Okay, so today we continue our study of the Dhammapada.
Continuing on with verses 13 and 14.
Watch, read as follows.
yatha agarang ducanang buddhi buddhi samati vidyati
evaṁ bhāvitam cittaṁ rāgo samati vijhati yathā agāraṁ sukṣaṇṇam utthi na samati vijhati evaṁ subhāvitam cittaṁ rāgo na samati vijhati And the meaning is as follows.
Yatha agarang, just as a house or a building.
Dukchanang, that is poorly thatched.
Or a roof, just as a roof that is poorly thatched.
The rain is able to penetrate.
Bhutthi samati vichuthi.
In the same way, an untrained mind, the lust is able to penetrate.
And number fourteen, just as in regards to a well-trained mind,
rain is not able to penetrate.
In the same way, a well-developed mind, lust is not able to penetrate.
So, quite useful for meditators.
This is a meditation teaching.
It was taught in regards to the Buddha's cousin, the Buddha's cousin Nanda.
After Siddhartha Gautama became enlightened, he went back to his home of Kapilavatthu and he taught all of his relatives.
He taught his ex-wife, he taught his son, he taught his father and they all were able to understand the teachings.
But there was one person who, it seems the Buddha understood he had the ability to penetrate the teachings, but was kind of stuck in a bit of a rut.
And that is that he was set to get married to the most beautiful woman in the country.
Janapada Kalyani, which means the beauty of the land.
So in the area where they lived, she must have been the prize beauty.
So she was well known for her beauty and Nanda had become infatuated with his beauty.
And so like ordinary human beings, he felt that that was going to bring him happiness to marry this woman and to live a life of sensual pleasure.
But Buddhists, as Buddhists, we always throw monkey wrenches into these sorts of things.
We always put the rain on people's parades.
And the Buddha was certainly our leader in this regard.
So on the day when they were to be
to be married or during the marriage preparations they invited the Buddha to come to receive alms and when the Buddha finished his alms he handed the bowl to Nanda
when Buddha finished his meal and had given a talk on the teaching, he gave his bowl to Nanda and he started walking back to the monastery.
And so when he got to the top of the stairs, Nanda thought, well, I guess he'll take his bowl back now.
But he didn't say, excuse me, sir, can you take your bowl back?
Because he felt that that would be rude.
And he had a lot of respect for the Buddha.
And he had great respect for the Buddha's teaching as well.
But the Buddha didn't take back his bowl.
So they got to the bottom of the stairs and Nanda thought, oh now he'll take back his bowl and the Buddha didn't take back his bowl.
Then he got to the door of the palace and he thought now he'll take his bowl and they got the door to the city and now he kept thinking, following after him with his bowl thinking, why doesn't Buddha take back his bowl?
And so people saw this and they started passing it around and they sent word back to his bride-to-be saying, it looks like this Samana Gotama has decided to capture your husband, your future husband, and he's going to spoil your whole plans.
And so she ran after them.
And she called out to him, oh, please, noble sir, hurry back soon, in the most pitiful voice she could muster.
And so this was, of course, tearing at his heart, because he was very much in love with her.
And making Buddha look like a bit of a meanie, no?
And so the Buddha, when he got back to the monastery, Nanda still thought, okay, well, when's he going to turn?
He thought right all the way back to the Buddha's kuti,
And the Buddha turned to Nanda and said, So Nanda, would you like to become a monk?
And then this thinking in his heart, no, no, no, no, no, I wouldn't like that.
But he had so much respect for the Buddha, as people in this situation often are when confronted by a person of authority.
And he had been so used to, of course, to going according to the flow, because he was a prince and he was living in luxury and you just kind of go along with things and everything is wonderful because you're a prince.
So right away he said, he said, sure, I'll become a monk.
But in his heart he was so mortified that he would have to become a monk.
And so the Buddha said, okay.
And he called the other monks over and they ordained him right then and there.
And...
Then the Buddha took him back, I believe, to Rajagaha.
And in that time, Nanda started getting quite perturbed.
And it was quite miserable as a monk, of course, because he was always thinking about his bride-to-be, who he was desperately in love with.
And he thought, this is my soulmate.
This is the one person who means anything to me.
And here the Buddha has taken this from me.
He wasn't upset at the Buddha, but he was so miserable because he was always thinking about the pleasure and the great love that he had for her.
And so he said to his fellow monks, finally he had enough.
And he said to them, he said, I've given up.
I'm going to disrobe and become a lay person again.
I can't take this anymore.
This isn't my role in life.
This isn't my path.
I'm in love with this woman and she means everything to me.
Of course, this is how we always justify it, right?
When we have sensual pleasure, we always claim that there's a person who has some importance.
We never get right down to it and say, I just think she's beautiful and I want to see her and touch her and receive pleasure from her.
We say she has great meaning and she's my soulmate and so on.
This is how we always feel.
What happened, so they brought him to the Buddha and they said, Lord Buddha, this Nanda here, he says he's going to disrobe.
And the Buddha takes Nanda.
He said, okay, I'll look after this.
He took Nanda by his arm and brought him magically.
First he brought him to this burnt out
burnt out forest, like it was a forest fire and it was totally burnt down.
And all there was left was this she-monkey, this female monkey who was clinging to a stump of a tree that she had probably used to live in, but it was like the last standing burnt out tree.
And her tail had been burnt off and her ears had been burnt off.
And what else?
Her tail and her ears and her fur had been singed and so on.
And there she was clinging in great suffering and pain and just looking like a total miserable sight.
And the Buddha said, you see that monkey over there?
And he said, yes, yes, I see that monkey.
And he didn't quite understand what the point was, this female monkey there.
And then he said, okay, now let's go.
And he took him magically up to the heavens.
And he took him to the Tavatingsa heaven, I think.
And there he showed him 500 dove-footed nymphs, or pink-footed nymphs, I think.
I'm not sure what the Pali is, but something about their feet being pink.
But just beautiful nymphs, of course, angels.
And the thing about nymphs, of course, is that they're so much more beautiful, essentially attractive than any human being.
It's hard to imagine.
It's not like just beautiful women.
These are people with great merit, and so they have become very beautiful as a result of their beauty of mind.
And so the physical has come to reflect that.
beyond anything most of us have ever come across.
So Nanda was quite blown away in seeing these 500 nymphs playing around or doing their thing.
And the Buddha said, So tell me, Nanda, which one is more beautiful, your wife, Janapada Kalyani, or these 500 dove-footed nymphs?
Nanda, who by this time had kind of forgotten about his wife, he said, Venerable sir,
if you compare my wife and that monkey that we saw, my wife, these dove-footed nymphs are as much more beautiful than my wife, as my wife is more beautiful than that monkey.
And the Buddha said, well, then I tell you what, Nanda,
If you stay as a monk and you try your best to follow my instruction and to live the holy life, I promise you these 500 nymphs will be yours, will be your entourage.
You'll be born into this state to frolic around with the nymphs.
And Nanda, he wasn't, I guess at this point, a very deep individual because, well, like most of us, he gets caught up with emotions or with lust.
And this is because his mind is untrained.
And so his mind just wiped out the memory of his bride-to-be or his soon-to-be wife.
and was overjoyed at this thought.
He said, well, in that case, I'll work really hard.
Because suddenly he had seen something that most human beings never see.
Something that he thought his wife was on the top.
And here he's seeing something that in his mind is much greater.
Because the sensual attraction would have been much greater.
The perfection of these beings would have attracted him.
And so he became quite excited and he became much more interested in living the holy life because he realized that even in India, even before the Buddha, they believed this, that through the practice of austerity or whatever, you could go to heaven and enjoy great sensuality in heaven.
So he thought, wow, it must be true.
This must really be the result of practicing the Buddha's teachings.
So he was really excited.
And it just shows how fickle the mind is really.
The whole idea of soul mates is kind of thrown out the window.
And so from that point on he practiced quite diligently.
And the Buddha kind of helped him along, as I understand, because the Buddha let it be known what their agreement was.
And so all the other monks came to know that Nanda is only practicing because he wants to have intercourse with a bunch of celestial nymphs.
And so they called him a hireling from that point on.
They said, oh, Nanda, there goes Nanda the hireling.
Oh, hello, Nanda the hireling.
It seems that Nanda can be bought with a price, can be bribed.
So they were scorning him and so on.
And so he felt quite ashamed about that.
But nonetheless he worked really hard because he felt like he was now both in line with the Buddha and in line with his desires.
Because he had done what most people do when this situation comes.
He had made a new decision that these were his soulmates or this was his destiny to be with these ones.
And so he worked very hard, and as a result of working very hard, slowly, slowly his mind changed, his mind calmed down, his mind became relaxed, his mind became clear, and he was able to see the arising and ceasing of phenomena, and he was able to follow the Buddha's teaching and understand the five aggregates, and able to break them up.
To the point that he began to lose his desires and lose his lust.
And that he was able to see that really, whether it's his wife or whether it's these celestial nymphs, it's all just nama and rupa.
It's all just experience, momentary experience that arises and ceases.
He came to see that this is impermanent, unsatisfying and uncontrollable.
And as a result, he gave it up.
And became an Arahant.
He gained the realization and his mind let go.
He entered into Nibbana and was able to become an Arahant.
Now at the moment when he became an Arahant, he went back to see the Buddha.
And he said to the Buddha, you know that bargain we had?
He wouldn't have been ashamed, but he said, that bargain that we have, Venerable Sir, I release you from that bargain.
And the Buddha said, from the moment that you became an Arahant, I was released from the bargain.
This is the story of Nanda.
And then the monks heard about... The monks, as usual, they would...
And they said, so Nanda, still thinking about some nymphs?
Or what are the nymphs for today?
What's the goal for today?
Still thinking about your wife?
Still thinking about those nymphs?
And he said, no, before my mind was untrained and so I thought about them.
But now my mind is trained and so I don't think about them.
And they listened to this and they thought, listen to him.
Because this is a serious offense if you lie about something like this, pretending to be enlightened.
So they went to see the Buddha and they said, you should hear what Nanda is saying now.
He's pretending to be enlightened.
Maybe he thinks he'll get better nymphs that way.
And the Buddha said, my son is correct.
Before, when his mind was untrained, it was like a roof that was ill-thatched.
And now that his mind is trained, it is like a roof that is well-thatched.
And so he told this verse.
He said, just as a poorly-thatched roof is penetrated by the rain, so an untrained mind is penetrated by lust.
I think part of what helped him, which is an interesting aspect of lust, would have been the realization that his mind was really just playing tricks on him.
Because this is born out in reality.
People who think that they have met their soul match, or that they get the idea of self, and they think, I like this, I like that.
or this is my preference my wife, my lover and so on my soul mate they can on a heartbeat turn and fall for something else and the realization that this is the nature of the mind that it jumps like a fire as the Buddha said there is no fire like raga like
like lust, because it jumps from one object to another.
Fire, you can contain it.
You can contain most fires by digging pits, by digging trenches.
Fire won't jump to a rock.
It won't jump to water.
But lust jumps to anything.
We can lust after just about anything.
This is why when you're born in a different realm, you begin to lust.
If you're born a dog, you lust after dogs.
If you're born a dung beetle, you lust after dung beetles.
So what is the teaching here for us as meditators?
This is the story part.
As for what this can do for us as we come to see our minds in this way, we come to see our minds as having holes like the hole in a roof.
Our minds are permeable.
And so our job as meditators is to patch the holes, to patch up the holes.
And the way we do this is by developing our minds.
Just as the roof has to be patched, has to be well covered over, so too the mind has to be well sealed.
The way to seal the mind is in three ways, through development of the mind, under development.
First is the development of morality.
And that's where we're starting off here, because at the beginning you don't have concentration, you just have your morality.
What is your morality?
It's you've stopped so many things.
You've stopped connecting with the world, and also you've stopped letting your mind wander.
So when you see something, instead of looking at it, you're saying to yourself, seeing, seeing.
That's morality.
The narrowing your activity, your mental activity, because that's what's going to bring concentration.
Normally when you walk you're also thinking and you're doing, you have no morality or no control over the mind.
And now you're in some way trying to control, restrict yourself, morality.
So when you walk you say walking, walking.
And even more so when you're practicing meditation, you're severely restricting your mind just to bare awareness.
When you hear a sound, hearing.
When you see, seeing.
When you feel pain, pain, pain.
Not letting your mind dwell or develop or...
make more proliferate.
So that develops concentration from morality.
Morality is the first layer.
Morality is good because it prevents you from getting caught up in distraction and doing many things that would hurt your meditation.
But the next level, as you continue on and continue on, you'll develop concentration.
Concentration is the second way to patch up our minds, to seal up our minds.
Once you develop concentration, then your mind won't even give rise to liking or disliking.
Once you're able to see the object, so you watch the rising and you watch the falling and you know that it's rising.
At the moment when you know that it's rising, your mind is perfectly...
It's perfectly dry.
The lust and desires can't come in.
The fire can't come in.
It can't drive you off to go and chase after celestial nymphs or whatever.
And the point being that these things are all impermanent.
and they're all relative.
They don't really have the ability to satisfy.
They'll create pleasure for some time, and even being born in heaven is not something that is permanent, because it has a power and it has a force, and that force arises and ceases.
And so when you develop concentration, your mind will not give rise to these lusts.
You'll just see things as they are.
Once you see things as they are, wisdom will begin to arise.
And the question is, why if concentration already stops these things from arising, why isn't wisdom necessary?
Because concentration, just like any roof, it's temporary.
As long as you keep patching it up, it will protect you.
But when you leave it alone, if you leave your roof alone, eventually the elements will penetrate it.
The mind is the same when you stop practicing meditation.
When you leave it alone, all of it will come back.
So this is a good way of protecting the mind that many people in the world use, but it's not the ultimate method of protecting the mind.
The ultimate one is when you develop wisdom.
As you're looking and you're seeing things clearly, you begin to penetrate the characteristics and the nature of things, the nature of reality.
Our reality, even right here and now, sitting here,
is one of phenomena arising and ceasing.
Sometimes we're seeing, sometimes we're hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking.
We have our emotions and all of these things arising and ceasing.
We begin to see this and we're able to break them apart and see them from what they are, one by one by one.
And we realize that there is no, this idea of self, this idea of me being able to experience pleasure or become this or become that.
It's really just a delusion.
The attraction towards some being or something is just a mind state that arises.
And it arises and it ceases.
You begin to see the progression of mind states.
When you give rise to lust, what happens?
It creates attachment, and the attachment leads to disappointment when you don't get what you want.
When you dislike something, it leads to anger and frustration and directly to suffering.
And when you see this, you start to lose interest.
You start to give up.
You start to realize that nature doesn't admit of liking or disliking.
It doesn't admit of good or bad.
The liking and the disliking comes from creating ideas about it and ideas of self.
That this is my experience.
And wanting that experience again for yourself.
once you just see it for what it is your mind doesn't have anything to cling to it doesn't have any interest in anything it doesn't say I want to be that I want to be this it's able to just experience once you do that once you get to that point where you see things as they are because there's nothing positive or negative in anything really you think this is good or you think this is bad it's all a concept that arises in your mind when you see through that
Then it doesn't matter what comes to you.
This is the ultimate protection because nothing can penetrate.
The reason why we give rise to likes and dislikes or give rise to lust in the first place is through ignorance.
Because ignorance is the default, not knowing.
Everything in the universe comes together.
It doesn't come together out of knowledge.
It just comes together and arises and develops.
Wisdom is something that isn't inherent in the universe.
Wisdom has to come afterwards.
It has to come as a result of all of this coming up and the systematic observation and eventual understanding.
Once you understand, then none of it can affect you.
Then you don't give rise to likes or dislikes.
and your mind is perfectly well-fetched.
And so that is the development that we're trying for here.
We're trying to just come to understand things.
It's not intellectual.
It's by repeated observation and direct experience, once you see it again and again and again for what it is.
your mind will change.
Your way of approaching things will change.
You'll have no desire to chase after things.
Knowing that when you chase after it, you know what it leads to because you've seen that.
You have no desire to be angry or upset at things or frustrated about things because you know what frustration leads to.
And furthermore, you see these things for what they are, so you don't think of this as bad or this as good.
When something happens, you don't have any judgment for it.
You see that it happens and you let it be.
So this is the teaching for today.
This is really what we're trying to do.
We start with morality, bringing our mind in, and then we develop the concentration which allows us to see clearly.
Once we see clearly, our minds will be free.
Our minds will be well-fetched.
thatched so well, in fact the word well is an understatement, they will be totally waterproof or lust-proof in this case.
So this is the teaching on the Dhammapada based on verses 13 and 14.
Thanks for tuning in and back to meditation for you.