Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse 149, which reads as follows.
yāni māni apathāni alābhu neva sārade kāpo takāni atthēni tāni dīsvāna kārati Which means,
These cast off, these that are thrown away.
Like a gourd, like a pumpkin in the fall.
Like a pumpkin that has been harvested.
These bones that are graying, that are dull.
They're bleached by the sun.
Having seen them thus, why the lust?
Why the passion?
Again, this is the old age chapter, so we have a lot of these sorts of verses.
This one in regards to death, but it related to the body and the decay of the body.
So this is referring to the body.
It's poetry, so it's all out of order.
But the gist is this body that is thrown away, cast off like a gourd in the fall.
These bones, this body is just bones that are
Like, or you could say, like bones that are bleached.
It's just decaying bones.
Having seen this, why the passion?
So it's either referring to our body, or it's referring to other bodies, when we look at the bodies of others.
So this verse is actually in regards to dead bodies.
It's told about a group of monks who were adimanika.
Adimanika, mana.
Mana means one's estimation, what one thinks, what one thinks of oneself.
So adimana.
means overestimation of oneself.
There's overestimation, underestimation, and then there's even equal estimation.
So one can still esteem oneself appropriately, but it's still considered mana.
It's still considered conceit.
If you're a very strong person and you think, oh, I'm very strong and still conceit.
If you're a weak person and think that you're very strong, all the worse.
So these monks were adhimanikams.
They overestimated themselves.
It seems that there were 500 monks who received meditation technique from the Buddha and went off to practice.
And they, having lived in the forest for some time, they entered into the jhanas.
which are a meditation technique that the Buddha would often recommend.
But what's really interesting about this story, it gives one of these traditional examples of the commentarial position that it's not enough, and that it's easy to become lost and caught up by these positive meditation states.
And they thought to the earth themselves, With the non-arising of the defilements, we have completed and finished the duty of the renunciate life.
So they become enlightened.
That's the idea.
thinking to themselves that because the states of the jhanas are free from defilements, when you're in them, and when you're in them repeatedly, the calm and the peace means no arising of lust or aversion.
Or they might say there's some delusion, but there's certainly ignorance.
But the ignorance led them to think that they were enlightened.
And they said, let's go and tell the Buddha.
Let's go and see the Buddha and tell him of our attainment.
And so they traveled all the way and came to the outer gate, or the outer door of the Buddha's Kuti, or the outer gate of the monastery.
They arrived outside the gate.
The Buddha knew they were coming with his extraordinary vision and knowledge of things beyond the ordinary ken of ordinary people.
He said, it won't do for them to see me.
They won't do for them to see me.
Because they'll come and then I'll have to argue with them.
Let's show them indirectly.
He said, Ananda, tell them to go to such and such a cemetery, charnel ground.
See, in India they didn't have cemeteries.
They wouldn't bury people.
Burying would have...
There were reasons for not burying.
I can't remember what they were.
It was something very interesting.
It would have been very wrong to bury the body.
But anyway, so poor people, they would just throw the bodies in the charnel ground.
Some of them would have been old and decaying.
Some of them would have been fresh and new, mostly naked, men, women alike, young and old.
So the Buddha sent them there.
And they wandered along.
They said, that's fine.
Us being enlightened, we can go anywhere.
We're patient.
And so they got to the charnel ground, and they walked inside, and they were standing there for a bit.
And then they started to notice the corpses around them.
And sure enough, the disturbing sight many of them had never seen
dead bodies before, and the disturbing sight of rotting corpses cultivated in them aversion, agata, which is repugnance or dislike, disgust, revulsion.
And the young bodies, the young women, I mean, sorry, the new bodies, the fresh bodies of young beautiful women,
cultivated lust and passion in them.
And as they stood there waiting for the Buddha, thinking, oh, the Buddha's going to come and find us, they all realized that we still have this lust.
Then the Buddha came to them and said this verse.
He said, is it fitting that upon beholding such an assemblages of bones, you should take pleasure in the evil passion?
The English likes to embellish him a bit.
That you should give rise to raga, passion.
He chose passion, but it includes the aversion.
The aversion is also not suitable, not wholesome.
And then he gave this verse.
So it's actually relating to dead bodies, but the teaching in general, this kind of teaching, it's not just about the dead bodies.
We all have this nature.
Our eventual destination, the eventual destination of this physical body is the charnel ground, or the cemetery, or the crematorium.
We're all just bags of bones.
waiting to lie on the earth before long this body will lie will lie on the ground with consciousness having left it having departed
Useless, like a charred log.
I don't remember the poly.
So, what does this have to do with us?
How does this benefit us?
Well, a really interesting point about this, of course the simple one, is the potential for overestimation.
I mean, this shows the pitfalls of calm and tranquility.
I mean, not to be hard on tranquility meditation, but to refer to all of us.
I mean, there is that realization that Samatha meditation, the jhanas, will never be enough.
That it is possible to get caught up in them and to mistake them and have them be a cause for overestimation.
But even for all of us practicing insight meditation, so much of our practice is going to be how we estimate, how we esteem ourselves.
Conceit is something that takes a long time to overcome.
And so we'll constantly be overestimating, underestimating ourselves, both of which are problematic.
Underestimation leads to low confidence, leads to weak results.
if you get discouraged thinking that you're incapable of the practice.
Overestimation is dangerous because it leads to complacency.
One thing that's quite common of meditators in the center is to overestimate the results of their practice.
I mean, good results come from the practice, there's no question about that.
But one of the most common
observations once you leave the center is that the results were actually far more moderate than how it felt in the meditation center because here there's tranquility here there's calm here there is no there's no adversary there's no challenge to one's peace of mind
The defilements are likened to a snake in the grass.
If you look out on a field of grass, it looks quite calm, right?
It looks peaceful.
The mind is like that.
The ordinary mind doesn't seem capable of great evil or defilement.
But when you walk through the field and step on the snake, watch out as the snake comes out of the grass.
So especially with the states of tranquility, of trance, they are the calmest of the calm of all the risen states.
And so it's easy to think that that's all that's left in your mind.
Which is why it's important to understand that enlightenment doesn't mean the cessation of defilements.
The cessation of defilements can be temporary.
How do you know that they are gone?
Enlightenment means the wisdom that arises, the wisdom that destroys the potential for the defilements to arise.
So that's an important lesson for us to be aware, not to become complacent.
It's quite important that we're mindful of the calm states, and we see them for what they are without estimating, thinking that they mean something.
Oh, look at how calm I am.
That must be a good sign.
That must be a sign that I'm halfway there, or I'm already there, or hey, maybe I'm enlightened because of how calm I am.
Very easy to fall into that.
and not to overestimate our practice.
But another important lesson of this is what is a proper meditation practice and how challenging ourselves is a proper part of our meditation practice.
So first of all, this is a reassurance
when we practice difficult practices.
When we practice insight meditation it feels somewhat discouraging by how difficult it is, how challenging it is, how uncomfortable it is.
Here we have a good example of how being uncomfortable, being put in a situation that makes you uncomfortable is important.
Moreover, we have this interesting aspect that, or interesting fact or reality, that sometimes
The arising of the defilements is useful.
We're not talking about purposefully inducing them, saying, hey, I'll go do something that makes me angry.
And yet, putting yourself in a position where they can arise, I mean, this is what allows you to see who you are.
It allows you to see the reality.
It allows you to see the danger.
If you're never confronted with that which makes you angry or greedy, how can you see the danger, the problem?
How can you be spurred into action?
And so to some extent, as I was talking about earlier, our practice has to involve the arising and defilement.
Some people would say, you know, if you don't enter into the jhanas, how can you become enlightened?
One might argue that if you're always in the jhanas, how can you become enlightened?
Because you never get to see the problems and the misunderstandings that we have.
You can somehow feed them by thinking of things, thinking of reality as stable, as satisfying, as controllable, because the jhanas to some extent are.
You won't ever let go of samsara.
We shouldn't be afraid of the defilements.
It's not to say we want them to arise or that they're harmless.
They're harmful.
They're bad.
But part of our practice is to see how bad they are, how harmful they are.
And so our meditation has to, to some extent, take us out of our comfort zone.
And that includes taking us out of these calm states.
Meditation shouldn't be all calm.
It's a very good lesson for people who have cultivated Samatha practice not to be content or complacent and to go the extra step to undertake Insight Meditation.
It's reassurance for those of us who are undertaking Insight Meditation that even though our meditation might not be calm, we're learning a great deal about ourselves.
And we're really changing as we see the danger of clinging, of striving, of wishing and wanting and clinging and liking and disliking.
So this is just one example of that.
When you see the
these facts of life, the nature of our existence, and really learning to overcome it, seeing the disturbing aspects of life, seeing unpleasantness, seeing the non-beautiful, the asuba side of life.
as a challenge for us, and learning to overcome it.
This is an important part of our practice.
So, important for us to keep in mind, to be open to this.
So it's not to say that deep and tranquil meditation is not useful, or that being in a meditation center is not useful.
There's another reason why we push meditators.
We can't let you just stay here and be at peace meditating.
We have to make it difficult for you.
Because we need to learn to let go.
If it's comfortable, it's very easy to overestimate yourself, to get complacent and to reaffirm your attachment.
The best way to let go is to be challenged and to come to see, to be reminded.
of these facts of life, that we get old, sick and die, that we're hurt, that everything changes, that reality is chaotic, that there's always the potential for suffering if we have expectations or attachments.
So, another good verse, an interesting story.
It's one of these interesting ones where the story itself actually has more than the verse offers.
The verse is, of course, a poignant reminder that we're all going to get old, sick, and die, that this body is just a bundle of bones, not something to cling to.
there you go that's the Dhammapada for today thank you all for tuning in wish you all the best