Okay, welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we go on to verse number 43, last verse in the Citta Vagga, which goes as follows.
Natangmata pitakaira anyevapitanyatika samma panihitang citang sayaso nang tatukade.
Which means,
Not what a mother or a father might do.
Or even one's relatives, any other relative.
the mind which is well fixed or set in a good way does greater for one or acts in a works for one's well-being in a far greater to a far greater extent so the the basic meaning
The mind which is well established or set in a good way is of far greater value or far greater benefit to one than even a father, a mother, or one's relatives.
The benefit that can come from a well-trained mind or a well-directed mind is far greater than the benefit that one can gain from father, mother, or any other relative.
That's the reason.
Now, each of these verses has a story associated with it.
For those of you who have been keeping up, you get this by now.
You probably also get that some of the stories are a little bit hard for a modern audience to believe.
Well, you ain't heard nothing yet.
This one probably takes the cake.
And in fact, it's one of the few stories that I have difficulty stomaching.
But at first I thought I just wouldn't tell the story and I'd just talk about the verse.
But then the more I thought about it, I realized, you know, it's just a story.
So let's just treat it as a story.
Because we read a lot of fables.
I don't want to say this is a fable.
I don't want to go to the extent and say it's not true.
It's just meant as a story.
I don't want to go to that extreme.
Because who am I to say?
But it's a difficult one.
And you'll understand once we get through the story.
So let's just treat it as a story, in a similar way to a fable that has an interesting moral to it.
So, story goes, there was a rich man in Saudi, I think.
No, not in Saudi.
Anyway, there was this rich man somewhere in India, and
One day he went out to the park, he went out to the city to go to this bathing place with one of his friends.
And they surrounded themselves with all their servants or all of their retinue, so maybe friends or associates or so on.
And they went out in a big gang to this bathing place.
And at the same time, Mahakachayana,
was going, right, it was, the city was Sorey, Sorey, I think was the city, Sorey Nagra.
And, um,
Mahākacāyana is one of the Buddhist chief disciples, one of the 80 great disciples of the Buddha, who ended up apparently teaching Pali or relating the grammar, the Pali grammar, because he left.
He wasn't from the area where the Buddha was from.
He was from far away, and he ended up going back to his homeland to teach Buddhism, and so he had to teach them Pali as well.
So this is an area maybe where the...
in the outer outskirts of India I don't know anyway it was where Mahakachayana was staying at the time and Mahakachayana the interesting thing about him is he was he was outstandingly handsome especially handsome in in comparison to all of the other disciples he was his skin was bright and he had this kind of radiance about him
And he was going for alms round just at the time into the village, just at the time that these men were coming out of the village.
Or they had gotten to their bathing place or something like that.
And they saw Mahankacayana coming.
Now the story goes that this man saw Mahakachayana and became enamored of his skin color or his beautiful complexion and thought to himself, wow, wouldn't it be wonderful if this monk could be my wife or if my wife could have the same complexion as this monk.
And so he gave rise to a fairly powerful thought of lust in regards to this venerable enlightened elder.
And the idea is that that intense karmic mind caused his male
sexual organs to disappear and female sexual organs to arise.
Somehow because the attraction towards the monk made his mind
you know, gravitate towards a state where he would actually be able to fulfill his lustful thoughts.
I mean, maybe it got even worse than it says in the text, but that's how it says.
It's just that he wishes this guy could be his wife, so he actually became a woman.
So that's how the story goes.
I don't know what that says, but that's the story.
Anyway, there's nothing to do with the verse, but you'll see it's actually quite interesting as it goes on.
And so he turns into a woman and he realizes he's a woman and she becomes quite embarrassed and doesn't want anyone to see her.
And so she jumps out of the cart and runs away and everyone's like, what's going on?
Where did Soraya go?
And he runs away and starts going on the path towards Takasila, this famous city in India.
And everyone's looking around, where did the rich man go?
Where did he go?
And they can't find him.
And so they go back home.
Everyone asks where he's gone and don't find where he is.
And so they think he's dead or something like that.
They all start crying and getting upset.
And meanwhile, she...
the woman goes walking down this road and follows behind a caravan and she goes with these people to Takasila and they start inquiring about her who she is and so on and is she married and they hook her up with the rich man in Takasila and she gets married to this rich man in Takasila and has two kids
Now, when it was a he, back in the city of Soraya, he had also two kids.
He was the father of two kids.
And when he was in Takisila, he had two more kids.
So altogether he had four children, two from his own womb, her own womb, and two from his wife's womb, back in Soraya.
That's how the story goes.
So all of that is really, I don't know, bizarre.
Then his friend happens to one day come to Takasila and she sees, her friend comes to Takasila, sees her.
Or she sees him and she comes down and invites him into the house and he says, what, do I know you?
And she says, she asks about the family, she asks about herself or when it was a he.
And he says, what, do you know this person?
And she says, it's me.
That was me.
And the guy says, you're crazy, what are you talking about, get out of here.
And somehow she manages to convince him that yes, indeed it was, and I was there at the bathing place.
And the guy says, well, what happened?
And he said, well, I got this lust for this venerable elder, and so I kind of, that really warped my mind, I guess, and somehow warped my body as well.
So they take him to the elder and her to the elder, and she apologizes.
And apologizing, she becomes a man again, going back to his old state, somehow getting back to being a man.
Really bizarre.
I don't know what to make of this story, actually.
I don't want to endorse it, to tell you the truth, but it's a story.
But the important part here is, putting all of that aside, the important part here has to do with the fact that this guy is now in an interesting predicament.
He's got four children.
Two when he was a man, two when he was a woman.
And he gets so disgusted with this whole state of being a mother, of being a father, that he asks permission to ordain under Mahakachayana.
And Mahakachayana makes him a novice, makes him a monk, and they go back to stay with the Buddha.
And people hear about this.
They call him Soraya, which is his monk name, after his city.
And people hear about this and they come, is it true?
Is it really true?
This bizarre occurrence really happened?
And he says, yes, it was true.
And then they always ask him the same question, which is an interesting question.
Which do you love more?
The children that you were father of or the children that you were mother of?
And I guess they asked him other questions, but this is the one question that people always tend to ask.
And his answer is always, the ones that I actually gave birth to are the ones that are more dear to me, or something like that.
And he answers this way again, and he becomes so disgusted with this repeatedly, this repeated questioning, he puts his heart into the meditation practice and becomes enlightened.
And then someone comes and asks him and says, is it really true?
He says, yes, it's true.
This is what happened to me.
And then they ask, so which do you love more?
The ones you were the father of or the ones you were the mother of?
And he says, I don't have any...
The word isn't love actually, it's attachment, sineha, which means somehow like attachment or like a parental attachment to their children.
And they said, I don't have any of that anymore.
Or there is none of that in me.
And so they brought him to see the Buddha.
They're saying, look, this guy claims to be an Arahant.
Or they didn't bring him.
They go to see the Buddha.
They say he's lying and so on.
Listen to this monkey.
He's pretending to be an Arahant now after he went all crazy and had four children and had two sex changes.
Yeah.
I don't know.
But this is the interesting part, the idea of being attached to children, both as a father and a mother.
So if you think about that, fathers and mothers have kind of different attachments to their children in general.
The mother is actually the one who gave birth and nursed, and the father feels somehow like the protector of the family as they watch them.
So they tend to have different roles towards their children.
And this guy's experienced both of them, the attachment from the mother's side and the attachment from the father's side.
So in that sense, the story kind of sets this up in an interesting way for someone to overcome that.
And I guess that's how it relates to this verse, because the verse talks about both mothers and fathers.
So then they came to the Buddha, and the Buddha said, no, he's actually telling the truth.
And he said, because of his well-directed mind, he has been able to overcome all of his attachment, both to his parents,
the children that he fathered and the children that he mothered.
And then he gives this verse, he says, better than what a father or a mother can do.
It's not what a father or a mother or any relative could do, but it's rather what the well-directed mind can do that is greatest.
So, again, focusing only on our meditation.
Let's not focus too much on that story because it's... A lot of people came after the Buddha and
You know, a lot of the stories seem true, but seem possible, but seem to have been embellished to the point where they seem ridiculous.
I don't know how you could unembellish this story.
Maybe you could get it to the point where maybe what really happened is he had so much lust toward this elder that he went crazy, and maybe he thought he was a woman, or I don't know.
Maybe that's more like it.
I don't know.
And then it gets lost in the translation, you know, from generation to generation, they embellish it.
But the point, I think, is the attachment to beauty and the attachment to children.
These two themes in the story, and of course the purity of an enlightened being, both of Mahakachayana and of himself, when he became enlightened.
So, it is something, because they say anyone who kills an Arahant,
Especially an arahant can never become enlightened in this life.
It's something quite extreme.
If you're guilty of intentionally murdering an enlightened being, it's so heavy compared to murdering an ordinary person that you can never become enlightened.
It's impossible.
So there is something there to acting against enlightened beings because of the purity of it.
If you hurt a Buddha, it's the same thing.
You could never kill a Buddha, this was the theory, but you could hurt a Buddha, in which case you could also never become enlightened.
That kind of thing.
So the idea that something like this could, or the idea that this is somehow in line with the nature of an Arahant or so on, is conceivable.
But the fact that it could go to that extent, to actually change one's physical characteristics, and especially in that direction, because it doesn't seem to be related.
You know, in modern days he would be considered homosexual.
He wouldn't have anything to do with becoming a woman.
So, I don't know.
Anyway, it's just a story.
The point of this is how it relates to our practice.
It's the same, it's a pair of verses, actually.
The verse before this, if you remember, was the ill-directed mind.
So this is the well-directed mind.
So if we think of how
how much great, what great good our parents and our relatives can do for us.
It actually relates to the potential good that we can get from the whole world around us, from the material world.
Because that's really the thing, your parents and your relatives can only give you material well-being.
The only protection, the only good that they can give you is something that's material.
At best, they could give you some teaching.
They could encourage you and teach you and guide you towards goodness of mind.
But in the end, many parents try to do just that and wind up failing because the ill-directed mind of their children is unable to accept the teachings.
So the benefits of parents, of relatives, and of friends, of even fortune, riches, possessions, good luck, good health, all of these things pale in comparison to the benefit of a well-directed mind.
Something that is not clear in the world and is really the defining understanding that leads people towards or away from meditation, that keeps people from meditation or leads them towards it.
That they want to train their minds or they don't want to train their minds.
Many people in this world are not interested in training their minds.
It's one of the big fears I have with the loss of religion because there's a big anti-religion movement which on the face of it seems reasonable considering that there is no
There is no rhyme or reason to believing in a god.
There is no proof of the existence of a creator god.
But it seems like they're throwing something out with the bathwater.
The baby might be going out with the bathwater because they have a hard time defining ethics.
And people nowadays will argue against that and say, yes, you can find ethics in this or that.
But the proof seems to be in the actions and the behaviors, because there's a lot of anger and conflict that arises out of beliefs, especially wrong beliefs, but there seems to be a lot of hostility and crudeness.
There's a lack of interest in the mind, so people are more and more interested in sensuality, more and more interested in possessions and material pleasures, as opposed to training their minds, because of course they think material is of the greatest benefit.
They think the greatest benefit comes from friends, it comes from family, it comes from things outside of yourself.
they don't ever grasp that or they're not ever capable due to the coarseness of the material
obsession, they're not able to grasp the more subtle truths of how important the mind is.
If the mind is ill-directed, it destroys you.
It doesn't matter how rich you are if your mind is upset.
As the Buddha said, if you're lying in a luxurious bed with silk sheets and down comforters and down-filled pillows and so on,
Most people would think you sleep quite soundly, but if your mind is full of lust, if your mind is full of hatred, if your mind is full of delusion, Buddha pointed out it doesn't matter how much luxury you have, you'll never sleep well.
And once your mind becomes free of these things, as I told this story, the best night of my life, the best night's sleep I ever had was under a picnic table lying on the concrete in the park in downtown North Hollywood because I was free.
I really felt like I had no obligations to anyone.
I had given up my expectations, given up any kind of hope.
Not saying this was a spiritual attainment, but
It was some momentary decision making, decision not to get entangled with anything and just walk and go and sleep in the park.
Something that would normally seem outrageous.
In the middle of winter sleeping under the park with my thin robes on the cement.
But when your body is ready to sleep and when you don't have any expectations or any worries, you sleep quite soundly.
It's amazing, even in the cold of winter, freezing, lying on the concrete.
I slept at least for a few hours.
So I don't mean to, it's not a bragging or feeling proud of, but it's something that I think it's obviously quite true.
Because of course on other nights when the mind is full of, when my mind is full of lust and anger and delusion and so on, of course there's not this kind of peace and bliss.
When you attain, when you're able, when you
When you train your mind, when you free your mind of these things, you have so much more happiness in any situation.
It's something we don't think about.
So obviously there are two paths to happiness, the external path and the internal path.
What can you get?
What can you attain?
What can you achieve?
What can you be?
What can you experience?
It's all about experience for people.
Experience everything.
Skydiving, scuba diving, mountain climbing, movies, music, internet, romance, sexuality.
The more you can experience, the better.
And then you bring, what do you bring with, at all times bring with the mind?
What do you experience it with?
What are these experiences experienced with the mind?
And what if your mind is unhealthy?
What if your mind is untrained?
Can you really enjoy any of this?
And of course, simply by craving for these things, you cultivate more craving, you cultivate an addiction towards them.
Your mind becomes more and more unsatisfied.
It's not that you can die satisfied knowing you've done so many good things.
You will die unsatisfied because of your craving for excitement and so on.
But when your mind becomes well directed, when you are able to
Really see the essence of things so that all of your experiences have meaning.
When you travel, you talk to people, you learn about good things, you listen to stories, you ask questions about good things and find out about... Live your life helping people, live your life learning, studying, practicing good things.
This is of greatest benefit, the trained mind.
Because in our lives we have a wide variety of experiences.
We have pleasant and unpleasant experiences.
No one can escape that.
But the person with the untrained mind clearly is at an intense disadvantage, extreme disadvantage.
When they enter into an argument, they become upset.
When they receive something they desire, they become addicted.
Now a person who has a well-trained mind, a well-directed mind, and sees things as they are, experiences the same things.
They experience the same sort of suffering.
They experience the same sort of pleasure.
But they don't suffer from the suffering.
They're not upset by it.
Their mind is well-established.
is well established in wisdom and understanding.
When pain arises, they know it is pain.
When they hear sound, when someone's yelling at them, they know it's just sound.
When a person's mind is ill-directed, they become upset and they do all sorts of evil things to hurt other people.
They insult and vilify and cheat and rob and take advantage of other people.
They look down on others.
When the mind is ill-directed, all of these things you do, not only hurting yourself, but hurting other people as well, it has a cumulative effect of sullying the mind.
Such people are not pleasant to be around.
They're not the sort of people who you would trust with secrets or trust with responsibility.
They're not the sort of people that people admire and love and respect.
All of the wonderful advantages of a well-directed mind are lost on people with ill-directed minds.
When you have a well-directed mind, people respect you, they love you, they esteem you.
You succeed in everything that you do.
You focus on whatever you do.
You are wise and discerning in the choices that you make in life, in the paths that you choose.
You are a benefit both to yourself and to the world around you.
You live your life without guilt or remorse, without worry or fear of being chastised, of being attacked, of being criticised, because you know that you've done nothing worthy of criticism.
And when you die, you die happy because you're sure and settled in yourself.
You have no wants, you have no unfinished business.
You die with peace in your mind.
For these reasons and more and for unlimited reasons, most especially for the reason that you attain to enlightenment.
You attain the perfect understanding of suffering, the cause of suffering.
You attain to the cessation of suffering so that nothing can make you suffer.
You realize nibbana and you live your life according to the noble path.
For all of these reasons, the Buddha said that the well-directed mind brings happiness.
There is no the mind that is well-tamed or trained brings happiness.
And as the Buddha said here,
It's not the good that a mother or a father might do for you or even any other relative.
It's the goodness that comes from a mind well directed.
Directed towards wisdom and understanding, towards peace, happiness.
Directed towards goodness.
Directed towards clarity of mind.
that is of the greatest, the highest benefit, much higher benefit than any other thing.
So, that's the teaching on this verse.
I apologize if the story was a little bit weird or even uncalled for in some ways.
It seems a little bit sexist if you ask me.
Anyway, let's hope that it's
Anyway, just a story, whatever.
So the most important, I think, has come through, and we understand that the most important is the verse teaching of the Buddha, which really doesn't have much at all to do with the story, though it does pose an interesting question.
the love of a father and the love of a mother, the overcoming of this, the being free from one's attachments.
Being just clear and pure in the mind doesn't mean not having love.
This is the question we always get.
Does that mean an enlightened being doesn't have love?
No, it means they don't cling.
They don't get upset and they don't worry about other people.
They don't have expectations in regards to other beings.
They just have peace and love and compassion and equanimity.
So anyway, thank you for tuning in.
This has been a teaching on verse number 43, the end of the Jitta Vagga.
So we are officially more than 10% done with this verse.
So thank you for tuning in and I wish you all are able to put this into practice and train it and well direct your own minds so that you may find peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
Thank you and have a good day.