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The Dhammapada: Gems of Wisdom (3 of 3)

Welcome to our third session. We're continuing to explore Gil Fronsdal's translation of the Dhammapada. We started by going over the main themes of the texts. So, various contrasts—the way wisdom is used to discern between skillful and unskillful alternatives, and also these key flavors of energy and peace.

Last time, we delved into the Buddha's analysis of the human condition, and the way he acknowledges right up front that it's challenging to live a human life. We often suffer in various ways. Everybody is subject to the difficulties that come with old age, with illness, and with death. But more immediately, we suffer from our own unskillful mind states. Things that are going on right here, right now. He locates the root of all of these problems in our own heart and mind, and in our way of reacting to the world and relating to the world.

But it's not all bad news. That's the analysis of the challenges; the acknowledgment that there are challenges. But he also offers a vision of being able to become free from these various kinds of suffering and unsatisfactoriness, collectively called dukkha^[1]. There is a possibility of liberation from what is binding the heart. And then he offers a path of practice, a prescription for getting from here to there, so that we don't feel like it's just way out of our reach. That is the Noble Eightfold Path, which includes all the different aspects of human life: it includes ethical conduct, the meditation and cultivation of wisdom, a changing of our understanding of how life works.

The folds of the path—just as a review, or for those not familiar—are Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. These eight are divided up into those three areas that I named. The first two—view and intention—are part of wisdom, are part of our understanding. Then speech, action, and livelihood—the next three—are part of ethical conduct, Sila. And then effort, mindfulness, and concentration are part of the cultivation of the mind. They're the three Samadhi steps of the path. The trainings are collectively Sila, Samadhi, and Paññā, placed into this eightfold path.

It's maybe worth mentioning that the early Buddhist teachings that are found in the Pali canon, of which the Dhammapada is one, don't have as much to say about the specifics of what will happen after liberation. What we will do with our liberation, essentially, we'll definitely be leading a life of non-harming. But what that looks like is up to us. There's a trust that it will be clear to the practitioner how to express freedom. The Buddha focuses on how to get there, because that's a big enough task in and of itself.

Recall also that I had asked you to come prepared with one verse that you found inspiring and one verse that you found was either challenging or stretched your understanding of what dharma practice entails, just a little reminder from the teachings for today. You'll have a chance to do it if you haven't done it yet, but we'll get to it later.

Chapter Four: Flowers

In talking last time about the Buddha's analysis of the human condition, we looked at some chapters through the broad lens of the Four Noble Truths. This time, we're going to zero in on what happens as we engage with the fourth truth, the truth of the path. What does happen when we start walking this path, actually doing the practices, studying the teachings, applying ourselves to what the Buddha suggested?

One thing that happens is that there's ongoing refinement as we begin to have an experiential understanding of practice, and as we study the teachings more fully. In particular, one ability that we gain is to have some flexibility with the language of the dharma. When the dharma is all hypothetical or theoretical, or when we're not familiar with how these wisdom teachings work in our own mind and body, we tend to read the terminology literally, and to interact with the teachings only with our cognitive mind. This approach can be fine. In some cases, it's even useful; we do need to think about the teachings and look at terminology, kind of what the definitions are.

But I want to start us off with the first chapter for today, which was Chapter Four: Flowers. This has some nuance because the whole chapter is just called "Flowers," but the flowers are used as an image for different things in different stanzas. In many of the stanzas, the flower has a positive connotation of the beauty of the dharma. For example, in the opening verses, I'll just read verse 45: "One in training will master this world, and the realms of Yama and the gods, one in training will select a well-taught dharma teaching as a skilled person selects a flower." Not surprisingly, flowers are often used as a positive image because they are a symbol of beauty in many cultures. We see that verses 51 and 52 also link well-spoken words to the image of a beautiful flower.

But in verses 46, 47, and 48, the flowers represent sensual pleasures that one is relating to in an unskillful way. It's a different image. I'll just read verse 47: "Death sweeps away the person obsessed with gathering flowers, as a great flood sweeps away a sleeping village." In India, the sweeping away of villages by floodwaters is very real; that was not an idle image, people would know exactly what it meant. Note that the verse uses the word "obsessed." This means that the person is really focused on the acquisition of sense pleasures, to the degree that we would consider them asleep, not really paying attention well to life, but just focused on gaining these pleasures.

It actually happens in more subtle ways also. I used to volunteer in a hospice, sitting with people who were near the end of life. I was amazed that there were people well into their 90s who were a little bit outraged or surprised that they had to die—you know, it was their turn. It wasn't maybe an obsession, and in some cases, it was nice to see the life going on. But there is also a way that we can be a little bit blind to the truth of how things work. We're focused on certain other areas of life.

In verse 53, the flowers again have a positive connotation, but in this case, they represent the potential of a human life to be used for the cultivation of various skillful actions and mind states. Verse 53: "Just as from a heap of flowers many garlands can be made, so you with your mortal life should do many skillful things." They're examples of the same image being used in different ways.

This occurs in other areas also. For example, sometimes people wonder about the term "stream entry," which is used for the first stage of awakening; it's when a person enters the stream of the dharma, which is the Noble Eightfold Path. People hear, "Oh, stream entry, you enter the stream of the dharma," but then they hear that the dharma goes "against the stream," which means dharma practice goes against the stream of habitual karma: greed, hatred, and delusion unfolding. We also hear about floods, and how the mind is trying to reach dry ground and become an island. Aren't all these different water images inconsistent? Well, yes, they are. But that's okay, because they occur in different contexts.

I think sometimes of child development. I have observed in children that there's a stage where they're trying to figure out how things work, and they want everything to be consistent. They can make funny connections by taking things literally and applying something from one case to another case, not understanding that it's a different context. Then, later in our cognitive development, as we move toward adulthood, we become capable of understanding more nuance in how things work. Yes, technically, they're inconsistent, but it's a different context.

It's interesting to see that even though we're physical adults, we still go through this process spiritually. We might have parts of ourselves that are spiritually immature and have this same way of applying literal thinking and demanding that everything be consistent in the spiritual realm, in reading texts, for example. But as we go through the maturing process spiritually, we become able to see that things can be different in different cases. That helps us understand religious teachings more maturely and more deeply.

It's interesting, by the way, that this word "fool"—remember one of the contrasts is between fools and sages. The word for fool, bala, also means childish. So when he says "foolish people," sometimes he means just spiritually immature. That's not a label of how we inherently are, but it's the stage we're at, and we're going to develop. We will grow up spiritually, and that's what we do along the path.

In some cases, going back to chapter four about the flowers, the flowers are actually literal. In verse 54, the scent of virtue is contrasted with the scent of actual flowers; the scent of virtue can go upwind, but not real scents from flowers.

We might find some resonance in this first kind of nuance that I'm talking about with a teaching from the Anguttara Nikaya that I'd like to read. This is AN 2:24: "Monks, these two misrepresent the Tathagata [meaning the Buddha]. Which two? One who explains a discourse whose meaning requires interpretation as a discourse whose meaning is explicit. And one who explains a discourse whose meaning is explicit as a discourse whose meaning requires interpretation. These two misrepresent the Tathagata."

That's interesting. I interpret this to mean that sometimes the dharma teachings are literal, the Buddha is really telling something exact as it is. And sometimes it's more metaphorical. Part of our discernment, our wisdom, is to know: is this teaching literal or metaphorical? That will help a lot.

Chapter 23: The Elephant

Another chapter that we read for today also contains a specific metaphor like flowers, and that's Chapter 23: The Elephant. This one is actually a fairly consistent image of the elephant as representing spiritual strength. The word is actually Naga, which some of you may have heard, because it has other meanings. A Naga, in ancient Indian mythical understanding, is a water serpent, a mythical being. Nagas appear in other suttas as these large water serpents, very majestic. In addition, it represents the arahant. Arahants are sometimes called Nagas—spiritually strong, a large, strong presence. An awakened person or an arahant can also be called a Naga. You might find the chapter has a little bit more juice if you pick up this resonance between elephants and arahants. You might read it a little differently.

We can also notice and appreciate that this chapter contains many images of strength and also renunciation, and ends with a long verse that's all about happiness. Again, we see the flavor of energy and heroism represented in the strength and the renunciation, and the flavor of peace or santi represented in all the images of happiness. As I said in the first session, it's very difficult to distinguish happiness and peace in Buddhism.

Chapter 8: Thousands

Let's go on to Chapter 8: Thousands. We could just call this the chapter on numbers. Through a series of comparisons, the dharma and dharma practice are held up as far better than various mundane alternatives. I find in this chapter that somehow through the use of specific and somewhat hyperbolic numbers, it ends up invoking an idea of the innumerable benefits of the dharma. It's meant to be a lot.

For example, verse 100: "Better than a thousand meaningless statements is one meaningful word, which, having been heard, brings peace." Or verse 113: "Better than a hundred years lived without seeing the arising and passing of things is one day lived, seeing the arising and passing." The whole chapter has various references to numbers, usually to point out the power and the innumerable benefits of the dharma.

Chapter 19: The Just

I want to look a bit then at Chapter 19: The Just, which is a very interesting chapter. This chapter asks us to look beyond superficial qualities or hasty understandings of the spiritual life. It gives quite specific pointers to qualities and actions that we need to undertake, which might be a little different than expected. Every verse negates something and replaces it with an explanation of what is better. I find the style interesting, and the combination of the items that are pointed to makes me think more carefully about the teachings.

For example, in verse 258: "One is not wise only because one speaks a lot. One who is peaceful, without hate, and fearless is said to be wise." What caught my attention there is the word fearless. It's not that we would expect a wise person to be fearful. But nonetheless, the Buddha is highlighting—he's picking out just three qualities of someone who is wise, and he chooses peaceful, without hate, and fearless.

Then we go on to verse 259: "One does not uphold the dharma only because one speaks a lot. Having heard even a little, if one perceives the dharma with one's own body, and is never negligent to the dharma, then one is indeed an upholder of the dharma." We have a contemplation there: what does it mean to perceive the dharma with one's own body? Is that a literal phrase? Or is it a metaphorical one in this case? I don't have an answer for you there; I'll leave it as a contemplation because it's quite important to discover in our practice.

Now, we might think from the examples that I just gave that the Buddha is praising silence over a lot of talk, because both of those said that one shouldn't speak a lot. But there is something different in verses 268-269. These say: "Not by silence does an ignorant fool become a sage. The wise person who, as if holding a set of scales, selects what's good and avoids what's evil, is for that reason a sage. Whoever can weigh these two sides of the world is, for that reason, called a sage."

There's an interesting endnote to this verse. It points out that there's a play on words which we miss in English. The word for silence, monena, and "one weighs," munati, play off the word for sage, which is Muni. That literally means "silent one." In ancient times, around the time of the Buddha, a Muni was someone who undertook a vow of silence as a form of religious practice. But we can see that, as usual, the Buddha is not so impressed with outer practices, like a vow of silence. He wants to know about the person's inner qualities as a real measure of their worth. Are they wise enough to know what's good and what's not? That matters more than taking a religious vow of silence. By the way, you may have heard the term Shakyamuni, referring to the Buddha. That means "sage of the Sakyan clan." He didn't take a vow of silence, so he was using Muni more broadly as sage.

The last verses in this chapter are particularly pointed, verses 271-272: "Not with virtue or religious practice, great learning, attaining Samadhi, dwelling alone, or thinking 'I touch the happiness of renunciation unknown by ordinary people' should you, Monk, rest assured, without having destroyed the toxins." The last line being a reference to full awakening. All of the things named are positive signposts of progress: great learning, virtue, samadhi, having insight—these are all good. But the verse warns against deciding that we're done too early, essentially. We need to keep watching even as we walk the path.

Chapter 20: The Path

That brings us to Chapter 20: The Path. This one contains a famous, oft-quoted verse, 276: "It's up to you to make strong effort. The Tathagata is merely telling you how. Following the path, those absorbed in meditation will be freed from Māra's bonds." Remember, Māra is the forces of distraction or delusion. In early Buddhism, there's no notion that one person can literally save another. We all do our own work. We saw that same idea back in Chapter 12: Oneself that we read for the first week. We also see this flavor of energy or heroism; it's up to us to make strong efforts, resulting in the freedom of peace in the end.

The next few verses include an interesting phrase: "one becomes disenchanted with suffering." And of course, the word there is dukkha: one becomes disenchanted with dukkha. First, be aware that disenchantment is a good thing on the Buddhist path. When we're enchanted, it means that we're under the spell of something. We're deluded, we're not seeing it clearly. We're entranced. We've been seduced, perhaps by the pretty things of the world, or by conventional ways of seeing things; maybe we have fallen asleep. Disenchantment, nibbida, is to break the spell of that and to see clearly. We wake up, and we typically realize something is not as it appeared on the surface.

What does it mean to become disenchanted with dukkha? We can reflect: "Am I enchanted in some way with dissatisfactoriness or suffering in life?" It's really interesting to contemplate what that would mean. I would say there's at least a couple of different dimensions. One is that we could realize that no experience is ultimately satisfying. When we're enchanted, we think that certain pleasures are going to do it for us. "If I just get this one thing, or get rid of this one thing, then I'll be happy." But it doesn't actually work that way. How many decades have you lived, and has it worked yet, to get rid of that one thing, or to get that one thing? It's a deeper problem actually than that. The various experiences of the world are not capable of being ultimately satisfying for us. We have mistaken what's unsatisfactory for something that's ultimately satisfying.

Another form of healthy disenchantment is to wake up to the various ways that we're perpetuating our own suffering through various familiar mental habits. Common examples are worrying, complaining, envy, seeing ourselves as a victim. It can be a very sobering and humbling moment when we realize that no one is actually making us perpetuate those patterns. We're simply enchanted with the notion that we need to be that way somehow. That doesn't mean that it will immediately go away when we realize that; it takes some practice. But the disenchantment allows us to eventually let go of dukkha. We have to be disenchanted with dukkha if we're going to eventually let go of it. Back to Chapter 3 on the mind, the Buddha locates the source of our struggle in our own heart, our own mind.

Chapter 21: Miscellaneous

There's so much to say about the readings this week. Chapter 21: Miscellaneous includes some heterogeneous verses that may not have fit in other places. I just want to mention two of them, these metaphorical ones that are shocking in their literal form.

Verses 294-295: "Having killed mother, father, two warrior kings, the kingdom and its subjects, the brahman undisturbed, moves on. Having killed mother, father, two learned kings, and a tiger, the brahman, undisturbed, moves on."

Those verses appear just like that in the original text. You might think, "Wow, what is that referring to?" There is some interpretation in the Dhammapada commentary. The idea is that mother is craving, father is conceit, and this is an extended allegory. The two kings are eternalism and annihilationism, and so forth. Probably the Buddha was sometimes just trying to wake people up. If people are falling asleep during the dharma talk, and then you hear this, it's like, "What?!" and then you realize, "Okay, wait, it's a metaphor."

Along these lines, we could also revisit a verse that we had in the readings for the first week, which is verse 97, from Chapter 7: The Arahant. Here's the verse: "The person who has gone beyond faith, knows the Unmade, has severed the link, destroyed the potential for rebirth, and eliminated clinging, is the ultimate person." This one points to the arahant—a strong example of freedom. But the endnotes point out that all the words could be read in a different way, and it could be given a very different meaning. It's a pun, basically. An alternative translation is: "The person who is without faith and gratitude, who breaks into homes, who has destroyed opportunities, and who has vomited is an audacious person, or perhaps is the ultimate servant." That would have had some shock value when reading it, if it could be understood in these two different ways from the same Pali words. The Buddha had some sense of reaching into people and waking them up.

Chapter 21 also includes a verse that may help you understand all these references to sensual pleasure and sensual desire as evil, harmful activities. Often lay people feel that there's too much heavy emphasis on that and they tend to tune it out. It's the opening verse of Chapter 21: "If, by giving up a lesser happiness, one could experience greater happiness, a wise person would renounce the lesser to behold the greater." That doesn't sound so bad, does it? This is another discernment between lesser and greater happiness in our lives. Sensual happiness goes in the lesser category. It's far inferior to the happiness of ethical conduct, of generosity, of kindness, of compassion, of Samadhi, of wisdom. Those things are all better than any sense pleasure you could have.

Sometimes, we say, "Well, can't I have both?" Yes, you can in some cases; it's not always the case that we have to let go of something to get something else. But sometimes we have to release our attachment or obsession in something in order to get something better. For the Buddha, renunciation means letting go of something not as good, giving something up to get something better. We might have to give up some of our comforts in order to grow in dharma wisdom and deeper forms of happiness. Verse 290 is worth contemplating quite deeply, even as lay people.

That's a start on what we find in the chapters for today as it gets into some of the nuance and subtleties of walking the path.

Q&A and Reflections

Eric: I just had a question on verse 412. What was meant by the adjective dustless?

Kim Allen: Let me get to that one. Here's 412: "Sorrowless, dustless and pure." Sometimes the defilements that come into the mind, various unwholesome mind states, are called dust. Greed, hatred, and delusion, the five hindrances—things like that. The reason for that is that they obscure the mind. They're kind of along the same lines as likening the hindrances to disturbances of water where we're not able to see our reflection clearly. Dust would be like a disturbance on a mirror surface or on our eyes. Sometimes it is said that when the Buddha first awakened, he despaired of teaching as he looked at the world and said, "Oh, the world is going the wrong way." And a god came down and said, "Don't worry, there are some beings that have little dust in their eyes. You'll be able to teach them." And then the Buddha said, "Okay, I'll start with them."

Sharon: Verse 302 in the Miscellaneous chapter. It's referring to a traveler. So, it's not a traveler on the path, apparently?

Kim Allen: No, it's referring to the wandering on in samsara^[2]. This is someone who is just wandering on through the realms of existence, taking rebirth again and again and again. The word samsara actually refers to a verb that literally means "the wandering on." The English word "traveler" is used there for someone who is doing this wandering on.

Carlotta: I came across several verses about aloneness. Verse 305: "Sitting alone, resting alone, walking alone, untiring and alone." Aloneness is stressed, given a lot of credit. But at the same time, it doesn't give me the opportunity to grow, because there are no challenges when you're alone. Growing many times takes place when someone pushes your buttons. I wonder if you can comment on that?

Kim Allen: That's a great question. What comes to mind is a story from the suttas where a monk comes to the Buddha and says, "I am a master of seclusion, because I live alone. I do alms round alone, I eat alone, and I meditate alone." The Buddha said, "Well, being alone, that's one way that you can do seclusion. But another way is that you're always independent in your mind and heart. Even whether you're with other people or not, you have the ability to be mindful, present, clear, uphold virtue, and do skillful actions of body, speech, and mind." He tells the monk a deeper kind of aloneness is to be able to be alone with others, where we don't fall into the social scene that's going on, but retain our awareness within it. I think that's a distinct form of practice that you're pointing to. At some point, we have to test our practice; you don't just learn it at the retreat center, you have to go out into your family or the world and apply what you've learned. So we could read this as having both of those dimensions. There's room for literal aloneness, but there's also the aloneness that we can carry into situations of interaction.

Lila: I wonder if you could briefly describe the distinctions, if there are any, between an arahant and a brahman. And then I wonder if you could comment on the best way to approach reading the Dhammapada as part of your practice.

Kim Allen: As to your first question, in the last chapter, 26: The Brahman, the Buddha is redefining the term brahman to be an arahant. In ancient Indian culture, the Brahmins were the hereditary religious class that were doing a form of religion that later became Hinduism. They had a sense of themselves as being the main spiritual people. The Buddha was redefining them from their hereditary status to mean the pinnacle of his spiritual discipline, which would be the arahant. When he says, "That person I call a Brahmin," he's referring to someone who has done his practices fully.

As to how to use the Dhammapada, it is okay to just read it through linearly, just with the understanding that it's not going to fulfill our linear mind. I kind of like skimming through and looking for a verse that catches my attention. I have a lot of trust that when my mind is mindful, I will see certain verses and say, "Oh wow: 'The craving of a person who lives negligently spreads like a creeping vine.'" I wait until I see something and I trust that what I see has some relevance for my practice. Another way is to read very slowly on a given topic. You select a chapter, like happiness, and then just read that chapter again and again, slowly, and let it soak in until new layers of meaning start to be revealed.

Breakout Group Reflections

Maria: I had listened to Gil's translation, but I didn't have the print in front of me, so I was looking at a different one. This is in chapter eight, verse 109. It says, "To one ever eager to revere and serve the elders, these four blessings accrue: long life and beauty, happiness, and power." We were talking about the elders, and whether they meant people with more experience as well as people who are older. And then there was an interesting thing about power versus strength.

Kim Allen: There's always much to learn from different translations. The texts are in Pali, and then we have these different English renderings. The one that Gil uses is "worthy people" instead of "elders." It's implying people who are wise. That could be somebody older than us with more experience, or somebody who has gained a lot of wisdom through their own life experience, even if they're not elderly yet. Regarding strength and power, some people don't like the word power because it's been given bad implications, while some people think strength is kind of wimpy. But the Buddha is always pointing toward personal qualities. To have strength or power in a personal sense is to be self-possessed, and able to manage your mind and your actions in the world, and not to get pulled by our desires or other people's provocations. It's to have that strength of always having a choice about how to respond.

Marianne: I had a quick question about what the commentaries are.

Kim Allen: Buddhist texts like the Nikayas are the original versions that were put together after the death of the Buddha. But Buddhist literature doesn't end there. As Buddhism was being established and spreading, there started being universities and people interpreting the texts and writing down their interpretations. There are now some official commentaries that have survived on each of the Nikayas. They're not considered technically part of the Pali canon because they're the later interpretive literature, but in the modern Theravada tradition, they're often used to understand the early texts. This is ancient literature, anywhere from a couple of hundred up to a thousand years after the time of the Buddha. Those of you who have heard of the text called the Visuddhimagga, that is a famous commentary by Buddhaghosa. The Visuddhimagga, the path of purification, is a long text that explains one way to do dharma practice. There is also a specific commentary on the Dhammapada that includes a lot of stories about how the verses came about.

Guided Meditation

Let's do a short meditation to interact with the texts in a different way. Settle into a posture where you'll be able to sit comfortably. Bring the attention inward, closing the eyes. Softening the eyes, softening the jaw, letting the shoulders sink in. Softening the belly, releasing tension in the hands, legs, and feet.

Bring mindfulness up in the mind. Awareness of the body, the mind, and just allowing attention to be present with what's here. Sensations in the body, maybe an emotion, maybe thoughts. Not focusing on any particular thing, but just allowing each thing to be known. If the mind gets caught up in a thought, as soon as you notice, just release that and go back to being with the flow of experience.

Broaden the mind to imagine that the mind is like the sky. It's a broad space of awareness in which objects can arise and pass, experiences can come and go. We're not so focused on the particular objects, but using part of our attention to just sense this broad sky-like awareness. It can be a restful way of meeting experience.

"Whoever here has overcome attachments for both merit and evil, and who is sorrowless, dustless, and pure, I call brahman. One for whom nothing exists in front, behind, and in between. Who has no clinging. Who has nothing, I call a brahman."

Just letting the mind rest and release.

Reflections on Rebirth and Freedom

I thought it might be helpful for me to say a little bit about the teaching on rebirth. This is a topic that Western teachers often avoid in dharma groups, and in some ways, this does a disservice. It will have to be only a little bit that I say, because it's a large teaching with a significant historical and cultural dimension.

In the early tradition, there is this idea of rebirth, which is distinct from two similar-sounding ideas. First, it's distinct from reincarnation, which is an idea from the Tibetan tradition where a person is so spiritually advanced that they have some choice about their next lifetime. In contrast, rebirth is a natural process that occurs for all beings when one set of the five aggregates (mind and body) ends and another one begins. It's subject to karmic laws, so it's conditioned and ethical in character.

Rebirth is also distinct from transmigration, which was another philosophy of the Buddha's time. Transmigration means that there is some "thing" that's moving from here to there. But the Buddha rejected the idea of an immortal soul or consciousness that continues from one life to the next. The idea of an existing entity is one extreme, and the idea that death annihilates everything is another extreme. The Buddha taught a middle way between these extremes. It's the teaching on dependent arising that explains how there can be a continuation without any one thing continuing.

To understand the Buddhist teachings, it's good to understand that the flow of experience is essentially ethical in character. There are natural laws in the universe, like karma, that govern how volitional actions lead to suffering or to happiness based on their ethical valence. Verses one and two of the Dhammapada describe that quite succinctly. We're continuously conditioning our mind through our actions of body, speech, and thought. If you're caught up in anger for two hours, you've practiced anger for two hours, deep into that rut.

At any given moment, we receive the effects from the moment before, but there could always be something coming in from farther in the past. That's why karma is not completely predictable. The moment of death works like that too; it's one more moment in the flow. The momentum that we have in experience, if the mind is not fully liberated, flows into a new life, a completely different body and mind, in a realm of being that's determined by the ethical quality of the mind at the moment of death.

The key point is that the Buddha does not locate freedom from suffering in any of the conditioned realms. There's nowhere you can be reborn that's free of suffering. All realms are ultimately impermanent because they're based on this flow of karma. Heaven is not forever, hell is not forever. Freedom is getting off the round, stopping that cycle. How do we do that? We release greed, hatred, and delusion in the mind, which are the agents of rebirth.

What happens to a Buddha or arahant at death if they're free? That was one of the questions that the Buddha refused to answer, because it distracts us. We can say that freedom does not mean finally being annihilated, nor does it mean finally living forever. But it does mean the end of greed, hatred, and delusion, and that is pretty darn good.

Inevitably, as we practice, we're going to have to shift our understanding of what's going on. The path to a better life is one thing, and the path to awakening is distinct from that—they overlap for a while, but not completely. The texts that we read are like the finger that points to the moon. We really want to see the moon and not the finger. When we read in the texts things that seem paradoxical or challenging to us, we just sit with the idea that maybe there's something more to be learned here below the surface.

For example, verses 266-267 in The Just say: "Whoever sets aside both merit and evil lives the chaste life and goes through the world deliberately is called a mendicant." Setting aside both merit and evil? We also had that same language in verse 412. There are numerous verses in the Dhammapada about distinguishing those two and choosing the meritorious side. We find that there's a dimension of freedom that is somehow beyond these different divisions. To walk the path, we need to be discerning what's wholesome and what's not, but we're eventually getting to some point where those distinctions fall away. It's a matter of knowing the difference between the tools that we're using, and then finally going beyond those.

I think you'll keep seeing things in the Dhammapada if you read it again in a few months, or a few years, or a few decades. It helps to read the suttas with great humility. They contain so many layers of meaning, and they keep meeting us no matter how deep our practice goes. This path has so much to offer and it just keeps unfolding. Bhikkhu Bodhi says there's only two things you have to do to awaken. One is to start, and the second is to continue. I think that's pretty good.

We will conclude by dedicating the merit of our time together. We learned a lot about merit in this text. One of the little rituals that we do is to imagine that all the goodness that we've generated together will go forward and spread outward to benefit other beings. It will come out naturally through our actions of body, speech, thought, understanding, wisdom, and compassion in the world. It will ripple out from there in ways that we can't even know or see. We go forward with the wish that all beings might find happiness. All beings might find peace, and all beings everywhere be free. Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful day.