This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The Dhammapada: Gems of Wisdom (2 of 3)

Introduction

Welcome to everyone who is just signing on now; it's nice to see you again. We're going to continue to explore Gil Fronsdal's^[1] translation of the Dhammapada.

I want to remind you, as we're getting started, that part of reading this text is getting used to its language. Sometimes the language can sound a little bit stark. The terminology for this week particularly includes words like evil, defilement, and corruption. As we get familiar with the language, we can look beyond particular terms to ask, "What is the spiritual teaching that's being offered here? And how might it apply in my own life, in order to become more peaceful and free?" Hopefully, that's doable, but that is often a real issue with reading these early texts.

The topic for today is "waking up." I meant that in the initial sense where we become conscious of the human condition—what it is that we're up against in our life, and how our usual strategies for coping with life can be quite fragile, and sometimes ineffective. That's a lot of what brings people to practice, actually: the realization of what we're up against in life, or the realization that how we are doing things doesn't seem to be working very well. That helps that initial waking up, being ready to practice, and being open to the teachings.

The chapters that we read for today have a greater focus on ideas that could arouse in people the inspiration or the urgency to practice. To read something I wrote from the homework assignment, we might think of phrases like "warnings of trouble" or "seeing what we try to avoid," or more positively, "learning to see differently from conventional ideas of happiness," just in case we find that the conventional ones aren't working for us as well. Both of these rouse our energy to wake up and inspire us toward the goal of practice. We'll see both sides of that.

Already, we have another contrast: urgency and inspiration. They are similar, but not the same. In the case of urgency, the Buddha is lighting a fire under people to wake them (or us) up from the dream of sensual pleasures, and living for pleasant experiences while trying to avoid unpleasant ones—which we're encouraged to do by society. Most people find that it's not quite enough. We could say that urgency is related to that first savor we talked about last time: energy, or viriya^[2], or heroism.

In the case of inspiration, the Buddha also offers a vision of what it is possible to do when we wake up and begin to practice. There is something much better that we could be aiming for than just making our life relatively pleasant. This relates to that second savor of peace, or santi^[3], that we talked about last time.

So we have the twin movements of moving away from dukkha^[4] and moving toward the end of dukkha. They're really the same movement. I've sometimes seen them depicted as the front and back of a hand, going in the same direction. But, of course, to do that we would need the wisdom to discern the difference between what is dukkha and what is the end of dukkha—what is going toward dukkha and what is going away from it. Dukkha being suffering, unsatisfactoriness, unreliability, and the challenges of life.

Recall also that I had asked you to come prepared with a verse that you found inspiring and a verse that you found puzzling in some dharmic way, just from the chapters that we read for today. We'll get to those later.

What is the Problem?

Let's look a little bit at what we might call, "What is the problem?" That doesn't mean "what's wrong with you" or "why are you doing it wrong?" Instead, "What is the problem?" refers to the Buddha giving his diagnosis of the ills of the world or the universe, the deep and very real challenges of the human condition.

Many people find the sense of this to be refreshing. I know I did when I started practice. There's a certain clarity to just saying up front what the problems are. But of course, it's also sometimes challenging for us to hear, because it turns out that many of the problems are in our own heart. We have to do the work of working with that and changing it. We like to think that the problems are out there: "It's that person, it's that group, it's this system, it's this institution... all those other people that are not thinking correctly."

The Buddha is a little clearer about that. We might go back—this was from last week's reading, of course—but the very first lines of the Dhammapada state: "Mind is the forerunner of all things. Speak or act with a corrupt mind and suffering follows; speak or act with a peaceful mind and happiness follows."

The Dhammapada only briefly mentions the list of the Four Noble Truths^[5], and we'll see that today. But the chapters that we read for today have quite a bit to do with the truth of dukkha, and the truth that clinging or craving is the cause of dukkha. Those are the first and second of the noble truths. The chapter titles alone give you some idea of that.

Once again, the chapters don't really divide up neatly into beginner teachings and advanced teachings, or teachings on each of the Four Noble Truths. That's not how the Dhammapada is organized. Everything that we're talking about today, you could find examples of in other chapters. Nonetheless, we can find themes that are emphasized in certain chapters. Today, we're highlighting these particular issues about waking up, seeing what the problem is, and getting inspired to practice.

The Mind

We started out with a broad overview in Chapter 3: The Mind. That word for mind is citta^[6], which could also be translated as "heart." We don't have such a sharp division in the Buddhist understanding between mind and heart as we evolved in Western thinking. We have the heart-mind, the citta. This is where the Buddha locates the seat of the problem. We get some powerful images that I think many people can relate to. As I did last week, I'm going to read verses as we go along and talk about the main ideas.

Verses 33 through 36 from "The Mind" read:

"The restless, agitated mind, hard to protect, hard to control. The sage makes straight as a fletcher the shaft of an arrow. Like a fish out of water thrown on dry ground, this mind thrashes about trying to escape Mara's^[7] command. The mind—hard to control, flighty, alighting where it wishes, one does well to tame. The disciplined mind brings happiness. The mind, hard to see—subtle—alighting where it wishes, the sage protects. The watched mind brings happiness."

I think many people can relate to this. There's a reference there to Mara, which means the forces of distraction in the mind. Sometimes it refers to the forces of temptation for us to get lost in sense pleasure. Sometimes it's personified into a being who shows up and torments people who are trying to meditate. This word "Mara" actually comes from the Pali word for death. Remember last time in verse 21, where it said "negligence is the path to death, and the negligent are as if already dead?" This image is in line with that.

If you've done mindfulness meditation, you may have noticed that your mind is flighty and not so easy to control. When it is somewhat calm, or we're at least able to be mindful of the agitation, then there's a kind of happiness to that. So the Buddha is locating the problem in our own mind and heart.

What is the solution? We find later in Chapter 3, verses 42 and 43:

"Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy, or haters, one to another, far worse is the harm from one's own wrongly directed mind. Neither mother nor father, nor any relative can do one as much good as one's own well directed mind."

We have the wrongly directed mind and the well directed mind. It seems that the solution is training: to train the mind to be well directed.

Old Age

Some of the problems that we have as humans are genuinely fundamental. We see that in Chapter 11: Old Age. Everybody's body is going to get old, if you live that long. The Buddha is pointing out that it's often our relationship to experience that makes the difference in whether we suffer or not. But it's not an easy switch. We can't just reframe and say, "I'll just see it differently." We will actually have to practice now in order to be prepared for the difficulties of aging.

We often choose to ignore the reality of impending age, and the Buddha encourages us not to do that. For example, verse 146:

"Why the laughter, why the joy, when flames are ever burning? Surrounded by darkness, shouldn't you search for light?"

Taken out of context, we might see that as somewhat depressing, putting a damper on the celebration that we have in our youth. But it's essentially a wake-up call to maturity. Shouldn't you search for light? Shouldn't you search for something that is good and bright and alive? Even while you're alive, we can find deeper aliveness in order to prepare for old age.

It continues starkly in verse 152:

"The person of little learning grows old like an ox. The flesh increases, but the insight does not."

It's a tough image. He's saying just getting old doesn't necessarily bring wisdom.

It's not all depressing. That same chapter includes two verses that contrast with this general tone of alarm and warning. Verses 153 and 154 describe the triumph over aging and death with the powerful image of the house builder:

"Through many births I have wandered on and on, searching for but never finding the builder of this house. To be born again and again is suffering. House builder, you are seen! You will not build a house again. All the rafters are broken, the ridge pole destroyed. The mind, gone to the unconstructed, has reached the end of craving."

It's like a little burst of inspiration amid the description of the problem. "The unconstructed" is nibbāna^[8], and contrasts with the construction of a house. The "house" refers to individuality, selfhood, or the body. The "builder" is craving or wanting. This is an extended metaphor about what we construct—ourselves, our identity, our place in the world. We're taught how to be a self in the world as we grow up, and the Buddha says that's actually the problem. There's another way of being that we can discover through spiritual practice.

As a side note, there's an idea that these words are the Buddha's own shout of triumph upon full awakening. But the early teachings in the Pali canon don't attribute these words to the Buddha. The other place they appear is in the Therīgāthā^[9], attributed to the monk Sivaka. So this is not technically the Buddha's awakening poem.

Unskillful Conduct and Thought

Back to the Dhammapada, we then come to a handful of chapters that straightforwardly treat some of the major forms of unskillful conduct and thought. In Chapter 3, the problem was said to be the wrongly directed mind. Most of the other chapters for today are essentially an elaboration on what the "wrongly directed mind" means, with different emphases.

Chapters 18 (Corruption) and 22 (Hell) are mainly about ethics, and how a wrongly directed mind does unethical things. For example, verses 246 to 247 in Chapter 18:

"One digs up one's own root here in this very world, if one kills, lies, steals, goes to another spouse, or gives oneself up to drink and intoxicants."

Some of you may recognize those as the list of the Five Precepts^[10].

In Chapter 22, the word "Hell" is translated that way, but the Buddhist understanding is not like the Christian understanding. Hell is not a permanent destiny. It's just one possibility for rebirth that is temporary. If you have very bad karma ripening at the time of death, you can end up in hell for a while, but then that karma will run out, and you'll be reborn somewhere else.

In this chapter, a fair amount of the criticism falls on renunciates who are not actually living an ethical life. There was a group of people who had opted out of society, living with their alms bowls in the forest, practicing meditation or various austerities. You had opted out of society because you wanted to live in a better way, and the Buddha criticizes that not all renunciates were doing that.

He also criticizes lay people. For instance, verse 317:

"Seeing danger in what's not dangerous, and not seeing danger in what is, those who take up wrong views go to a bad rebirth."

This locates the difficulty in one's mind, in one's views. If we don't understand that poor behavior and poor speech are dangerous as our life unfolds, we make consequential mistakes in our conduct.

Aversion and Violence

Some chapters focus more on the side of aversion—anger, ill will, cruelty, and that spectrum of mind states. We can locate Chapter 10 (Violence) and Chapter 17 (Anger) in that direction.

Verse 130 in Chapter 10:

"All tremble at violence, life is dear for all. Seeing others as being like yourself, do not kill or cause others to kill."

This is a version of the Golden Rule. If we saw that other people are like us—they want to be happy, they are afraid of violence, they don't want to be harmed—then we wouldn't behave in such a way.

Verse 133:

"Don't speak harshly to anyone, what you say will be said back to you. Hostile speech is painful, and you will meet with retaliation."

Chapter 10 also contains verses that offer guidance for how to live well, as well as some hope. Verse 144:

"Like a good horse alert to the whip, be ardent and alarmed, with faith, virtue, effort, concentration, and discernment, accomplished in knowledge and good conduct, mindful, you will leave this great suffering behind."

The word translated as "alarmed" is samvega^[11], which really means spiritual urgency. I think we could try "galvanized" there instead of alarmed—to be ardent and galvanized, ready to act on the path. It then lists "faith, virtue, effort, concentration, and discernment," which are the Five Spiritual Faculties^[12]. Other discourses say that it is the maturity of the five spiritual faculties that determines how far a being can go on the path. These are worth developing.

In Chapter 17, verse 222, we have the image of anger as a careening chariot. Many of the verses refer to restraint (such as 231, 232, 233, and 234). The Buddha is pretty clear that his view of anger is that it's always unskillful and needs to be restrained, or at least seen mindfully.

Desire and Craving

We have two chapters focused on desire, grasping, wanting, and craving: Chapter 16 (The Deer) and Chapter 24 (Craving). These are problems based in desire, which are linked to fear and grief.

In modern neurological research, the center of the brain focused on desire and wanting is co-located with the place where the brain expresses fear. Fear and desire are intimately linked. When you want something, or when you have something, you're suddenly afraid that people are going to take it away, or that you won't get it. There's also grief when the thing you hold onto is gone.

There are perfectly good things to want in the world, but we have to skillfully relate to things that we care about such that they don't lead to suffering. I detected a sense of laziness in those who just "settle for what is dear" in that chapter—not having done the work of releasing the bondage to things we are attached to. The merit that comes from releasing these attachments benefits a person in the next life. We might think of that as a sweetener to give up something nice from this life.

These chapters reminded me of a teaching given in the commentaries that sums up the problems of the mind: "Desire is less blameable, but harder to remove. Hatred is more blameable, but easier to remove. Delusion is very blameable, and very difficult to remove."

We can see this in our own practice. People often work on aversion first because it's more blameable, more obvious that it causes problems, and it's easier to remove because it hurts us so much. Later, we get to greed and craving because it's more subtle. It causes slightly less harm in the world, but it's harder to remove. And then there's the delusion that underlies all of them that we eventually have to get to.

Q&A

Paul: In verse 156 it says, "Those who have neither lived the chaste life nor gained wealth in their youth lie around like arrows misfired from a bow, lamenting the past." That implies an encouragement of wealth, which seems inconsistent with non-attachment. What is meant by wealth in this case?

Kim Allen: The Buddha was not opposed to lay people gaining material wealth—he called it "righteous wealth" if earned through ethical means. But my guess is that he's also including a metaphorical, spiritual sense to the word. There are various kinds of spiritual wealth: ethics, the five faculties, the brahma-viharas^[13].

There's nothing wrong with taking care of oneself in life as a lay person. He's implying that we need to do something in our early life—whether it's earning a good livelihood, but probably more so taking care of our ethical, relational, communal, and spiritual lives. That way, when we get to old age, we don't realize we have no way of dealing with the body falling apart and the approach of death.

Bess: In Chapter 3, Verse 39, it says, "For one who is awake, whose mind isn't overflowing, fear does not exist." I was thrown by the word "overflowing." Does that mean just the sense doors?

Kim Allen: Do you ever feel like your mind is overflowing?

Bess: Oh, sure. Sometimes I sit down to meditate and the mind is just whirling.

Kim Allen: A mind that's overflowing is one that's really caught up in its stories, restlessness, or whatever is going on. Awakeness is different from an overflowing mind. We usually get scared of our own mental constructions. There's a famous story of a monk who painted a tiger on a cave wall. He focused so much on making it perfect that when he put the finishing touches on it, he got terrified of the tiger and ran out of the cave. He scared himself. That's what we do when the mind is overflowing. We scare ourselves imagining what might happen.

Marianne: I was challenged by Chapter 10, Verse 141: "No nakedness or matted hair, no filth, dust or dirt. No fasting or sleeping purify a mortal who has not overcome doubt." What is the discussion about doubt doing in this chapter about violence?

Kim Allen: In this chapter, he is criticizing people who are living as renunciates but doing austerity practices—living with matted hair, filth, fasting—believing that torturing the body and preventing desire will purify their karma. "Overcoming doubt" is pointing to the first stage of awakening in the Buddhist teachings. That cuts a few of the fetters that bind the mind to the round of rebirth. "Not overcoming doubt" is code for not being awakened yet. He's saying there's no way that these austerity practices will lead to the first stage of awakening.

Winnie: Could you explain this reference to birth, rebirth, and many lives in the 21st century?

Kim Allen: It was clearly the worldview that the Buddha was syncing up with. Some people can roll with that, and some find it very challenging. One way people in this century relate to it is as psychological states. How many births have you had since this morning? A lot! We cruise along fine, then we get angry, and we take birth as the angry person. Then we see a friend, and we take birth as a friend. We get home and take birth as a partner. We have many births each day in the different roles we play. Wandering on and on through rebirth is to be unmindful and let karma take charge. If we're aware, we have some choice about not falling into unfortunate births.

Positive and negative karma generated in this lifetime is part of that rebirth. Karma is meritorious or de-meritorious, and you can't avoid the consequences of either.

Breakout Groups

(The group engaged in a 10-minute breakout session where participants practiced reading out loud the verses they found inspiring and the verses they found puzzling, pausing in silence to let the words settle.)

Guided Meditation

Finding a posture where you can sit comfortably in meditation, and just drawing your attention inward. Closing your eyes if that's okay for you. Maybe taking a deep breath, and on the out-breath, softening the body. Letting the shoulders drop, letting the belly soften. Perhaps leaning back slightly if we have a habitual tendency to lean toward the screen. Softening the eyes and the eye sockets.

Bringing the quality of mindfulness to the fore. Becoming attentive to experience in this moment. Just as it is, knowing that you know, knowing that you're aware.

"Irrigators guide water. Fletchers shape arrows, carpenters fashion wood, the well-practiced tame themselves."

Allowing the mindfulness to connect to the body. Sensing the body in sitting posture, or lying down, whatever posture you're in. Finding some balance, shifting back and forth a little in the seat, just finding that middle place where it takes the least amount of effort to be upright. Making sure your spine is relatively straight.

As you rest with the body, feeling the breath not just at the nostrils, but if you can, feeling the breath as a whole-body experience. As we breathe in and out, we can feel the clothing shifting against the skin, from the nasal area all the way down into the chest and the belly. It involves a lot of the body. We don't have to do anything different with the breath, just sensing its full range.

Now I invite you to sense into one or more places in the body that currently feel energized or alive and don't have pain. Attending to that part of the body with mindfulness. Knowing how it is without grasping at it or trying to make it feel even better.

Now I invite you to shift the attention and sense into one or more places in the body that feels tired, or achy, or stiff, or even painful, in a gentle way. Attending with mindfulness and also with wisdom, maybe some compassion. "This is how it is for these parts of the body." If it's ever too much, you can redirect the attention, but the idea is just to be with the part that's not so comfortable right now.

Opening up the attention again to the whole body. Widening the attention out to encompass the whole of the body. We might say the world of the body has many different parts, many different feelings and sensations. This body as it is right now.

"Come look upon this world as a beautiful royal chariot. Fools flounder in it, but the discerning do not cling. Even the splendid chariots of the royalty wear out. So too does the body decay. But the dharma of the virtuous doesn't decay, for it is upheld when the virtuous teach it to good people."

Just resting in mindfulness.

The Path to Awakening and Hope

The readings for today are not only about difficulties, unwholesome mind states, and the problems of human existence. They also point toward ideas that might inspire our practice. If we agree with the Buddha that there is a problem, and that it lies in poor habits and distractiveness of mind, we can ask: "Is there any hope?"

Yes. The Buddha and many of his early disciples managed to disentangle their minds, and he offers verses that guide us toward that ourselves.

There's one kind of hope in doing skillful actions and living a life of ethics and faith. Then another kind of hope is in ending the defilements completely through awakening. We see the two different goals: a better life now and a heavenly rebirth, and the goal of awakening, finding complete freedom that can't go back.

Verse 168 from Chapter 13 reads:

"Rouse yourself, don't be negligent, live the dharma, a life of good conduct. One who lives the dharma is happy in this world and the next."

And Verse 172:

"Whoever recovers from doing evil by doing something wholesome, illuminates the world like the moon set free from a cloud."

It's nice to know that we can recover from unfortunate mind states. Impermanence is a major teaching of the Buddha. One of the advantages of the teaching of impermanence is that we're never completely trapped by past bad karma. Its effect is always finite.

Some verses are very directly inspirational, like verse 179 of Chapter 14:

"The Buddha's victory cannot be undone. No one in the world can approach it. By what path would you guide him who has no path, whose field is endless?"

And Verse 181:

"Even the gods envy the awakened ones, the mindful ones, the wise ones, who are intent on meditation and delight in the peace of renunciation."

I love verse 194:

"Happy is the arising of Buddhas. Happy is the teaching of the true dharma. Happy is the harmony of the sangha. Happy is the art and practice of those in harmony."

These verses are shading into the Third and Fourth Noble Truths. The Third Truth is the end of suffering—there is a possibility of ending dukkha, overcoming the possibility of being reborn again and again. The Fourth Truth is the path—there is a way to get from here to there, typically exemplified as the Noble Eightfold Path.

There are a few verses in Chapter 14 that give a compact exposition of the key articles of faith for Buddhists worldwide. Verse 183 is very classic:

"Doing no evil, engaging in what's skillful, and purifying one's mind. This is the teaching of the Buddhas."

Verses 190 through 192:

"When someone going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha sees with right insight the Four Noble Truths—suffering, the arising of suffering, the overcoming of suffering, and the eightfold path leading to the end of suffering—then this is a secure refuge. This is the supreme refuge. By going to such a refuge, one is released from all suffering."

Notice in these verses that there are two different levels of refuge. At one level, there's going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Then it says for one who has done that, they see the Four Noble Truths. Nibbāna has many different epithets, which include safety and supreme security. This points toward the goal of the path.

This is the only point in the Dhammapada where the Four Noble Truths are explicitly named. We also found places where the precepts or the five faculties were referenced. Naming lists is not the point of the Dhammapada; it's verse, not an analysis.

At this point of reading the text, we're getting a clearer sense of the directness of the Buddha's message. It doesn't work to chase pleasures and avoid pain. There are clear skillful and unskillful actions, and we need the wisdom to know the difference. When you act on that knowledge, you have a life that's good here and now, and you can even become liberated.

Next time, we're going to look at some chapters that are broadly aimed at people who are already walking the path. Once a person has been roused and set on the path, there needs to be nuance. We'll look at chapters that have a little bit more subtlety to them.

Final Q&A and Dedication

Charles: It would take hours to explain the threads that brought me here today. But listening to Gil's tapes, your talk from last week, and being here tonight was really energizing and affirming. I have been inside the face of evil in the last nine months, and my practice has allowed me to be amidst suffering, fully available, without attachment. The service I've done has woven this refuge. When I hear about this perfect refuge, it might be on the front line in Ukraine bringing medicine to children in bombed-out homes. That has been the refuge. I'm grateful that I've had this practice. It works like Teflon. Thank you for the symphony of focus and openness. I'm heading back to Ukraine on Monday morning, and this was an amazing gift.

Kim Allen: Your presence and what you've shared with us is just as much a gift. Thank you so much, Charles. May these teachings carry you and benefit the people you're interacting with.

Participant: My question goes back to Chapter 24, Verse 352: "Knowing the order of the teachings, what precedes and what follows, one is said to be a person of much wisdom in one's final body."

Kim Allen: That's a reference to the arahant^[14]. When a person reaches the final stage of awakening, the fruit of that is not to be reborn. So one is in one's "final body." It can happen at any time.

Steve: In the small group, we looked at the verse about how "the merit we have made receives us." I always think of myself moving towards a field of consequences, rather than the field opening to receive me.

Kim Allen: That's a reference to what happens when we're going through the rebirth process. The amount of merit that we bring to that moment, and what is ripening, has an effect on where we'll be reborn. If the mind is in a poor state, it will find a rebirth in one of the lower realms. If wholesome states are present, you can find a rebirth in the human or heavenly realms.

Kim Allen: We will reconvene next week. Let's dedicate the merit of today's session to the good work that Charles is doing in Ukraine, and wish that all of the merit we generated together be passed on to the people of Ukraine in a wish for peace. Thank you, everyone.