Okay, hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we go on to verse number 47, which reads as follows.
Which means,
Like one who collects or gathers flowers.
Man or a person who is with a distracted mind or with a negligent mind, with a heedless mind.
is carried off by death or death carries away such a person just as a great flood carries away a sleeping village.
So one whose mind is distracted, or who is distracted in mind like someone collecting flowers, is carried away by death, just as, carried away unexpectedly by death.
or unready, not ready for death, just as a sleeping village is carried away unexpectedly without any time for preparation by a great flood.
That's the verse.
So this was told in regards to a fairly famous story and quite a long story.
So I'll try to abridge it, give you the condensed version.
Basically, it starts with the, well it doesn't start with, the important part of the story starts with King Pasenadi, who was a king in the time of the Buddha and he gained great faith in the Buddha and
as a result invited monks to come to the palace and for a few days he looked after them but then something like after the seventh day he stopped he lost interest and went back to his worldly affairs and as a result the
and the monks weren't taken care of because, you know, if the king doesn't give the orders, no one really cares.
And so the people in the palace, when the monks came, weren't doing it out of faith.
No one was really interested in the monks, and so they
They weren't fed or they were fed late or there was much confusion and it wasn't really a wholesome scene.
So as a result, the monks slowly, one by one by one, stopped coming to the palace.
until finally the only one who was left was Ananda because Ananda had this great quality about him of protecting the faith of families so no matter what he would stick to his stick to his duties for the purpose of keeping the faith of the king in this case and
So one day the king remembered the monks and he came to see, oh, how is it going with the feeding of the bhikkhus?
And he goes there and he sees that there's only Ananda and he says, what's going on?
Where are all the monks?
Oh, well, when you stopped coming, they slowly stopped coming as well.
And he went to the Buddha and I can't remember what the Buddha said.
The Buddha gave him some
Gave him some reasons as to why the monks weren't coming or something like that.
And the Buddha taught as a result of this.
He didn't force the monks to go there.
He said if, this is he gave in the Anguttara Nikaya, he said if families don't,
have nine traits, nine qualities, it's not important to go to.
You need not bother with visiting those families.
But if they have the opposite nine qualities, or if they're free from those nine qualities, or if they have the opposite, then they should be visited.
So this is like if they stand up respectfully when the monks come, if they stand up and are respectful and are happy to stand up as a respectful gesture, if they hold their hands up, if they venerate you respectfully, if they do it happily,
if they put out seats happily, if they bring you lots of food, if they don't do these things, if they give coarse food and so on, if they don't listen to the Dhamma when you teach it, if they're not interested in the Dhamma, if when you're talking they don't listen and so on.
then these are reasons not to go there so the Buddha was kind of taking the side of the monks but the king went back home and so what it was is the Buddha had told him that it must be because there was no one there
There was no one familiar there, or they weren't familiar with the king or something like that.
Because the point of this story is that the king got it in his head that he would find some way to make himself dear to the monks.
And Sainadi, if you know the story about Sainadi, he wasn't the brightest, what do you say, he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.
so instead of thinking maybe I'll practice meditation or maybe I'll actually listen to the monks when they teach or something what did he think?
he thought I'll marry one of the Buddha's relatives I'll take one of the Buddha's relatives as my queen and that will be a sure way of getting in good with the Buddha this is what he thought
And so he sent a messenger to the Sakyas in Kapilavatu and said, please send me a queen, send me a woman to be my queen.
I want to marry into the Sakyas.
And you know this isn't going anywhere good.
Now the Sakyas were very proud.
It was one of their failings.
They would never mix with another tribe.
Yet they knew that if they refused King Basenadi he would invade them and he would start a war with them and they didn't want that because they were definitely not as strong as him nor as warlike.
So they talked about it and Mahanama, this famous Sakyan prince, he suggested that they send his daughter who was a daughter with a slave woman
So,
The point being that she wasn't really a legitimate child.
And so they wouldn't feel like they were betraying their clan purity or something, whatever.
And so they did this and they tricked the king and the king for a long time thought that this was a real Sakyan princess and he had a son with her.
and
Then his son went back to, after growing up, his son went back to visit the Sakyas and overheard someone talking about him as that bastard child of the slave woman.
And so word got back to the king, and the king went to see the Buddha and said, no, that's not really correct.
They shouldn't have done that.
And he said, but your son is still the son of a prince.
And so he consoled the king about this.
This is, you know, this is quite a bridge, so there's actually a lot more that goes on here.
But now it starts to get interesting because the son, Witu Daba, Witu Daba is his name, he doesn't let go of it.
So the king says, well, that's fine.
Yes, he's right.
My son really is a prince.
There's nothing wrong with him.
But the son himself is really upset by this and feels like he has been, I don't know, somehow he has been wronged by the Sakyas.
And so when King Pasenadi dies, and he becomes king, he vows to
Kill all the Sakis.
He says, when I'm king, I'm going to destroy the Sakian race.
And I'm going to wash my feet with their blood.
That's what he says.
And so he builds up this hatred in his mind.
He builds up this vengeance in his mind.
And one day he thinks of this.
He thinks of this vengeance.
He becomes king.
And then he makes plans.
And finally he gets it in his heart.
He says, now I'm going to go.
And he puts together his army.
And he leaves his home, which would be Sabati, I guess, and heads out for Kapilavatthu with his army.
The Buddhas have various duties.
Buddha is considered to have four duties, I think.
Duty to oneself, duty to the world, duty to one's relatives, and duty to the lineage of the Buddhas, or duty as a Buddha, whatever that means.
So there are examples of the Buddha looking after his relatives.
And this is one prime example where he did so.
Sitting in his kutti,
it came to his mind that this was happening, that King Vidyadamba was planning to destroy all of his relatives, his whole family was going to go and put an end to his family.
And
So he made a decision to travel and to intercept the king.
And so he went halfway on the path to Kapilavatthu and he found a tree with very little, very few leaves on it, almost dead tree with just a few leaves.
And he sat under it in the hot sun.
And Uddhava came up and saw, oh, there's the Buddha.
And so he got off his elephant and went up to the Buddha and bowed down to the Buddha and said, Lord Buddha, why are you here?
Why are you sitting under this tree without any shade?
And the Buddha said, oh, look, the shade of my relatives is enough for me.
My relatives provide me all the shade I need.
Oh, the Buddha's here to protect his relatives.
And so he gets on his elephant and he turns around and goes back to Samadhi.
But you know kings, they're not the most stable sort of beings.
And so he's unable to give up this hatred.
You see, people who don't practice meditation,
It's funny how he was so close to the Buddha and he never was able to practice meditation, but it's true.
This is, well, the story says it's true.
This is the story.
This kind of thing happens for sure, though.
People can be very close to Buddhism and even study all the Buddha's teachings and never actually practice.
And so they're never able to overcome, they're never able to change.
And so he can't change because he's harbored this from when he was young and when he first found out that he had been
It's funny because he wouldn't have been born if his father hadn't have married this woman.
And so he decides again to go out.
He gets angry again and he's unable to suppress it and unable to let go of it.
And so he heads out on his elephant with his army.
And again the Buddha goes, sits under the same tree.
Says the same thing.
And Vittadatta turns around and goes back.
You think that's the end of the story?
No.
No, sir.
He goes home and like a week passes.
And a week later he's out on the elephant again.
He just can't handle it.
And the Buddha looks.
And he looks back into the past, and he sees the Sakyas have actually built up this state of affairs.
They've done some sort of bad karma.
I can't remember what it was.
I don't think it maybe even says.
And there's no way he's going to be able to stop.
We did that, but it's advanced.
He says his relatives are destined to be wiped out.
And so he doesn't go.
He stays at home.
And Dabba heads out on his elephant and gets to Kapilavatthu.
And see, the thing about the Sakyas is that they become Buddhist.
They follow the Buddhist teaching, and they're keeping the five precepts.
So even the soldiers couldn't kill.
So what did they do?
I can remember, I think they'd shoot arrows over the heads of their enemies.
And I think they held up grass.
They collected grass and they held it up like a weapon or something like that.
And sticks.
I can't remember, but it's quite funny if you read the story how they fought.
how they fought back and they all were wiped out all were killed and he washed his feet with their blood and so it says the Sakyas were actually wiped out which is interesting because many people in Nepal claim to be related to the Buddha Sakyas Sakyas so the story seems to suggest otherwise but on the other hand it's quite difficult to wipe out everyone in the race it's not an easy thing so maybe some escaped
Anvita Dabba was victorious and happy and feeling like he had won the day and so he headed back, started heading back home and he got to this river and he got all his men out and he went down by the river and washed the blood off of his feet and they laid down to sleep by the river.
Oh, and they also had Mahanama with him.
They captured Mahanama and they wanted to torture him or something like that.
So they had him tied up as well with an army.
And they slept there overnight.
And as they were asleep, Mahogo, a great flood came and swept them all away in the night.
And so the monks were talking about this and they said, it's amazing that there's this, how the world goes.
You think you're on top of the world, victorious in battle one day and whoosh, you're gone the next day.
And so this is why the Buddha taught this verse.
This is where this verse comes from.
The Buddha said, indeed, we're negligent.
We think, we think, uh,
I think we're invincible.
People become so caught up in their arrogance and in their conceit, in their intoxication with life, intoxication with health, intoxication with youth.
I think I'm still young.
There are children who die, some people die when they're like five years old.
True, no?
Buddha said, Who knows whether death will come tomorrow?
If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, would you be negligent today?
Would you just go and do whatever you want today?
If you knew this was your last day,
What would you do today if you knew it was your last day?
Go ahead and get a puppy?
Would that make you happy?
Well, the problem is that when we die, the mind continues, no?
If we have clinging in our mind, we'll die with sadness.
We'll die crying.
We'll die longing.
This is why people are born as ghosts.
If you love your puppy today and then tomorrow you die, you'll be born as a ghost haunting your puppy.
It's the danger of clinging.
and don't realize that everything gets cut off.
The only thing we bring with us is our subjectivity, really.
If you look at how this new research that I keep talking about, after people die, people die and then they have these experiences.
Brain is dead.
Heart has stopped.
The temperature of the body is dropping.
And they keep, I think they were in Japan, they actually pump ice or cold water into the bloodstream just to keep it from rotting.
And then hours later they bring them back to life.
And these people talk about their experiences and it's totally subjective.
It's based on the things that they've done in their life.
It's based on their religion often.
It's based on their ideas.
It becomes totally subjective.
So imagine what it would be like if you had such strong clinging to something.
If there was something that you, suppose you were afraid of spiders and
You would see spiders.
And then how would you react when you now had nobody?
There was nobody there to put the spider in a cup and take it outside.
Suddenly, spiders crawling all over you.
This is what you'd see when you die.
And what if you couldn't handle that?
So this is why the Buddha said we're like picking flowers.
Is that preparing yourself?
What if you knew there was a flood coming to Winnipeg?
And you said, well then I'll spend my time picking flowers.
Is that wise?
This is what we're like.
It's not like we're, it's actually not even like a sleeping village.
It's like a village that knows there's a flood coming.
And all the villagers say, well then let's go pick some flowers.
That's what the Buddha is talking about here.
Like a sleeping village, but it's even worse than a sleeping village.
It's like a village that goes to sleep knowing a flood is coming.
We know there's a flood coming.
We know death is coming.
We don't know when.
We know it's coming.
And we know from Buddhism, we have this, you could say we have a belief that life continues after death.
But there's many ways it doesn't have to be a belief.
And one of them is now this kind of evidence even of people when they die having subjective experiences.
and how it becomes totally subjective, or totally based on your mind.
Could you imagine Ritu Dabu who had just washed his feet in the blood of his enemies?
What do you think he was thinking about when he died?
When his brain stopped, what images do you think he conjured up?
Blood.
He's not going to a good place.
So the Buddha said death carries you away, unprepared.
There's something about this that is not obvious unless you've been practicing meditation, and that's that we store up all of our experiences.
Everything that we've done is stored in our mind.
And you only see this when you meditate.
As soon as you begin to meditate, you realize how much you're keeping inside you.
All of the little obsessions that we have.
Because when you meditate, they come out.
You remember things and, oh, that was this bad thing.
I did that bad thing.
You realize how you've hurt other people.
You realize how you've caused suffering for others.
and you feel very strongly the things that are causing you suffer when you meditate you'll think about what you want all the things that you want you will think about and it will become so strong and so much suffering until you finally give it up this is why some people when they practice meditation they think it's
torture.
Think of meditation as some kind of bad idea, because it actually causes suffering.
You have to sit still and go through all of this stuff that you'd just rather forget about, right?
I don't want to have to think about this.
I don't want to have to think about how much I want this, how much I want that.
But that's exactly why we do it.
Because if we don't work these things out now, we're going to have to work them out when we die.
They're going to all come up.
And it's not even only when we die.
Death is just one example.
It's an extreme example.
But it's true in all cases.
If we have anger inside, then when anything happens, we'll get angry and we'll say bad things to others.
If we have greed inside, then anytime we want something, we'll be impossible to deal with.
I want it, I want it.
Let me cry.
Sound like anybody you know?
This is called negligence.
We cling to things.
We always try to get what we want.
And that's like picking flowers.
Because getting what you want doesn't make you a better person.
It doesn't make you a happier person.
You have this idea that the more you get, the richer your life is.
It's really not true.
Not by any stretch of the imagination.
The more you get what you want, the more wanting you have, the more clinging you have.
the less fun you are to be around.
Who are the nicest people, the people we love the most?
Are the people we love the most the ones who are the most taking people?
The ones that take all the time?
Oh, I love that person.
Every time I go over to their house, they ask me, they ask if they can borrow something.
They ask me for money.
I love that person.
Who do we love?
Every time I go to their house, they give me something, right?
They're always helpful.
They're always kind.
These are the kind of people we love.
So what's the kind of person that we want to be?
Why is it that we want to be the person who gets things all the time?
Gimme, gimme, gimme.
Why do we want to be that person when nobody likes such a person?
We get a benefit from the thing that we get.
What is the benefit that we get from the thing that we get?
Like, do we like what we get?
If we want it, if we want it, then then we get it.
Do we like it?
And then are we satisfied with that?
Like when you get a new toy or Christmas, when Christmas comes, how long before you're bored of your toys at Christmas?
How many hours?
How many minutes?
I remember Christmas when we'd get all these wonderful, really cool, just the coolest toys.
And then the next day we're like, OK, next Christmas I want this.
Easter.
What's next?
Birthday.
Birthday is coming up.
Do you have Christmas?
You must have Christmas, yeah.
We had Christmas and Hanukkah and eight.
Hanukkah's eight days of presents.
Well that's the theory, it doesn't really happen that way.
But no, these things don't satisfy us.
Things that we need are useful, but the point isn't getting what you want, the point is dedicating your life to that.
What is most important in your life?
Usually it's getting what we want, right?
So there's no question about whether they're useful or not.
The question is, why is that the focus of our lives?
Why is that the kind of person we want to be?
Someone who gets.
Why is that how we're using our life?
We all know people like this, people who want, people who cling, people who take.
We don't want to be around such people.
Oh, I don't want to go near that person.
I know they're just going to ask me for this or that.
Kids in class who are always, what you got for lunch?
Or, did you do your homework?
Can I copy it?
This kind of thing.
Always, always, always.
Can I borrow this?
Can I borrow that?
Can I borrow money?
Can I borrow things?
These are people we don't want to be.
So we have to consider carefully, how do we want to live our lives?
And how should we live our lives so that we'll be ready for anything, even death?
Death is a great unknown and for most of us it's a very sad thing.
I remember when I was young it was one of the things that impelled me towards spirituality and finally Buddhism was being in my house and looking.
I remember it's one of the oldest memories I have, or clearest of my young memories.
I was walking in the house and somehow it hit me, I don't remember how.
And I walked downstairs and I looked at my mother and I said, she's going to die.
And I thought about my father, and I said, he's going to die.
And my brothers, they're all going to die.
What can I do about that?
It's this kind of thinking that's important for us.
We have to have an answer here.
We have to have an answer to these questions.
Death is an inevitability, something that we all have to face.
It often sounds kind of depressing, actually.
You think, well, that's all life is, is for death.
But it's actually not.
Death is not a terminal point.
It's a conjunction.
It's a junction point.
between this life is certain, but when we get to that junction, we don't know which way we're going.
Are we going to go left?
Are we going to go right?
Which way?
That's very important, right?
When you're driving down the street and you come to a junction point, if you don't know which way you're going to go, you just crash into the sidewalk.
Left, no right, left.
How do you know which way you're going to go?
It's very important.
So death isn't like terminal and you think, well, why waste all your time thinking about that?
No.
Death is the moment where we become free from this certain life, this life which is set.
Nothing is set in stone at death.
So this verse is a call to, a wake-up call, that we shouldn't be like a sleeping village.
We should wake up and take life.
Take the wheel.
Take charge.
Take charge of our lives.
so that we don't become a slave to our desires and a slave to our partialities.
You can see this.
I think it'd be really interesting to work in a hospice, to work with dying people and to look and learn so much.
I've talked to people who worked in hospices who care.
And many things.
One of the things is how clear the mind becomes just before death.
People with dementia, even schizophrenia, there are studies done.
And probably not enough, but there are studies, if you look on the internet, of people with, I think, schizophrenia, but I think dementia as well.
At the last moment, the mind becomes so clear and pure.
or clear anyway, the point being that there is a lucidity at that last moment and it's at that moment where the person has to face their karma they have to face everything that they've done some people when they're dying you can see the fear in their eyes people when they're in pain there's such fear
And you can see the hunted look in their eyes if they've killed other beings before.
If they can't come to terms with that in this life, if they can't work that out, let go of this guilt and this fear, they'll die with that.
And they'll certainly go to a bad place.
So we have to take charge, and we have to be ready for this.
This is why.
Excellent reason to meditate, because we're prepared for anything.
When you meditate, you're ready.
If it floods, you're ready.
You've built up your things, sand bags, whatever.
Yeah.
Embankments, no?
You're ready for anything.
So you sleep well.
You sleep soundly.
A person who meditates doesn't fear the future.
A person who meditates isn't afraid of what comes.
When you understand meditation, nothing makes you afraid.
Even when you're afraid, you say, what am I afraid of?
It's a difference really, because a person who meditates might still be angry, might still have greed, might still get afraid, you know, they might not have worked all these things out.
But once they understand the meditation, even when these things come up, they don't go to that.
They don't listen to the emotions.
Fear comes up and they just see, oh, it's fear.
They don't say, okay, I have to run.
They don't follow the emotions.
When they're angry, they know they're angry.
When they want something, they know they want something.
Why is it that when we want something, we say, well, then I have to get it.
Why don't we say, oh, I have to work on the wanting?
Why have we fallen into the idea that wanting is a sign that we need something?
Why do we equate these two?
There are many questions like this.
We have to study and we have to understand, is wanting really good for us?
Is it really happiness?
People who say the most important thing in life is to experience, to have these wonderful, amazing experiences.
But that's just a belief.
We don't know if it's true.
It sounds good.
It's like, yeah, yeah, just do what you want, right?
Okay, let's be scientific.
Let's ask ourselves.
Let's look and see what happens.
When you get what you want, are you really happier?
Is it really a stable state?
And what happens when catastrophe hits?
Are you able to deal with it?
How strong are you?
So many people are, we would say, relatively weak.
Once you start meditating, you see how weak people are.
Weak.
This weakness, this inability to deal with simple things.
And all these stories of people start meditating and then there's a little bit of noise, and they get angry.
It shows you how weak you are in meditation.
So meditation, this is an example of how strong it makes you, how it works out these weaknesses.
Remember after we finished our meditation course in Thailand, first meditation course, and I went into the city with this friend, one of the fellow meditators, and we got into the cafe and we ordered some coffee or something.
And suddenly there was a huge, someone dropped a whole stack of dishes and huge noise.
And everybody in the whole restaurant turned and looked.
And we just sat there, both of us like this, hearing.
And then we looked at each other and said, meditators.
It's exciting, actually, to know that you don't have to follow your
instincts.
You don't have to follow the habits.
You're not a slave to your habits.
You may follow them, you may not.
But you can choose, you can decide, and you can see with wisdom whether they're going to make you happy or not.
So this is the important point of this verse, that we should not be like the heedless person gathering flowers.
Because it doesn't prepare you for the future.
It doesn't make you strong.
It doesn't bring you peace and happiness.
It just gets you a bunch of dead flowers.
Alright, so that's the Dhammapada first tonight, number 47.
Thank you for tuning in.
I hope that this has been useful and a reminder for us all that we should take life seriously.
If you want to be happy, you should seriously figure out what is true happiness.
Happiness is a very serious topic.
If it were not, everyone would be happy.
So let's take this seriously and truly find peace, happiness and freedom from suffering.
Thank you.
and wish you all the best.