Dhammapada Verse 222: A Charioteer

0:01Hello and welcome back to our study of the Dhammapada. Today we continue with verse 222, which reads as follows. Yo ve upatitam kodam ratam bantam va varaye tamaham sarating brumi rasmika ho itarojano, which means, way indeed, yo, whoever, varaye, restrains, indeed, whoever restrains, upatitango dang, anger that has arisen in them. Va, just like ratang bantang, a wayward chariot or a swerving chariot. Tamahang brumi, I say, that person, Sarating, is a charioteer.

1:38Itarojano, other people, people other than that. Rasmigahang, rasmigaho, they just hold the reins. This verse was taught in response to a story which in brief was about a monk who decided to make a nice kuti for himself out of wood. And he saw a nice big tree and so he thought he'd cut down this nice big tree to make lumber. The story goes that there was a ruka deva, a tree spirit, tree angel, living in the tree. And she was not happy about this idea.

2:40So she tried her best to discourage the monk from cutting down the tree, but I'm not sure if he heard her or not. He just ignored the deva, the devata. And he cut down the tree. The story says something about her, him injuring her child. It sounds to me like she just thought the tree was her child, but the story, it's a bit confusing to me. Doesn't matter. The point is, what happened, she got very angry. Very angry and, and considered to herself whether she should strike the monk down.

3:31She was quite ready to kill him with some kind of angelic power, I guess. But then she considered, well, she considered that this was a follower of the Buddha. Perhaps she considered that he hadn't meant to hurt anyone. And so she went to see the Buddha instead and laid the situation out for him and he congratulated her. Perhaps something unexpected, perhaps not what she expected when she went to find him. Maybe she went to find him to have him punish the monk.

4:19But the Buddha set her straight, set everyone, set us all straight, really, in regards to this kind of issue. And he praised her with this verse. He said, very good. A person who controls their anger. Perhaps it was a slight rebuke as well, in case she was still angry and trying to get revenge another way. To remind her and all of us about what's really important. And the story has a happy ending, that the Buddha gave her a very special tree that she might still be living in to this day if that tree is still there.

5:00I think it was in Jetavana in front of his kuti, in front of his kuti somewhere. It was a very special tree. Anyway, I think many people listening probably don't have much interest talking about devas or belief in angels or that sort of thing. It's not really at all important for the story, but it's an interesting story. As far as what we learn from the story, I think the obvious lesson that isn't really clear from the verse, as great as the verse is, is about vengeance and revenge.

5:46Because anger is one thing, but vengeance is a particular sort of anger. It's a desire for punishment. It's mixed with righteousness, self-righteousness, perhaps conceit quite often. We seek revenge out of a perceived slight against ourselves, or something that... we see as belonging to us or relating to us. And we seek revenge sometimes for other people. We have a sense of deserts, what is deserved. It's very much tied up with I don't deserve that, or this person doesn't deserve that, or the person who did it deserves this or that.

6:47We talk about it as a type of justice. It doesn't seem very just to a Buddhist, I think. Yeah, we hear a lot about this thing called social justice warriors, people fighting for justice, which I think is, as a concept, quite a good thing. But I think we often get lost in our sense of what's just and what's right. We think anger is somehow just, punishment is somehow just, revenge somehow just. I think the only thing that comes from revenge for the person seeking vengeance is an increase in cruelty, a desire to see others hurt.

7:41Say what you might about the good feeling that you get. Say what you might about the sense of righteousness. it ultimately boils down to what you're saying is that the right and just and good course of action is to cause harm to someone. Putting aside how right you might think it is that this person hurt. I mean, the point in Buddhism really is that if it's right, if something is right, it will happen anyway. If it's right that this person hurt, the only way that it's right is that they do actually hurt from it.

8:25So right is a very sort of scientific thing. It's right in the sense that it's true. The only way that deserts or deserve justice, righteousness, the only way they make sense is in terms of what's true. So we talk about someone who deserves to be punished. If that were true, then they will be punished. And that's why often justice is sort of a passive, or it's viewed with a passive perspective from Buddhism. I mean, in the sense of seeing people punished or even killed for their deeds, looking at wars or any kind of conflict.

9:20We look at them passively saying, that's the way it goes. If this person hurt that person, this person is going to try to hurt them back. That's just the way it is. Bad things are going to happen to the person who did bad things. And none of that is to excuse any of it. I just mean to say that we look at it sometimes passively, not really judging, not really trying to take, I mean by not taking sides. Because ultimately it's just nature. You can't even say, don't hurt that person.

9:59It's not going to work. People are going to hurt each other, are going to find vengeance and so on. If you hurt someone, the natural outcome is that they'll try to hurt you back. So what I mean to say is that justice is just what happens. None of it's really just or really unjust. What's unjust is our sense that that we are meeting out justice, that somehow our intention to hurt someone, to seek vengeance or so on, or even the courts, or even that we are some, you know, in any sense that we are some independent arbiter or meter out of justice.

10:57Justice is just what happens to people. If it's meant to happen to you, it's going to happen. It's very complicated and unpredictable, really, so many factors involved. What we do know is that when a person does seek out vengeance, it's harmful to them, it's harmful obviously to the person who they mete out vengeance upon. And it is the justice or the result that comes from that, what we deserve as a result of that is future vengeance. We seek out vengeance on someone else, they're just going to turn around and mete out vengeance on us.

11:49It's a cycle. And it's a cycle because it's habitual. The only way to break it is if someone does not If someone breaks the habit, really, it's kind of an addiction. Bad things happen to us, we seek out the source of the bad things to return the favor. And only when we break that habit can we break the cycle, which we play a game, we play a part in. So there's no sense that vengeance is justice. There's no sense that there's any, there's anything right about saying this person deserves that or the other thing deserves something that we might bring to them.

12:54All that happens as a result is more suffering. Now that the verse says about both vengeance and really any kind of anger, the first lesson that it gives is something very, something very important about the nature of the mind. That Just because we hold the reins doesn't mean we're actually driving the chariot. For most people, the course of our lives is very much determined by what you might call the horses rather than the driver. And I think a good way to distinguish between those two is the horses being our habits and our instincts, our unconscious, I don't mean unconscious, our perhaps our unconscious inclinations.

14:21It really just means our habits and our frame of mind based on our views and our perspectives. The driver would be something that actually makes decisions, independent decisions. Often we think of ourselves as the driver in our lives, and we don't realize how much we're dependent on our habits and our partialities, our biases, and so on. Most people, most of the time, We're just holding the reins. We're sitting in the driver's seat of our mind, of our lives.

15:14But we go very much according to our habits. Anger is one good example of this. We get angry. We think other people deserve our anger. And we see this often in how we get angry at inanimate objects We can see how foolish it is and how unwieldy it is. We don't really decide who we're going to get angry at, when we're going to get angry. When there's a person, we have a clear example of how we can, well, we have a clear vision of someone to blame. We're able to see a cause of our suffering and it seems right somehow to blame them.

16:16And so we get a sense that this is how anger works. Anger is a just response to someone else's bad deeds. And then we see it happens when we, say, stub our toe on a table or on the stairs or something, and we still get just as angry. In meditation, one of the big things we see is how it's not us getting angry or greedy or even us who is mindful or insightful. It's not that it's someone else or that it's nobody. It's that that sort of perspective doesn't really fit the case.

17:06Reality is much simpler, much more direct. Anger arises. It's picked up. It's encouraged. It becomes habitual. It's supported by conceit, by views. It's right to get angry. I don't deserve to be treated like that. It's fed by desire. We want something, we don't get it. We want to be free from suffering, we get it. We just hold the reins most of the time. But you get another, the other lesson, I think, so it's kind of implicit, is that rather than trying to control our anger, assuming once we Accept the fact that our anger is a problem for us.

18:24It's a problem in general. It doesn't lead to good things. Hurting others doesn't actually benefit us or them. It's not just in the sense that we try to understand it. It doesn't bring about justice in our minds, righteousness in our minds, goodness in our minds. It doesn't bring about justice in the other person in terms of them becoming more just. But rather than trying to control it, the anger, the Buddha uses a simile of a charioteer who can't actually control the chariot.

19:18The Buddha praises a person who is able to what seems to be control. And it's quite different. There's maybe subtle, but there is a distinct difference between control and what I guess is translated as restraint. But whatever it is you do with a chariot, because you're dealing with horses and you can't control the horses, though we might use that word, you're not actually, you know, mind, getting into their minds and making them do this or that. You're training them and you're restraining them.

20:04You're guiding them. And you're straightening out the wayward chariot. You can't control the horses from wandering, but you can be with them. You can be the driver, the person who knows how to, why it's so praiseworthy even with a chariot. It's because it's not easy to keep horses in line, I guess. Regardless, it's not easy for sure to keep the mind in line. And in some ways, it's not even directly about keeping the mind in line. It's about being there when the mind does go out of line to bring it back and to train the mind out of its wayward habits.

21:00The Buddha used the word warai, warai. And this is the root is in relation to, I guess, restraining. It's a good translation. And to really understand what is meant by the difference here from restraining and controlling, we can look into what the Buddha talked about, what the Buddha taught in regards to restraining. In the Buddha's teaching, there are four kinds of restraint, what we call samvara. Again, vara is the root. Samvara. He said there are five aspects to it, I guess you could say.

21:51When we talk about restraining the mind, this is useful for... for restraining things like anger. It's also equally useful in restraining desire. When you want things perhaps that you shouldn't go after, or when you want things so much that they become addictions and you're unable to stop yourself, unable to live your lives sometimes because of the addictions. So the five samvara in Buddhism are sila samvara, restraint through ethics or morality.

22:40Sati samvara, restraint through mindfulness or remembrance. Jnana samvara, restraint through knowledge. Kanti samvara, restraint through patience. And viriya samvara, restraint through effort. Rather than seeing these as separate kinds of restraint, I think factors or aspects of restraint is more useful. Because I don't think it would be useful to practice one of these independently of the rest. I think they should all be aspects of our training in restraint.

23:31It's a very good way of describing. Again, I'm not confident 100% in the use of the word restraint. I'm not sure it's the perfect translation. Training, taming is often used. The idea of taming the mind seems a little more palatable. Because restraint can be a part of it. But it's something more similar to reigning in. You reign in the mind. Reign is these things that you hold. When you reign in the mind, you do restrain it. But there's also a sense of cooperation.

24:15You work with the mind to tame it. And part of that, a big part of that, is helping the mind, which is really you, to realize for itself because you restrain a criminal, often against their will, but you tame the mind in accordance with its will, by using its will. So these are the five samvara. And to understand this, I think we describe them all. We'll give a clear picture of what is meant rather than trying to find a word for it. Sila samvara.

24:51Sila is behavior. Literally, it just means behavior. We often translate it as ethics or morality. I mean, literally, it means normal in the sense of what is normal for you. So it's like habitual behavior, that sort of thing. character maybe what's in your character do you have an up are you an upstanding character that sort of thing but it refers to precepts rules guidelines That's the very most simple way of understanding sila. It's not entire, complete.

25:39But on a basic level, that's how we use it practically. We have rules to live by. And you don't need specific rules, but you have principles. It's a very important first step. It's very difficult, if not impossible, to practice any of the other samvara or any kind of practice if you don't have principles. First of all, if you are actively hurting others, harming others, acting out your anger or greed in such a way that it harms others, it's very difficult to be mindful or focused.

26:26Very difficult to see clearly. So we take as rules not to kill, not to steal, those kind of things. But you can have, of course, you should have a strong set of principles. You should, in your mind, make a determination, I'm not going to kill, but I'm also not going to harm others. To be careful of your speech. You know, one big aspect of sila is just to walk away from situations. when someone is angry, yelling at you and hurting you, perhaps. One of the best ways of dealing with that from an ethical point of view is to remove yourself from the situation.

27:11And the point is not to let them get away with it. Of course, we're not interested, again, in justice in that sense, on either end. But the point is to stop yourself from... from being as evil as that person. They yell at you, you yell back at them. You feed off each other's evil, injustice. And so removing yourself from the situation where you know you just get angry back at them. It's an ethical sort of thing to do. It doesn't solve the problem.

27:49You might go away and still be very angry. But you won't be as angry. It won't be as strong or as unmanageable as if you were to have stayed in the situation. That's the point. If that's the case, sometimes removing yourself from the situation. Even not looking, you know. For a monk, when we walk on alms round, we look down at the ground in front of us. That's why I like to start doing some videos without sight. We hear now about these people doing, everyone doing these online conferences.

28:32And I read something about the fatigue that comes from having to look at each other. I don't really know what it's all about, but it can be quite stressful to have to engage with the world. This gets to the point where we see things that we like, we see things that we don't like, it gives rise to anger, it gives rise to greed. As meditators we come to see this on a very subtle and refined level. It's not just about when something boils your blood or something creates lust in the mind, it's constant.

29:13We're constantly seeing things and judging them and so on. one of the best ways to begin to address this sort of constant judgmental attitude is to close yourself off. To shut down some of the doors and simplify our interactions to the point where we're just looking at basic experiences. You know, that's the best way. Close yourself off. Not to avoid it, but to limit it. You know, A big part of ethics is about limiting and simplifying so that you can begin to deal with the rest.

29:55You can begin to deal with all of it. You can try to deal with everything all at once, just engaging with life naturally. You're much more likely to make things worse. Sila samvara. Sati samvara follows right on the heels of sila. Sati is the basis of our practice. Sati means to remember. This is the best guard, the best sort of taming of the mind. Once you've got things manageable through sila, sati is the next logical step. Begin to approach reality with an honest and objective outlook.

30:49The best way to get the mind back on track when it's gotten off track with anger or greed, like the chariot, is to be present and to see the difference. Like the charioteer who sees that the cart has veered off, you see the dissonance in the anger. It's not intellectual, you just see it. It seems so simple, it almost seems like a meaningless task, something that we're perhaps already doing. Yes, I know I'm angry. What do you want me to do? What is it you're saying?

31:33What actually am I going to be doing differently? Mostly we don't even realize that we're not driving. We're mostly holding the reins and maybe talking to the person next to us. Daydreaming really is what it is. We're like a person driving a chariot with our eyes closed or daydreaming. Distracted constantly. Letting the horses go their way. It's like we can't even see the road and not the road. We're not a very good charioteer most of the time. So mindfulness is the real chariot here.

32:20It allows us to begin to understand what is the road, how to keep the mind, the horses on the path, how to keep our mind straight and clear, headed in the right direction. Mindfulness is just the, it's not the whole story, but it's the essential beginning of the story. Okay, ethics, yes, but mindfulness is the coming back to the present. It's where the driver who has been daydreaming suddenly realizes we're going off track. That's sati. Sati is not the realization you're going off track, but you would have never realized if you didn't have sati, if you didn't remember yourself.

33:11Remember is not even adequate, but the Buddha used the word sati, which means to remember or remembrance, because it's like remembering yourself. It's like bringing your mind back to what's really happening. That's what sati means. That's why we use this word, we repeat to ourselves, like pain, pain. It's giving us the habit, teaching us the habit of seeing, of being with the real experiences. The Buddha said, Again, the root is var, which means to restrain or to Gan.

33:54Gan is the Thai word. Sati. Whatever streams there are. Yani, sotani. Whatever streams there are in the world. Streams meaning anything we might start to veer off. Like the horses when they start to go off track. Anything that might draw us away from reality. Peace, from happiness, from clarity, from reality and the truth. Cause us to lose our way, they might say. Sati stops that. Sati stops it. And that's important to understand. You're not stopping it with force.

34:45You think, okay, so I have to stop it. No, sati is what stops it. It doesn't seem obvious that just by knowing, just by being present, you stop it, but that's it. When the driver wakes up, obviously they see that the horse has gone off track. When we have sati, that's the start. That's where it begins. The third is jnana sambhara. And jnana, I think, follows directly on the heel of sati. Jnana means knowledge. So when you have sati, then you can see, you know, oh, I'm off track.

35:24Furthermore, when you have sati, you know the difference between being off track and on track in case you were unsure. Is this the road? Is that the path? What's the path? When you're going through the forest, the forest of defilements, it can be hard to know which is the path. How do you get the horses? Not just how do you get the horses back on the path? Where is the path? So you can see, ah, this way is when you have sati and then jnana arises, knowledge arises.

35:52You know that that's not the path. It's too bumpy. This is the path. I can see the ruts. I can see it. And not just see, but you can feel it. The card is jostling, being jostled less and so on. You start to see the right signs. You're going along the right way. All of this is a very good analogy for meditation. Because when you're on the right path, you'll see good signs. You'll start to see some improvement in your life. You should. More importantly, you'll start to see more clearly because results are very hard to gauge considering how complicated lives are and our minds are and so on.

36:40But what you should be able to see is how clear The path is, you know, traveling this way, this mindful way, is much more straight, much more clear than letting my mind do whatever it wants. No matter how comfortable and easy that might be, you start to gain the knowledge that this is the right path. Not so much for the goal as for the state, the quality of it. Because the goal is right here. The goal is not really a place off in the distance. The goal is in our direction, our way, our state of mind.

37:32The fourth is kanti. Kanti, again, I don't think it's anything separate from the practice, but it's a very important aspect of the practice, especially with anger. but also with greed. The Buddha made explicit mention of patience in relation to anger. It's lack of patience that leads us to be angry, of course. But the same can be said with greed. It's not quite as obvious. Patience in regards to greed, well, it's in regards to wanting things. Being able to sit with the want without chasing after, sometimes in unethical ways.

38:14But always, in terms of increasing our addiction, if you go after, you're always going to be increasing your addiction. Patience is the opposite, with anger, with greed. Kanti Samvara is taming the mind through patience. And that's an aspect of our mindfulness practice that is separate and has to be taken into account. Because we might be mindful, we might be taking meditation practice, but have a hard time sticking with it because we're not very patient.

38:52When am I going to get the results is a good example. When you're sitting and wondering when the results are going to come. Wondering if it's any good for you. giving it up because you don't see immediate results. Patience when we can be mindful for simple things, but when difficult conditions, states of mind arise, we aren't able to be patient with the more difficult, challenging aspects of experience. Patience is put to the extreme test with things like pain, emotion, sometimes memories.

39:41Sometimes just the overwhelming chaos of our mind can really put our patience to the test. So it's an important thing for us to remember. Patience. It's not a separate practice, I don't think. But it's an aspect of mindfulness practice. We remind ourselves to be patient. Patient in our mindfulness. Patience in our remembrance. And the fifth is virya. Virya, like patience, is a part of the practice. Different from patience, very much different. But virya is another thing that we often need to develop and find ourselves lacking in the beginning.

40:27The virya to continue to practice, to continue to tame the mind, to undertake the work to tame the mind. We find ourselves lazy. We find ourselves unconfident. Unconfident. Without lacking in confidence. Lacking in the confidence that we are able to do what needs to be done. And so we lose effort. Or we aren't able to manufacture the effort. So it's an important part of our practice to keep in mind. Again, I don't think it's something you develop independently, but it's an aspect of mindfulness practice, the realization that it's going to take effort to be mindful.

41:18Just that is a very important part of the practice. The patience and the effort to actually be mindful. that it's not going to be something simple or easy or comfortable. It will often purposefully, intentionally take us out of our comfort zone. And so we have to be ready to be both patient and energetic. If we do that, the knowledge will come. The understanding will come. It's not an intellectual knowledge or understanding, but we'll come to see things more clearly.

42:00Our perception of things will be based on knowing them. I know you. Knowing, like the horses, I know your tricks. And you know how to deal with them. Pull on the rein like this and not too hard. Again, it's not control. And this important thing to state is that it's different from control, as I said. Important thing to explain is that trying to control the mind, as I said earlier, is not the solution, and that's not what this means. Samvara, these five samvara, it's about taming the mind.

42:39But controlling the mind, just like horses, you can't control animals. You try, you're just going to make them more neurotic. You might get some good results, but it won't be deep and powerful and natural, real, wholesome, innate results where you actually tame the creature. If you want to tame horses, if you want to tame the mind, it has to come from knowledge, it has to come from understanding, from a familiarity that allows you to know what works.

43:24allows you to understand what is effective and control like yanking on the reins and constantly paranoid about stopping the horses from going off track, stopping the mind from going off track. No, I'm not going to let myself get angry. It's really not a good way of looking at the problem. If the mind gets angry, tame the mind. Tame the anger. Simply saying to yourself, angry, angry, puts the mind back on track. Anger is, by its very nature, a judgment, a bias.

44:07Mindfulness, acknowledging and recognizing things as they are, is by its very nature unbiased. That's putting the mind back on track. Helping the mind to see anger in the right light And respond in the right way, not in a way that is going to perpetuate, increase and augment the problem. So Sarating, someone who is a real and true charioteer, this is a person who is able to tame the mind. It's a lesson that this angel, I think, took to heart. It's a lesson we all should take to heart.

44:56So that's the Dhammapada for tonight. Thank you all for listening.