Okay, so today we continue our study of the Lama Kama.
On to verse number 24, which goes as follows.
Uthana vato sati vato, suchi kamasa nisamakari no.
Sanya tasa dhamma jivino appamma tasa yasobi vadatiti.
Yasobi vadati.
which means for one who is effortful, who puts forth effort, who is mindful, with pure actions, with pure acts, one who acts conscientiously or considerately,
Sanyatasa, one who is subdued.
Dhammati, we know, who lives by the Dhamma.
Appamatasa, one who is apamada, heedful or vigilant.
Yasobi vadati, for such a one, glory ever increases or greatly increases, constantly increases.
The glory of such a person was all these things.
Now this story was told in regards to a... Well, it's a fairly ordinary story.
It actually doesn't have much to do with meditation, but it's another example of how the...
the story shouldn't set the context or shouldn't eclipse the meaning of the verse, shouldn't define the meaning of the verse.
It does set the context and it helps us to understand the reason why the Buddha gave the teaching.
But as I've said before, the Buddha, in giving the teaching, wasn't trying to give a teaching specifically about this instance.
He was taking the example.
and creating a rule out of it, which, as you can tell from the verse, actually does very much relate to the Buddhist teaching and the practice.
So we have to be able to separate the story out.
But anyway, we'll tell the story.
The story goes that there was the son of a very rich couple.
And again, it's a story of a plague.
And the parents were afflicted with the plague, and so they told their son to run away.
And they told him where to find all of their treasure that they had hidden.
And said, when you're older, come back and retrieve your treasure.
Retrieve all of our wealth.
As they hid it away and buried it or so on.
And so, greatly distressed and crying, he left as a boy and lived abroad for some time before coming back 12 years later, I think it says.
When he came back, he had grown up and had a beard and so on, and so nobody recognized him.
And he went where his parents had said the treasure was buried, and he found it and saw that it was there.
But he thought to himself, no one recognizes me, and I have no station and have no...
If I were to take this wealth and start to live by it, no one would believe it was mine and they would capture me and think I had stolen it and put me in jail.
So he buried the treasure again, covered it up, and instead of taking it, he didn't take even a piece of it because it would have been gold or something very valuable.
Instead he went to live his life as an ordinary worker.
He found a job as a manager, getting people to work and telling people what to do and organizing labor.
And I guess he figured that eventually he would slowly, once he had got some of his own money, he would slowly bring that money in.
But he didn't dare to take it and so he lived quite conscientiously.
And this was in Rajagaha, that he was living in Rajagaha.
The king of Rajagaha was a Sotapanna, who was a follower of the Buddha, who had practiced the Buddha's teaching and become a Sotapanna.
And he also had some fairly special intuition of his own.
He was able to tell the station of any man whose voice he heard.
And it may have been because of his training as a king.
But one day he heard this... What's his name?
Kumbha... Kumbha... Kumbha... Kumbha... Kumbha Gosaka.
Kumbha Gosaka.
one who has a voice of wealth, kumbha, or voice of buried treasure, I think it means actually, the sound of the buried treasure, or the sound of hidden treasure.
And so he heard this, and he heard this sound of this man, and he said, now there's a man who has great wealth.
And one of the servants who was standing there, she went and looked and saw that it was just an ordinary man who was actually quite poor.
And she thought, well, kings don't just say ordinary things, so she sent someone to find out about him.
And it turns out that, yeah, he's living in a small hut alone with absolutely no wealth.
And so she came back and told the king, and the king said nothing.
And yet the next time the king heard his voice, he said the same thing.
He said, hmm, that's a man of great, great wealth, like more than ordinary.
And so the slave couldn't understand, and the servant sent a man to check, and again and again found out that there was nothing to, he had no wealth of his own, or it appeared that he had no wealth.
And so this servant devised a trick.
She took her daughter and they went and she got her daughter to, they went to live with him pretending to be poor people and got her daughter to become married to him and got him seduced by her daughter and ended up living together.
And then she sent back to the king and told the king to order everyone to have a festival, that there was to be a festival, and everyone had to decorate, and their part of their home had to be decorated.
And anyone who didn't decorate it would be punished.
This was the king's order, and of course kings can order just about anything.
So this woman, she said, oh, my son, we need money.
And he said, I have no money.
What are we going to do?
And she said, well, then go borrow some.
Find some way to get money.
And she kept asking.
So he went back to where the treasure was.
And he was so pestered by her that he didn't know what to do.
He went back to the treasure and took one gold coin out.
And he brought it back and gave it to her.
She took that gold coin, looked at it, it was some kind of older issue coin, and sent it off to the king, and used her own money as a royal servant to pay for the decorations.
And again, later on, she had the king do the same thing again.
And she pestered him again to get money for the decorations, and he went and got three more, but I don't think it's three more, because in total there were only three.
Anyway, in total I think there were three gold coins that she sent off to the king.
Then she went and told the king that he must have money and the king can do what he wants.
And so the king sent some men to bring him to the castle.
And they tied him up and they brought him to the castle.
And the king said, what are you doing hiding all your wealth from the kingdom?
Because normally you'd have to pay taxes, I guess.
And he said, I have no wealth.
Where would I have wealth?
I'm just an ordinary... I'm working as a day laborer.
And the king pulled out the three gold coins and said, Then who are these?
Whose are these?
And he said... And he knew that the game was up.
And he looked and he saw the servants.
The royal servants had gone back.
The mother and the daughter.
And he knew that he was in trouble.
And so he told the king.
And the king said, How much money do you have?
And he said, This much.
And the king sent a bunch of carriages, got the money.
And...
And see, the thing was that they understood that it was his.
He told the whole story of how he had been a rich people's son and that they had died and left the treasure to him and he didn't want to take it.
And when they brought all this gold, it was amazing that this man, because you've got to think that during that whole time, it's amazing that greed didn't overcome him and he was able to live after being a rich family's son and he was able to live as a poor man.
And so the king was quite impressed, and he made him a royal treasurer or banker or whatever, and gave him his own daughter in marriage, or maybe this woman's daughter, it's not quite clear, and took him to see the Buddha, and said, Bhante, look at this man.
the likes of whom have never been seen before.
Even though he had so much money, he was never tempted to go and take it, and he was content to live and to work as an ordinary laborer for his life.
This is the story.
So the Buddha's reply was these two verses.
showing how a person who acts properly, a person who is conscientious, a person who is mindful, a person who knows the consequences of one's actions, for them glory increases.
So by the sounds of it, it's actually quite a simple and mundane story.
And it might actually seem to be encouraging us to save up our wealth and so on.
And for ordinary people, it can be seen in that way.
And people living in the world can say that, hmm, when we work, we shouldn't become greedy.
and become attached to our wealth, we should still work hard, even though we're wealthy, and we should be conscientious.
And so many things here that are good in the world.
People living in the world should be hardworking.
Of course, they have to be mindful.
When they do things, they have to do it conscientiously.
They have to be conscientious and do things methodically.
and do the right thing, suci kamasa, their actions should be pure.
So they shouldn't be treacherous and so on.
And they should make their livelihood by pure means.
As opposed to nowadays, you see people when they amass lots of money, they tend to become very corrupted.
And...
and stingy and so many things and as a result now you see so much discord in the world over these rich people who refuse to support or who have basically cornered so much of the wealth in shady and underhanded ways by cheating basically, by corrupting politicians and bribing politicians and deregulation and so on and all of this.
So this is what is called asuchikamasa, impure deeds.
So the Buddha said a person with pure deeds, this is how true glory comes about.
Sanyatasa, person who is subdued.
This means a person who isn't arrogant and isn't rash, so who acts in a mindful, really in a mindful way, but doesn't, isn't...
Addicted to sensuality, always looking for new pleasures and so on.
And Dhamma Jeevi, living by the Dhamma.
Of course, living by the Buddha's teaching, living by the truth, you could say.
Living truthfully and living according to the goodness and righteousness.
Appamadasa, a person who overall, and really all of these things are a description of appamada, of heedfulness.
The person who is heedful and always on guard for such a person, their glory increases.
Yasa can just mean fame or glory is I think a good translation.
And it generally can mean simply worldly glory.
But what we have to do here is think of who the Buddha was and what he was bringing to the world.
And obviously he wasn't bringing people the teaching, yes, you should become bankers and treasurers and work hard to get the king's favor.
So this obviously wasn't what he was saying.
And in fact, if you look at it and you think about it, and you think about who has the true glory, of all the people in India, of all people who have come out of India, I can't think of one person
in the history of India, who has more glory than the Buddha.
The second might be Gandhi, who came much later, of course.
But you would have to think that of these two, there's no question that in all of India, of all the kings, even King Bimbisara or King Ashoka, who came later, none of them have even a part of the glory of the Buddha.
So then you ask yourself, where does the true glory come from?
And you can see that these virtues apply far more to someone like the Buddha or even to a Buddhist meditator than they do to this banker who acted in a very noble sort of way, in a mundane sense.
But it was actually quite a mundane sense.
He was still very much, seems to be addicted to sensuality, falling for this woman's daughter.
And if you read the story, it was, if you read the story, actually, he seems like a really nice guy, to tell you the truth.
When these women came to live in his home, and they started, first what they did is they cut his bed so that when he sat on it, it fell apart.
Because there was only one other bed and that was where the daughter was sleeping.
So you go and sleep with my daughter then.
She called, she said, oh son, you go and sleep with your sister.
And of course it didn't happen like that.
It wasn't meant to happen like that.
But what he said in the beginning is he said, you know, you guys are too much for me.
When I was alone I can come and go as I please.
And now I've got all these troubles now that you've come, which is really the truth.
As you take on a family and a mother-in-law and children and so on, so much headaches and problems come, which was what he was realizing, but he fell for it.
But anyway, these qualities, we have to remember the Buddha is not referring specifically to this example.
He's using this example to show how this reality works.
And it works for all people, most especially for us in meditation.
So, what we should do is look at this verse in terms of its meditative applications.
And we can use this guy.
We can actually use this whole story as kind of an allegory.
We can think of ourselves as working hard here in meditation.
And you're working here and actually you don't have much salary.
Salary in the sense that you're practicing and it seems like sometimes you're not getting much.
And you're working really hard and it's quite painful, quite difficult.
At times it seems like, oh, all I'm getting is bug bites and not sleeping enough and no pleasure and no entertainment and so on.
And not even good food and so on.
So sometimes you think, oh what's it all for?
But what you're doing is you're developing all of these qualities.
And as a result, well you can look at what happens to someone with these qualities.
This person eventually was recognized by a wise individual, a king and a powerful individual.
So you become recognized by the world, just as the Buddha became recognized by the world.
And your glory, and we're going to put aside the idea of glory in the world, but here in his case, glory in the world came to him, but for you, glory in the Dhamma comes.
So you become in the universe.
And in fact, that's really what it is.
The whole of the universe becomes...
or reacts to your greatness.
And so many people who practice meditation will go on to become angels, will go on to heaven, or that's according to the text anyway.
But even in this life, you become a great teacher, you become someone who people listen to, someone who people respect.
The people who you find yourself surrounded by are good people who respect what you have to say, who listen to you, who care for you, who support you, and so on, because you have these things.
So what are we doing in meditation to develop this?
Well, the first one that we're developing is uttana, which means effort.
So the first quality of meditation, this is what you gain from things like walking meditation, or even just sitting, the effort to stay still, and the effort to stay with the object and not run away from it, and not avoid reality.
Just that effort to not fall into liking or disliking.
Even the effort just to say to yourself, rising, falling, or say to yourself, sitting, or seeing, or hearing, or pain, or aching, or so on.
Just simply that effort, it has a profound effect on your mind and on your whole being.
Some people think that practicing here you're not getting any exercise, but in fact you're getting an incredible exercise, and your whole being is becoming stronger.
You'll find that when you leave, even after doing the foundation course, that your mind is, all of the wavering in your mind, or much of the wavering in your mind is gone.
And you become a more powerful individual.
This is something that people respect, that the world respects, that the whole universe reacts to.
And of course internally.
you become much more peaceful and much more at ease, and much more in tune with reality.
Sati matto, so we have to be someone who develops mindfulness.
So this is the practice that we're using the effort for.
So the effort is to develop mindfulness, really.
We have this effort and we're developing mindfulness.
If you put those two together, it means being mindful,
having effort and being mindful, then you really have the essence of the practice.
Because concentration is something that comes by itself.
When you have these two, they surround concentration.
If you want to develop right concentration, you have effort, you have directed effort.
So it's not just working hard like this man did.
But in terms of meditation, it's
working hard in a focused manner.
Well, this man, of course, actually the truth is he was focused, right?
He was working hard and he had a goal and he knew his way and he knew the reasons for doing what he did.
But he did what he did, so in a sense he was mindful.
But what we're doing is even more so knowing what we're doing and understanding the reason and understanding the purpose, understanding everything we do.
When you go to eat, for example, you understand wanting to eat and wanting to take.
You understand the desires and so on that make you eat too much, for example, and so on.
So you understand cause and effect.
So basically you have mindfulness and you're aware of things.
In an ultimate sense you're aware of every movement, every experience.
And for when you're walking, walking, walking, you know it is walking.
When rising, you're rising.
When pain, you know it is pain.
This is mindfulness.
So you have pure actions.
And so this might sound like a teaching for people living in the world.
Because it means you don't cheat others, and you don't lie, and you don't steal.
But it's on a much more profound level for someone who's practicing meditation.
Because when you're practicing meditation, everything you do becomes pure.
Or you're purifying everything you do, even eating.
An ordinary person, when they eat, they don't think about it.
Is it wrong to eat?
Is it right to eat?
It's a silly question, of course.
There's nothing wrong with eating, right?
I bought this food, I made this food, and it's mine.
I can eat it.
So they just eat it, and they think that's suchikamasana, suchikama, that's a pure karma.
But as a meditator we know that that's actually not the case.
Even though it's yours and you bought it and so on, it can still be an evil act in the sense that you still become addicted to it.
And evil in the sense that it's going to create addiction and suffering for you.
Even just eating food, we can see how much we become addicted and we lose our whole mindfulness and forget what we're doing and our mind goes somewhere else.
And maybe if it's bad food we get upset and angry and don't like it.
And we can see the evil for us in that, that it causes us suffering.
It causes us to do all sorts of nasty things as well.
So the purity that we're gaining is on a whole other level.
The purity that you're gaining in your practice
is something, it's exactly what the Buddha was referring to.
We have to be careful not to miss that.
That the purity of karma doesn't come from intellectually thinking this is right, this is wrong, or even in terms of just the five precepts.
It's on a much more profound level.
Not doing anything with greed or anger or delusion.
nisam karino, a person who acts conscientiously or aware, knowing the right way of acting.
So this means knowing what you're doing when you act.
It's in the same sense of doing the right thing, because when you're mindful, you're aware clearly of what you're doing.
Is this the right thing to do?
Am I doing it for the right reason?
You do it in the right way.
So when you walk, normally when you walk, you're walking kind of mindlessly.
And so as a result, you might trip and fall, or you'll find that your body becomes tense as a result of your actions.
What you find in meditation is actually a lot of our tension and all of our stress is a result of the way we act and the way we move our bodies.
So you come to refine your movements, you come to refine your actions, even our speech.
You find that we're speaking in a more clear way and we're speaking less.
We find ourselves not going on and on about mindless things, about things that are unrelated to mental development and so on.
We find ourselves less interested in it.
We see that it's causing us stress and suffering.
So our actions and our speech and even our thoughts become much more clear and much more careful.
That's what this means.
Acting carefully, which comes directly from meditation.
Sanyatasa means we have sanyata, or we're developing this subdued nature, or controlled.
Controlled in the sense that we're not letting ourselves go out of control.
It doesn't mean you have to force yourself not to see things or hear things.
It means when you see things,
You're controlled in terms of just knowing that it's seeing and not letting yourself get caught up in enjoying beautiful things or being angry at unpleasant things and so on.
You're falling into this partiality that brings you so much out of balance.
Dhamma ji, we know, a person who lives by the Dhamma.
So the wording is kind of in terms of having a life, livelihood that is righteous.
And so it does accord with the story.
But you can never compare the life of a banker to the life of a Buddhist meditator, for example.
Someone who the Buddha is really trying to talk about here.
And he's trying to explain to the king that
It's not this person, what he did that's so great, it's his qualities of mind which are to be found so much more in a person who is practicing meditation.
So one who lives by the Dhamma, one who lives righteously.
If you look at the way we're living here, living in a way that is cultivating goodness and developing peace and
tranquility and is avoiding so much of the we're building a society here in a sense even in just a monastery like this you're building a society that has so much there's no weapons of war there's no drugs sometimes the villagers bring their red juice stuff trying to keep it out there's so much of society there's no sensuality, no entertainment none of this
Hollywood, addiction to sensuality or pleasure or entertainment, beautification and all of this.
So much of the things that are bringing the world down and are bringing chaos to the world, we're doing away with.
We're developing a way of life that is pure, that is according to the truth and reality and harmony and peace.
Moreover, we are developing this for the world and we're spreading this teaching so when people come, they're able to see this and they're able to take the example back
and are able to use teachings like this.
For example, when we record the teachings, just our living by the Dhamma and sitting here talking about it is something that helps the world because we spread it.
Because by talking about it, we let other people know what we're talking about.
Let other people know that I'm saying this.
And then they'll think of this man who worked in a right way and they'll think, well, that's on a level that I can deal with it.
And they'll live their lives conscientiously and according to the truth, according to
They won't become greedy and self-serving.
And when they do have wealth, they won't become obsessed by it.
And in this way, in all of these ways, they will become appamatha.
They will become heedful or vigilant, not negligent, not heedless.
And as I said yesterday, really the meaning of heedfulness is mindfulness.
And the Buddha said this at one point.
There's this quote, A person who is never without mindfulness, this is the meaning of one who is heedful or not negligent.
But when you put all of these things together, you get an idea of what it means to be heedful, a person who is conscientious, a person who is subdued.
most importantly a person who is mindful and full of effort, never giving up, never becoming lazy, never slacking off, and always trying and trying to better themselves.
No matter how good they are as a person, always trying to make themselves a better person.
This is a person who is appamatha.
And what happens for such a person?
Their glory ever increases.
He's not trying to say that our purpose should be to develop glory.
He's just observing what this man has done by putting into practice these traits.
The practice of these traits is what has brought this fruit.
It is because of these things that this fruit has come.
So he's explaining what is most important, which is these virtues.
Actually so many things, good things come from it.
He's not trying to say the only good thing is that you become glorious.
But glory is most reserved for those who have these traits.
People who work hard and work in righteousness and do good things for the world.
As we can see that the Buddha did and people like Gandhi and so on.
who tried to help people, or said to have tried to do good things and bring peace and happiness and harmony and prosperity and glory in the sense of goodness and raising up people's consciousness and people's lives to happiness and peace.
So this is what leads, this is the Buddhist teaching on what leads to yasa, what leads to glory.
That's verse number 24 and that's the Dhammapada teaching for today.
Good one for our meditation as well, very good one.
Another one from the Appamadvaga.
So thanks for tuning in and back to our meditation.