Okay, so today we continue our study of the Dhammapada.
Today into the Appamadaranga.
Appamada means heedfulness or vigilance, as I say.
It's the opposite of Pamada, which means negligence or heedlessness.
So, the first story is based on three verses, which go as follows.
APAMADO AMATTA PADANG APAMADO MATCHUNO PADANG APAMATTA NAMIYANTI YEPAMATTA YATHAMATTA EVANGBUISESATONYATVA APAMADAMHIPANDITA APAMADE PAMODANTI
aryanam gocharirata te jainog satatika nityang dalha-parakama pusantidhira nibhanam yogake manganuttaram Three verses.
So the first verse, apamado amatapadam negligence or heedlessness is the path
No, vigilance is the path to the deathless, to immortality.
Heedlessness or negligence is the path to death.
The one who is vigilant never dies.
Whoever is negligent is as if already dead.
Knowing the difference between these two, the wise set themselves in heedfulness.
They rejoice greatly in needfulness, delighting in the pasture, the resort of the noble ones.
They meditate constantly, continuously, establishing themselves in effort.
permanently in effort or constantly in effort.
These wise ones touch or reach nibbana, freedom, which is nibbana, which is the yoga kemang, the safety, the highest safety from bondage.
Okay, let's explain them.
I'll try to explain them simply.
The first one, the path, heedfulness is the path to immortality.
Heedlessness is the path to death.
The one who is heedful...
never dies.
Those who are heedless are as if already dead.
Seeing the difference here, the wise will set themselves in heedfulness.
They delight in heedfulness and therefore they delight in the refuge of the noble ones.
They meditate constantly and put out effort constantly and therefore they touch Nibbana, which is the supreme safety from bondage.
So being safe from getting trapped or falling into suffering.
So what were these three verses?
These three verses were said in relation to the story of Samavati.
Samavati, who was a queen in the time of the Buddha.
And the story here is actually incredibly long, because it tries to tell the stories of just about every character involved, which takes quite some time.
I'm going to try to limit it to
hopefully just two people, the protagonist and the antagonist in the story.
Protagonist is the queen Samavati and the antagonist is the queen Magandiya.
They were queens of the same king.
And how it came about?
Samavati was born into the family of a banker in one city.
And it happened that there was a great plague in their country.
And as a result, she and her parents escaped, had to run away from the city and leave behind all their belongings.
But they were friends with...
Gosaka Sethi, who actually there's a big story about him, but he's not really important, so we're going to skip it.
The important thing is that he lived in this other city, the city of King Udena, who we're also not going to tell the story.
But Samavadi and her parents went to this city looking for the Gosaka Sethi.
Because since they were friends of Gosaka the banker, they thought for sure he would take care of them and look after them and help them out in this difficult time.
So it was very difficult on the travel and they were very much worn out and famished by the time they got to the city of King Udena.
And what they did is they found out that Gosaka Sethi had set up these almshouses where they could get free food from.
So they thought, well, what we'll do is we'll stay here.
And they stayed in this rest house for travelers.
It's just an empty place for people to rest.
and send Samavati to get food for the three of them.
So she went to Gosaka the banker's house and found this man who distributes the food to the beggars and to people who have...
who have no work and no food.
And they said, how much meat, that was his name.
They said, how much food would you like?
How many portions?
And she said, I'd like three portions.
And he looked at her, this little girl.
And so he gave her three portions.
And she took them back to her parents.
And out of respect, of course, in India, the respect was always given to the man.
So out of respect, they encouraged him to eat first.
Yeah, whatever.
That's the way it was.
But as luck would have it, because they had him eat first and he was so famished, he ate the best food and got sick and actually passed away that night because the food was too rich and because he hadn't eaten for such a long time.
He gorged himself.
And that was pretty upsetting for the two of them.
It was like now their husband, the man of the family who would have supported them in that culture.
It would have been very difficult for these two women to get along.
And of course this was their loved husband and father.
But the mother anyway had Samavati go to get food the next day.
And the same thing asked, how many portions?
And today she said she wants two portions.
And so he gave her two portions and she brought them back.
And this time she had her mother eat first.
And the same thing happened to her mother.
Her mother got sick and died.
So I don't know whether there was some problem with the food or not, but it sounds like it was just because they were gorging themselves.
And so Samavati was now alone, an orphan in the world, and very, very distressed.
And you have to think, also, she was born in a good family.
Her parents were the head bankers in their country.
And so she was a very high-bred and, of course, not used to things like begging.
So she went back the next day to get one portion.
And they asked her, how many portions?
She said, one portion.
And this man, Mita, got very, very angry at her and called her all sorts of names, like, you vile woman, don't know what's wrong with you.
And she was just shocked.
She'd never heard such terrible words in her life.
And she never thought anyone could ever be called such a thing.
And she was...
mortified and asked, what did I do wrong?
And she said, well, and he said, well, first day you have three portions, a greedy, greedy pig, and then you realize it's too much, so you only have two, and now finally you've realized how much is enough, so you're only taking one portion.
And she started crying and she said, that's not why I took three portions.
And she explained what had happened.
And that she had come actually to see their friend, Gosaka Sethi, whose almshouse it was.
And this man, Mita, he started crying as well and he was so sad for Samavati.
And so he said, from now on you will be my daughter.
And he took her in as his daughter.
So this story is, you see it's a very long story, but this part is important only because it tells us where Samavati comes from and also gives us her name.
Because her name at that time was Sama.
And what she did, they had this almshouse and everyone would just rush in to get the food.
All these people, the supplicants, coming in, just rush in to get their food.
And Samavati heard this great noise and she said to her father, isn't there some way you can stop, or this man who had taken her in, isn't there something you can do?
And he said, oh, there's no way to stop it.
And so she said, well, why not build a fence and have them come in from one door and out the other door, so two entrances.
And they can just come in one by one by one and get their food and there'll be no jostling and no shouting.
And so he did that, and then it was totally quiet from then on.
So she became known as Sama of the Fence.
And it was Sama's Fence.
Fence means wati, which gave her the name Samavati.
Now, the other part of the story is that Gosaka liked to hear this noise.
He heard this noise and he always thought, oh, that's my almshouse where they're giving away free food.
And he felt really good about that.
And now all of a sudden there was no noise and it kind of bothered him.
And so he asked, where did the noise go?
And he said, oh, my daughter devised some clever plan for this fence.
And Gosaka said, you have a daughter?
I didn't know that.
And he said, well, actually.
And then he realized that, he said, actually, this is the daughter of your friend, the other saint, the other banker.
And Gosaka was shocked.
And so he took her as his own daughter.
He said, why didn't you tell me?
And took her as his own daughter and raised her as a high-bred woman again.
Now then it happened that she was seen, she was going bathing one day and King Udayana saw her coming by the palace and asked for her hand, fell in love with her and thought she would make a good queen and asked her to become his queen.
And there was a big fight about it and she gave in.
Kings in that time were not to be denied.
So they tried to say, the parents tried to say no and they were almost thrown out of their house and finally Samavati said, no, no, no, you don't say no to kings, I will go.
And so she went and became the queen.
That's the story of Samavati, how she became queen.
The story of Magandiya, in brief, is a little more interesting.
The Buddha found out about Magandiya and her parents because he realized the parents were ready to become enlightened.
They were highly developed individuals.
And
So he went one day on alms round.
And the story goes that Ma Gandhia was probably a fairly... Ma Gandhia is the bad guy in this story.
So she was probably a fairly proud and cruel and wicked sort of person.
So very hard to find a husband for, very picky.
And it's said that the parents were also picky.
So the father would never accept anybody for her daughter.
So she was probably spoiled as well.
Because he only wanted the best for his daughter.
And so they denied all these sutras who came and tried to take her as their wife.
Until finally they saw the Buddha.
And he saw the Buddha standing there.
And he said, this is the man for my daughter.
Uh-oh.
And he was, there's no man in India like this one.
This has to be the one for my daughter.
And so he rushed back home and told his family and told his wife.
And everyone was like, wow, you're
This must be something.
And they wanted to see this guy.
So they all went out.
And suddenly there was no Buddha.
The Buddha had gone.
He had asked the Buddha, he said, stay here, stay here.
I want you to meet my daughter.
So he brought his wife and daughter.
The Buddha was gone.
And so they're looking around for him and then they saw on the ground his footprint.
He had put, specifically, he had put intentionally, he had put a footprint there.
Because the thing in India is that they knew how to read palms and they knew how to read feet.
So they looked at this footprint and the wife, Magandiya, the woman, the mother,
She knew right away that this wasn't the one for her daughter.
She said, this guy is enlightened.
This guy has no more lust in him.
Why?
Because you can tell by the footprint, if you're very clever, she said, if a person is angry,
then the heel will go down heavy.
When people stomp because they're angry, a person with anger, a person with lots of greed will step on the tiptoes because they're always hurrying towards something.
And a person with delusion will not have an even footprint because they're wobbling all over the place.
But this is a perfectly pure individual who puts this footprint down.
So she could apparently see that.
And the man said, oh, be quiet.
You don't know what you're talking about.
You're always seeing crocodiles in water pots.
And so he searched and searched, and he found the Buddha.
And he bowed down to the Buddha.
And he said, this is my daughter, Magandiya.
Please accept her as your wife.
There's no one in all of India who's more worthy of her than you are.
And the Buddha looked at him.
And of course the Buddha had a purpose here.
He was coming to teach these two, the two parents.
And so he explained to them his story of how he had left behind the kingdom in Kapilavatthu and gone forth and for six years had tortured himself until finally he realized the middle way and became enlightened and was...
was confronted with Mara along with Mara's three daughters.
And he talks about the three daughters of Mara, who of course would be the epitome of sensual attraction.
Mara being the evil one, so his daughters were this... If you've ever seen The Little Buddha, you know the three daughters.
And he said, having seen those three and not given rise to any lust, any desire, having totally thrown out all lust and desire myself, would you survive for this sack of urine and feces that you present to me?
I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Or I wouldn't touch it with my baby toe or something like that.
And listening to this, and because of course he was teaching the Dhamma as he spoke,
the two of them became enlightened, listening.
Or they, I can't remember, maybe they became Sotapanna, and then they asked permission to become monks, and then they went forth, and then they became, something like that.
But Magandiya, the daughter, was of course not impressed, being called a bag, a sack of crap.
And she said, one day I will know what to do with this ascetic Gautama.
So she vowed revenge against him.
That's how our story starts.
That's the introduction of these two.
The last thing is that Magandiya was then placed into the protection of her uncle, who got the bright idea to bring her to the king, saying, well, if there's no one else good for him, bring her to the king.
brought her to the king, and the king fell in love with her as well, and took her as his wife as well.
He had a third wife, but we won't talk about her because she's not important, not for this story.
Well, that's the way of kings.
They have as many wives as they want, and whoever they want.
Okay, so that's the beginning.
Now, how did it come about that the Buddha told these three verses?
Well, where do we start?
Samavati
Samavati had a slave girl, a servant.
Kudutra, I think is her name.
Kudutra, you should know her name.
She's a very important person.
Kudutra, who was a bit of a hunchback and a servant.
And every day the king would give Samavati eight pieces of money for flowers, or every week or something.
And Kujutara would go out, steal four, pocket four of the gold coins, and buy flowers with the other four gold coins.
And she would do this, and Samavati didn't know any better.
She said, oh, this is four gold, this is eight gold coins worth of flowers.
Okay, so she took four gold coins worth of flowers, thinking it was eight.
And all the time it went like this.
Now, it so happened that at that time the Buddha was staying, being patronized by the three bankers, one of them being Gosaka.
At any rate, the Buddha was in the area.
And Kujutara one day went out to get flowers, and it turned out that the flower, the gardener,
had decided to patronize, had asked permission to be able to feed the Buddha on one day.
And so he got the permission, he got that day to give food to the Buddha.
And part of it was to make a lot of flowers.
And so he said, okay, I'll get you some flowers, but first I'm going to feed the Buddha.
And so he went, he said, you come with me and you sit by me.
He said to this servant, Kujutara, come with me and at the end I'll give you some flowers.
And she went in and the Buddha saw her and knew right away that actually she had some perfection in her.
And so he taught with her in mind.
And at the end of his teaching, of course after he eats then he gave the talk, he gave the teaching and as a result of the teaching she became a Sotapanna.
She was sitting there listening and of course applying the teachings and became a Sotapanna.
Now the thing about a Sotapanna is they don't steal.
So here she had eight gold coins in her possession and instructions to get eight gold coins worth of flowers.
So what did she do?
She bought eight gold coins worth of flowers.
Now what happens when she brings eight gold coins worth of flowers back to Samavati?
It's twice as many as she normally comes with.
So Samavati says, what happened today did
How did you get twice as much?
Did they put a special on in flowers or something?
Are they on sale?
And Kututra said, no, no, my lady.
But here's how it happened.
Before, I actually was stealing four of the gold coins.
I mean, she just said it because she's enlightened.
She's a sotapanna.
She has no fear for herself.
She had no...
no desire to hide her.
She couldn't lie either.
She had seen the baseness of it, and of course felt great shame as a result.
And she said, in the past I was stealing half of the money.
And she said, well then why, and what, so today you're not stealing them?
What happened today?
And she said,
Well, today I heard the teaching of the Buddha and I realized the truth of it.
And so I could never steal.
I could never do such a terrible thing again.
And Samavati, Samavati was a very good person.
She wasn't the kind of cruel, wicked person that we're going to see Magandiya being.
So instead of saying something like, you evil slave, give me all my money back, she said, can you teach me the Dhamma?
And she said, yeah, I can do that.
And so they had, because she was going to be their teacher, they actually put their servant up on a higher seat.
First they bathed her in this rose water, and then they put her up on this higher seat.
And then they listened to the Dhamma.
She had called all of her ladies in waiting to come, and they all listened to the Dhamma from their servant.
And from that point on they said, from now on you will be our teacher.
And they said, we want you to go to the Buddha constantly.
and receive all the teachings you can from him and come back every time and teach us.
And she did this faithfully and as a result she became, actually this servant lady became, was able to memorize the whole of the Buddha's teaching, the whole of the Tipitaka, they say, or all of the trainings of the Buddha.
And she faithfully brought them back to Samavati.
Now one day Samavati wanted
to be able to see the Buddha, because of course this was their teacher and they were practicing according to the Buddha's teachings.
So they wanted to see, to meet with the Buddha.
He said, can you do this for us?
And she said, it's not easy for a queen, because the queens were totally trapped.
They never saw the city.
The king was so jealous that he would never let his queen out, of course.
Of course.
It was pretty terrible, actually.
But what she said, well, then do this.
She said, poke some, cut some holes in your walls.
and in each of your rooms make a hole and when the Buddha walks by on alms round you'll be able to hold up your hands and pay respect to him so they did that now Magandiya at this time she was walking around and she saw these holes and she says what are those for and one of the ladies says oh those are so we can pay homage to the Buddha and Magandiya right away she said oh this arch villain no this arch enemy of mine my nemesis
And so Magandhi right then thought, well, I'll know it.
Now I'll figure out something to do to destroy both the Buddha and this queen and her followers who are followers of this nasty, mean ascetic.
And so she tried to think, this is where she tried to think up all these ways to... So the first thing she did is she went to the king and said, Samavati was plotting against the king, and tried to turn the king against Samavati.
And the king said, why do you say that?
And she said, well look, they're not even faithful to you.
They've put these holes, and instead of coming to pay respect to you, they're now paying respect to the Buddha.
The king went and he saw these holes and he smiled.
Instead of getting angry and upset at it, he ordered that there be windows placed there.
He put some nice windows so they could be able to see the Buddha comfortably.
So the king wasn't moved and he didn't listen to Magandhi, not the first time.
She was very, very angry.
So what she did as a result of that is...
got together some of these other religious groups who would have been anti-Buddha, against the Buddha, jealous of the Buddha and so on,
and got them together and bribed them to set up some people to say nasty things to the Buddha.
Every time they saw the Buddha, to revile the Buddha, to generally make a nuisance of themselves, which they did.
This is an important part of the story because it's an important story that we always bring up.
What happened then is Ananda, the Buddha's attendant and cousin,
said to the Buddha, we should go somewhere else.
The Buddha said, why go somewhere else?
Well, these people are reviling you.
I can't take it to hear them saying such nasty things about the Buddha.
And the Buddha said, where will we go?
And the Buddha said, well, we'll go to some other city.
And the Buddha said, and what if they revile us there?
And Ananda said, well, then we'll go to another city.
And the Buddha said, and then, if they revile us there, then we'll go to another.
And Buddha said, Ananda, this isn't how you deal with problems.
A problem that arises should be dealt with right then and there.
This is the correct way.
And then he used the simile of an elephant
The elephant goes, the Buddha said, I am like the great elephant.
If an elephant goes into battle, it doesn't go in there and as soon as it gets attacked by arrows and so on, it runs away.
It has to stay in the battle and carry the king and so on.
It can't be afraid of these things and it must settle it right then and there.
He said, so how can I not suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous people?
And the Buddha said, in any way, it's only going to last seven days.
And indeed it did only last seven days.
Because he said, no one can revile a Buddha for more than seven days.
It's too wicked.
You can't do it.
So eventually they just couldn't bear it anymore, they're evil, and had to give it up.
So Magandiya was very, very angry, and at this point it started to go to her head, and she started getting crazy ideas.
So what she did next is she was trying to find a way to get at Samavati.
She said, I can't get at the Buddha, but I can sure destroy Samavati.
There's got to be a way.
And so what she did is she knew that these samavati and her followers were now keeping the precepts, at least the five precepts.
And so she said to the king, or she got her relative to bring eight live chickens as a gift to the king.
And the king said, oh, what a nice meal that will be.
And through Magandhi's prompting, he asked, oh,
who's going to cook them?
And Magandhi right away said, oh, Samavati will cook them.
Her maids are doing nothing.
Send them to Samavati and her ladies-in-waiting and they will cook them up.
And she said, oh, good idea.
So he sent them off to Samavati.
So they brought these live chickens to Samavati and said, kill these and cook them and serve them to the king.
And Samavati said, we don't take life.
We refuse to take a life of any being.
And they brought them back.
And Megandiya said, see, see, they won't even do this for you.
They have no love for you, O king.
And she said, but let them take the same eight chickens and tell them that they're for the ascetic Gautama, for the Buddha.
And I bet they'll do it.
And the king said, the king didn't say anything.
And Kanna, okay, let's go along with it.
Mukundi said, here, take these back and tell them to cook them up and serve them to the ascetic Gautama.
But what she did is she switched them with eight dead chickens and sent them eight dead chickens.
And they said, oh, we can do this.
And so they cooked them up and sent them off to the Buddha.
And when the king found out, or when Magandiya found out, and she told the king, and the king was kind of quiet, but at this point probably losing a little bit of faith in Samavati, because she said, oh look, see, they killed them and took them for the Buddha.
They wouldn't do it for you.
Okay, and then the next thing she did is, when the king was going to stay with, so he would go from one queen to the other, one week, one queen, and she was just getting ready to go for one week to Samavati, and the queen, Magandiya said, oh, I had a bad dream last night, let me come with you.
And she wouldn't listen to the king when he said no, so she went and she was looking around.
And what she had done is she had had someone put a poisonous snake into the king's guitar or lute, a musical instrument, and put some flowers in front of it.
And so she came and she pulled the flowers away.
And then they all saw this snake come out of the king's musical instrument.
And she blamed Samavati.
She said, they want to kill you.
Look, they put a poisonous snake in your musical instrument or something like that.
And she said, see, I told you, you wouldn't listen to me.
And here the king just had had enough and he got very, very angry.
So he started to believe Magandiya and he called up the samavati and got them all lined up in a row.
This is apparently what he did.
He put samavati in the front and put all of her ladies in waiting behind.
And he got a bow with a poison arrow and he was ready to shoot her.
Now Samavati, what she did is she told all of her ladies, she said, we have no refuge.
Let us take the Dhamma as our refuge and bear no ill will towards the king and think of the king just as yourself.
And so they would have had this method of developing loving kindness, first for yourself, then for someone you love, then for someone who's ready to kill you with a bow and arrow.
So they were used to this.
They would start with themselves and then they would send loving kindness out to the king.
And so the king shot this arrow, actually shot it at Samavati.
And I'm trying to understand the Pali, but it says something like, because the, well, it basically says he shot the arrow and it turned around.
Because of the power of the love, the arrow actually bent back and came to stand right in front of the king's heart, pointed at the king's heart, something like that.
but it's almost as though it shot him through the heart, which it couldn't have done.
What it says is, it says as though he was shot through the heart himself, but it must mean it was as though it would shoot him through the heart.
And he became very frightened.
And he asked Samavati to take refuge, if he could take refuge in Samavati.
And Samavati said, you can't take refuge in me, take refuge in the Buddha.
And he said, please, please let me take refuge.
Samavati said, no, you must take refuge in the Buddha.
So at that point he took refuge.
He went to see the Buddha and took refuge in the Buddha.
But he said to Samavati, please, I grant you one wish.
And Samavati said, then I have no wish for gold or silver, but I have a wish to see the Buddha.
She said, give me permission to see the Buddha, to have the Buddha come here regularly and give us teachings so that we may hear the teachings of the Buddha.
And Udena went to the Buddha and asked the Buddha to come.
And the Buddha said, it's very difficult for the Buddha to go to one place all the time, but he sent Ananda instead.
And Ananda therefore became a favorite among these queens and actually got a lot of reward from them.
That's kind of a side story.
Ananda got 500 robes from them.
They gave him 500 pieces of cloth to make robes out of.
And then the king found out and the king got very angry and went to see Ananda and said, so you heard you got 500 robes.
And he said, you're going to wear them all?
And he said, no, I'm not going to wear them all.
Then what are you going to do with 500 robes?
What are you doing accepting so many gifts when you know you can't use them?
He said, well, I'll give them to those monks who have tattered robes.
If the monk has robes with holes in them, then he can replace them with these robes.
Oh, and then what's the monk going to do with his tattered robes?
Just throw them away?
And he said, no.
No, they'll take their outer robes and make lower robes with them.
Because the lower robe is smaller, they can cut it into pieces and make a lower robe.
And then what will they do with their old lower robes?
And Ananda said, well, then they'll make bandages to cover for those monks who need bandages or slings.
And then what will they do with the bandages they already had?
Well, then they will make patches for their robes.
And what will they do with their old patches?
Well, they'll make threads to sew their robes.
And what will they do with the old threads?
Well, they'll pound them up with mud and make bricks out of them for making kutis, making huts.
And the king was so impressed by this, he said, that's incredible.
He said, I'm sorry, you people really do know the worth of gifts.
And he gave Ananda another 500 robes.
And the commentary goes on about it, saying that Ananda actually gained thousands and thousands of robes, and he would travel all over India giving away his possession, his acquisition, his gifts.
So, side story.
But that brings us up to what really happened and why the Buddha told these verses.
At this point, Magandiya had had enough, and she knew that now there was no way she could possibly say anything bad about Samavati.
She was going to have to take matters into her own hands, which indeed she did.
She committed a very terrible, terrible karma.
She got her uncle, another Magandiya,
to go to the Samavati's quarters and get rags soaked in oil, wrap them around the pillars, and close all the doors and light the place on fire with Samavati and her ladies waiting in there.
So he started doing this and some avati ladies came in and said, what are you doing?
And he said, oh, we're strengthening the pillars.
They would have been wooden pillars.
He said, yes, you put oil on them and it strengthens them.
Now don't stay here because you won't like the smell.
And so he sent them off and they all went into their rooms and closed the doors.
Locked all their rooms and lit everything on fire and locked the other door and went on his way.
The monks heard about this
and went back, before what happened, the monks went back to find the Buddha, to tell the Buddha they heard about this on Amsran, saw the palace burning and they heard what happened, went to see the Buddha and the Buddha said, oh, this is the way of samsara.
And he said, all of these ladies actually, oh, what happened, sorry, I forgot the most important part is that
While they were burning, once they found out what was happening and they found out that the doors were locked, she said to all of the ladies in waiting, she said, again, we have no refuge except for our practice.
And she said, do you exert yourself, everyone exert yourselves in practice.
And so the commentary says, by exerting themselves on the mindfulness of Vedana,
the pain, even as their bodies were burning and the heat was enveloping them, some of them became Sotapanna, some of them became Sakidagami, some of them became Anagami.
So none of the... And this is what the Buddha said.
He said, well, they were... that they were not negligent.
These people were Appamada.
They were heedful or vigilant.
And so even at the moment of death, being burnt to death, they alerted themselves in the meditation, obviously saying to themselves, pain, pain, and watching their emotions and...
It's an incredible practice and one that really helps you let go.
I mean, this is why in meditation we always say how good it is to look at the pain and how good it is for you to experience these difficulties.
If you don't have the difficulties, if it's not unpleasant to you, you'll never let go.
So we're looking at this unpleasantness again and again and again until finally the mind gets it that actually this really the whole of this being that we cling to is a cause for suffering and unpleasantness.
So the mind lets go and it won't come back to have to be born again and again and again.
I mean, this is the idea.
Some people like to be born again and again and again.
But what you see in the meditation is actually it doesn't come down to being burnt alive.
Actually, you can see that the way the body and the mind work, there's really nothing beneficial or wonderful about them at all, and the mind lets go.
And so this is what happened with them.
And so the Buddha said they got their just desserts.
None of them, they all got what they deserved.
which is an interesting thing and we'll see why the Buddha said that actually and so the king then the king rushed in trying to he heard about this and he rushed in trying to put out the fire and found out that he was too late and they had all been burnt to death and he was so sad so grieved and he thought who could have done such a horrible deed and immediately he thought of Magandiya and he thought to himself well if I accuse her she'll never admit it so he said oh he thought of a plan he said oh
How wonderful.
Before, when Sama Wadi was still alive, I was always afraid of my life.
I never knew what was going to happen.
I could never trust her.
Now I can sleep well at night.
He said, boy, if only I knew who had done this, I could reward them so great, so highly reward them.
I should treat them with great honor for having done this wonderful, having relieved me of this.
Now I don't have to think of a way to kill her myself.
And Magandiya, of course, held up her hand and said, Oh, Kim, it was me who did it all by myself.
I thought it up and I gave the orders.
You, Magandiya, oh, you're the only one who loves me.
She said, come, I want to give you a reward.
Bring all of your relatives.
And she said, with the help of my relatives, I did.
So bring all of your relatives, I will give you all a reward.
And so everyone heard that Magandiya's relatives were going to get a reward.
So people who weren't even related to Magandiya, they started saying,
Oh, yes, I'm a Gandhian's relative.
And so, oh, come on, God.
Got them all in and brought them into the courtyard in front of the king.
And the king had them dig big pits up to waist height, had them all put into these pits and the ground covered up and had the whole courtyard covered in straw.
and lit the straw on fire, burning these people to a crisp.
And I believe the idea is that they were still alive after that, their skin having these terrible burns, but still alive.
And then he had the ground with them in it, plowed with an iron plow.
And that's not the worst of it, because they didn't do that to Magandiya.
What they did to Magandiya herself,
He tied her up and took a knife and cut pieces of her flesh, roasted them, deep fried them in oil and had her eat them.
This is the cruelty of kings.
You have to think Udena is not such a good guy himself.
This is the story of Samavati and Magandiya.
So then the monks started asking these questions amongst themselves.
They said, hmm, I wonder where these, you know, what can you say about these two?
Can you really consider that Samavati is dead?
Magandiya, is she the one that's dead?
Which of these would we consider to be dead?
It was kind of a philosophical talk.
And the Buddha asked, what are you talking about?
They told him.
And the Buddha said, this is where he said these verses.
And this is with a context for it.
So, who is really dead?
And the Buddha said, apamado, heedfulness, is the path to immortality.
Those who are negligent and, of course, evil, go to death.
He said, apamata namiyanti, the heedful, people like Samavati, never die.
But the heedless are as if already dead.
and so on.
Now the monks asked, what had happened to Mugandira?
I guess we can tell this part.
What had happened to Samavati?
He said, well, how did Samavati really deserve what had happened to her?
And the Buddha said, well, if you look at just this life, it doesn't look like she deserved it at all.
But what happened is, way back in the past, she and her ladies had
I think they had been queen, she had been a queen, and these were her ladies-in-waiting at the time.
And they wanted to make a fire for the king.
And they wanted to set this grass on fire or something.
They saw this grass, and they wanted to clear it or something, and so they lit it all on fire.
Turns out there was a Pachayka Buddha.
a Buddha, an enlightened being, sitting in the middle of the grass, sitting in, actually, in a high meditative attainment state, a state of high meditation, state of meditation, anyway, high state of meditation, meditative attainment.
And so they were afraid.
They thought he must have died as a result.
And it turns out they knew this guy.
This Buddha was supported by the king, and the king
was always giving him food.
So they knew the king would be very, very angry at them if he found out that they had burnt this guy.
And they said, oh, we have to get rid of him.
They thought, oh, he's still there.
He must have died.
Truth is, when you're in these states, even fire can't hurt you.
This is what they said.
So he wasn't dead.
He was actually perfectly fine.
And so they said, let's get rid of him.
And so they put wood all around him and piled wood up all on top of him and lit him on fire again and went away thinking, ah, now he'll burn to a crisp.
Turns out he didn't burn to a crisp.
Seven days later, he got up and all, of course, the fire was totally gone.
And he got up and looked around and went on his way.
But as a result of that, as a result of the evil, see the first time they had no evil in their minds, but the second time they did a very evil deed to burn this Buddha.
And as a result, so it says, they were burnt in this life.
Because it weighed heavily on their mind, the guilt that was in their mind.
Their minds.
Even though they actually didn't kill the guy, but they had bad intentions, so it says.
Okay, this is the story.
And apologies, it's actually much longer than that even, but that's quite long enough.
The important thing is this is the beginning of the Appamada Vagga, which is the most important teaching of the Buddha.
As it says here in the commentary, what do we say of Appamada in the Samyutta Nikaya?
The Buddha says this, he says, just like all of the footprints of all animals that exist, that walk on land, can fit inside the footprint of the elephant, in the same way all of the teachings of the Buddha
fit inside this teaching on appamada.
This is how important the Buddha took this teaching to be.
This is also the last words of the Buddha, appamadena sampadita, develop yourselves, perfect yourselves, and become full of heedfulness.
So what does it mean to say that someone who is heedful doesn't die?
Basically, we're looking again at the idea of death.
And really the truth is that death itself is only a concept.
But if we're looking at absolute death or ultimate sense, death is this momentary birth and death of our experience.
When you experience seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting or feeling,
Or thinking, that's birth.
And when the experience ceases, that's death.
So we're experiencing constant death and birth, death and birth in every moment.
So someone who is heedful is able to overcome this and is able to enter into nibbana, which is free from arising and therefore free from ceasing.
That's what that means.
What does it mean to say that a person who is heedless is as though one who is already dead?
I think this is how you can say a person who is heedful dies.
Because on the one hand they have to be born and die again and again and again.
And they'll have to keep coming back, being born again, sometimes in hell, sometimes in heaven.
always subject to more and more based on their clinging and their craving.
So lots of stress.
Even in heaven, people have, beings have stress.
They worry about dying still.
When they come to the end of their term, they might go back to the human world and eventually back to hell.
But the most important part of this teaching is that one who is negligent, it doesn't matter whether they're born or die, they're as if already dead.
And so this is what you should see in the meditation, that actually it's a part of being born or a part of waking up.
And you really feel like this.
Like before I started practicing meditation, I was alive, but really it's only a name.
It wasn't as though I was alive really at all.
It was more as though I was dead or asleep, sleepwalking.
When you come to meditate, you wake up to so much and you're able to see clearly what's going on.
You're able to see clearly your habits and your reactions and how you've built these up just out of the darkness of ignorance that you've carried with you.
This is why we get angry.
This is why we get greedy.
This is why we are conceited and arrogant and attached to so many things.
Why we are judgmental.
Why we are partial.
All of this comes from our negligence, our
our laziness, really, in doing our duty, in not applying ourselves to our experience, not being careful.
Another way of translating this is carefulness and carelessness.
Simply by not being careful, not being thorough when we do something, even when we're eating.
When we eat food,
Every moment we're giving rise to craving and maybe we don't like this food so we're giving rise to aversion and we're feeding this partiality.
Simply because of going by our old habits and going by ignorance and delusion and thinking that this is the way to find happiness and peace.
When we come to meditate, you can see this.
You can see your attachments.
You can see your aversions.
And you realize that they've just been cultivated.
We've just been growing these like weeds in a garden or like fungus in the dark.
And once you shine the sun in, all of the fungus, all of the rot dries up and fades away.
A person who is negligent, it doesn't matter what they do or who they are.
They will always be
leading themselves to more suffering because they're like a person flailing around in the dark.
Their life has no meaning, so therefore they're as if one who is already dead.
So seeing this difference, when you come to practice meditation and you see the difference between the two, you set yourself and automatically the mind begins to change.
Once you see things clearly and you apply yourselves to see things as they are, the mind can never go back to that.
It sees something it's never seen before, and this is the suffering that follows necessarily from craving, from evil.
So it will never go back and give rise to craving or partiality again.
These wise ones set themselves in heedfulness or carefulness.
And they delight in it.
They rejoice in it.
And this is what you gain from the meditation.
It may not feel like it in the middle because you're suffering from all of this bad stuff.
But once you come out of it, it's such a joy.
And you have this great peace and happiness in your life, feeling very viscerally this freedom, like an open space that you've gained, whereas before it was like you were suffocating.
And you feel this great weight lifted off.
So you rejoice in it.
And you dwell in the resort of the noble ones.
Because the resort of the noble ones is to be mindful all the time.
So how do you do it?
De jai no satatika.
You do it by meditating constantly.
Satatika means incessantly or continuously.
So the idea is not to just do, now I'll do meditation and then stop and then meditation.
It's to be mindful all the time, even here when we're sitting, even when you're walking, when you're eating your food, to try to be mindful in everything you do, and to take it as a meditation.
This means setting up your effort, which means the opposite of a
Nikcham means permanently, really.
To be permanently set in your efforts.
So it means that you never give up your effort, never give up your working to get rid of the evil things inside, to develop good things, and to protect yourself from giving rise to evil and to protect the good things inside.
Pusantidhira nibhanam.
These wise ones touch nibhanam.
How this happens, through exerting yourself and continuously practicing meditation, you start to see things clearly.
You start to see the connections and the relations.
But more importantly, you see the suffering.
And you see that all of this being and this experience that we have is meaningless, is useless.
The attraction you had, thinking this will bring me happiness, that will bring me happiness,
is delusion.
And you start to see that, that actually it's only bringing more and more attachment, more and more addiction, and more and more suffering.
The mind changes, and the mind begins to look at these things as boring.
This is where you get to the point where it seems like everything is the same, same old, same old.
You really don't want to look at them anymore.
And you keep looking and looking until finally the mind gets it and says, I want to be free from this.
It gives rise to a desire to be free.
Some people run away as a result, thinking, well then I'll go back home and I won't have to deal with this.
But of course if you go home you take it all with you.
So they don't generally actually want to go home, but they're desperate.
And the mind is really looking for a way out.
And that's really important.
Because as you apply yourself again and again, eventually the mind will just have had enough.
When it becomes unbearable, that's when the mind will let go.
The mind will refuse to bear it anymore, refuse to go out, refuse to cling again.
I'm going to cling again, and it's good.
And then you hurt yourself again and again until finally the mind says, no, I'm not going to cling.
And that's nibbana.
The mind doesn't mean you just sit there, but it means actually the mind goes out.
No more seeing, no more hearing.
It goes in, actually.
No more coming out to see, hear, smell, taste, feel, or think.
The mind becomes free.
That is called touching Nibbana, which is the supreme yoga kemanganuttara, which is the supreme freedom from bondage.
Because we're only bound to suffering because of our attachment.
Once you don't attach, once the mind is truly unattached, it will not even go out to the suffering again.
It will constantly come back inside until finally this life is gone, and for the arahant, the mind...
gives rise to no further becoming, and there is no more birth, and therefore no more aging, sickness, or death.
So this is the meaning of these three verses and the rather long story that goes with them.
So that's the teaching for today.
And I think the application to our practice is quite relevant.
The Buddha was very clear that this is the important thing to take in our practice, is to be careful.
So we should constantly be bringing ourselves back.
As my teacher, he gave an example of a man who's, a person who's
rocking a cradle, you have to constantly rock the cradle just carefully so as not to wake the baby.
The same way you have to, with your practice, you have to keep constant watch and to do it smoothly so that your practice never gets broken off course when you wake the baby.
your practice will fall off, of course.
A person who's practicing meditation should do it as though they're rocking a baby's cradle.
Careful.
As the Buddha said, as though carrying a pot full of oil.
The story of this man who
Buddha told the story of a man who was carrying a pot of oil and he said, I want you to carry this pot of oil full to the brim through the whole city during a festival.
There was a festival and all these dancing and games and so on.
And what we're going to do is we're going to have a man walk behind you with a sword.
And if you spill one drop of that oil, we're going to cut your head off.
And the Buddha said, now suppose there was such a man, and suppose such a thing happened.
Now do you think he would be distracted by the dancing, by the singing, by the games and the sports?
And the monk said, no, no, probably he wouldn't.
And the Buddha said, then you should take this similarly to heart and you should act like that and be constantly vigilant.
This is what is meant by this.
So this is an element of our practice, the key element.
The other reason why it's the key element is because it's a synonym for mindfulness.
The Buddha said, sada sattva, the person who is constantly, always mindful, that is what is meant by appamadha.
So our practice of mindfulness, where we know things as they are, where we're clearly aware, when a thought comes up we know it as thinking, when pain comes up we know it as pain, not letting our mind extrapolate on it and proliferate and make more of it than it is, simply seeing it for what it is, until the point that our mind
settles and this changes its behavior, seeing the difference between going out and clinging and just simply knowing what it is.
And it starts to rejoice and feel such great peace and freedom in just seeing things as they are.
So this is the teaching and hopefully a good explanation of how it relates to our practice.
Thanks for listening and now back to our meditation.