Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 69, which reads as follows.
Which means...
The fool considers it to be honey or perceives it as honey.
For as long as an evil deed doesn't bear fruit.
But when the evil deed bears fruit, the fool falls into suffering.
Then the fool falls into suffering.
The Buddha taught this verse supposedly in regards to the story of Upalavanna, one of the eminent disciples of the Buddha.
She was, as a result of
good deeds in a past life under the Buddha Padumutra, she was born with very beautiful skin.
So the point is she was beautiful.
She was physically attractive.
And as a result of that she had many suitors.
Her father was in a great state of consternation because he couldn't figure out
what to do when he had all of these high class young men or these high class old men pressing their sons upon him requesting his daughter's hand in marriage so he had to choose between very powerful people and he knew he wouldn't be able to satisfy them all and there was no way he could really get out of it so he
conceived of a plan, he called for his daughter, explained the situation to her, and she said, well, what are we going to do?
He said, well, there's only one thing I can think to do.
There's no way we can satisfy all of these people.
But one way to get out of it is if you were to decide, because, hey, I've heard that there's actually now this religion, or maybe they were Buddhist already, I don't know, but I'm just kind of making this up, that, hey, now that the Buddha is allowing
women to ordain, you could go and become a bhikkhuni, a female monk.
And she was ecstatic.
For her this was a wonderful idea.
And due to her past deeds and her spiritual bent, she was quite happy about the idea of becoming a bhikkhuni and so accepted it right away.
So she went and became a bhikkhuni and in due time through her practice and through her mindfulness training and just observing reality, it's said that watching a flame she was able to see, she was able to enter into concentration based on the flame and actually able to attain enlightenment by seeing impermanent suffering on self and so on.
So she became an arahat in the Buddhist teaching, meaning she had no more defilements, no more greed, no more anger, no more delusion.
And then the story begins, our story begins regarding this verse where she decided to go wandering through the countryside as the monks were wont to do and she went and found
village or a community in a dark forest or she was dependent on this community living in a dark forest meaning she was alone in this dark forest but there was a community of people who were supporting her and so they built a hut for her in this deep dark forest and she would go every day in for alms round to Sawati and then go back and stay in her small hut in the forest
Now it so happens that her beauty even as a bhikkhuni didn't go unnoticed and her cousin actually, his name was Ananda and her cousin, this cousin
noticed her and actually became infatuated with her.
And to the extent of deciding to follow her around, stalk her, and came to know that she was living in the forest in this hut alone.
And one day decided that he would take advantage of the situation.
While she was in the city, he went into her hut and hid under the bed.
When Upalavanna was finished her alms round and whatever she had done during the day, she came back I guess in the evening and it was already dark or it was dark inside the kutti, the hut.
So she came back from alms round, she had finished eating and she went to the hut where it was dark and lay down on the bed.
And as soon as she lay down on the bed,
And this Brahmin cousin of hers came up and lay down on top of her and I guess pinned her to the bed or whatever.
It's not very explicit obviously.
But what it does say, interestingly, is what she said to him when he was assaulting her.
Normally you think it would be, get off of me, don't hurt me and so on.
But obviously that wouldn't be the case because she was enlightened and so had no attachment.
So what did she say instead?
She said, don't hurt yourself, don't destroy yourself or don't be destroyed.
She called, don't be destroyed, you fool.
Ba'ala means fool.
You fool, you're going to be destroyed, you're going to be doomed.
Don't doom yourself.
He didn't listen and went on with his sexual assault.
When he was finished, he got up and ran out of the hut.
But as soon as he got out of the hut, the story goes that due to the weight of his evil deed, the earth wasn't able to support him.
And so just like there's other stories of this happening like with Devadatta and so on.
He sunk into the ground and the earth opened up underneath him and he sunk into the ground and the flames came up, burned him to death and he died and went to hell.
This obviously was a sort of big deal and the monks were talking about it and everyone was talking about how insane it was that this man would do such a thing, would think that he could actually derive happiness from this.
And of course there was talk about how amazing it is that the earth responded.
Now people who don't think that this sort of thing is possible, obviously it goes against the laws of physics and so on.
But we have interesting examples of this.
There's a case on my teacher's 80th birthday.
He sort of gave up the will to live.
And they talk about how when the Buddha gave up the will to live, the earth shook.
The Buddha was 80 years old and he decided he didn't want to live anymore.
He made a determination to give up and pass away.
And our teacher did that on his 80th birthday.
And that night the earth shook.
And I was there.
I was in Jomtong.
So this isn't just a story that people tell.
I was there and can verify this.
So sometimes interesting things happen in the world.
And there may be more to reality than what we think.
Obviously it's not important for our practice or for this story even to believe that the earth actually
opened up underneath him.
In fact, to some extent you get the suspicion that it was probably the weight of the karma was so bad and so strong, so heavy that his mind
was corrupt and he killed himself or so on, and it was as if.
He was so quick to go to hell just through his own corruption of mind and maybe suicide or being murdered or so on.
that it was as though the earth opened up and swallowed him whole.
So the Buddha would often talk like this.
He said a person who does very, very bad deeds goes to hell just as if they were picked up or swallowed by the earth and so on.
So, but anyway, it was a surprise and sort of a shock, and the Buddha said, well, this is the case of things.
The fool thinks of it as honey, for as long as the evil deed doesn't bear fruit.
But once it bears fruits, then, only then do they experience suffering.
So then the monks were talking more and they were kind of thinking, well, even they were some of the young monks, I guess, or the unenlightened ones were saying, oh, well, even enlightened beings want to enjoy themselves once in a while and kind of implicating Ubalawana that obviously if she had sexual intercourse, it's because she still has defilements left.
And the Buddha said, well, that's ridiculous.
Certainly not the case.
And he went on to give them more teachings and so on.
And finally the Buddha as a result instituted a rule that the bhikkhunis should not live alone in the dark forest, which I think is reasonable.
There's actually no, I'm told there's no actual rule in the Vinaya.
You only find it here in the Dhammapada commentary where he says that rule.
So again, may not be canonical.
We only have the commentator's word on it as far as I know.
But it does make a little bit of sense considering
the problem that some men have with women living alone in the forest, meaning problem containing themselves.
Some people are so
confused and no not confused so warped in their minds with the idea of where to find happiness that they can't control themselves or they don't control themselves and they go so far as to actually hurt others in you know into to put it mildly they'll do do horrible things to others just to find happiness for themselves
According to Buddhism, this is called sweet poison.
This is what the Buddha means by something that is like honey.
The question is, what does this have to do with us and our practice?
I'm assuming that we're all at least stable enough to avoid doing horrible things to others for our own happiness.
It may just be a matter of degree.
I'm sure for the most part we're still not free from hurting others to some extent for our own happiness.
Sometimes it's just in ignoring or avoiding helping others.
Sometimes it's in actually being rude or mean or unpleasant to others because we don't want to have to
be patient or helpful or generous or kind to them.
We don't want to give up our own happiness or maybe it's because they have something we want and so we manipulate them or extort or blackmail or bribe them to get what we want, hurting them or manipulating and so on just to find our own happiness.
This kind of thing the Buddha said is like sweet poison.
So there are two kinds of poison and just like there are two kinds of evil deeds.
Most people come to practice meditation because of the type of the bitter poison.
When you're poisoned, it's much easier to know that you're poisoned when it's something awful, when it's unpleasant.
So bad deeds that actually cause us suffering, that are actually unpleasant, are much easier to see and much easier to elicit a sort of a desire to be cured from the poison.
But when the poison is sweet, it's much more difficult to want to be cured.
So when you are in great pain and you get upset about that, that upset, we want to be free from the upset.
We want to be free from the anger.
So bitter poison is anything based on anger or unpleasantness.
When you have anger issues, when you have pain issues, depression, fear, anxiety, all of these ones we want to be free from.
It's not as common.
to find someone who wants to be free from the sweet poison, which is the greed-based.
So for the most part, and the Buddha said this many times, the world is
inclined towards sensuality, inclined towards sweet poison, inclined towards these sweet things to some extent or another.
Often it's quite harmless and it always seems harmless.
It's just a matter of how well we are able to reign in our desires because it's like a fire.
If you aren't able to keep it in check,
it can lead and escalate.
So it begins with ordinary attraction towards someone and then it goes into desire and then it becomes addiction and it escalates.
And so it's a matter of the person's ability to contain the balance in their mind, their ability to be mindful and the wholesomeness that's able to keep this in check.
Because
In the end it's simply due to wrong view to the idea that this is somehow going to bring us happiness.
So whether it's in something that is quite harmless or whether it's all the way to the extent of actually sexually assaulting someone.
But the point is that it is something that only causes suffering in the end, and this is what is much more difficult to see than in regards to anger, in regards to the negative emotion, the anger-based or the aversion-based emotions.
with desire-based addiction, there is a reaffirmation in the mind.
So every time you achieve that which you desire, there's the reward system in the brain.
The brain remembers that and stores it.
So you can see this every time you see or experience that which you desire.
The brain says, hey, that brought us happiness.
It keeps that.
It collects this as an engram or a mental pattern, a mental thought process.
So it says, hey, that's something that brought us desire, and that triggers a desire.
or that brought us happiness and that triggers a desire and then the desire triggers the action to go and get it and then getting it triggers getting it and the going for it triggers getting it and then the getting it triggers the or reinforces that
that perception that that thing is going to bring us happiness.
And so it's self-affirming.
Now anger isn't so much self-affirming or it's self-affirming in another way.
It's affirming in the sense that you get angry and then you don't like that because it's unpleasant and so you get more angry.
But because we attribute the anger to the object and not to the
actual anger.
We attribute the suffering to the object.
This thing is making me unhappy, instead of the anger making us unhappy.
So it goes the other way.
That one, easier because it's unpleasant, but still habit-forming because of the misattribution.
We attribute it to the actual object.
We hear loud noise, makes us angry.
The anger is unpleasant, so we get angry at the fact that we're unhappy.
But we get angry at the noise.
We're always thinking about that noise is making me unhappy, when in fact our own anger is making us unhappy, not the noise.
And so on, or whatever the experience might be.
But that's the kind of thing that someone wants to fix.
Now, no one wants to fix something that's bringing you happiness.
It's like, that's the thing that brought me happiness, and there's nothing wrong with that.
We think, well, that's great.
Except eventually, whether it be a small, innocent sort of desire, or whether it be a large one, eventually, at some point it bears fruit.
And this is what you have to understand.
You think, well, but it did bear fruit.
So going after something means getting it, and that's the fruit of it, but it's not.
The fruit of getting is, or the getting of something,
is the fruit of our ability to get, our situation.
So as a human being we have the potential for lots and lots of happiness quite easily.
Food, luxury, we have these softness and warmth in our houses and we have pleasant
speech from our friends and touch and dialogue and so on.
We have so much potential for all of this.
And that's all here for some reason.
The reason is that we were born as a human being in the situation that we are.
If we were in a different situation or not born as a human,
things would be quite different.
So our ability to get pleasant, to obtain pleasant experiences is what's allowing us to get the pleasant sensations.
It's not the actual seeking that's doing it.
Not completely, it's not enough.
So many people want
pleasant experiences, but aren't able to get them.
The fact that we can get them is a huge part of our actually getting them, the position that we're in.
So that's not the result that we're talking about, nor is it the action that we're talking about.
The action of getting is just a part of, just a function of being in that situation.
So every evening many people in this world will get a full plate of food, of quality food that is delicious and healthy and brings them pleasure.
and brings them health, and so on, our ability to experience all sorts of pleasant sensations.
But the desire, the action that we're talking about is the desire for the object, and that desire is going to bear fruit, not right away, not necessarily, except in certain very extreme cases if the desire is incredibly perverse, corrupt,
intense and if the actions lead us to do things like raping or killing or stealing or doing all sorts of any sort of extreme deed.
Except in those cases it's going to be a gradual thing.
The Buddha said like water filling up a cup, you don't notice until it overflows.
That's another Dhammapada verse that we'll get to eventually.
But because we don't notice the accumulation, we don't notice the change in ourselves, we allow it to build up and build up and build up until eventually it overflows and we suffer because we don't get what we want.
We suffer because we're more sensitive
to not getting it, where that part of our brain has become obsessed with this, with the experience, or more obsessed.
So this is why an ordinary person will become bored easily, will become annoyed easily, will be impatient.
This is why we have all these problems of being bored, impatient and annoyed and so on, frustrated easily.
Because we have a need, we've cultivated a partiality and inclination, an imbalance, lack of flexibility in the mind.
So the
the mind becomes accustomed to pleasant sensations and is unable to deal with unpleasant ones.
So eventually it comes to that and there arises anger, there will arise this sense of anger.
Now that's... then the poison has taken fruit and then there arises this new poison, the bitter poison of the anger and the frustration.
That's when people want to come and meditate and say, what's wrong with me?
But how this verse relates to our practice is that we actually, dealing with the bitter poison is really not the point of Buddhism.
The Buddha much more focused on the sweet poison, the craving, desire.
He said that's the root of suffering.
Because if you wait until it's bitter poison, you're already missing the point, missing the root.
The root which is this desire that we've cultivated, that which we want, that which we're clinging to, which is leading us to be upset when things go against our expectations, when we don't get what we want.
So the goal is to come back and actually look at this experience where we are getting what we want, this experience of chasing after what we want and breaking apart the chain and coming to see the mistake and to see the delusion involved in clinging, involved in desire.
There is no actual reason for us to favor certain experiences over others, and yet we do.
And in fact there is a great harm in it, as we were just talking about.
Once we examine this, only through examining this, can we come to change our behavior and come to see clearly the truth about the experience.
So we come to see that
by watching, we come to see that the actual desire itself is of no benefit.
The actual pleasure itself is really of no benefit.
The experience itself is of no benefit.
It's actually not helping us.
There's nothing wrong with the experience.
There's not even anything wrong with the pleasure.
But the desire is poisonous.
The desire is harming us.
And we start to get this.
You get this in the very beginning when it becomes bitter, when the suffering comes.
When the fool who has done the evil deeds falls into suffering.
And so you start to investigate.
But eventually you're able to see it even here and now.
You can see how this is a stress.
This is something that is not helping you.
It's in fact taxing you, taking away your energy.
You can see how it's an obsession.
So many people fall into obsessions and addictions and are not able to function.
not able to focus themselves, not able to be at peace with themselves because of their addictions.
And so you begin to take apart the experience.
You see that there is the experience, there is the pleasure that comes from the experience, and then there is the desire for it.
And when you're able to break it apart, then you're able to cut the chain.
You're able to experience the experience and the pleasure,
without any desire.
Whatever experience that you perceive as pleasurable, you're able to do that without any sort of desire.
So in a sense the pleasurable feeling is no longer pleasurable, it's just a feeling.
You come to see that actually there's nothing pleasurable about the feeling, not in any appreciable sense.
Objectively you could say, well that's
understood as pleasurable in the sense that it's soft or it's gentle or it's delicate or so on.
But that's only in relation to a type of experience that is harsh, that is intense and so on.
In fact, eventually through intense desire one is able to
find pleasure in pain.
So this is why people become sadomasochists and so on, because they actually find it pleasurable.
There's a desire for pain.
And for many people there is a desire for pain.
Because there is actually no difference between the two.
It's just an experience that you then interpret as good or bad.
But by retraining yourself, you're able to become objective.
And this is really what the meditation is about.
So, important that we focus on this, that we don't just focus on the negative experiences.
Most people, our knee-jerk reflex reaction is to focus on the negative experiences, when life is bad.
And we're very much more difficult, we have a very much more difficult time focusing on the pleasant experiences.
And this is where our real work lies.
our training, our practice as the Buddha said abhijja vina ye sikhang this is the training to be free from abhijja which is desire or lust or greed the training to see clearly the things that we desire and to live our lives seeing clearly because when you see clearly you don't desire this is the thing when you're clearly aware and mindful you have this peace, you have contentment
You don't need, you don't obsess.
And so this teaching, it's not an actual exhortation in meditation, it's just an observation.
But it's a very important observation that most of us miss this.
For the most part we miss the
sweet poison.
We're always focused on the pain in life, the suffering in life, and we don't notice that we're actually setting ourselves up for it by becoming obsessed with, addicted to, partial towards pleasure.
And by building up and building up and building up this, which is really an expectation of how things will be, that things should be or must be or are better to be in this way, that we suffer when they're not.
Because reality has nothing to do with our desires.
Reality doesn't go according to what we want.
It can't always go according to what we want.
It's eventually going to have to, through just the working out of reality, it's going to have to lead to something other than what we desire.
So the stronger our desire is, the more we'll suffer when that comes about.
This is the teaching, the best teaching I can think that we can get from this verse.
So I hope that is useful.
And if it's not clear, then what we mean by this is to actually meditate.
So through the practice that I teach, when you have an experience, say you see something that would be a cause of pleasure, you just say to yourself, seeing, remind yourself that it's seeing.
This creates objectivity.
Say to yourself, seeing, seeing.
If you feel happy about something, say to yourself, happy, happy.
Or if you feel calm because of something, something calms you, even that can be a cause of desire.
So say to yourself, calm, calm.
Just being objective about it.
Even if you want something, because wanting is a problem, but if you reaffirm the wanting or experience the wanting as a good thing, then it's going to be stored, it's going to be encouraged in the future.
So even if you want something, you have to be objective about that.
It's a part of the chain.
Say to yourself, wanting, wanting, and so on.
If you can break it up in this way, you come to change the way you look at the experience and you feel your mind shift and start to see things just as they are.
And if you can do that, you can actually free yourself of the most insidious type of poison, mental poison that there is, and that's the poison of desire, the poison of attachment, of partiality.
which leads us into need and eventual suffering when we don't get what we want.
There's no benefit to wanting things, not intrinsically, logically, universally.
Universally, it can only ever make sense to be content, to get what you want, in the sense not having any want, not be wanting anything.
So there's two ways.
One, you always get what you want.
Or two, you stop wanting.
And of course we know that it's not always possible to get what you want, but
our claim is that it is possible to be free from want, to not have any desire or wanting for anything.
And so our claim is that through this practice, and we teach that through this practice, one can attain this state, one can straighten out one's mind and become free from this.
Anyway, that's the teaching that we get from this verse.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Tune in next time for verse number 70, I guess.