Hello, welcome back to our study of the Dampada.
Today we continue on with verse number 5, which goes, nahi vairena vairani sammantidha kudachanam avairena ca sammanti esadam mo sanantanam Which means, not indeed through enmity,
Is enmity appeased?
Not here or anywhere.
It is appeased through non-enmity.
This is an eternal truth.
This teaching was given in regards to a famous story, another famous one.
about two women who got very much caught up in a cycle of enmity or revenge and would never have gotten out if it weren't for the teaching of the Buddha.
This is our understanding.
These two women were married to the same man and one of them was barren, the other one was fertile.
And the fertile woman got pregnant three times.
And each time the barren woman, being afraid of being left out or being cast aside, caused an abortion in the fertile woman, slipping some kind of medicine into her food.
And the third time the woman actually died as a result of the abortion.
And while she was dying, she cursed her murderer, vowing revenge, vowing to come back someday and pay revenge for this evil deed.
And she died.
And the woman who killed her, or who caused the abortion,
was beaten by her husband for being such an evil person and so on, and her husband was a fairly rough person, I guess, and died as a result as well, was beaten to the point where she got so sick she died, and was born in the same house as a hen, a female chicken.
And
So happened that the woman who died from the abortion was born in the same house as a cat.
So you can see where this is going.
The hen laid eggs and the chicks hatched and the cat came along and ate the chicks three times.
And the third time actually ate the chicken as well or killed the chicken as well.
The chicken died and was born as a leopard.
The cat died and was born as a deer.
And the leopard came and they were well familiar with each other at this point.
The leopard came and ate the doe, the deer's fawns, and the third time ate or killed the doe as well.
The doe came back, each time vowing revenge.
The person who was killed would each time keep it in their mind.
When the hen was dying, she said, you've done this to me three times now.
One day I'm going to come back.
And indeed she came back.
And the deer are the same.
And the deer came back as an ogre.
This is the woman who had died from the abortion and made a vow to come back to eat this woman's children.
Died and was born as an ogre.
And the leopard was born as a woman, an ordinary woman living near, I believe, in Sawati, the great city in the time of the Buddha.
And twice, this ogre, an ogre is like an evil spirit that eats your children.
Again, this part of the story I don't vouch for, the idea that there could be children eating ogres.
2,500 years ago seems to me a little bit far-fetched.
So it may just have been a woman who was a cannibal or something.
It may have just been, you know, whatever it was, because these things do happen.
Even in our life, there are people who eat
who eat other people, who kill and murder them, and so on.
There are terrible things that happen in this world.
So I don't disbelieve that.
This is just an extraordinary example.
But that it was an ogre, well, okay.
It's not so important, because it doesn't affect the moral of the story at all, really.
But let's go along with it.
It was an ogre.
and ate this woman's children twice.
And the third time, the woman saw her coming and ran.
And how it happened was, the third time, the woman left with her husband and said, we've got to get away from this.
This is like, you know, every lifetime we're in this cycle of revenge.
And so she ran away.
And the ogre chased after her and found her near Jetavana, which is the monastery of the Buddha near Samadhi.
and they were bathing, she and her husband were bathing in the pool outside and her husband went to bathe and she was holding her child and then she turned and saw there was the ogre coming and right away they recognized each other and she knew right away who this was it was like they had this bond and so the woman ran into Jetavana and the Buddha at that time, at that moment was giving a talk to a large group of people, his followers
And so she ran right up to the Buddha and dropped her son at the Buddha's feet and said, here's my child, please protect him, save his life.
And fortunately the angels that guarded Jetavana at the time didn't let the ogre in.
They have power over it and spirits go like this.
The idea that there might be evil spirits doesn't really faze me.
The idea that they might eat your children is a little bit, as I said, far-fetched.
But okay, so there was a contact and this evil spirit wasn't allowed in.
And until the Buddha called, told Ananda, his attendant, to go and bring in the ogre, to invite her in.
And the Buddha said, what are you doing?
He said, how can you, you know, do you not realize where this is headed here?
Now three lifetimes you've been...
You haven't been the aggressor every time.
You can't hope to possibly win every time and you're creating a cycle of revenge.
And he said, if you didn't come and find me, if you didn't have someone here to explain to you the problem.
inherent in this sort of behavior you would have continued on like this forever and then he said his verse this verse that goes not by enmity is enmity appeased not here nor anywhere but only by non-enmity is enmity appeased this is an eternal truth and just by waking them up and explaining it to them in this way he was able to help them to overcome it and actually the ogre was able to let go
Now, I think this has a good lesson for us because it's part of this helping us to open up and see the bigger picture and see where we're leading ourselves and where our minds are taking us.
Every act that we do does have an effect on our minds, or can potentially have an effect on our mind, if we cling to it.
There's obviously some incredible clinging going on here, this incredible clinging to revenge.
This person hurt me, as I said in the other verses.
We have here, akochimangavadimangadinimangahasime.
He hit me, he beat me, he hurt me, and so on.
When we think like that, it builds up in our mind.
And in this story we see an example of the result and the consequences.
It's not only in this life.
And this is something that we obviously lose sight of for the most part in this world because we think of things only in terms of this one life.
And so we think in terms of getting ahead.
We think of getting the better.
We talk about the dog-eat-dog world and how if you can get the better of other people and come out on top and so on,
So that by the time you're in your middle age, you've got money and you've got power and you've got influence and you've got stability, that somehow you've achieved something, you've won in that sense.
If you can do it morally and great, if you can't, it's not really important because in the end you're going to die anyway.
So better to get the better of other people.
And I think most of us,
in this world or the majority of people in this world do partake of this to some extent.
We don't mind so much getting the better of other people.
In business we don't mind cheating other people, we don't mind conning other people and so on.
We don't mind trying to get the better of people and getting their money and so on.
Just so long as we can somehow come out on top or we can get something good for ourselves at the time.
And I think here we have a really good example of these two women who are trying to secure a happiness for themselves against their rival, this woman who was jealous of the woman who was fertile.
But the point is we have in common with all of our feuds
is that it carries on.
And it's really quite easy to see, and this is why it's really quite easy to understand.
It's funny to see so many people having trouble with the idea that the mind might continue on.
We're building up an incredible
power or an incredible energy through our deeds.
People who cling, people who build up this cycle of revenge, who have quarrels with other people, who fight and dispute and hurt and harm others.
fight and are victorious even over other people.
They build up this incredible energy in their mind that drags them down and actually puts them in the place of the victim in the future as a result of the defilement of the mind.
Because defilement is, as I've said, the problem with it is that it drags your mind down.
It defiles, it soils, it sullies the mind.
It hurts you.
It takes away your ability to function.
It cripples you.
So the reason why we're in these unpleasant states is because of our crippled mind in the past.
When a person comes out on top, they've developed all this clinging and all this evil in their mind.
Even though they might have great luxury and power externally, it drags them down.
And if they don't use their power in a good way, it will drag them down and the cycle of revenge will continue.
our inability to see beyond one life,
leads us to, this is something I've said, it doesn't really matter whether the mind does continue on.
You can see the difference in our beliefs.
If you believe that at death something stops and that's it, and you don't have to go on, then it really doesn't matter what you do.
And we can see the effect that that's having on the world, that it's deteriorating and we're depleting our resources.
You know, the depletion of resources.
Well, who cares?
I mean, when I die, that's it, right?
Well, wrong, really.
I mean, the effect of your mind states and the greed that's in your mind alone is something that will last eons because of our attachment and our clinging.
On the other hand, if you understand life after...
Or let's say if you believe, if we think of it parallel in terms of belief, that the mind doesn't stop and this experience continues on and works itself out, so the energy that we build up through our actions has eventually to bring consequences, then
Do you really think it's possible you would go to war?
Do you think it's possible you would cling to things?
Or if you really believe this, would you ever have any reason to build up and to try to find pleasure in the here and now, to try to become addicted to things and to reach, to crave for things or to run after ephemeral pleasures?
You'd have no reason to.
If you understand this, you really, when you look, when you sit back and think about it, you think, you know, this is really whatever I get in this world, whatever I achieve, whatever I accomplish, if I become rich, if I become famous, it's meaningless.
And in the end it's quite, quite inconsequential because it lasts for a moment and then it's gone.
And this is the idea that it will be gone, that everything does cease and the evil that we do now
will drag us down and bring evil unto us.
So this is something that helps us to see the true nature of reality and it answers a lot of questions in regards to why people are victims, why people suffer, why people are in a place, in a position of great inequality.
where some people are very rich, some people are very poor, and so on.
We can see that there are these waves, and a person who is rich now may be poor in the next life, depending on the state of their mind, really.
If a rich person is very generous, then there's no reason
If they use their power and their influence in the right way, then you can see that this is something that is going to last, because their mind is powerful, their mind is strong, they're sure of themselves and they have this great charge of good energy, which will come back to them.
Obviously, it's something that you can feel.
A person who does good deeds is able to hold their head up.
They're able to sit up tall and they don't shrink down.
There's none of this clinging that drags them down and actually drags them to hell.
Something that lifts them up and makes them feel light and makes them feel free from guilt and so on.
So this lesson is in regards to helping us to give up our
our quarrels, because any kind of victory that we could gain is ephemeral, is temporary, and it only
encourages more and more quarreling, more and more enmity as the person who is defeated, unless they can somehow give up, unless one of us can in the end let go, then they will surely seek revenge.
Regardless of whether they seek revenge, the evil that we have done will drag us down, and drag us down to a state of suffering and stress and so on.
So, that's the lesson here.
This is verse number 5.
Thanks for tuning in, and all the best.