Okay, good evening, welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada Today we continue on with verses 209 to 211 Which read as follows
Ayoge yunjamatanam, yogasmincha ayojayam.
Athanghitva piyagahi, pihetat tanuyoginam.
Mapyehi samaganchi, apyehi kudachanam.
Piyanangadasanam dukhang, apyananchadasanam.
tasmā piyaṁ na kayīrātha piyāpāyohi pāpa-ko kaṇṭhā te saṁ na vijante ye saṁ na thih piyāpiyaṁ Which means one who
is involved with things one shouldn't be involved in and in those things that one should be involved in doesn't get involved.
Having abandoned what is useful, atta, and clinging to what is dear to them, they will end up
Envying those who were more involved or better involved.
Those who were strenuous or got work done.
Don't associate or one shouldn't associate
One shouldn't hold on to what is dear or what is dear whatsoever, what is not dear whatsoever.
For not to see what is dear, this is suffering, as well as seeing what is not dear.
For that reason, make nothing dear.
For the loss of what is dear is evil.
And here evil just means bad or unpleasant.
There are no bonds, binds.
There are no fetters.
For those who hold nothing dear or undear, not dear.
For those who have nothing that is dear or the opposite of dear, which is unpleasant.
So dear is maybe not, it's an awkward translation.
Pia means something you value, something you cherish, something you hold on to, something you love, we might say.
It's probably the most common usage of the word love, even though love can mean many different things.
When we say we love cheesecake, or when you say you love your partner, even when you say you love your parents, or love your children, it's often associated with clinging, rather than appreciation or simply friendliness.
So that's what piya means.
And we're in the piyavagga.
We've just started.
This is the first story from the piyavagga, which means the chapter on dearness or holding things on cherishing.
So this verse is supposed to have been said in regards to a story about a family.
A family...
whose members were very dear to each other.
We have a mother and a father and their son.
And they were living together in harmony.
But then one day the Buddha came to their area and the son heard him speak and was so
encouraged by the things the Buddha said that he decided that he wanted to become a monk.
So he asked his parents.
His parents refused.
They said, no, you can't.
And they tried to keep watch on him because they figured he would sneak away and go become a monk if they didn't.
And so whenever the mother would go out, she would tell the father to look after him and watch him and
spy on him or basically hold him prisoner and the same when the father went out he would tell the mother remind the mother to do the same one day the father went out and the mother was weaving or spinning wool or something and so she would sit in the doorway of their hut or their home just to make sure he didn't even leave the house it doesn't say how old this boy was but maybe he was just young enough to become a novice I don't know
They loved him so much that they wanted to protect him and keep him prisoner even.
But he asked her if he could go outside and use the facilities, maybe the outhouse or something.
He had to go maybe water the bushes, I don't know.
He had to make a bowel movement of some sort.
And so he asked her to move out of the way.
I'm just going to go outside for a second.
So she let him go outside and went back to her work.
And as soon as he got outside, he ran to the monastery, asked the monks to ordain him.
They ordained him, which is not really allowed, but this may have been before it was required to have your parents' permission.
Anyway, it's just a story.
The detail is not so important.
But the parents, the father came home and he went into the house and where's our son?
Usually he would greet the father when he came home, didn't do that.
Where did our son go?
Oh, he went out to the washroom.
He's not back yet.
Oh, and the father said, oh, I know.
If he's not here, he looked everywhere for him.
He said, if he's not here, he must have gone to the monastery.
So the father went to the monastery.
Sure enough, he saw his son with a shaven head and wearing robes.
And he was so aggrieved, so sad, thinking to himself, how can I go home and live without my only dear son?
And so then and there he said, I'm not going home.
And he asked the monks to ordain him as well.
Shaved his head, put on the robes, became a monk.
The mother sitting at home, wondering where the husband and son have gone.
She said, well, I guess probably the son would have gone to the monastery.
And so she heads off to the monastery, sees them both and says, well, what the heck am I going to do at home if they're both at the monastery?
I better ordain as well.
And she went to the bhikkhunis and they ordained her, shaved her head, put on the robes.
Which sounds like a very heartening story, you know?
The son led both his mother and father to become monks, but it didn't work out the best.
After they ordained, it says they did nothing but socialize.
They were so accustomed and attached to each other, accustomed to being in each other's presence, attached to each other.
presence and company and interactions, that they did nothing but sit around and socialize and chat.
And the monks got annoyed, upset or disturbed, at least the ones who weren't yet far advanced in their meditation.
And so they went to the Buddha.
And they said, Venerable sir, this family, I kind of regret letting them become monks because now all they do is sit around and chat and socialize.
They're not accomplishing anything except increasing their clinging and disturbing the monastery.
So the Buddha called them up and, is this true?
And he scolded them and said,
This is not the way of It's not the way to real happiness Let's see what did the Buddha exactly say He said Why do you do this?
This isn't the proper way for you to conduct yourself But venerable sir It's impossible for us to live apart And he said Once you leave home Having left home This is very improper And then he taught the verse basically Verses
So we have a lesson from the story, we have a lesson from the verses.
From the story I guess there are two lessons.
The first most obvious one is we don't approve of chatting and socializing.
So in a monastery, in a meditation center, it's why we have these sort of rules.
Not just because the Buddha said not to and said it's improper.
But you've got to admit, if the Buddha says that something is improper, it's probably a good idea to follow, even blindly, because, well, we don't know many, many things, and taking your teacher's advice is often a good thing.
Good sort of default, until you have reason to doubt.
But we can find reasons easily, of course.
Socializing and chatting...
in specific, are quite distracting from our practice and reinforcing of our defilement.
The bad things inside that we're trying to change about ourselves, bad habits, are quite reinforced simply by engaging in idle speech because it's very difficult to be mindful.
It's very habitual.
Just the act of speeching is caught up in so much of our habits, our manners of speaking,
the topics of speech.
Often we sit around gossiping and talking bad about other people and so on, that sort of thing.
Teasing, manipulating, joking, all of this.
It's just part of our habits that are caught up with speech, which are very difficult to change.
It's not that speaking can't be mindful.
You can even be mindful as you're speaking, mindful of your lips moving, even mindful of the sound of your own voice.
But it's just mostly we're not doing that.
That's not the reason why we sit and chatter, not as a meditation exercise usually.
But we shouldn't think that silence is necessary.
It isn't.
It never was.
It was something that the Buddha criticized, in fact.
If you say, I'm not going to talk no matter what, you shouldn't ever go to that extreme.
You can...
for the most part not talk and there were monks who did this they didn't talk hardly at all but then they didn't talk at all actually but then every five days or so they would get together and they would talk all night talk about the Dhamma but it was a means of getting feedback and interacting with your fellows it's just important
just like we talk every morning so you have a chance to interact with someone who has a little bit of background and experience but the deeper lesson of course is this idea of holding something dear so the real lesson this story gives to us and other stories of the Buddha or of the Buddha's time
is how strongly people cling to each other, how strongly this habit becomes, how powerful it can be.
The strength of their attachment was preventing them from allowing this young man to do something great, right?
How often you hear about parents not allowing their children to become ordained.
I mean, I do, in Asian circles anyway.
Not because they think Buddhism is bad They're generally Buddhists themselves There are cases where parents don't want their kids to ordain Especially in the West Because they think Buddhism is evil and wrong and so on But that's not the case often in the East In Buddhist countries They just don't want it because they're so attached to their kids Even attached and worried about their kids' future
They want their kids to be rich and in society and carry on their name and have kids.
They want grandkids and that sort of thing.
So it's quite horrific to think that their kids might become monks.
And then how strong was the attachment once he had ordained that they couldn't live without him.
They couldn't continue on their lives.
They were so desperate that they decided to ordain even though they didn't seem to be all that inclined towards Buddhist practice.
And then once they were ordained, their attachment was so strong that even the son wasn't able to practice because he was so involved with socializing with his parents.
So it gives us this example of very strong attachment.
The verses themselves provide sort of the lesson on why it's not a good idea to attach.
And there's three lessons.
Each verse is actually a little bit different, and you can find a distinct lesson from each of them that describes a very important part of the Buddha's teaching.
The first verse is mostly...
Describing our acts, acts and omissions It talks about getting involved with things you shouldn't get involved in I use the word involved, yoga Yoga means something like bound or attached But not exactly attached, tied to Yoga is kind of like, I've talked about this before, from yoke A yoke in English Where the yoke on the ox is this thing that ties it to the cart So it can pull it
So when you're harnessed to a cart, you do the work of pulling the cart.
That's, as I understand, how the word evolved.
So it's used often in Buddhism to talk about this person who is dedicated, a dedicated practitioner.
Yoga vachara is a very common Buddhist word.
Someone who is engaged in the work.
So, but there's things that you shouldn't engage in, you shouldn't get involved and you shouldn't work at.
And so one who engages in those things and doesn't engage in the things that you should engage in is, and then he says, is going to be jealous or envious, is going to feel bad when they see everyone else in a monastic setting, especially or in a meditation center, everyone else is becoming enlightened and they're still
Still useless.
The Buddha gives an example, not here, but it's a famous simile of a cow herd or a shepherd.
You might think of a person who works, a servant in a rich household, or a person, you know, cows we don't think of so much because we don't think of cows as highly as they would have in the time of the Buddha.
But it's the equivalent of...
being surrounded by riches but having to take care of them like a banker.
A person can work in a bank surrounded by such wealth but have no access to the bank.
A person who shepherds or cow herds cows surrounded by very valuable livestock but they're just working for a minimum wage.
They don't actually get to taste the milk from the cows or the cheese or the meat now as we kill the cows.
You don't get any of the benefit from the animals.
A person who works in a mansion can be surrounded by great luxury but never have access to it.
They can't sleep in the beds or sit in the chairs or eat the food.
They get minimum wage and then they go home.
Or they sleep in the servants' quarters.
So the lesson here is about acts and omissions.
In Buddhism, of course, it's democratic, or it's, democratic isn't the right word, there's equality in the sense that it's accessible to everyone.
It's not a case where you're set in your social class.
So it's different in that you have the option to become rich in Buddhism.
You have the option to be the person who owns the cows, to be the person who owns the money in the bank.
All you have to do is do the work, engage in what you should engage in, don't engage in what you shouldn't engage in.
So this relates to actions, karma, really.
There's a story of a monk who was very, very much attached to his food.
He lived alone.
And this is a common thing.
I've seen this.
It's discouraging how common it can be.
Monks live alone because they're jealous of their gains.
They live in a village and they're surrounded by people who, for lack of a better monk, a better monastery, always go and pay respect and give offerings to this monk.
So anytime another monk comes, they're very protective of their gains, right?
The things they hold dear.
So they'll chase the other monks away.
So you have to be a little bit suspicious when you see a monastery with only one monk.
It's unfortunately common for that to be the case.
So this is a story in the Buddha's time it was even the case there was this monk who was in this sort of situation and another monk came and this monk was so profoundly peaceful in his demeanor he would walk slowly when he talked it was thoughtful and he was an arahant he was enlightened as it turns out.
This monk, of course, didn't know that.
He was just scared because this was clearly a powerful sort of spiritual individual.
And he thought to himself, I'm ruined.
If the people of the village see this monk, I'll never get any support.
And so he arranged it so in the morning he said he would ring the bell and in the morning he went and touched the bell with his finger and said, oh, I've rung the bell.
This monk hasn't come.
And he went to the village and they asked, oh, where's the other monk?
We heard there's another monk living there.
And he said, oh, I think he's sleeping in.
I rang the bell and he didn't come.
And there was one lay woman who was taking care of him, who made very sort of luscious, what's the word, very delicate, superior food, good food, delicious food.
refined food, fine food.
And she said, oh, well, then take back, you eat some food here and then take back food for him in your bowl.
And so he ate the meal and she put food in his bowl for the other monk and he looked at it and he said, I can't let him taste this or he'll never leave.
He'll be so attached to the food that he'll stick around and then I'm ruined.
And so on the way back to the monastery, he dumped the food out on the side of the road.
The other monk, the arahant, had woken up, of course, early in the morning.
He wasn't lazy or wasn't sleeping in.
He knew what the other monk had done, I think.
He had some kind of psychic ability to see that the monk was doing that.
At any rate, he knew that the monk had not actually rang the bell.
And he thought to himself, I can't live with such a person.
And he went on his way.
The monk who was very much attached to the food And as a result Engaging in practices He really shouldn't have been engaging in Ended up being born in hell And ended up becoming a I think he was There was this monk in the time of our Buddha Yes, this was a monk Starts with an M, Mendika maybe I can't remember One monk who
not Mendaka, Malukya maybe, I can't remember.
He never got enough to eat as a result of his bad karma of throwing out this food that was designated for this other monk.
He never got enough food and all the time he was ordained until finally Sariputta was the one who ordained him.
And it may have been Mendaka now that I think.
And
I don't remember his name.
Someone's going to tell me what the name was eventually.
Sariputta had to feed him with a spoon.
And finally, he was dying.
And Sariputta, on the last day,
Sariputta went for alms they went for alms together and this monk didn't get any food he said and neither of them got any food because of the bad karma of this monk the story is a very long story when he was born he was born a beggar and as soon as he was born as soon as he was conceived the whole company of beggars didn't get anything to eat they kicked his parents out and his parents didn't get anything to eat and once he was born
None of them got anything to eat So they kicked him out And he never got anything to eat Until finally Sariputta found him and ordained him And he still didn't get anything to eat Sariputta took him on alms Neither of them got anything to eat Sariputta told him to stay at home Sariputta went on alms Sent food back with a novice to him The novice ate the food on the way
Sariputta went back to the monastery and asked him if he'd eaten.
He said, I'm fine.
He was an arahant at that point, I think.
And Sariputta took his food, took his bowl, and actually with his own hand, hand-fed into his mouth.
And just before he passed away, he got a real meal.
He actually got food to eat.
And I can't remember his name.
But the story here is about his evil deeds because of his craving.
And this is, of course, just one of many, many stories of how clinging or holding something dear, something silly like food, right, can lead us to do such evil.
when we hold people dear, when we cherish other people, the things we'll do to get what we want.
That's why I think you could extrapolate to why things like rape occur and that sort of things, horrible things that happen.
It's why people go to war, because they cherish what other people have or they cherish what they have.
We cling to our possessions
we cling to nationalities, we cling to
color and so many things wealth is something rich people clinging to wealth now we see the rich getting richer the poor getting poorer and this class warfare fighting and the truth of it is from a Buddhist perspective that the richer are just trading places with the poor every lifetime so if you're rich and stingy then you get poor and then you realize how awful it is to be stingy and so you start to be a little more generous and then maybe you become rich again
But we're seeing less and less generosity, I think, and that's why the disparity.
Why so few people are rich.
So few people actually have wealth or affluence, luxury.
Because while they've traded places, they've done some good things that give them that.
And probably when they die, they're going to lose it all.
So the first verse deals with this, this idea that when we hold things dear, it leads us to do evil things, it leads us to fail to do good things.
It's why this family was unable to practice meditation.
And in our meditation, this is the important lesson that
It prevents us from being mindful when we start to get off track and thinking about the past or the future, greedy about or clinging to things that we might get or things that we had or so on.
It leads us to fail to be mindful.
That's why entertainment is something we should put aside during a meditation course because it gets in the way of our mindfulness.
The second verse says,
deals more directly with the suffering it says seeing what is not dear that suffering and seeing what you don't like that suffering and what you like when you don't see that that's also suffering
And many stories like this, the story, of course, of Patachara, who lost her two children and her husband.
She was traveling back to see her family and her husband got bitten by a snake.
And then one of her babies was killed.
was taken or carried away by a bird she had just given birth and she placed she left the older son by the side of the river this river and she crossed the river with the baby left the baby on the side of the on the other side started to cross back the river
And then she turned around and saw that this bird had seen her newborn baby and thought it was a piece of meat and grabbed it.
And so she waved at the bird in the middle of the river, trying to scare it off.
And the older child on the other bank saw her waving and thought, no, she's calling me and got into the river and got swept away by the river.
She lost both of her children.
And when she got home to her parents, now completely alone, she found that her parents had died and their house had burnt down in the storm.
And she went crazy.
She lost her mind.
She was so distraught that she just was completely overwhelmed.
Such suffering comes from, I mean, the potential for such suffering.
It's not that you can't enjoy the things that you hold dear.
It's just that you engage in this kind of happiness that is fraught with uncertainty and is dependent.
In mindfulness, we try to become independent.
It's another approach to happiness.
It's much more sustainable.
It's much more happy, really.
Because we think these things make us happy.
They only give us greater and greater clinging.
The happiness disappears and we're left with craving and clinging.
Another story is Santati.
We have many stories, but Santati is another example.
He was...
He was a minister to a king and he got rewarded and he ended up living like a king for a while.
And his girlfriend, this dancer who he was very fond of, she dies all of a sudden just in front of his eyes while she's dancing because she was, I guess, starving herself.
It was a thing for dancers to do.
Still is, I suppose.
And she suddenly got nerve, some kind of nerve damage and died.
And he had to go see the Buddha and the Buddha had to explain to him, oh yes, this is what happens when you hold things dear.
Impermanence.
So the second verse relates to the suffering that comes from clinging.
The third verse relates specifically to the clinging that comes from holding things dear.
So the clinging aspect itself
It says there are no binds, there are no fetters for those who hold nothing dear.
And that's really the point.
We don't see how dangerous it is to get attached to things.
We don't see how much suffering is involved, how distraught we can become when the things we hold dear.
People who hold on to relatives and believe family is so important are the first ones to grieve deeply and really in a way that they would never wish on anyone else when they lose their relatives.
And even when our relatives are there, the more clinging we have towards them, we think, well, it's good.
Hold on to your family.
But these are the ones that fight the most with their relatives, that argue when the relatives are not the way they want them to be.
If a stranger said something to you, you might not react.
Or a stranger did something you didn't expect.
doesn't bother you but when your relatives change sometimes it's just their children doing things they don't want like dyeing their hair or wearing different clothes not getting good marks on their their tests someone else's kid doesn't do well in school maybe you're happy because it means your your child is superior to them
you feel proud of your children but when your children do not well because of your attachment to them you're scared for their future and not just as in your duty as a parent to teach them and help them but you suffer children suffer when their parents say things to them right if another person were to criticize you you might be able to shrug it off but when your parents do often you get very angry when your parents
scold you or so on because of attachment because we're so caught up in our desire for them to be a certain way
And why it's interesting to especially stress the fact that each verse specifies a different aspect of the teaching is because these three together, the clinging, the action, the karma, and the suffering that comes from it are the cycle of samsara.
It's called Kilesa, Kamma, Vipaka.
These three are the circle of craving, circle of life, I guess, in Buddhism.
When you have craving, then there is actions.
You act out on it.
We do bad things, evil things, things that hurt ourselves, that hurt others.
We fail to do good things, of course, because we're so infatuated with getting what we want.
And we suffer because the actions lead to suffering.
That's the whole point.
They wouldn't be bad.
They wouldn't be considered evil if they didn't lead to suffering.
But they do.
Clinging to good things and our aversion to bad things leads us to suffer, leads us to do these things, manipulate others, hurt others.
And as a result, we suffer.
We suffer when we don't get what we want.
We suffer when we get what we don't want, revenge and so on.
And of course the suffering leads us to cling more, right?
We cling to when bad things happen to us, when we suffer, we do whatever we can to fix it, to get a pleasant experience.
And we create more and more clinging.
Because of the clinging, then there's more suffering.
Defilements lead to action.
Action leads to results.
Results, we react to them again.
And so we create this snowball effect.
This is why even in meditation, you can see this happening.
You can see how when you get upset about something, then you get upset about that.
And you build and build the upset.
That's when it becomes a real problem.
Same with craving.
If you want something, it's just wanting, but when you obsess over it and you like the fact that you're wanting, you feel the pleasure associated with wanting, then you increase it.
And so the final part of the third verse gives, of course, the opposite, the way out.
That really a much better way, a much more peaceful and happy way to live is when you don't hold anything dear or undear.
You change this whole philosophy.
You abandon the idea that happiness can come from cherishing things or being averse to certain things.
And you cultivate an open mind, an ability to experience the whole spectrum of reality.
Because we have two choices.
We can limit our experiences to those things that we like, or we can stop liking, and we can be open to all experiences.
Of course, the former sounds good on paper, but is fraught with dangers and problems.
And is a cause, is the reason why there's so much suffering in the world.
Because there is so much suffering in the world.
It's an undeniable fact.
As much as we want to ignore it, the reality is there is great suffering in the world.
And it's all because, it's all because of our clinging, because of our attachments.
Because of holding, cherishing certain things and hating and despising other things.
So that's what we try.
That's why mindfulness is so central to Buddhism.
It's why we're so focused on mindfulness.
Because mindfulness is that middle way.
It is the avoiding of the two extremes.
It is a third option where you don't have to chase after things or run away from things.
where you simply experience things as they are.
There's no more good, there's no more bad.
There's not even any me or mind to cling to it.
There only is experience.
It is what it is.
And so by simply reminding yourself of that every moment when you can see or hear, have seeing, just be seeing, have hearing, just be hearing, you create a new perspective, a new way of looking at reality instead of things you have to fix and control to being things that you should experience and understand.
So, a very good set of verses.
That's the Dhammapada for tonight.
Thank you for listening.
I wish you all the best.