Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 84, which reads as follows.
na ata he tu na parasa he tu na puttami che na dhanang na rakthang na itchaya adhamme na samidhimattanau sa silava panyava dhamiko siya
which means not with oneself as the cause not with another as the cause not because of oneself not for the cause of oneself not more for one's own cause for one's own benefit is the meaning or for the benefit of another
not wanting, not for desires in regards to children, not dhanang, or wealth, not even a kingdom.
One should not wish
for success, for one's own prosperity by means of adhamma, by unrighteous means.
Such a one should be silava, have morality or ethics.
Panyava should be wise.
Dhammikosa, thus they should be righteous.
Dhammika.
The word Dhammika is one who has Dhamma.
Ika means one who has.
So this verse was spoken in regards to Dhammika.
The Dhammika Thera was a monk who had a very good name, but he also lived up to his name.
It seems that he was living well, lived according to the Dhamma.
So maybe this is how he got the name.
Maybe it wasn't his real name, but it's what they called him because he was righteous.
Could have also just been his name.
Sometimes names do give power in that way, no?
name someone something and they feel like they have to live up to it, or it guides them through their lives.
So naming someone Tiffany or something might not be as meaningful.
Noah is interesting.
It's got an interesting meaning.
It certainly affected me, no?
You've got these names.
On the other hand, what's in a name, right?
There was another story of a man named Arya.
And he was, I think he was a fisherman.
And so the Buddha went.
He was walking along one day, and they came across this man named Arya, who was really quite proud of his name and thought he had such a great name.
And the Buddha, I think we'll have this.
I'm pretty sure it's in the Dhammapada, so we'll come to it.
So just a little spoiler.
He turns to all the monks and he asks them, what's your name?
And all the monks are telling him their names.
And Arya, this man who's sitting there, maybe he came to listen to the Buddha teach or something.
He's like, oh, I hope the Buddha asks me my name.
And finally the Buddha gets around and says, so what's your name?
And he says, my name's Arya.
And he says, it's not a very good name for you.
You don't call someone an Arya who kills.
Anyway, so this guy, whose name was Dhammika, having listened to the Buddha's teaching often, became desirous of ordaining.
And so he said to his wife, look, I want to ordain.
But his wife was pregnant.
And so she said, wait, please, if you must go forth, please wait until our son, our baby is born.
And so he waited, and sure enough, the baby was born, and then he waited until the baby was old enough to walk.
And then he said to his wife again, I'm really ready, I've been patient, but I really would like to become a monk.
And his wife says, well, wait at least until he's come of age, until our son is left home.
And the man was silent, but then he thought to himself, what good is it to try and wait for her permission?
And he just went off and became a monk.
Kind of reminiscent of the Bodhisatta when he left home.
And everyone's always critical of this.
How can these Buddhists allow for
allow their students, allow their people to just go forth leaving behind wife and child.
How could the Buddha set that kind of example?
Not taking care of his family, so they like to criticize in this way.
When we talk about this verse, there should be something to say on that, so I'll wait.
Um...
But yeah, so he just left home and became an Arahant, practiced, obtained meditation subject and strived and struggled and became an Arahant.
After becoming an Arahant, he went back to Savatthi, to where his wife and child were living, and they gave him Aum's food, and he taught the Dhamma to them.
He would go and sit in their house and teach them the Dhamma, and sure enough, his son became interested, well, let's follow the family line, and went forth and became a monk himself, and in no long time became an Arahant himself.
And last but not least, the wife, thinking to herself, what is there left for me in the home life, became a bhikkhuni, a monk, and became an arahant herself.
So this is one example of the greatness of ordaining.
And in fact, it's a good example to think about.
They would criticize, in the time when the Buddha went back to Kapilavatthu, all the Sakyan men followed him.
And even the women eventually followed him and became the first bhikkhunis.
And everyone was up at arms saying, he's taking away our children.
How can he just...
How can these people just take our children away from us?
And so they told the Buddha this, and the Buddha said, tell them, and this was when Buddhism was new, you have to remember.
So the word Dhamma wasn't very well understood, but he said, tell them they ordain according to the Dhamma.
And that worked somehow.
So they went and when people criticized or scolded them for this, they said, people ordain under us according to the Dhamma, according to the truth, according to righteousness.
And so at that point, if anyone wanted to criticize, the point was they would have to criticize the teachings.
It made people think and say, well, that's true.
You know, if you become a monk, if it's for a good reason, if it's according to the truth, and if there's truth behind the teachings, then how can you criticize that?
And to some extent, how can you even criticize leaving behind wife and child?
But we'll get into that.
That's what this verse really addresses.
So there's not much more to the story.
They all became ordained and the monks were talking about it and thought it was exceptional that he was able to set an example for his son and eventually even his wife followed him.
And the Buddha used this as an example and said, you know, this is really the way we practice in Buddhism.
This is the direction in which we're headed.
And he gave this verse teaching.
And it's an important verse, I think.
One that I always...
think about usually can't remember the rest of it, but at least that part.
Not for one's own benefit or for the benefit of another.
Should one do evil is the first part of this.
So the most extreme aspect of it is there's never any reason to do something against the Dhamma.
Adhamme na samidhi mattano.
One should not wish for success in an evil way, success for oneself in a way that goes against the Dhamma.
But there's more to that.
Because as the Buddha says, a wise man, he says more directly, one should never desire success at all, really, for one's own sake or for another.
meaning worldly success.
And this is sort of the idea in the Buddha's teaching that all of what we're taught and all that our culture pushes us towards is suspect at best.
We would consider us to be faulty.
It's based on delusion.
The idea that there is something meaningful about worldly success
The Buddha said, as we'll read later on, better than kingship, better than lordship over the angels or earth, better than to be the emperor of the world, is the attainment of sotapanna.
Sotapatti palangwarang.
Because really, what purpose can there be in worldly things, in samsara at all?
People ask, what is the meaning of life?
What is the purpose of life?
There's no reason to think that the universe admits of any purpose, that there can be found any purpose in samsara.
The only way you could think of such a purpose is if you had a God, a divine being who was running everything.
In which case, it's more like a prison than anything.
There's no perfection to be found in the world.
It's just always changing.
It's quite natural.
It appears to be quite as one would expect it to appear to be, just random and chaotic, organized according to laws and rules and patterns.
But in the end, there's no...
There's no protection from suffering.
There's no protection from loss.
There's no protection from the dissolution of all the things that we strive for.
So there's more to it than just not doing evil.
One should not wish for sons, wealth, or even a kingdom.
One should do nothing by unjust means.
You should not seek these things out.
Certainly.
I mean, there's two things being said here, really.
And the Buddha is often like this in the sense of couching it, because he doesn't want to alienate people, whereas I'm not so careful, perhaps, when the commentary is maybe also not.
But the Buddha does say two things here.
He says you should not desire these things.
But then he also couches it and says, at the very least, I mean, that's what it seems like he's saying, because in the next part he says, by unjust means, adhammena,
Of course, you could also interpret this, I think, to mean one should not seek wealth outside of the Dhamma.
Ad-Dhamma, in this sense, could be outside of the path, outside of the path to freedom.
So if you're looking for success, it should not be outside of the Dhamma, which is basically what's being said here.
Of course, the translation usually of Ad-Dhamma is unjust, unrighteous, so evil.
But in the end it does boil down to the same thing because we would consider on a very, very ultimate, if you're going to nitpick, on an ultimate level, any desire for sons, for wealth, even for a kingdom, for anything, any desire for anything is by a Buddhist definition evil.
Evil in the sense that it's going to lead to stress and suffering.
It has an unpleasant result.
A result that is not going to favor us.
It's not going to make us happy.
It's going to keep us being reborn again and again and keep us in the prison of samsara.
So these are things we should look at in the practice.
It's something we should check in ourselves because these are views that are deeply ingrained by society that we've been taught since we were born, right?
As you grow up, you're taught by example of your parents.
So the great thing about this story is here we have someone who is actually an example for their family.
Going back to his family, could you imagine having a parent who was a monk?
In Thailand I hear about this, someone in their family was a monk.
And he was actually a role model for his child, who said, I want to be like my father when I grow up.
And even for his wife, who in the end followed along.
It points to the greatness of ordaining, how it can affect your family.
And again, the defense is that it's based on the Dhamma.
So leaving your family behind to go and live a negligent life would be definitely blameworthy.
But to go and to live it in a spiritually enlightening way can only help both oneself and the people close.
But most of us get a different sort of role model, right?
We're taught to be physically attractive.
We're taught to be eloquent and charismatic.
We're taught to be powerful, confident.
I mean, confident isn't bad, even power, even eloquence, these aren't bad things, but we're taught to be things
in a way that's going to help us in the world.
We're taught of the value of money, the value of power over others, the value of social status.
We're taught so many things.
The value of stability, which is totally, totally overrated, but it's so seriously ingrained.
that we're so afraid of loss or of being shaken up.
We become so inflexible in our lives.
We need to have a stable job and a stable income.
And we often set ourselves up in these castles that become prisons.
Prisons of debt, prisons of responsibility.
the prison of ownership it's an interesting thing we think it's so great to have possessions but our possessions end up owning us because then we need locks to keep them safe and we need to protect them and to guard them and to to take care to care for them and so on we can't just we can't move as easily we can't pick up and go anywhere we want and so on
So all of these things, and then we're taught about progress, getting education for the means of getting a good job, getting a good job for a means of having a retirement plan and so on.
In the end, it leads to the same death at the end.
doesn't lead anywhere different.
In fact, it doesn't lead to anything greater.
Something maybe we feel proud of at the end of our life, sure, but even that pride is in and of itself a problem.
Nothing we should feel proud of, nothing that is of any use
On the other hand, when we live our lives focused on the Dhamma, focused on being moral, ethical, charitable, generous, kind, compassionate, and to be calm and collected and clear-minded and wise, who wouldn't be proud of such things as this, right?
And of course, not be proud exactly, but feel good and feel content, feel confident.
These are things that we should feel confident about.
So these are things that we have to look at in our meditation, that we have to look at not just when we're meditating but in our lives and try and identify them.
Because they can get in the way of meditation when you want to do meditation but at the same time you're keen on getting a raise or getting a better job or a bigger house or a nicer car.
getting married.
I have some students who are keen for romance.
It's an obsession for some people.
All of these things we have to look at and
really remind ourselves, scold ourselves even, this is not really going to make me happy.
There is really no benefit in those people who have strived for these things, who have never ended up content and happy as a result of them.
Their contentment and happiness is dependent on other things, is dependent on their state of mind, their clarity and their purity of mind.
These are things that the Buddha reminds us to stay away from.
And it paints a clear picture of the difference between the way of the world and the way of the Dhamma, which are diametrically opposed.
Mahasi Sayada gives a great brief talk about this in one of his books.
He says most people don't like to hear the Dhamma because it's diametrically opposed to their way of life.
For most people,
these things that I'm talking about are the right way.
Whenever I talk about things like exercise and music, art, beauty, there's always someone who's going to be disappointed and upset and turned off.
So it's important for us to choose sides in a sense, which should choose directions, not sides, but directions, because they don't go in the same direction.
Nahi Dhamma Adamo Adhammoja Ubo Santavipagina
The Dhamma and that which is outside of the Dhamma don't go in the same direction.
The Dhamma leads to suffering, to hell actually.
The Dhamma leads to heaven, or a good way, leads in a good way.
Leads to a good becoming, or a good state.
Eventually leads to Nibbana.
So,
That's the Dhammapada for this evening.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Keep practicing.