Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada.
Today we continue on with verse number 98, which reads as follows.
Which means,
whether in a village or in the forest, whether in the sea or on dry land, wherever an enlightened one dwells, that is a delightful abode.
Then this verse was taught in
Regards to Revata, Revata who was a relative of Sariputta, the youngest brother of Sariputta.
So Sariputta had I think three sisters and three brothers and they all became monks.
All the brothers became monks, became bhikkhus, all of the sisters became bhikkhunis except for Revata who was too young.
And he was approaching his seventh birthday.
And so there was every expectation that he was going to follow in his older sibling's footsteps.
except the parents weren't so keen on this.
Sariputta's parents were Brahmins, and they actually were quite upset at Sariputta.
Before Sariputta died, he had to go back and stay with his mother and deal with her abuse.
Even though he was like the Buddha's chief disciple, he still had to go home and deal with the abuse of his mother for being a Buddhist monk, because it was something she disapproved of.
And so they tried to figure out a way how they could stop Rewata from becoming a monk so they wouldn't lose their last son to these heretic Buddhists.
And so they found a young girl, also seven years old.
Because at seven years old, then you're allowed to ordain as a novice.
So they knew that that's what was coming up.
And so they found a seven-year-old girl
And agreed with the family of this girl to marry the two of them.
And so they, as was the tradition among the Brahmins, they had an arranged marriage between these two seven-year-old children.
And so they were feeling quite proud of themselves and they got the marriage all set up and it came time they brought the two kids who really didn't know anything about anything, two seven-year-olds who had lived fairly sheltered lives.
And so they came to the marriage and they
Actually, I don't think they did the marriage.
It was some kind of rehearsal or some kind of blessing ceremony before the marriage.
I'm not sure.
I can't remember the exact details.
It's not so important.
But everyone was blessing the two children and they were saying, may you be as wise as this girl's grandmother.
They were talking about this grandmother who was sort of the elder in the family.
May you be as wise as her and may you both live to be as long as her.
And Rayavata was curious and he looked around and he asked, who is this grandmother that you're talking about?
And they pointed over to this woman who was 120 years old and her teeth were fallen out and she was bent and decrepit and barely able to walk or keep herself up.
And Revata was kind of shocked at this sight because he'd never seen someone quite so old or wrinkled or bent or out of shape.
He said, that's what old people look like?
And they said, yes.
They said, so wait, is that what she's going to look like when she's that age?
And they said, oh, if your wife is lucky to live that long.
But usually people die out a lot earlier.
die and he thought about this and people we have to die we get old he said what's the point and it hit him the way it had hit so many people including Sariputta and all of his other siblings and he said this must have been he said to himself this must have been what my older brother saw
And suddenly he had no desire to get married or live a lay life at all.
And he became intent in his mind on leaving the home life and becoming a monk.
But the family was having none of that and so they took him back and they were guarding him quite carefully on the way back.
So he pretended to have diarrhea and he had to go and use the bush.
And so they stopped and they watched him go into the bush, watched him come out again.
and he he saw that he couldn't he didn't have any chance to escape and so he did it again he said oh no i have to go again and finally a third time he did it and and he said and i'll be right out and so they left him and went back to the carriage and as soon as they left he ran away
And he ran to a group of monks who were living fairly close by and asked them to ordain him.
And they said, look, kid, we don't just ordain people.
You have to get permission from your parents and so on.
It's a real deal because we don't want to get in trouble with your family.
And he said, well then take me to my brother Upatissa.
And they said, we don't know anybody named Upatissa.
And he said, you guys know him as Sariputta, but he's my older brother.
And immediately they said, you're Sariputta's younger brother?
And he said, yes, what's your name?
My name is Rewata.
He said, oh.
And actually, Sariputta had told them about Rewata and said that if Rewata ever comes to you and asks you to ordain him, you consider that he has his parents' permission.
I am his parents as far as this goes because his parents have wrong views.
So what good are they?
What use is it seeking their permission?
It's an interesting sort of breaking of a rule, really.
Ignoring or using some kind of special privilege of the chief disciple to sort of ignore that rule that the Buddha had laid down.
With good reason, obviously, but it is a curious example of breaking the rule or not following the rule.
I'm bending the rule to suit one's purpose.
And so they ordained him.
And he became an arahant.
I can't remember whether it was when he was ordained or afterwards.
But he went to live off in the forest.
And Raywata became known as the one who lives in the forest.
Some kind of special forest that he lived in.
This forest with all of these thorns, it would drop, I think it would drop these seeds or these seed balls that had thorns on them.
I know in Thailand they have those anyway.
I was staying up on a mountain in Thailand once and
I got lost up in the mountains, and I was wearing sandals, and so I was climbing up and down trying to find my way back, and I got so terribly scratched up because of these little, partially because of these thorn balls, so...
Point being, he was someone who lived in a place that was very hard to get to, was very remote, was the sort of place that no one would bother him.
He was the kind of person who was looking just for solitude.
And so he went there to a place where no one would come for other reasons, like looking for some kind of produce or some kind of...
some kind of edible or this kind of this or that.
There was just not an accessible forest that people would want to go to.
Nobody would go there for fun or sport or hunting.
There was no reason to go there, so it was a perfect place for him to find peace.
It was just a place that he decided to live.
It could also have to do with past life karma.
and so that's the story of Rewata sort of in a nutshell but the story of this verse is in regards to his dwelling and there's sort of this magical one of these magical happenings where the Buddha came to see Rewata and he brought all of the monks with him he brought a large retinue of monks with him
And when they got there, Rewada had transformed the place into a comfortable place to live for all these monks with kutis and everything.
And they say he had done this with magical powers.
At the very least you could say that he made it, he had the power of mind such that he's kind of hypnotized people or all the monks were kind of
unable to or or were able to ignore the the hardship because of his power of mind he made it so that everyone was comfortable there let's say that we want to be a vague about it i mean we can say literally in the text that says he created a monastery from his using his mind whatever that's not really the point but um it's how the story goes and uh
And there were these two older monks who were, I think, criticizing Revatta by saying, how can he possibly meditate living in such opulent conditions?
As they sort of got the sense that this was real, that it really was an overly comfortable place to live.
They said, oh, Revatta, he's supposed to be this austere monk living off in the forest.
What's he doing living like this and pretending to live off in seclusion?
And so they had this, again, this criticism of the arahants.
And then all the monks left.
And these two monks who had criticized Revata forgot, ended up forgetting something in the monastery.
And so they had to go back for it.
And when they got back, after all the monks had left, they couldn't find the monastery.
And they were looking around and all they saw were thorns.
It was just a horrible place.
There was no monastery, nowhere, no pads, no comfortable place to live.
And then they found their belongings hung up on a tree.
Not where they had left them, but someone had hung them up on a tree.
I guess Rewata had put them there or whatever.
And so they picked up their belongings all confused and went back on their way.
and they traveled all the way back to Savatthi, and when they got to Savatthi, they went to see Visakha, because Visakha was someone who would always give rice porridge to monks who were traveling.
So whenever any monk reached Savatthi, they would go to see Visakha and go to her house.
Now, Visakha found these two monks coming, and so she thought she'd ask them where they'd been, and she found that they'd been to see Revatta, and she said, oh, is...
I've heard about the place where he lives.
What was it like?
And they said, you've heard that it's a nice place to live.
He said, it's horrible.
It's this forest of thorns and bushes and so on.
And
So she's, oh, yeah, it's really such a remote place and hard to get to.
And she got this sense that it was just a horrible, horrible place, or a very difficult place, a very remote and uncomfortable place to live.
And so then they went on their way.
And then these two other monks, who had been there with the Buddha and hadn't gone back and seen what it was really like,
They came to see Visakha and told her a completely opposite story.
They said, oh, it's just a wonderful place.
It's just the most comfortable, peaceful, pleasant place to live that you can imagine.
And so now Isaka was confused because, well, not exactly confused, but she knew something was up because she had gotten two completely contradictory stories about this place.
And she thought, well, I'll go and ask the Buddha, figuring that the Buddha would tell her if there was some kind of magic involved.
Something's going on here.
Something's fishy.
Well, how are these two people, two groups of people seeing something completely different?
So she went to see the Buddha, expecting him to kind of explain it, and he didn't explain it.
She asked, you know, how is it that some people found it very... How is it that one group of monks described it as being this place of hard, you know, thorn trees and...
just sounds like a very uncomfortable place to live.
But then these two other monks said that while they were there, they felt quite comfortable.
How can that be?
And the Buddha said, oh, well, wherever arahants live, it's a beautiful place to be, whether it's in thorn trees, in a thorn tree forest, or whether it's in the village, or whether it's in the middle of the ocean, the bottom of the ocean, or on dry land, wherever it might be.
It's a great place because it's where our hands live.
So that's the verse today.
That's the story and that's the verse and that's the story behind it.
There's not too much to say here about this verse, or the story really, but what we can say is the importance of being around and engaged with people who are meditating.
There's two things I guess we can say.
One is this, the importance of being around people and how beneficial it is.
how a place is worth living because there are people doing good things.
If you're in a place full of wicked, evil, mean people, it's going to be a real problem for you and for your spiritual cultivation, spiritual development.
There will always be this drag.
You'll always be drawn into conflict and difficulty, suffering.
Makes it very hard to progress, very hard to find peace of mind and clarity of mind.
Much easier to be clouded in the mind.
And the other thing is this idea that it doesn't matter where you live.
The other side of it is you can live in the perfect place to meditate.
You can live in a comfortable place.
You can live deep in the forest, but without proper guidance or at least suitable friendship with people who are meditating, people who are doing good things, you're better off living in the city.
This is a clear place where the Buddha says it's not about living in the forest.
It's much more about associating with the right people.
So you shouldn't feel bad that you have to live in amongst society.
The question is what sort of society you incline towards.
What sort of friends you cultivate and associate with.
Because we emulate, all of our learning comes from, or much of our learning anyway, comes from emulating others or taking from others, our sharing and our setting examples.
So when we're surrounded by people who are a bad example, it's very difficult for us not to fall into old patterns and problematic patterns of behavior.
So associate with people with the highest sort of person.
Dwell where there are arahants.
So the upshot of this verse is that most of us are living in the wrong place.
We have to find a place where we can associate with arahants.
I know this isn't to go around looking for someone.
Are you in our hand?
Is that person in our hand?
That's just a remark by the Buddha.
Because it doesn't work that way.
You can't just ask and people are going to tell you.
It's not likely to happen.
But what you will find is that when you are around them, things get better, not worse.
You progress in the practice.
When you're around people who are also practicing, people who have practiced, people who know things about the practice, then things get better, not worse.
So that's the general gist that we should take away from it.
We should not think of ourselves that we can become enlightened on our own without guidance.
It's much easier, much more likely that we'll get on the wrong path and get a wrong understanding of enlightenment and easy to get lost and mistake what is not the path for what is the path.
It's very easy because it's a path we've never taken before.
Having a guide is indispensable.
So that's the Dhammapada for today.
Thank you all for tuning in.
Wishing you all the best.