Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 99, which reads as follows.
Ramanīyāni aranyāni yatana-ramatī-janau vītarāgāra-misanti na te kāma-gavesino Which means, those forests are delightful where there is no being
No being, no person who delights.
Those free from passion will delight.
Not those who are gone to or are seeking out.
Not those who seek out pleasure.
So, quite an instructive verse.
And quite similar to our last verse, if you're keeping up, the last one was about delightful forests as well.
But that was about where an arahant dwells.
Anywhere an arahant dwells, that's a delightful place.
So this verse actually doesn't really have a place in the Arahantavagga except that it follows after the last verse which did talk about Arahants.
Of course this one does talk about enlightened beings and the story is about Arahantship so let's get right to the story.
Here we have a story of a monk who was practicing meditation in the forest.
He had found this delightful forest in which to meditate.
He had thought to himself, oh, here's a place where I will certainly progress in my practice.
And so he strove to his utmost in this forest doing, I guess, doing walking and sitting meditation.
But fortune had it, or bad fortune it was, that a courtesan or a prostitute happened to think the same thing.
Boy, this forest would be a nice place to meet a client.
Good place.
So two kinds of delighting or two kinds of pleasure, two kinds of enjoying were, well,
They had the same idea, but for two different types of enjoyment.
So the monk was here sitting in the forest and the prostitute or courtesan or however you want to translate it, was also in the forest with an appointment with one of her clients.
and so she was quite near where the monk was and she was sitting in the forest patiently waiting for her client and as it turned out her client didn't show up so she was left sitting in this forest waiting for her client until finally impatient she realized he is certainly not going to show up might as well just go back home and on her way back home
Lo and behold, she spied a monk.
I guess he was somewhat handsome or at least looked like a suitable client, someone who might be gullible enough or might be beguiled by her ways.
And so she decided in her mind, she made up her mind in a very, you could say, a fairly unwholesome decision.
to seduce the monk.
And so she went up to this monk who was sitting there valiantly striving in meditation.
He wasn't enlightened, so there was hope for her.
And so she came up close where the monk was and cleared her throat.
The monk looked up and saw her and she let her robe slip a little bit and showed a little bit of, you know, just sitting as though she was just there to perhaps meditate or to enjoy the peace and quiet, but moving her skirts ever so slightly to show her legs and
shifting around and showing off her attributes.
And sure enough, the monk found his concentration begin to waver.
he found himself suddenly rather disturbed.
And I'm not sure, it's an interesting thing that he says, it's as though he's never felt such desire before because his whole body begins to shake and
Maybe his sweat comes out of his armpits or his body heats up.
And he becomes confused.
He doesn't know what it is.
He doesn't understand what's happening to him.
So he actually says, what is this?
Something like, What is this?
What the heck is going on?
Anyway, he was quite disturbed.
And...
probably in a bit of trouble.
Who knows what would have happened if it weren't for our favorite savior, our savior, the one who would always save the monks, who saved the monks from themselves, the Buddha.
the Buddha was watching out for him.
And it's again one of these cases where you might believe or you might not believe.
It might be unbelievable to some people.
But the Buddha had
this power in his mind, the ability to sense or a heightened awareness of reality.
So the story goes that he knew what was going on.
He was able to understand and furthermore able to communicate with this monk.
If you don't like that, if that sounds far-fetched and implausible, well, that's fine.
It's not a matter.
It's more the meaning behind the story.
But for most of us, there's a sense that there is more possible than most of us are able to understand.
So these ideas of ESP or telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience,
mind reading, even prediction of the future, these kind of things, there is some sense that to some extent the mind that is cultivated can engage in these things.
And there's accounts by the ton of meditators who claim to have these powers.
Now, they seem to be a bit unpredictable and certainly hard to capture by doctors looking to prove or disprove.
So there's been experiments that have been done and you can learn about some of these experiments that they've done in textbooks and often are inconclusive.
It's a hard thing to test because it takes an exceptional frame of mind and exceptions are not something that science does best with.
It's the easiest to prove or disprove something that applies to the majority.
Because then you can get statistically meaningful results.
But if you're dealing with a one in a million thing, no.
It's something that most people can't do.
It's a little bit harder, of course.
Most people just deny this possibility outright, but then most people don't practice meditation and don't have a sense of the power of the mind.
Anyway, either way, that's not the point of the story.
The point is what the Buddha taught to this monk.
So if you don't like the actual story, you can pretend it's a story about the Buddha being with this monk and he sees what's going on.
Maybe he was meditating right beside the monk.
That's not how the story goes, but you can look at it that way.
It's the same meaning because the Buddha turns to the monk and says, Aramanyani Aranyani.
He says, you want to know what's going on?
Why you're not happy?
He says, you can only really enjoy the forest if you're not full of lust.
There's more to this verse actually than the story tells.
But this is when the Buddha is said to have told this verse.
But there's a deeper meaning here.
Because being alone in the forest is tough.
If you go off into the forest thinking, I'm going to be free from all my problems, you learn pretty quick that all your problems come with you.
And if you're not able to overcome this desire,
It doesn't matter whether you're in the forest or in the city.
He makes the point here that the work has to be done.
Going into the forest is great.
It's a great opportunity to focus your mind on the essentials.
It's a great way to protect yourself from yourself.
So when you get angry, when you have lust, there's less of opportunity
to act out on it, so it is much easier to be patient with.
So you want something, well, if you know you're not going to get it, it's much easier to be mindful of, it's much easier to let it go.
So, in essence, it's
It's protecting you.
Or it's a guard from yourself, like training wheels on a bike.
Being in the forest makes it easier, especially for new meditators.
It's never going to be comfortable, you're never going to be happy, and you're never going to become free unless you can do the work.
The forest won't do the work for you.
So he says, where there is no one delighting.
It's a play on words.
The word Ramati is the same root as Ramaniya.
Ramaniya is a forest that is delightful.
So it's delightful when no one's delighting.
So the difference is delighting in sensuality and delighting in freedom.
And delighting is probably a bad word, but being happy might be the best.
It's pleasant.
Pleasant might be a good word.
It's pleasant where no one seeks pleasure might be the best translation here.
Those who are free from passion
are pleased.
That might be a good one.
But the point being, and the key to this verse is this idea of what can truly please or what can truly make you happy.
That's the key here.
And it's the key to solving this monk's problem because his mind, assumedly, is inclining to find pleasure with this courtesan and this prostitute.
It's inclining towards the pleasure of a body that is attractive.
Attractive probably because
or we understand because of the mind's inclination or the mind's recognition of it as an object of pleasure.
So we find pleasurable stimulation from either the same gender or the opposite gender, depending on our sexual preference.
But we find it just in vision because of lifetime after lifetime, or scientists would say because of our biology, which is programmed to recognize the object as an object of pleasure, a place that is to be enjoyed.
uh enjoyed so it leads to physical pleasure it leads to sounds pleasant sounds sounds of love and and of enjoyment and laughter and so on all these pleasant sounds that we so enjoy pleasant sights pleasant sounds pleasant smells
So as a result, as soon as you see someone and you say, that's a woman, the sign of the woman for a man inflames the mind.
So this is where his mind was inclined towards.
But he realized something, it seems.
Not only was he caught up in it, but he realized that it was actually disturbing him.
What's going on?
What's the meaning of this?
And the Buddha straightens out the meaning by saying that actually, or points out that, hey, look what's going on with you.
Look where this is leading.
And it's another useful thing about the forest is that you get to a different state of calm, a different state of peace.
So you have pleasure in a sense that is, you could say, wholesome.
It's the pleasure of peace, the pleasure of a calm state.
I think you could still argue that it would lead to attachment, because you can get attached to calm and peaceful states.
But there are aspects of it that are wholesome, where the mind is calm and undisturbed, where the mind is fixed and focused.
So actually considered to be wholesome, useful.
And that's in contrast with trying to find pleasure in lust, in sensuality, because all the chemicals that are involved, all the hormones that are involved are actually quite disturbing and they inflame the mind and they lead to jealousy and irritation, they lead to frustration.
They lead eventually to a lot of anger states, unpleasant states.
And so he was seeing in a sense the unpleasantness of it.
It's really the key to this problem of sensuality, this problem of desire.
It's the fact, the simple fact that it's essential for us to learn that these things can't satisfy us, that they don't satisfy us, that they don't make us happy.
You can take them and it's the crux of the problem really.
It's like
The answer to this question, why am I not happy?
I'm indulging, I'm enjoying, I'm engaging, I have everything anyone could want.
Why am I not happy?
Some people I don't think ever come to that even.
They don't ever realize that they're not happy.
I've had this argument with people before where they say, well, we get this question a lot actually.
What's wrong with sensual pleasures if it makes you happy?
Well, if it really made you happy, there'd be nothing wrong with it.
The problem is that it doesn't.
And it's funny that often we don't even realize that.
Those of us who do are the ones inclined towards spirituality.
We would say that's a better thing to be displeased by these things.
Because it also answers the question as to why we, or answers a more mundane question of how to deal with loss, how to deal with depression, how to deal with
really the results of the intense attachment to craving that we have.
People who feel low self-esteem because they can't get a romantic partner, who feel like they're ugly, like they're unattractive, because of an intense attachment to just the idea of having sensual or romantic relations.
People who get sick or who get overweight because of their attachment to food.
People who become depressed when things don't go their way or even get depressed when things do.
People who become addicts, addicted to drugs, addicted to all sorts of things.
Addicted to entertainment.
And just never see it.
Never get a sense that something's wrong.
But eventually have to deal with it.
So it's an answer to the question of the eventual loss when someone passes away, someone you love dies.
It's excruciating loss.
And we're so blind, really, in general, that it's confusing to us.
No, it's not even confusing to us.
It's as though that's a normal part of life.
It's become normal to mourn when you lose something, as though it was normal to cling.
and as though this is the best we can expect.
So we get so caught up in our attachments, so lost in our attachments, that we don't even think to free ourselves from our attachments.
Instead we want something that frees us from the suffering.
The problem is that one leads to the other.
When you lose someone you love,
Well, the real problem was that when you say you love them, you're actually saying you're attached to them.
Because love isn't something that makes you suffer.
Love is the intention to help others.
It's the friendliness that we have.
It's the desire for their welfare.
has nothing to do with loss.
Loss and suffering caused by loss is because of possessiveness, the idea that it was ours, it was mine.
So it has to do with ego and it has to do with attachment.
But that's a very far removed state.
If you get to that point, which most of us do, it means we're already very much lost in the attachment.
What we're talking about in this verse is the fight to not have the attachment in the first place and the observation that it's so much more primal or primary
when you first want something, when you first like and attach to something.
Most of us don't see this.
Most of us are lost, have to get it later on when we lose something that we love or when something goes wrong, when we can't get what we want.
But the truth is that compared with what this monk was seeing, and the reason he was seeing it was because he was meditating, is that compared to the peace of not wanting, wanting is something that inflames the mind.
So one who seeks out kama, seeks out sensuality, will never be pleased, will never be happy.
Natte ramisanti.
Not those who are kama-goesina.
Not those who seek out kama, seek out sensuality.
They will not
be at peace, not in the forest, but they won't be at peace anywhere.
But the key is that you see it when you have something better, when you have something better to compare it to.
If you don't have something better to compare it to, you often think this is as good as it gets, this is the best I can expect.
Is this
unsatisfying, fleeting moments of pleasure that punctuate our lives of toil and strife, where we have to work long hours or we have to work meaningless, you know, we have to work in the world, we have to do things, spend our time just for these fleeting moments of pleasure.
So the key here is to see that there is something better and to see that it's not all that.
It's not as good as it gets.
It's not the best.
It's not true pleasure.
It's not true happiness.
The true happiness is beyond that.
It's only for those who give it up.
This is the claim and this is the core of this verse, the core of the Buddha's teaching really.
that happiness is to be gotten through letting go.
It's a claim that is backed by meditation, but it's the argument that we give as to why people should practice meditation.
Are you satisfied with your life?
No.
There is a way to go beyond this.
If you can see how unsatisfying these things are, there is a path, there is a practice that gets you past them, gets you beyond them.
It's very simple.
It's not religious or it's not about believing in magical powers like the Buddha could read people's minds or project an image of himself across space.
It's not about that.
It's about seeing the limitation of sensuality and the ultimate unsatisfactory nature of sensual pleasures, which are, rather than satisfying, they're addictive, and they lead to greater and greater states of want and need, until eventually the want and the need comes crashing down, can't be fulfilled, and leads to suffering.
in and of itself, is a disturbance.
This is what you really see in meditation.
You see it at a very primal level.
Even any kind of touching, the Buddha compared it to feces.
You wouldn't even want to touch it.
You can say, it's only a little bit of feces, so that's okay.
The smallest bit of feces is not worth touching.
In the same way, even just the mere...
seeing of something, or the mere reacting to something that you see, rather.
Seeing this beautiful woman, and then reacting to her.
The reaction, in and of itself, even before we decide whether he can get it or not get it, not having it, this is what leads us to want to get it, because not having it is suffering.
Here his body is
shaking in what we would call anticipation, but it's actually in withdrawal, because he doesn't have it yet.
The body is saying, get that, get that, get that.
And that's what leads to suffering.
That's what is suffering, really.
The not having.
And so then you would chase after and get it, and then you'd suffer.
I mean, you'd have to disrobe from being a monk.
You'd have to get involved with many different things.
But most importantly, he'd chase after it, get it, get the pleasure, and then suffer when he didn't have it again.
Wanting it.
So this relates directly to our meditation.
Here we have a story of a meditator who had to deal with this.
So the story goes that he was able to hear what the Buddha was saying, and he was able to get what the Buddha was saying, and he was able to meditate.
As I've talked about meditating on the aspects of desire, the aspects of attachment.
So there is the desire, that's a part of it, but there's much more involved.
There's the physical sensations, this heat in the body or the tension in the body or whatever physical aspects there are.
Then there's the pleasure, which is fleeting, but it's there.
When you want something, there's often a pleasure associated with it.
Oh good, I'm going to get that.
The sort of excitement will be there.
Then there's the image, the image itself that you see.
You see this beautiful woman, beautiful man, beautiful thing, beautiful food, whatever it is.
That's another part of it.
And they work in a sequence.
So you'll see the food, it gives you pleasure, you want it, you give rise to an intention, wanting, chasing, getting, and the cycle continues.
So if you cut it off at any place, you catch all of these, break it into its parts, and catch what is really happening in that moment, and then that's all it is.
Because the enjoyment is not any one of those things.
The cycle itself is not any one of those things.
So when you focus only on one of them, you've broken the illusion, you've broken the delusion.
You've pierced this misconception of attractiveness.
There's nothing attractive about any one of the things.
You see something, it's just light.
There's nothing attractive there.
You recognize it.
You want it.
Each one of those things is just an individual state.
That's what we do in meditation.
So we remind ourselves, this is seeing, seeing.
This is feeling, feeling.
This is wanting, wanting.
Thinking, thinking.
And so on.
Liking, liking.
And if you do that, if you go back and forth between each and one of these things, you can overcome any addiction.
You really can.
Again, it's just about doing the work.
It's not about living in the forest.
Obviously that doesn't work all the time.
Even if there's not women coming up to seduce you, which does happen, but even if there's not...
No matter what, there's only one, only a person who can, Vita Raga, who can free themselves from passion, give up the passions in the mind.
Only they will be happy.
And actually this verse doesn't say it, but it doesn't matter in the forest or anywhere.
It's not about being in the forest.
Although there is something, the verse is also saying that the forest is actually harder to be in.
And there's no way anyone who is stuck on sensuality could be happy in the forest because there's nothing very sensual in the forest.
There's no bright lights or pretty colors or beautiful, attractive human beings or food or this or that.
It's actually quite hard living in the forest as we talked about in the last verse.
But it's delightful for those who are free from sensuality.
Why?
Because it's peaceful.
Because you don't have people coming to bother you.
Because you are able to keep your mind
at ease, at peace.
Anyway, that's the Dhammapada for tonight.
So, quite a useful message for all of us.
Thank you all for tuning in.
I wish you all good practice.
Be well.