Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 35, which goes as follows.
Which means...
difficult to restrain flighty landing upon or lighting upon whatever it desires the taming of the mind is good the tamed mind brings happiness so another really pointed
teaching from a meditative point of view.
And this one has very much to do with meditation.
It's actually quite a story, well known among Buddhist circles.
And the story goes that there was a village called Matika.
And there was a group of thirty bhikkhus who went to practice meditation there.
And the headman of the village, his mother, had great faith.
And when she saw these Buddhist monks coming, she was quite excited to see them.
And asked them where they were going.
They said, well, they're just looking for a place to spend the rains.
And so she immediately jumped upon it and said, look, if you stay here, then I'll be able to take the precepts and listen to your teachings and learn more about the Buddhist teaching and have a chance, a very good chance to study and practice the Buddhist teaching.
So she said, please stay here and we'll build you a monastery.
And so, poof, just like that, they built off in the forest a monastery for these monks with the hopes or
under the promise that they would stay there for the rains.
And they promised that they would bring them food every day and whatever they wanted that they would bring for these monks.
And so the monks were quite happy about this because it would mean that for the rains they would have a chance to practice meditation strenuously and put all their effort into the practice.
And so once the monastery was finished, they all went in and they had a meeting amongst themselves as to how they were going to conduct themselves for the rains.
And what they said, just incidentally, the things that they said were kind of interesting.
One of them is quite pertinent.
It sort of gives you an idea of the intentions that they had going into this.
They say, the Pali is amma
Just like our own house.
The eight hells.
The Eight Great Hells are wide open for us, have their gates wide open for us, just as if they were our own home.
So they say it would not be good for us to be pamādacāraṁ caritum,
na vattati.
It is not proper.
It will not be that we, it is not the case that we should be negligent because the eight hells are wide open, meaning they still had greed, anger and delusion.
And so if they were negligent, then these things would lead them into one of the eight great hells or couldn't possibly.
At the very least, it would lead them to suffering.
So they, for that reason, they made a vow
amongst themselves out of this great anxiety or fear that they all had of the possibility of going to a bad place, and out of a desire to become free from it.
They made a very
extreme sort of agreement, a very hard agreement with themselves, strict agreement with themselves, that during the rains retreat they would, as best as possible, not talk to each other.
Now what it says that they did is, in the morning they would meet for alms, so then they would maybe even discuss where they're going to go on alms, who's going to go on which route, and who's going to go in which direction.
And in the evening they would meet together to pay respect to the elder monks and to do the duties towards whatever monk is elder and so on.
But apart from that, they would say, we will not meditate two monks in the same place.
We will not go on alms round two monks on the same road.
We will not meet eye to eye out of fear that we might begin to converse and therefore give rise to defilement.
And so with this promise, they undertook themselves to spend all their time in their kuti.
Now, the one thing they did say, and if a monk is sick, the only exception is if a monk gets sick, then that monk should go out and ring the bell in the middle of the monastery.
and then all of us must come to attend on the Sikh monk.
So that was the only one exception.
Apart from that, they decided they would spend all their time in their gurus, so immediately they all went to their own huts and undertook the practice of meditation.
Now, the woman who was the mother of Matika, the mother of the village headman, who was looking after them, was quite excited and wanted to come and make sure that everything was all right for the monks.
So she decided that she would come to the monastery and see how her sons were doing, as she put it.
But when she got there, it wasn't as she expected.
She expected that her sons would be happily enjoying their monastery and discussing the Buddha's teaching and so on and so on.
So when she saw these monks...
She went to the monastery and she said, where are all the monks?
And the man who was looking after the monastery said, well, they're off in their kutis one by one.
They're all in different places.
And she saw that this was the case, that they were all avoiding each other.
So she said, what can I do if I want to talk to them?
And he said, well, ring the bell.
And so she went up to the bell and she rang it.
And she watched and they all came from different places.
And she said, sure enough, they're all avoiding each other.
And she thought this was the most peculiar behavior.
So they said, what's wrong?
We thought someone was maybe sick.
And she said, no, I'm wondering why it is that you're not talking to each other.
Why are you avoiding each other?
And she said, you must be angry at each other.
There must be some problem with your harmony and
Here I was hoping to gain lots of merit having you here, but now I'm afraid that there may be some problem.
And they said, no, no, it's not the case.
We're practicing meditation.
And when you practice meditation, you have to be in solitude.
And she said, what does this mean, practice meditation?
She had no idea what this was.
Well, practice meditation, in our case, we're thinking of this, the parts of the body.
We say to ourselves, hair, hair, and skin, skin, and so on, focusing on the 32 parts of the body, and as a result, developing calm and tranquility, and then developing insight based on that.
This is what we've been taught to do.
And she said, oh, that sounds, she said, oh, that's quite interesting actually.
And she said, is it only monks who can practice this teaching?
And he said, no, no.
And they said, no, no, anyone can practice this teaching.
And she said, well, then can you teach it to me?
And so they taught her these 32 parts of the body.
And to just get to the end of the story, she practiced diligently and actually gained the third stage of enlightenment, anagami, means she had no more sensual desire, no more anger, but she would still have these subtle desires to become or to not become, desire to get rid of things and the desire to achieve things.
to be this and to not be that, and she still would have conceit and so on, some of the subtle defilements.
But she was totally, totally freed from the lower defilements of lust and craving and so on, and anger and aversion.
And she thought, wow, this is wonderful.
She said, I wonder, when did these monks attain this state?
And she used these powers that she gained as a result of her enlightenment to send her mind out and to examine these monks.
And she said, these monks are still full of greed, anger and delusion.
They haven't gained anything.
She said, what's wrong?
They've been here for some time practicing meditation.
I wonder what could be wrong.
And she looked and she said, do they have suitable lodging?
Yes, they have suitable lodging.
Do they have suitable company?
Are there any problems in between them?
No, there's no problems between them.
Do they have suitable food?
And she said, aha, they don't have suitable food.
And so she thought to herself, you know, she sent her mind to all the monks and she thought, which monk needs what sort of food?
And she realized what sort of food that the monks wanted and what sort of food would make them, would bring them comfort in their meditation.
And so she prepared these foods for them.
And apart from that, prepared everything for them, whatever they needed, whatever they were lacking, or whatever she knew for herself would help them.
She brought it to them.
And as a result, the monks were all able to attain arhantship,
As a result of attaining arahantship, they said to themselves, wow, at the end of the rains, they said to themselves, the time has come for us to go and to see the Buddha.
And so they went back to see the Buddha and the Buddha said, oh, you all look bright and radiant.
You must have had suitable lodging and food and so on.
And they said, oh, did we ever?
This lay woman, she attained anagami and she was able to read our minds and she got us whatever we want.
And the Buddha said, oh, that's great.
that's great, good for you and so on.
Something profound of course, they had become Arahants.
Now the story goes that there was one monk listening to this and overheard the Buddha talking to these monks and overheard these monks extolling the virtues of this lay woman who was so
who was so perfect or in such a clear mind that she was actually able to attain enlightenment before these monks.
But what he got stuck upon is he said, he heard that this woman was bringing these monks whatever they wanted.
She was single-handedly taking care of 30 monks and as a result allowed them to attain arahantship.
And kind of out of greed he thought,
Wow, if I go there, I'll get whatever I want.
If I want water, I'll get water.
If I want food, I'll get food.
Whatever kind of food I want, I'll get it.
And so he asked permission to go and stay there.
I'm not even sure if he asked permission.
He just immediately went to this monastery and he said, Okay, if this woman can read my mind, may she send someone to clean up this monastery for me.
Because it would have been all covered over in leaves and so on.
And immediately this man shows up, or not immediately, but after some time, this man shows up and starts sweeping the monastery.
Wow, that's quite incredible.
And so he thinks, there's no water here, may she send some sweet water.
And after some time, someone comes with some sweet water.
And then he thinks, oh, and in the morning, may she bring me this kind of good food and yagu or congee or so on.
with sugar and this and that and dainties and something like that.
May she bring me exactly what I want.
And of course she brings exactly what he thinks of.
And then for lunch the same thing.
And then he says, wow, this is incredible.
I would really like to meet this woman.
And so she
And within no long time she comes to see him.
And he asks her, he says, wow, is it true that you can read people's minds in this way?
And she said, why do you ask?
And he said, well, you know, people said this.
And she said, oh, and she did her best.
She avoided the question completely.
And he thought to himself, he thought, for sure she can read my mind because she isn't saying no.
But because of her purity, she doesn't want to say yes.
And he thought, what am I doing here?
Suddenly, just the gravity of the situation occurred to him.
He said, if I have one thought of lust, imagine this woman is going to know right away, and she'll probably grab me by my robe and throw me out of the monastery if she finds out.
all the defilements that I have in my mind.
And so the rest of the day he just was walking around paranoid, thinking, oh, I can't stay here, I can't stay here.
Ran back to the monastery where the Buddha was.
The Buddha saw him coming and said, you know, why aren't you staying at that monastery?
And he said, I can't stay there.
If I have one impure mind, I thought this woman is going to know it right away.
And
And then the Buddha gives this verse.
This is the teaching that he gives to this monk.
He says, look, you don't have to guard this thought or that thought.
Can you do one thing?
And he said, what is the one thing?
And he said, you just guard your mind, watch your mind, stay with the mind, and tame your mind.
The word is to tame the mind.
Just go back there, train your mind and overcome these thoughts, work on them.
Because really the truth is, this woman wouldn't have thrown him out of the monastery as an amnagami.
She would have known very well the defilements that were in his mind and she would never complain at all.
And she would always work in a way, as we all do, to help people to overcome these.
We never get angry or upset at students when they come and tell us they have lust.
In fact, because we can't read their students' minds, we need our students to tell us that lust arose or anger arose or so on.
Mahasi Sayadaw was saying like this.
He was saying, well, it would be great if you could have a teacher like that who could read your minds.
But if you don't have one, all you have to do is explain your situation, or it becomes your duty to explain your situation.
That is the answer here.
The answer is for you just to tell what is going on in your practice.
Because the problem, as I've always said, is not this greed and not the anger.
It's the delusion.
It's our ignorance, our inability to understand the situation.
the fact that we don't see that we have these, or we don't see the problem with these things, the fact that we don't understand these things as they are.
If we actually look at them, accept that they're there, and take a look at our lust, take a look at our desire, take a look at our anger, take a look at our aversion, our frustration, our boredom, our depression, look at it, and simply see it for what it is.
only then will we be able to become free from it.
So rather than worrying about these things or what other people think of us or anything, let us just, he said, all you have to do is train your mind, straighten your mind as we were talking about before.
But here he uses the word to tame the mind or to train the mind.
And then he said this verse, he said, the mind is difficult to restrain and flighty, lighting upon whatever it desires.
The taming of the mind is good.
The tamed mind brings happiness.
That's the verse.
And the story goes that as a result he did go back and became enlightened as a result.
So for our practice, I think it's quite obvious, and it's quite obvious with this example as to the importance or the meaning of this verse.
that yes, this is the case, the mind will run after its desires, it will run after what it wants.
If it wants something, then it will chase after it.
And the commentary here has something interesting to say, it says, so much so that it won't worry about its reputation, it won't worry about what is right or what is wrong,
It won't worry about things like, you know, in the case of lust, someone else's wife, someone else's husband.
It won't worry about things like someone else's possession.
It won't worry about suffering for oneself.
It won't worry about suffering for others.
If one is angry, even though one knows that one is hurting oneself, one will kick things and punch things, punching the wall and causing great suffering to oneself.
This is the meaning of the word yatha kama nipatino, whatever it wants, no matter what.
Whatever the defilements lead one to, it will go there no matter what, out of incomplete disregard for what is right or wrong.
So this is why we see infidelity, and this is why we have theft, this is why we have murder, this is why we have suicide, all of these things because of our desires and our aversions and our inability to control them.
So rather than control them, the Buddha says to train the mind, to train the mind to see them clearly, to see them as they are.
This is the word vipassana, just to see them for what they are.
Because the Buddha says you can't restrain the mind, you can't tie it down and stop it from going these things.
It's lahu, the word is lahu, which means light or flighty, like a bird.
These words are actually what you would use to talk about a bird.
Last time we had a fish, now we have a bird.
It's like a bird because it lights on whatever it wishes.
If it doesn't like it here, it will go there.
It will go here.
As soon as something scares it, it will be gone.
This is the mind.
You can't catch it.
It's not a physical thing that you can put in a cage.
If it were the body, you can tie the body up.
You can cover your mouth.
You can plug your ears.
You can close your eyes.
You can stop up your nose.
You can stop.
The body you can stop.
But the mind you can't stop.
No matter if you do all of these things, the mind will still escape to cause you endless, endless grief and suffering.
In fact, if you do such a thing, you'll find, for most people, they'll just go crazy as a result.
This is the funny thing, because you think you can control it.
And the more you try to control your mind,
Maybe you try to take medicine.
Some people, when they have headaches or when they're thinking too much, they'll take pills or drugs.
And the more you take them, the worse it gets.
And the more wound up the mind becomes.
So the more you try to tie the mind down, the more of a problem your mind becomes.
So the Buddha taught us to train the mind to see clearly.
This is in the last one we were talking about, straighten the mind.
But the word tame here, or damma, or danta,
This means making the mind like a trained animal, like a horse or a buffalo or something, something that is trained and understands
what is the important thing to do.
So teaching the mind to understand what is of its own benefit and what is to its detriment.
Understanding the anger, understanding the greed, seeing it for what it is.
So this is very much a reminder to us
that the untrained mind is the cause for all of our suffering.
And it's simply by training the mind that it leads to happiness.
The first kind of happiness, of course, that it leads to is that it helps us to overcome suffering.
So as these monks said, it was the untrained mind that had greed, that had anger, that had delusion, that was...
that had opened up the hells in front of them.
They could even see in front of them that if they were to just follow their desires, follow their aversions, it's open like the doors of their own house with a big welcome mat in front.
This is what they said.
So the training of the mind, the taming of the mind stops that.
It stops the mind from exploding.
It stops the mind from going insane.
It stops the mind from following after desires and aversions and causing so much suffering.
We can see it even when people get angry, they kick things and they punch things, as I said, or they hurt other people.
how we destroy our lives.
Even in this world you can understand how training the mind, taming the mind brings happiness.
If you think of how the world, mostly people think that happiness comes from war, from conflict and from victory.
So, what is the result of that?
We see how the world has gone to war and when the world is at war, so little peace in the world.
The peace vanishes like a mirage.
And what you're left with is conflict and the victor gains the ashes of the spoils.
What you get is a world of rubble and fire and suffering.
The suffering that comes from war is something that we have all been told about and read about.
heard the records of even in our society when we look at capitalism or materialism or when we look at this competitive society what it has brought to us how much suffering how much poverty how much lack of trust this has brought to the world how we can't even trust our neighbors we can't trust
our community.
We can't trust the people at the stores.
We can't trust the banks.
We can't trust anybody.
We can no longer trust each other because their minds are not trained, because their minds are full of these things.
Even in the family, the untrained mind amongst family, friends, at work,
If you talk to anyone about their job situation and how it's going, almost anyone in the world will be able to tell you about the fighting and the politics that goes on at work.
And if you ask people about their home life, most people nowadays, because of the nature of our minds and our desires and everyone's conflicting desires, the anger and the fighting and the harsh words,
even the abuse that goes on as a result of our untrained minds, how people, even though they want to find happiness, and they want others to be happy as well, they end up bringing great suffering to both themselves and to others.
This is all from the untrained mind.
If we begin to practice meditation and then we consider our own lives,
Because of the stability of mind that comes and the ability to reflect clearly on where we've come from, we'll be able to see the suffering that we've been causing in our lives.
It'll become quite clear to us where all of our suffering comes from.
And it'll become clear to us that we were in much suffering that we didn't even realize.
And we thought we were living in great peace and more or less lying to ourselves.
Once you begin to practice meditation, all of this comes up and much guilt about all of the things that you've done to hurt others when you were just avoiding it the whole time and pretending it didn't exist.
And now as your mind starts to calm down, you get to see everything that's in there.
So for someone who's practiced meditation, this is a clear teaching that it is the trained mind, the tamed mind, the straightened mind that brings happiness.
So it's a good teaching for us to always remember.
It's one that is often taught in Buddhist circles, that the trained or the tamed mind brings happiness.
So just one more verse in our series on the Dhammapada.
Thank you all for tuning in.
And see you again next time.