a Buddha in a place where the Buddha was teaching.

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They were lucky enough to be born as humans and they were lucky enough, it seems, to have actual interest in hearing what the Buddha said.

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But then there was the problem, there was going to be teaching during the day and teaching during the night, but they both couldn't go to hear all the teachings, so they had to take turns.

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And so he asked his wife, what will we do?

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And his wife said, I'll go during the day.

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And she took the robe, the upper robe, and had her lower robe on, and went out and listened to the Buddha's teaching.

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By the time she came back, it was getting on in the evening, and

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She handed over the upper robe and he put it on.

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This Brahmin Ekasattaka put on his one robe and made his way to the monastery and sat in the back and began to listen to the Dhamma.

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And as he listened to the Dhamma,

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It is said that in a past life he was a follower of the Buddha Vipassi, one of the Buddhas in times gone by.

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And so it hit him rather strongly, this teaching.

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It was like a recognition of something familiar.

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And he felt himself just becoming ecstatic with joy and rapture and faith.

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so he wasn't enlightened he hadn't really come to see the Buddha's teaching for himself but he was just overwhelmed by the greatness of this teaching and as we often are when we hear spiritual teachings you know when you read wise teachings or when you listen to talks about wise things when you read the Buddha's teaching or hear talks about it often it's quite overwhelming how how impressive it is when we hear about the Satipatthana Sutta or when we hear about

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the Buddha's teaching on the Eightfold Noble Paths, or these kind of things, and we see how pure it is.

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It gives us, makes us, it excites, brings great faith and great encouragement.

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And so he got this real sense of faith and devotion to the Buddha, which is useful.

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You know, faith and devotion are useful qualities of mind because they give you strength and power.

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The problem isn't with the qualities.

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The problem is with how they're used and whether they are directed by wisdom.

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They're not sufficient, of course, to bring about enlightenment, but they do give encouragement.

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So this is why in all religions,

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People with faith are able to do great, great things in the sense of powerful things.

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They're able to support their religion.

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Religion is therefore able to build great structures and some of the greatest architecture and most profound feats, the pyramids.

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Much of the architecture in history has been due to religion.

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If you go to any Buddhist country or Hindu country,

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In India, they were carving temples out of solid rock.

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So they would carve a temple out of a single block of a cliff, roof and all, and carve the inside out.

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So great deeds can be done with things like faith and devotion.

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They're not to be taken lightly.

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But they're dangerous because, of course, with faith and devotion you can kill, you can cause terror and fear and suffering to others as well.

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And, of course, when two people believe very different things it causes conflict and war and so on.

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So it's powerful, is the point.

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And so he gained this great sense of strength, inner strength.

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And it made him think the almost unthinkable.

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He wanted to give a gift.

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He wanted to do something out of appreciation and not just appreciation really, as a spiritual practice, because giving is a spiritual practice.

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And for lay people, for people who are living in the world and have to work, I mean, probably he had

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a job that he had to do that took up most of his time and obviously didn't pay very well.

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And so as something he could do to better himself, he wanted to give something up.

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He wanted to give something as a gift to the Buddha.

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This was his idea of a religious practice.

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So the question is, what was he going to give?

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Well, he obviously couldn't give his lower robe because that would make him indecent.

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He had no money, he had nothing but these two pieces of cloth, and cloth of course was quite valuable at that time, so it was considered an obvious choice of a gift.

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But all he had was this one upper robe.

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It was really the only thing he could give.

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But it was even worse to give that because not only did he depend upon this upper robe to keep societal etiquette or decorum, his wife also depended on it.

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And so he had this dilemma in his mind because he thought, yes, I should give this piece of cloth because it's relatively valuable.

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And certainly the Buddha could put it to use.

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But then he thought, that's ridiculous.

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How could I even think such a thing?

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It's not only I need it, my wife also needs it.

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And so he had this one good thought, but then he had about a thousand.

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It says he had about a thousand thoughts against it.

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He decided not to do it.

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He was sitting there listening in the first part of the night.

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And he suppressed this desire to give.

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And he sat back down and said, what a ridiculous idea.

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But then he continued to listen to the Buddha's teaching and it just came to him that he really wanted to do something.

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It seems like he wasn't really prepared to do any meditation or develop himself spiritually.

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But this is often how it is.

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One of the first spiritual practices for this reason is giving because

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when people just that their minds aren't ready or they're they don't have the understanding of what it means to meditate or why it would be useful to meditate when people hear religious teachings and if they're not yet inclined to say hey I should practice that I should put it into practice because they don't have the requisite development that makes them think that their mind instead

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And it's just a basic spiritual practice, inclined towards giving.

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And the theory is that through giving, their mind lightens up and they come to see the difference between clinging and letting go.

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And they start to see how the mind is clinging and they start to realize it's not really about giving gifts.

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It's about the nature of your mind.

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Giving gifts is nice because it helps you become a better person, but really, and that's what would then lead them.

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So it's a gateway spiritual practice, you could say.

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that leads people on to the idea of higher spiritual practice as they realize that true giving is giving up and giving up really has nothing directly to do with an object it has much more to do with the mind and the mind of course is something that can be trained and it's cultivated based on habits and so then you start to listen deeper to the Buddhist teaching but it seems he wasn't able to do that because he didn't become enlightened through any of this

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And as often is the case with the suttas, or with these stories,

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They tend to leave the person behind and don't really talk about what happened to him.

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But the implication is that it seems he didn't ever become enlightened through this.

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But nonetheless, it was incredibly impressive that he even had this thought.

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And then in the second watch of the night, the second part of the night, the thought came up again because still the Buddha was teaching and it was just such an incredible teaching and he could feel how profound it was.

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And so the thought came up again, and again, he was fighting, it was warring inside of him.

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This conflict, should I give, shouldn't I give?

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And still, he couldn't bring himself to give, with good reason.

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For most of us, this is really a no-brainer.

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We think you can't, it's not proper.

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But if you put yourself in his place as someone who believed that this was a good thing, that giving was good, and who was in such a state that they had no other recourse to perform good deeds.

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He felt, or it seemed to him, that there was very little he could do.

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to do good deeds so it was it was either or it was either do this or resign yourself to to not having a spiritual practice to not doing anything of any benefit to anyone

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Of course, it's actually not true.

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There are many ways that you can help other people, how you can cultivate spiritual practice, and so on.

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But I don't mean to look down upon his intention.

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It's actually quite impressive.

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For most of us, we would be too afraid to do such a thing.

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And I don't think it's wrong that he had this idea.

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I don't think it would have been wrong to give.

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You could argue, as many people have, that giving beyond your means, giving to the point that it's uncomfortable, especially where it affects others, like this was not only going to affect him, it was going to affect his wife.

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that there's an argument to be made that it's improper and it's improper for people, for the monks for example, to accept such gifts or to encourage such gifts.

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But, you know, dealing with, that's really a cerebral argument, dealing with ultimate reality and the incredible sacrifice of someone giving away something so dear to them, something so important to them.

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Putting aside the fact that it wasn't only his and he didn't really have a right to give it away, he should have actually, or you could argue that he should have consulted with his wife first because it was also hers.

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If you put that aside, it's pretty awesome that he came up with this idea.

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Anyway, it's a good thing.

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Maybe not incredibly awesome, but he had a great intention here.

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And yet he still didn't give, reasonably.

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But in the third watch, in the third part of the night, as the night was drawing to a close and soon it would be morning and he would have to go home, finally the warring of these two thoughts, the desire to give and the fear of being without and of the consequences or the difficulties,

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the attachment to this cloth and the concern that he had maybe you could say it was a bit of ego that he was concerned with how it would look if he had to walk home and if he had to give up his own his only possession and had to walk home looking like a sort of like a beggar who didn't even have an upper upper robe finally near the end of the night he stood up pulled off his upper robe

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and placed it at the feet of the Buddha.

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And then he shouted, I have conquered, I have conquered.

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And he said it three times.

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I have conquered, I have conquered, I have conquered.

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And it so happened that in the crowd, also listening to the Buddha's teaching, was the king, King Pasenadi Kosala.

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He was the king of the realm of Savatthi, one of the great cities in the time of the Buddha, where the Buddha was staying.

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And of course, kings don't like to hear this from their subjects.

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I have conquered, I have conquered.

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And so, I mean, that's my understanding is that it was quite disconcerting to him to hear someone in the crowd say, I have conquered.

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It's not really what a king wants to hear.

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And so he had someone say, go find out who that person is and what they're talking about.

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What have they conquered?

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And the king's men went to the Brahmin and asked him, what are you talking about?

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What's this?

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And he explained what happened.

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And so they went back to the king.

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And when the king had heard what he had actually done, that he had given over to the Buddha his one main possession in the world, the king said it was a hard thing to do what the Brahmin did.

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That was not an easy thing.

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He was impressed.

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And, as these stories tend to go, and really as reality tends to, I mean, not maybe as magnificently as this, but good deeds are quite often rewarded, especially when they're done without any thought of reward.

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And it turns out this Brahmin was a pretty awesome guy, all in all.

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And the king wasn't bad either.

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decided that he would do something of kindness for this Brahmin who had so selflessly sacrificed something that was really quite important to him.

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And so he gave two pieces of cloth, one for the wife and one for the Brahmin.

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He asked his men to get two pieces of fine cloth, probably quite expensive cloth, to give so that this man wouldn't have to go without cloth.

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But the Brahmin was on a roll.

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So he took these two pieces of cloth and offered them to the Buddha as well.

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It seems he had become quite attached to this idea of giving.

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attachment or not, but he became quite, he had felt how great it was and what a relief it was really.

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I mean that's one of the things about giving is finally he didn't have this stress in his mind.

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It was just give, give, give up, give up.

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And once he had given up and sunk to the bottom where he had literally nothing, like really one robe just to cover his nakedness.

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What else can go wrong?

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So he gave both of the two robes to the Buddha.

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And the king saw this and he was impressed and so he gave him four pieces of cloth.

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And again the man gave, it's kind of like a test, well let's see what happens if I give him four.

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Certainly his greed will take over, right?

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But no, he gave all four pieces of cloth to the Buddha.

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So as the king continued, gave him eight pieces of cloth.

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And again, Eka Sataka gave all eight pieces of cloth to the Buddha.

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He gave him 16 pieces of cloth.

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He gave all 16 pieces of cloth to the Buddha.

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finally the king was impressed enough he had his men give over 32 pieces of cloth but this time he said he ordered him as king keep two pieces of cloth for yourself you can give the rest away if you like give one for your wife and one for you and so the man not wanting to go against the king did that and

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Yeah, and kept the two for himself.

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On top of this, the king, very impressed by this Brahmin, he had two expensive blankets, maybe they were made of silk or some kind of fur or something, something very, very expensive, and gave two blankets to the Brahmin, thinking this would be some very precious gift.

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Of course, cloth at that time, as I said, was a valuable commodity, especially fine cloth.

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And so he gave these as a token of his respect for this man, one for him and one for his wife.

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But again the Brahmin, he didn't say anything about having to keep them, so again the Brahmin

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took one of the cloths and offered it to be put above the Buddha's bed as a canopy.

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Because of course at that time they wouldn't have had the same kind of building that we'd have.

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So there would be spiders and bugs and even ticks and all sorts of dust and so on.

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So you needed the canopy over your bed to block that out.

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So he had this rich blanket placed over the Buddha's bed in the Gandhakutti, in the Kutti in Jetavana.

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And the other one he put as a canopy above where he offered alms.

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So it seems that he was offering alms every day as well.

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And so when monks would come for alms, they would have a place and this blanket served as a canopy.

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So he had completely given himself over to giving.

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This had become his spiritual practice.

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And then one day the king was visiting the Buddha and he saw this blanket being used as a canopy and it looked familiar and he said, he asked one of the monks or one of the attendants in the monastery, who gave that piece of cloth?

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Where did that come from?

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And they said, oh, that came from Eka Sataka, he gave it.

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And he remembered, he said, I gave him that cloth.

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And he just shook his head and he was...

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he was impressed beyond himself.

200
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And so he decided at that moment, you know, I have to do something really substantial for this guy.

201
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This guy should not be without.

202
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This is someone who could do good things with wealth.

203
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And so he gave him what is called the gift of fours.

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Four elephants, four horses, four thousand gold coins, four women, four female slaves, and four most excellent villages.

205
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That's apparently what they gave in those times.

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Slaves were a thing, though the Buddha doesn't seem to have looked very favorably upon them.

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He wasn't really into this whole social

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justice or change like people think he was.

209
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He seems to have tried very much, or not tried, but seemed to have stayed fairly much out of political and social causes.

210
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A lot of people tried to claim he was all for equality.

211
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I mean, he really was in the sense of allowing

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anyone, even outcasts, to become Buddhist monks.

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That's a very difficult, a very radical thing to do.

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At the time, outcasts were considered worthless or inferior, little better than animals, and the Buddha let them become spiritual monks, they become spiritual leaders.

215
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But, yeah, anyway, it was a thing at the time.

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So men had many wives, and they even had concubines, as I understand.

217
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So he got four female slaves.

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King Pasenadi wasn't really sort of the best example of humanity.

219
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I mean, he wasn't enlightened.

220
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They say that Pasenadi, I think, was going to become a Buddha at some point in the future.

221
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So he's in it for the long haul, and he's...

222
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So he sometimes did things and had policies and so on that were less than stellar.

223
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But nonetheless, the point is, the king gave this man great gifts.

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That's really the point to be taken from this, the gift of force, four of many different good things.

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And so the monks, as they were wont to do, began to talk about this one day in the hall of Dhamma.

226
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saying how wonderful was this deed of Eka Sataka.

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And it's wonderful that right away it was repaid and that within a very short time he was given this incredible gift, this gift of force.

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And the teacher heard, or the teacher walked in and asked them what they were talking about.

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And they told the Buddha.

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And the Buddha said, it's not really all that spectacular.

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He said, the truth is, he gave at the very end of the night.

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And if he had given in the second watch of the night, the second part of the night, he would have gotten the power of it, the power of that gift.

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would have given much greater rewards.

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The gift of eights, they said.

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If he had given in the first watch of the night, it would have given the gift of 16.

236
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So apparently that's, I mean, the Buddha is saying that there is some kind of, and many of these stories do tend to imply that there's a kind of a strong power that's almost magical, that causes very quick results.

237
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I think there's something about giving to someone like the Buddha that's considered to be of great benefit.

238
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I think you can vouch for this sort of thing.

239
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Most of us can't.

240
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I mean, if you give to someone who is just an ordinary person, say a person on the street who, you know, they're in hard times, so it's great that you give to them.

241
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There's no question.

242
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But who you could say,

243
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isn't a great person, great in the sense of really great, like a person profound or a person who has deep thoughts or does great things or is beneficial to humanity, that kind of thing.

244
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You don't get to see the results quickly at all beyond how they affect your mind, because it'll make you happy to know that you've helped someone.

245
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But it's not going to change the world.

246
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It's not going to bring about great things.

247
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but if you give to someone who is doing great things who is a great person if you support them and and If you revere them and so on there's kind of there's a magnification of an order of magnitude Greater because of the power of that person I remember when I was

248
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living in Thailand reading a lot of stories like this and a lot of teachings about charity and so on living as a monk and I was going on alms round every day and as I've mentioned this many days I wouldn't get very much but part of my thought process was well that's you know that's part of me I was always fairly stingy as a person

249
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fairly self-centered and concerned only with my own benefit and grew up being worried about money and not ever thinking about helping others.

250
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I remember when I was a teenager we was walking with a friend of mine and she saw a homeless person and immediately went into a McDonald's to get him a hamburger and I didn't even noticed him and if I had noticed him I wouldn't have had any real inclination to give him anything.

251
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But she right away without hesitation

252
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And I wasn't that sort of person.

253
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So with all these readings I was doing and sort of the philosophy and the religious, you could say religious belief that I had at the time, I was okay with that.

254
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I was okay with not getting much.

255
00:29:55,645 --> 00:30:05,238
But at the same time, I had the idea that there was something wrong with my outlook that I had to do something about.

256
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And I had to cultivate

257
00:30:07,681 --> 00:30:15,582
this intention to give and so i was reading one book about the perfections about how

258
00:30:16,928 --> 00:30:23,217
how someone should really practice like Jaga, this idea of charity.

259
00:30:23,237 --> 00:30:25,000
It's actually a religious practice.

260
00:30:26,562 --> 00:30:29,787
We studied in the Visuddhimagga, it's one of the recollections.

261
00:30:29,827 --> 00:30:37,058
When a person recollects on their charity, on their goodness of giving, it's something that calms the mind.

262
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It can actually lead to an absorbed meditative state.

263
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And

264
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It was talking about how when you go for alms, which I would do, whether you get enough or not, you should give the best of what you get to someone else, to the monks, to older monks, senior monks, wise monks, enlightened monks.

265
00:30:59,756 --> 00:31:12,231
And so what I started doing was even when I didn't get enough food, I would give the best, I would take the best, put it on a golden colored tray and offer it to Ajahn Thong, my teacher.

266
00:31:13,932 --> 00:31:22,476
And so it was just usually just a little bit, maybe some peanuts, because he apparently had, he was apparently, it was something that he would eat.

267
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And

268
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then sometimes it was a piece of fruit but anything I got good and this was such a spiritual practice you see because of course I was craving all these things and I was excited when I'd be excited when I get them and I could recognize that greed in myself so to have this practice of very much like Eka Sataka you know this so these are the things that that are important for me and then to give them away you know and to watch how your mind deals with that and actually gets kind of excited about it

269
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and free about it, like, oh, I'm free from that desire, free from that addiction.

270
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And really, you can feel it.

271
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It's not a hardship at all.

272
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It was actually quite fun.

273
00:32:11,290 --> 00:32:15,918
I continued to do this and I watched as my situation changed.

274
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And of course it changed for other reasons.

275
00:32:17,641 --> 00:32:19,865
You could say as I became more well known.

276
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But within actually a fairly short time, I would go to my teacher and I came up one day with a large golden tray covered

277
00:32:33,582 --> 00:32:43,618
in fruit and drinks, like soy milk, soy drinks, and all sorts of the best of the best.

278
00:32:43,698 --> 00:32:53,473
And it was still this wonderful practice where I would eat what was enough to keep me alive and what was healthy at that point.

279
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But all the good stuff, all of the best stuff,

280
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went on this tray and it became a daily ritual of mine after receiving food as gifts myself to give it all away, all the good stuff away.

281
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,102
It was just wonderful because I would look, oh, there's a mango.

282
00:33:10,122 --> 00:33:10,963
Oh, I got a mango.

283
00:33:10,983 --> 00:33:12,625
Oh no, it's going on the tray.

284
00:33:13,786 --> 00:33:15,528
And I offered it to him.

285
00:33:16,249 --> 00:33:21,375
And one day I went up and he said, this is all this round.

286
00:33:22,756 --> 00:33:24,980
Because it was quite impressive at that point.

287
00:33:25,641 --> 00:33:27,024
He said, you got that on alms round?

288
00:33:27,044 --> 00:33:27,946
I said, oh.

289
00:33:28,527 --> 00:33:32,254
And then he said, this is punya, this is goodness.

290
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It's because of goodness.

291
00:33:35,279 --> 00:33:37,163
Or something, I can't remember exactly what he said.

292
00:33:37,183 --> 00:33:42,152
He may have said something else.

293
00:33:42,172 --> 00:33:44,155
But I did that every day, every day, every day.

294
00:33:44,396 --> 00:33:45,017
And...

295
00:33:46,634 --> 00:33:48,857
I have another funny story that's related to that.

296
00:33:49,759 --> 00:33:52,302
Because I was doing it every day, he would give me a blessing every day.

297
00:33:52,342 --> 00:34:03,479
And because I was going up to see him and sitting and listening and learning how to teach at that time, other people would come and give gifts because giving gifts to great teachers was, of course, a big thing.

298
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:12,051
And so lay people would come on their birthday or on when they just felt like they had bad luck and they wanted to get some good luck, they would give a gift.

299
00:34:13,735 --> 00:34:21,148
And so these people came up and as was usual, he said to these people, he asked these people, what's the occasion?

300
00:34:21,188 --> 00:34:21,949
Is it your birthday?

301
00:34:22,009 --> 00:34:26,497
And they said, no, it's not my birthday.

302
00:34:26,517 --> 00:34:30,023
And I came at the same time with my tray to offer.

303
00:34:30,003 --> 00:34:33,107
Because then he wouldn't have to give a blessing just to me.

304
00:34:33,127 --> 00:34:36,231
I would get in on the blessing that they were going to give.

305
00:34:36,671 --> 00:34:37,372
And he turned to me.

306
00:34:37,392 --> 00:34:39,335
He said to them, is it your birthday?

307
00:34:39,435 --> 00:34:41,137
I think they said no or they said yes.

308
00:34:41,197 --> 00:34:41,678
I can't remember.

309
00:34:41,978 --> 00:34:46,704
And then he turned to me and he looked at me and he said, Noah is born every day.

310
00:34:46,724 --> 00:34:52,952
And he laughed and he accepted my gift.

311
00:34:52,992 --> 00:34:54,694
And that was that.

312
00:34:55,990 --> 00:35:04,484
It's a very wise thing to say, not in regards to giving gifts every day, but there's double meaning there.

313
00:35:04,524 --> 00:35:06,648
The other meaning is, of course, we're all born every day.

314
00:35:08,431 --> 00:35:10,254
And it was kind of cute.

315
00:35:12,577 --> 00:35:15,081
Anyway, so I can relate.

316
00:35:15,723 --> 00:35:21,492
And I think you have to... It's not just...

317
00:35:22,568 --> 00:35:24,410
that which is easily to explain.

318
00:35:24,430 --> 00:35:31,720
I think there is a power that's hard for us to comprehend even, so that it seems kind of magical.

319
00:35:33,121 --> 00:35:44,476
But the power of powerful people, of people who have profound minds, and getting involved with them, doing good deeds with them, for them, really can have very swift consequences.

320
00:35:44,496 --> 00:35:51,124
So that's the idea here, is that giving to someone like the Buddha is a very powerful thing.

321
00:35:53,450 --> 00:36:04,776
such that if he had a full mind and a full intention, meaning when he first thought of it, if he had just said to himself, well, then give, you know, I want to give, then I should give.

322
00:36:06,157 --> 00:36:12,923
then it would have been a much more powerful act and he would have been rewarded in kind.

323
00:36:13,583 --> 00:36:25,614
So it might sound like this becomes like a banking or an economic thing or all about getting, right?

324
00:36:25,694 --> 00:36:26,334
What can you get?

325
00:36:26,495 --> 00:36:27,415
But that's not the point.

326
00:36:27,936 --> 00:36:36,163
The point is to talk about consequences and to talk about a relative, the relative nature of deeds.

327
00:36:36,143 --> 00:36:51,739
And it's quite an interesting story for that reason, because it points out the difference between second guessing, between doing something with a whole heart and doing something while still second guessing or holding back.

328
00:36:51,719 --> 00:37:01,102
And this applies not just to giving, it applies to meditation, it applies to morality, it applies to all aspects of our spiritual practice.

329
00:37:01,583 --> 00:37:08,800
When you help people, are you doing it out of ego, are you doing it out of desire to get something in return?

330
00:37:08,780 --> 00:37:09,421
and so on.

331
00:37:10,302 --> 00:37:13,866
Many different ways in which you can do a good deed and cultivate goodness.

332
00:37:14,546 --> 00:37:21,254
Goodness, of course, if it's not obvious, being the core of Buddhism, I think it's not always made obvious.

333
00:37:21,374 --> 00:37:31,885
We have all these intellectual-seeming teachings like the Eightfold Noble Path and the Four Noble Truths, but really it all comes down to goodness, the cultivation of punya.

334
00:37:32,455 --> 00:37:41,509
The attainment of Nibbana is, well, it depends how you look at it, but it can be understood as being the highest goodness, the greatest goodness.

335
00:37:43,832 --> 00:37:45,054
Super mundane goodness.

336
00:37:47,558 --> 00:37:52,386
So the Buddha then said this, he said, you should be swift in doing good.

337
00:37:52,466 --> 00:37:53,667
Don't second guess yourself.

338
00:37:55,350 --> 00:37:59,256
He said elsewhere, as we'll learn, or as we've already gone over, I can't remember.

339
00:38:00,181 --> 00:38:12,273
I think maybe in this chapter, we'll have one should be quick in doing good deeds, one should be keen to do good deeds.

340
00:38:13,054 --> 00:38:21,722
And sorry, it's not in the Dhammapada, but elsewhere the Buddha said, Don't be afraid because of good deeds.

341
00:38:23,564 --> 00:38:25,586
Don't be afraid, monks.

342
00:38:25,606 --> 00:38:28,669
Don't be afraid of good deeds, monks, because...

343
00:38:29,712 --> 00:38:36,361
happiness is another word for goodness.

344
00:38:37,923 --> 00:38:39,505
Goodness is another word for happiness.

345
00:38:43,110 --> 00:38:58,690
And so how this relates to our practice I think is quite important in regards to being, as I said, wholehearted about our practices in general and understanding about the nature of the mind, how important the nature of the mind is

346
00:38:58,670 --> 00:39:00,932
giving a gift that had nothing to do with that cloth.

347
00:39:00,992 --> 00:39:06,837
And this is an important story we tell in regards to the difference between the object and the mind.

348
00:39:07,138 --> 00:39:09,179
It's not really about the object.

349
00:39:09,199 --> 00:39:12,142
He gave something that was actually probably fairly low value.

350
00:39:12,362 --> 00:39:16,966
The cloth was probably not a fine cloth, probably wasn't worth much at all.

351
00:39:17,007 --> 00:39:22,391
And a person like the king would have maybe used it, probably wouldn't have even used it to wipe his feet.

352
00:39:24,293 --> 00:39:26,875
And yet this was the most prized possession that this man had.

353
00:39:27,396 --> 00:39:28,677
And giving that

354
00:39:28,657 --> 00:39:47,766
raised his status in society greatly and was a very important spiritual practice that probably uplifted him, made him feel confident and powerful and would have given him a great base for meditation if he had actually used it for that.

355
00:39:48,447 --> 00:39:50,310
We don't have any indication that he did.

356
00:39:50,290 --> 00:40:03,547
But it gives us this sort of understanding or this idea about where true goodness lies.

357
00:40:03,868 --> 00:40:05,312
It lies in the mind.

358
00:40:05,292 --> 00:40:17,351
If your mind is hesitant and if you have reservations about any of the spiritual practice that you do, it can severely debilitate you.

359
00:40:17,672 --> 00:40:19,915
So practicing meditation is the same.

360
00:40:19,955 --> 00:40:22,519
It doesn't mean you have to believe blindly.

361
00:40:23,281 --> 00:40:29,190
But if you don't believe, if you have doubts about what you're doing, it's important you get them cleared.

362
00:40:29,170 --> 00:40:35,025
Either that or that you recognize them as being unreasonable doubts, which is also possible.

363
00:40:36,348 --> 00:40:39,757
Because we doubt something, it's not always a sign that what we're doing is wrong.

364
00:40:39,978 --> 00:40:43,045
We can doubt things that are not worthy of doubt.

365
00:40:43,847 --> 00:40:44,850
That is possible.

366
00:40:44,830 --> 00:40:45,932
So it's one of two ways.

367
00:40:46,072 --> 00:40:48,778
Either we get our doubts cleared up or we quit what we're doing.

368
00:40:48,798 --> 00:40:58,778
We find a way to resolve our doubts or else we recognize the doubts as being unwarranted, invalid, and we meditate on them.

369
00:40:58,838 --> 00:41:06,012
So often we'll tell meditators to say to yourself, doubting, doubting, just remind yourself it's only doubt, it arises, it ceases.

370
00:41:05,992 --> 00:41:08,514
When it's gone, you'll feel better.

371
00:41:08,654 --> 00:41:12,818
I say, okay, if you doubt the practice, then forget about the practice.

372
00:41:12,858 --> 00:41:15,421
Stop practicing because you shouldn't do something if you're doubting.

373
00:41:15,861 --> 00:41:19,024
And instead say to yourself, doubting, doubting, doubting.

374
00:41:19,044 --> 00:41:19,705
They say, but, but.

375
00:41:20,145 --> 00:41:21,706
I say, if you do that, try that.

376
00:41:23,508 --> 00:41:25,510
And sometimes I've even had them do it right there in front of me.

377
00:41:25,530 --> 00:41:26,291
I say, try that right now.

378
00:41:26,311 --> 00:41:26,851
Close your eyes.

379
00:41:27,592 --> 00:41:28,393
They say, doubting.

380
00:41:28,473 --> 00:41:29,013
They close their eyes.

381
00:41:29,053 --> 00:41:30,334
They think to themselves, doubting.

382
00:41:31,155 --> 00:41:32,076
I say, how do you feel now?

383
00:41:32,897 --> 00:41:34,378
And they say, oh yeah, I feel better.

384
00:41:35,405 --> 00:41:36,707
And they say, well, that's really the point.

385
00:41:37,428 --> 00:41:38,829
We're not teaching you anything else.

386
00:41:39,250 --> 00:41:46,279
We're teaching you exactly that, that things like doubt and so on are stressful.

387
00:41:46,299 --> 00:41:47,480
So there's nothing really to doubt.

388
00:41:49,543 --> 00:41:56,411
Once you see that being free from doubt is much better, well, then you incline towards that which doesn't lead you to doubt.

389
00:41:56,451 --> 00:41:57,232
And that really doesn't.

390
00:41:57,352 --> 00:42:01,578
That fact, that being free from doubt is better, is enough.

391
00:42:01,778 --> 00:42:03,420
If you believe that,

392
00:42:03,400 --> 00:42:06,305
then you have nothing to doubt because that's really all it is.

393
00:42:07,447 --> 00:42:10,773
The real key to being an enlightened being is being free from doubt.

394
00:42:11,675 --> 00:42:13,698
And the only way you can do that is if you see clearly.

395
00:42:13,738 --> 00:42:20,430
You can't just believe.

396
00:42:22,368 --> 00:42:23,870
Mind is the most important.

397
00:42:24,410 --> 00:42:27,113
The mind comes first, as we learned in the very first verse.

398
00:42:28,295 --> 00:42:37,525
And in the second verse, when you do a good deed with a pure mind, that's what's important.

399
00:42:38,386 --> 00:42:45,034
When you do a good mind with an impure, do a deed with an impure mind, suffering follows you.

400
00:42:49,098 --> 00:42:53,028
So a very nice story, very nice verse.

401
00:42:53,048 --> 00:42:54,492
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.

402
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Thank you all for tuning in.

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Wishing you all a happy and fruitful spiritual practice.

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Be well.