Brahmanavagga: Brahmans

Finally, 26 chapters and 26 blog posts in 26 days. This is it, the final post in my personal challenge. And I’m torn because in looking at the Brahmanavagga, I really don’t want to blog about the verses; instead, I want to evaluate what this experience was like.

I mean why did I set out to do this? I announced this endeavor in a blog post Oct. 18, revealing part of the inspiration came from Julie Powell, who decided to show her admiration for Julia Child by blogging daily about her experience cooking a different recipe each day out of Child’s famous book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” And just like Powell, I hit some low spots during this effort, days when I really didn’t want to do it, I just wanted to rest after work. I didn’t have quite the meltdown that Powell did, but there were nights when I just hated the fact that I said I would do this.

But that was the key that kept me going, that I said I would do it. How many times do we say to ourselves that we will do something, but in the end, the task is never completed, abandoned for a multitude of reasons.

I thank all of you for staying with me through this. Although there weren’t many comments, I could tell folks were stopping by to check out what this oddball was up to. There were so many times when I wondered what I was up to. Was I trying to show off? Or was I successful in being sincere as I could be about what the Dhammapada meant to me?

In the final analysis, I believe a major reason for taking this on was to get me through my separation from Benny. I had something I could focus on each day to keep me from dwelling in self-pity and melancholy. I had a my moments, but staying focused on getting something done, something written regarding the Dhammapada helped me keep moving forward. I know, I know, I could complain bitterly about how wretched our government is that it won’t allow people like me marry the people we love, let alone be able to sponsor them for permanent residency when they are not a citizen. And many of you would think, he’s got a right to feel that way, it is a shitty deal.

Well hello! Life is full of shitty deals. Always is, always was. And it always will be. I want to get beyond that. It’s not that I don’t want to feel sadness at all. Sadness really is a beautiful emotion, just as beautiful as happiness – when experienced appropriately. But like any emotion – even happiness – sadness can become disruptive and destructive.

We are all handed water drops during our life that we want to keep, but we can’t keep them; if we try, they dry up and disappear. So I always come back to the koan that I liked so much from the movie “Samsara.”

How do you keep a drop of water from evaporating? By giving it to the sea.

“He’s called a brahman
for having banished his evil,
a contemplative
for living in consonance,
one gone forth
for having forsaken
his own impurities.”

Bhikkhuvagga: Monks

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about monks, the sangha and finding teachers. We’ve had the ordination of bikkhunis in Australia bunching up some panties in Thailand; others perplexed that their teachers seem to be less than perfect; and many discussions about the nature and direction of the Western sangha. And so I come to chapter 25 in the Dhammapada (only one more to go after this!), and with this background in mind, I look at the Bhikkhuvagga – or Monks – with an eye toward what it can tell me about Buddhism and the Sangha in the here and now.

And my conclusion is that it tells me nothing and everything.

On the one hand, the Bhikkhuvagga presents these idyllic descriptions of monks and a monk’s life.

“Hands restrained,
feet restrained
speech restrained,
supremely restrained —
delighting in what is inward,
content, centered, alone:
he’s what they call
a monk.

A monk restrained in his speaking,
giving counsel unruffled,
declaring the message & meaning:
sweet is his speech.

Dhamma his dwelling,
Dhamma his delight,
a monk pondering Dhamma,
calling Dhamma to mind,
does not fall away
from true Dhamma.”

Verses like these portray some serene individual that doesn’t get angry or even mildly perturbed, so when we encounter a monk who is a human being – and most are I think – the picture doesn’t quite fit. I can remember when I first observed my teacher smoking. I have to admit, I was disappointed! This guy’s a monk and he smokes Winstons! But where is the real problem here? It’s not with him, it’s with me, with my expectations about what a monk is and how a monk should behave. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a monk is not dwelling in the delight of Dhamma just because I perceive the monk is not living up to my own expectations. But because I have these preconceived ideas, I suddenly turn into the Sangha police and start issuing Dhamma tickets!

It’s the last verse, however, that portrays for me everything about monks.

“A young monk who strives
in the Awakened One’s teaching,
brightens the world
like the moon set free from a cloud.”

That image, of a moon set free from a could, is common in the Tipitika. And what I really like about this verse is that what it portrays, someone who lives the Dhamma and brings light to the world, is something that any of us can achieve. Whether we take vows or simply live good lives, we can bring joy to others. We can blow away the clouds over someone’s life, as well as our own. And that’s the beauty of Buddhism for me.

It sort of reminds me of the old story about the man and the starfish. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. A man is walking along the beach and he observes ahead of him someone stooping occasionally and throwing something out to the sea. As he gets closer, he realizes that the man is picking up starfish exposed on the beach from the receding tide and he’s throwing them back to the sea. The man witnessing this asks the other, “Why are you doing this? There are hundreds of starfish on this beach, you can’t possibly save them all. How can this matter?”

The other man just smiled, stooped down to pluck another starfish from the beach and toss it back to the ocean. He then said, “It mattered to that one.”

Just by being positive and striving to live the Dhamma in as much of what I do, I can be like that young monk and brighten a little part of the world.

Tanhavagga: Craving

Ah, craving – the very heart of the Buddha’s teaching. That all of our dissatisfaction with life – all our unhappiness, disappointment, frustration, everything that is contained within the word dukkha – is largely the result of our craving. We get ideas in our heads that things have special intrinsic value and qualities that make them appealing and desirable and so we want them. And when we don’t get them, we feel sad.

It started when we were children because at that time we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know that a Sears bicycle functioned the same as a Schwinn; we just wanted the Schwinn because all the other kids did. Well, all the other kids that mattered. We wanted the latest game or toy, but a new game or toy always came along later that we had to have as well. And oh, we can only pick one?

“When a person lives heedlessly,
his craving grows like a creeping vine.
He runs now here
& now there,
as if looking for fruit:
a monkey in the forest.”

With the first verse the Tanhavagga makes use of the monkey mind metaphor to describe this craving of ours, because as we grew older and allegedly wiser, we dropped many of our childhood cravings. But did we drop craving altogether? Not likely; in my case I believe my cravings just became more sophisticated.

Am I supposed to not want anything? Have no desire at all? I don’t think that is what the Buddha was saying, particularly with reference to laypeople. We are social animals; we desire companionship and we have a desire to feel secure as well as useful to others. But craving, to me, is more than just mere desire.

Let’s examine sex for example. I like sex. Do you? I would like to have sex more often than I do, and I would guess most of you are of similar mind. But when does a desire for sex become a craving like what the Buddha described?

“Cleared of the underbrush
but obsessed with the forest,
set free from the forest,
right back to the forest he runs.
Come, see the person set free
who runs right back to the same old chains!”

I picked this verse because I believe it gets close to describing how a craving is different from a desire. In some ways, we are bordering on the concept of addiction. But addiction is one of those words that person can easily distance him or herself from. Craving is more subtle.

Let’s say you have a partner or spouse. And you see someone really hot. I mean, this person is so hot you can’t stop looking at them even though you know you ought to look away. The person walks away, but you’re still thinking about him or her. My god he was hot! Oh man, and did you see that ass?

When you see your partner or spouse, do you say, “Hey honey, I saw this really hot guy today with the most fantastic ass, it was like, man, I wanted to butter him up and have him for dinner!”

I know I wouldn’t, and I don’t think many of you would either. Because we know what the reaction would be. Saying something like that would create stress, it would cause harm. So we keep it to our self. It’s harmless, right?

But that was craving in action. And the Buddha in many places instructs us to learn how to recognize this craving immediately and put an end to it! We need to begin questioning ourselves, asking why am I thinking about this person? This only leads to harm. I need to re-focus my mind. And when do that, when we follow this guidance, the craving does dissipate.

Of course, now that I’m single, well, that’s a different line of thinking entirely!