Okay, good evening.
So tonight we are looking at the Dhammapada.
Verse 194, which goes as follows.
Sukho buddhanam upado, sukha saddhamadesana,
Which means happiness is the arising of a Buddha.
Happiness is the teaching of the Dhamma.
Happiness is a community that is harmonious.
Happiness is the harmony of a community.
The exertion of those who have samaki, who have harmony,
is happiness.
This is a fairly popular verse.
It's one when I was in Thailand we would chant it every morning.
I'm not sure why we chanted it every morning but it is a fairly beautiful verse and
It's a good reminder.
I think one of the reasons for chanting it is when you're in a monastery, harmony is very important.
There's not much of a story behind this.
It's another one of these verses that just arose from a question, or no, arose from some talk.
And so the story goes that the monks were sitting in
the Dhamma Hall, a group of monks, and they were asking, one of them asked, what do you think is the great happiness, the greatest sukha?
And I say sukha because the word had some sort of colloquial meaning, right?
It literally means happiness, I think, but
could be translated as pleasure.
So it's not quite clear what they were talking about, but I don't know how philosophical it was because their answers were kind of odd for monks.
One of the monks said, well, I think the highest sukha is rulership.
I suppose we could assume that they were talking about happiness and they just hadn't made the connection between
a more refined sorts of happiness.
The Buddha often talking more about suffering, right?
So maybe they just heard about suffering and they didn't associate the practice of Buddhism with happiness.
Maybe they hadn't found any happiness in the Buddhist teaching.
They maybe saw that it was good or beneficial, but they were still probably, maybe they were still suffering, struggling with the practice.
So when they thought about happiness, the first one said rulership, being a king, being in charge.
Second one, another one said, or some said,
which means sensuality.
They said sensuality is the highest sukha.
So this is attachment to sights and sounds and smells, the pleasure that you get from them, so sensual pleasure.
And some others said things like food, getting the right food, being able to eat good food, pizza every day or cheeseburgers or whatever it is, the food that you like.
And the Buddha heard them talking, and he came in and said, what is it that you were talking about when I came in?
And they told him, and he said something like, what was it, or something like that.
What are you saying?
Literally, what are you saying?
He said all that sort of happiness, all of those kinds of sukha are bound up, are caught up, or they belong to pariyapana.
They belong to the suffering of vata.
Suffering of the vata.
Vata means around.
It means a sort of a circular path.
cycle literally probably cycle and he's maybe referring to samsara but this is what the Buddha said and he said real happiness is and then he taught this verse so I think we can get two sorts of lessons out of this the first comes from the story where the Buddha points this out about how these types of happiness that
these monks were coming up with are not really happiness.
He says those belong to the realm of suffering.
But he used the word vata, the cycle of suffering, because it has to be admitted that there's pleasure involved with all those things.
Even though there's pleasure involved with all those things, they're caught up in a cycle, meaning they involve an inevitability or an inevitable state of suffering.
When we talk about happiness, it's a hard thing to pin down.
Just like suffering, I think, is a hard thing to pin down.
How would you define suffering?
Or how would you define happiness?
I don't think we have to.
I don't think this is a sort of philosophical thing.
I think we can get a fairly easy agreement
about suffering and happiness.
If we talk about the kinds of things that are suffering, we're going to all get a sense of what we mean.
There's no real ambiguity there.
And the same with happiness.
The problem comes when we
conflate what we want with what makes us happy or with the cycle of addiction with happiness.
We think that because we want something, it's a part of it, that thing, the acquiring of that thing is happiness.
And the problem is that
that sort of thinking leads us to a lot of suffering, right?
It's involved with this cycle.
So it may be very true that anyone would say getting the food that you want or being in charge of other people, controlling other people, or just indulging in sensual pleasure, that there's pleasure there, that there's a pleasant feeling, there's happiness there, there's sukha there.
Maybe we could all agree on that, but
When you think like that and when you follow and pursue that path, you end up in a cycle of suffering.
What a dukkha.
And so we'd be better off thinking of happiness as this sort of answer to the question, are you happy?
When we ask someone about their life and we say, okay, you're doing this, but are you happy?
And well, we'd have to be honest with ourselves and be actually mindful to be able to have the ability to see whether we are happy because I think it is quite common for people to not really be sure if they're happy or not really know if they're happy.
Many people who come to meditate are quite sure that they're not happy and they know that they're not happy.
Another problem is that
we experience things differently.
And so some people are very naturally inclined to greater happiness, greater pleasure.
This has to do with the way the brain is wired even.
For some people, it's very hard for them to feel happy.
And so happiness becomes a little bit more complicated than simply saying, well, this makes me happy or that makes me happy.
And not only do we have to look at the bigger picture, the overall picture of our life, but we also have to, I think, look very much at our direction.
So if you say, I'm very happy, I kill and I steal and I lie and I cheat, but I'm very happy.
Could be because your brain might be very much wired
to enjoy life and to enjoy things and to put aside and to minimize any problems that you might have.
But still all those things that you're doing are building up to potential, a great potential for suffering.
They're corrupting your mind.
They're changing your brain, how it works.
Even just indulging in addictive substances or activities is changing the way your brain works, the way your mind works and eventually makes it harder for you to be happy.
Why?
Because it taxes and it changes and it kind of stretches the brain systems.
You need more stimuli to get the same amount of pleasure.
So while I think happiness is easy for us to agree on, it's much harder to understand and to get beyond this idea that this will make me happy or that will make me happy.
And we have to look at, again, the overall picture, but also where we're going.
And so in meditation practice it can be sometimes quite unpleasant as you have to face things that are unpleasant.
But there's a very strong theory in place here that I think is very profound and important.
is that we're headed in a direction.
We're doing these things for reasons.
We're staying with pain.
We're being objective with unpleasant thoughts.
Even our emotions, we're not judging or trying to change them for a reason.
We have a plan, and this is our path.
In many ways, we welcome the unpleasantness.
Why?
Because that's the thing that we are weak on.
If we spent all our time seeking out the pleasurable, well, that's not really a problem.
The problem is where we find suffering.
What is the aspect of the cycle that causes us suffering?
And if we understand that, we can free ourselves from it, and then the rest is just happiness.
So happiness is not just about being happy.
And this is why I've said before, happiness doesn't lead to happiness.
Because it's about a path, it's about the overall picture, it's about something more than just finding what makes you happy.
So that's the first lesson, I think, that kind of frames meditation practice.
Why are we practicing what we're doing?
There's something more than just enjoying life as though that were possible to do directly.
We're trying to overcome the things that get in the way of us being happy.
We're trying to change and open up our minds to be less judgmental, less partial, less reactionary, less controlling, less demanding, and happier.
The second lesson comes, I think, from the verse and that's, of course, dealing with these four types of happiness.
We can see these as four types of happiness.
I think maybe it's a little clearer to see them as four requirements for the practice of happiness.
The first is the arising of a Buddha.
Without the arising of the Buddha, I think we take it quite for granted, the profound impact the Buddha has had on the world.
In the West, we're a little more familiar with maybe the impact that Jesus had on the world.
And so if you think of the impact that Christianity has had on the world, not all good, but quite profound, or any religious teaching, what is the effect that the Buddha has had?
We wouldn't even have the concept of mindfulness as a meditation practice if it weren't for the Buddha.
We certainly wouldn't have a teaching on the Four Noble Truths.
We wouldn't have this idea of letting go and so on.
I mean we would have basic teachings, good teachings, but we would have a lot of bad mixed in there.
So the arising of the Buddha is great happiness.
It gives us a practice that is pure and clear and simple and not easy, but conducive to true happiness.
And without it,
Without this practice, it's not like the Buddha just found, just picked a teaching.
It's not like he went out and said, oh, well, this is what I should be doing.
This is what they're doing over there.
So it's not like we will always have the option.
It's not like the Buddha just taught us to do something that was already there.
He actually came up with something new.
So what I mean is that when the Buddha is gone, we won't even have the option to practice.
It's not just that we won't have anyone telling us to practice.
We won't even know anything about it.
the concept of practicing mindfulness.
Maybe someone will come up with it on their own, just fleeting.
But for anyone to be clearly aware and capable of presenting and teaching and spreading this teaching, that just won't be there once the Buddha's gone.
So this whole path will disappear.
A great loss of
happiness and the potential for peace and freedom from suffering.
The second is of course the teaching of the Dhamma.
So even with the arising of the Buddha,
Many people didn't get to hear him speak.
Even now today, 2500 years later, the teachings have spread, but there are still many people in the world who haven't heard the teaching and so they're hearing different teachings probably, or they're coming up with teachings on their own, coming up with practices on their own, or just wasting away because they never had the
the instruction.
I never had anyone explain to them a reason for keeping even ethical precepts or practicing meditation.
I never had any guidance for how to direct their mind or how to see clearly.
So hearing the Dhamma is not something we should take for granted either.
great happiness that comes from hearing the Dhamma, because of course that's necessary to be happy.
If you don't ever learn the truth, and we're not exactly claiming that we have the truth or something, it just means whatever is the truth, if you don't have someone explaining it to you, or if you don't ever hear it or learn it for yourself,
You can't possibly find true happiness.
You'll always be engaging in wrong practices and some good, some bad.
You'll just be a mix of good and bad tendencies, caught up in the cycle of suffering.
The third aspect of happiness that's required is the sukha-sankhasa-samakhi.
a requirement for a community.
Let's not say requirement, let's just say it's a part of happiness.
Because it is possible to practice alone, but you could also say, well, that's a sort of a community that is in harmony.
Like when you're alone in your room, you're a community of one that is quite harmonious.
Or you could look even deeper and say, there's internal harmony as well.
Are we conflicted?
When you're doubting the practice, you're of two minds about the practice, right?
Maybe half of you thinks it's good, half of you thinks it's bad.
Part of you, sorry, inside part of you thinks it's bad, part of you thinks it's good.
Maybe part of you thinks you can do it, part of you thinks you're not capable of doing it.
Part of you is keen to do it.
Part of you is lazy to do it.
Then you have a disharmonious community.
But I think the Buddha was talking about a real community, though we can extrapolate.
But having a community, having a meditation community, can be a monastery or here a meditation center, is a great gain for all of us because it encourages us to practice.
We have other people who are doing the same thing, so we have evidence that it is possible.
When you see someone who has been practicing for longer than you and you see how fluent or how well trained they are in it,
how skilled they are in the practice, it's quite encouraging.
It shows the potential for you to continue.
Having other people around practicing is a great thing, but also the aspect of it being harmonious.
So we're all practicing the same way, the same teaching.
And that we all have similar qualities of mind
So one, that we have a community.
Two, that it's harmonious.
The third quality I would say is not only that we're harmonious, but samagi means, it has the other implication, magga.
Samagi literally means harmony, literally means being on the same path or people who are on the same path.
But another important quality is not just any path.
So if you're a harmonious bunch of thieves who are all stealing, or if you're a harmonious group of cannibals, I don't know how that would work, but harmonious group of hunters, let's say, um,
Not a lot of happiness there, but a harmonious group of Buddhist practitioners, of meditators, people who are mindful.
So you're not only on the same path, but you're all on the path of mindfulness.
There's a great happiness there.
It means that we're not going to be distracting each other or manipulating each other or hurting each other.
We're going to be giving each other the space and the encouragement and the appreciation and the kindness that allows us to practice.
Tapa comes from tapa meaning heat, literally.
But it came to mean much more in India, even before the time of the Buddha, it means exertion, or it had a more religious significance like asceticism, austerity, like torturing yourself.
The Buddha called patience the highest form of torture or tapa, the highest form of religious practice you might say.
So the patience, but here I think it means more like exertion because that's really literally what the idea is.
When you work hard, you generate heat.
So it came to mean work, exertion.
So the work that we do
the fact that we're all working on the practice and the engagement with the practice and the intention, the inclination that we all have to practice is quite powerful.
Thinking more broadly, it might be hard to see on this limited scale, there's only a few of us, but thinking more broadly, imagine first, just simply if all of society were to understand the concepts of mindfulness, you know, were to
look at experiences and situations and problems and conflicts in terms of now I'm angry at you and trying to appreciate your anger and see it clearly so that you're not reacting to it, right?
Rather than saying, you make me angry and I've got to kill you for that or hurt you for that or yell at you for that.
Imagine a world where people were all meditating.
Imagine a world, society even, a
a city.
If you think of all the conflicts that we have in this world, how many of them would be solved?
So having people around you that are mindful, and this is only a microcosm here where you're only here for short times and people are coming and going.
This idea of having a community we shouldn't take for granted.
We should consider it a part of our practice to encourage other people to practice.
But another part of this is an exhortation, well, not just to be Buddhists or not just to be in agreement that the practice is a good thing, but to actually practice.
And so the great power that you are generating through your practice, the clarity of mind and wisdom becomes a communal thing.
It's something that makes this a great place, a place of great benefit and great happiness.
So appreciation, I don't think there's any
any really deep teaching to be had here beyond that.
The Dhammapada verses are often for encouragement.
And so I think this is a very good verse for encouragement and a reminder of the sorts of qualities of a community.
A reminder of the great
fortune that we have to be here in a time when the Buddha has arisen, the Dhamma is being taught, we have other people practicing, we have other people who agree with the practice and who are putting out the practice or undertaking the practice.
So that's the Dhammapada verse for tonight on happiness.
What is true happiness?
Well, it comes from
It comes from progress.
It's not something that you gain just by getting what you want.
It's something that you gain by changing the nature of your relationship to reality.
So that rather than getting what you want all the time, the whole concept of wanting is brought into question.
That's the real tapa, where you work to change the whole equation so it's no longer am I getting what I want and how much of what I want am I getting to an understanding and an appreciation and the letting go of wanting.
And when you have a freedom from wanting, well, you have a freedom from not getting what you want.
It's really a solution to the problem of how you can never be without what you want.
Much better than things like rulership.
If you think of the happiness that these monks were talking about.
Can you imagine being a ruler of a whole country or even a ruler of the whole world?
I was thinking about it and
It sounds nice to be in control of people, but if you think of what it is you're in control of, well, the world is at least 50% evil.
And so you're basically taking ownership of a lot of garbage, a lot of trouble and conflict and suffering that you have to then deal with to imagine being in charge of that.
Sensuality is really the number one
enemy that we point to in Buddhism.
Sensuality is the low-hanging fruit to talk about because there's no question that it doesn't lead to true happiness.
It's just a cycle of addiction.
Food, I think, is even baser.
To hear the Buddha say, what are you talking about?
I think it's not a surprise that he would say such a thing because
Well, food is sort of another obvious one.
It's obvious that people are not happy or unhappy because they're getting the food that they want.
Yes, if you're hungry all the time, it's hard to be happy, but on a deeper level, it's not food.
It's not even whether you're properly nourished or not in the body.
And many people who are very well nourished and still suffering greatly
But even on your deathbed, when you're not able to eat, if your mind is pure, you can be free from suffering.
Anyway, that's the Dhammapada.
Thank you all for listening.
Have a good night.