Dhammapada Verses 292 & 293: To Be Done

0:05So today we are looking at Dhammapada verses 292 and 293, which read as follows. yan hi kicchang apavidhang akicchang panagayirati unalanang pamatanang te sangva dhanti asava ye sanca susamara dha nityang kaya gatasati akityang tena sevanti kiche sata chakarino satanam sampajananam athanga chanti asava which means for those who by whom that which should be done is abandoned but that which should not be done is done insolent, negligent, for them impurities increase.

1:55And for those of whom there is proper initiative, with mindfulness always focused on the body. They do not partake of what should not be done, constantly engaged in doing that which should be done. For the mindful for those who are with full understanding, impurities come to an end. So these verses were taught in regards apparently to a group of monks when the Buddha was staying at a place called Bhadhya. These monks are talked about in the Vinaya.

3:14So the story is adapted from an issue where monks were engaged in making shoes, footwear. So there are many very minor and specific rules for monks to follow one of which is that our footwear has to be simple just made of leather we should only use the footwear when we're in the forest or in the forest monastery that sort of thing and these monks were abusing that allowance for wearing footwear and making all sorts of decorative sandals and sandals made out of this and sandals made out of that and so the Buddha made a rule about it but here made a rule saying you know that's not that should not be done but here this was apparently an opportunity because these monks were not just engaged in making footwear they were also abandoning the teaching, abandoning the practice.

4:28They weren't engaging in listening to the Dhamma or discussing the Dhamma. They weren't engaged in the practice of morality, concentration or wisdom. Instead they were just occupied with frivolous things like making shoes. So the monks, the other monks who were better behaved complained about this and told the Buddha about it. The Buddha called the monks and inquired about the situation and scolded them, saying, you came here, you came here. Why did you come here?

5:07You came here. You were born as human beings. You have good body, good mind, qualified to become Buddhist monks even, which is a very rare thing. You've met with the Buddha Sāsana. You've taken advantage of this meeting and you've come all this way. You've come here to do one thing, but instead here you are doing something very different. And then he taught this verse, these verses. So first of all, the story isn't much. It's a very short narrative.

5:55But the lesson, of course, is that we should be conscious of our involvement in frivolity. and acknowledge that a lot of what makes up our lives is inconsequential and meaningless and fails to take advantage of the rare opportunity that we have to be born, even just to be born a human being. Humans have such potential and we waste it on frivolity on things that have no potential to enlighten us better us even we spend time in things like hobbies and pastimes we call them it's such a funny name as though we had all this time and we're just waiting for something better the only thing better waiting at the end obviously is death and if that's better then so be it but A life full of frivolity, a life full of useless activities probably doesn't lead to a death that has any significant improvement.

7:24But the verse is, there's a little more to the verse and the verse builds on this idea and introduces this term that is actually fairly core to the Buddha's teaching. The idea of the Kiccha. Kiccha meaning that which should be done. And Akiccha, which is the opposite of Kiccha. Kiccha and Akiccha. And so the first thing we have to understand about this is it's not quite like these words would mean if they were used in a worldly or an ordinary sense.

8:08In the world we have kiccha, those things that we have to do, that we often translate as duties. duties are things that we have. We have duties towards our employment, we have duties towards our parents, our family, our spouses, our friends, duties towards the Buddha, duties towards religious people and so on. We have many sorts of worldly duties and often these duties are an obligation. there are things that we do not because we want to not because we feel any benefit comes to us but because we're told that we have to do this and so we make the best we can of it we perform these duties and then we go back to whatever we'd rather be doing employment is not something usually that people live for, for example duties that which should be done are often obligations And I bring this up because this can be to some extent how people approach Buddhism, meditation, the practice of the Buddhist teaching, and can often come to resent it, especially in situations where they're engaged in it intensively as a monastic or as a Buddhist meditator doing a meditation course.

9:29Over time you can come to actually resent the practice. feel dread for having to continue the practice, which is kind of just caused by this idea that it's some kind of burden, some kind of duty, some kind of obligation. And that's not really the meaning of the word kiccha. Because kiccha here is that which should be done to bring happiness, to bring peace, of course, to bring freedom from suffering. This is what you really should be doing for your own benefit.

9:57And the problem is that we're given this sort of dichotomy where the things we want to do are not the things we should be doing. And so we think of the pastimes and the things that we do in our free time as being that which makes us happy. And the duties that we do are not happy, but we can't avoid them, we have to do them. So it's important as a Buddhist and as a Buddhist meditator especially as someone engaged in intensive practice of the Buddhist teaching that we fix this attitude and that we appreciate and we understand correctly the meaning of which we should be doing and we should engage with it mindfully conscious of any kind of sense of dread or reluctance in doing these things.

10:44And the practice of meditation of course should be liberating, it should be freeing, it should be uplifting. The practice of the Buddhist teaching in general, even the practice of ethics, of not wearing this kind of shoes, for example, should be something that is uplifting and inspiring to us, that we are challenged by these things. Buddhist teaching is a great challenge and so it can be something that makes us uncomfortable. But of course as Buddhists we absolutely should welcome this sort of discomfort.

11:15Because it need not be unpleasant if we allow ourselves to be challenged and allow ourselves to let go, to change and to broaden our horizons, to strengthen our minds, to clear and purify our minds. the discomfort and the challenge of simply being and being present and of letting go is of course the most uplifting and liberating thing we can undertake But speaking specifically of this dichotomy of kiccha and akiccha It's important as well to understand what is it that is kiccha, that which should be done, what is that is akiccha, whatever the opposite is.

12:03So there are three categories. There's that which should not be done, that which is not that which should be done. There's two ways of translating a kiccha. And of course third, that which should be done. That which should not be done from a Buddhist perspective is anything that directly leads to suffering. We should not engage in activities that involve greed, anger, delusion. We should not engage in killing, we should not engage in stealing. There's fairly well-defined activities that should not be done.

12:42This isn't really what the Buddha was referring to in this case, I don't think, because it didn't relate to these monks, not directly. However, his point stands relating to the verse that whether it be that which should not be done or that which is not that which should be done, both have the danger of leading one to an increase in impurity the mind will be increasingly impure as a result of the engagement here so with the first category it's pretty obvious and this is one of the reasons many people come to practice meditation because they have bad habits that have led them to suffering and they find themselves despairing unable to cope, unable to cultivate or build or find the strength of mind to cope with the difficulty in their lives so they turn to mindfulness and Buddhism to help them change to help them overcome difficulty and challenge caused by things like depression, fear, anxiety, worry, doubt, even anger and addiction.

13:59People can have anger issues and come to practice meditation to help that. People can have addiction issues and come to meditation to help, mindfulness to help with that, and so on. So this is definitely akitya, but once we've established that and begun to practice meditation, there's another, there's the second category. And this is a sort of a nebulous, it's a gray area. This category includes things that we do actually have to do. They are not that which should be done, but we should do them.

14:32But the meaning here is that these are the sorts of things that are duties that we have towards each other and towards ourselves. We have duties towards our fellow monastics. We have duties towards fellow meditators. We have duties towards the meditation center. As a community we take to clean and to care and maintain the meditation center. This is our duty. And anyone who shirks this is of course not doing something that they should be doing. But this is still in the category of akitsa.

15:02because it can become a problem if you are caught up in and obsessed with doing this. Even things like cleaning. There was a story of a monk in the time of the Buddha who was constantly sweeping. And the monks were unsure about this because it seemed like he was quite industrious. It was quite impressive. Sweeping in the morning, sweeping in the afternoon, sweeping at night, day in and day out, sweep, sweep, sweep is all he did. the Buddha didn't praise this monk they asked the Buddha about it and the Buddha said it's just like a janitor or something it's just industry is not in and of itself praiseworthy so it is possible for us to get caught up even in things that we should do because they are not truly what should be done But more common that we find in this category are things that in and of themselves need not be associated with defilement.

16:03So it can be talking, chatting. You think, well, that can be profitable. You talk with the other monastics and sit around chatting or that sort of thing. It can be things like cleaning. It can be activities that we have. It can be building. Some monks get caught up in building projects and this sort of thing. The problem with all of these things being not the practice of mindfulness being not the practice that leads us to a purity of mind directly have the very great potential to as well as well as those activities that are directly associated with greed, anger and delusion these also have the potential to cause the arising of defilement.

16:49So as a result of engaging intensively in these practices we abandon mindfulness practices and as a result can trigger and build bad habits of greed and anger and delusion so you find people becoming irritable and caught up in their addictions because not that the things they're doing are evil but because they're not doing anything to prevent them So our engaging in worldly activities, whether they be activities that are truly frivolous and associated with greed and anger and delusion, or whether they just be frivolous activities that are meaningless.

17:33And we spend all our time now with computers and telephones, on Facebook all the time and this sort of thing. I mean, Facebook, you could say, well, Facebook is great, we're meeting. talking to family and reading stories and so on can be beneficial, but since it is not something that has the potential to cure the mind and purify the mind, what generally happens day in and day out engaging in this sort of activity is as the Buddha said their impurities of mind increase because they have the opportunity it's like in the dark they are festering and growing this fungus this impure thing And until you shine light on it, unless you're constantly vigilant about shining light on it, it grows and grows and festers and pollutes.

18:32In this way it pollutes the mind, the asava pollute the mind. But the third category that which should be done is really not a lot of things and this can be a bit of a problem that there's not a lot that we should be doing and so it's much easier to find many other things to occupy our time than it is to occupy all of our time doing these very few things that we should be doing. It's a challenge. The practice of the Buddha's teaching is very much a simplifying teaching where our lives become fairly simple And as I said, we still engage in many activities that we have to do duties and engagements, even talking with others and teaching and learning and studying and so on.

19:19But that which should be done should always be at our forefront and should be that which we focus our attention on for the most part in our lives as Buddhists, as Buddhist monastics, as Buddhist meditation practitioners. The theory is that there are four things that are called kiccha and these of course relate to the four noble truths. In Buddhism the core of the teaching is four truths that are noble because they lead one to be noble, they lead to enlightenment, they lead one to freedom from suffering, they lead to clarity, they lead to wisdom, they lead to light, brightness, brilliance, wisdom.

20:02So these four are that we should fully understand suffering. Fully understand why is it that we're suffering? What does it mean to suffer? Fully recognize and identify suffering, the suffering that we're undergoing. We should understand it. The core of the Buddha's teaching is that we don't understand suffering and that's why we suffer. We keep again and again banging our heads against the wall, bumping up against suffering, crashing into these situations and experiences that can't do anything but bring us stress and suffering and worry and pain, because we don't understand that that's exactly what we're doing.

20:49So in the practice of mindfulness this is crucial. It's essential that we face our experiences rather than running away from them, chasing them away, fixing them, controlling them or taking them as a problem in any sense of the word. All of our experiences should be things that we strive to understand. strive to understand that the suffering comes not from the experiences. They're not the problem. We don't have to fix them, we don't have to change them.

21:22It comes from our reactions to them, our attachment to them, our stress about them, our worry about them, our identification, this is me, this is mine and so on. Mindfulness teaches us to understand the process of experience and as a result to understand this is how we cause our self-suffering. As a result of doing that This is the first task. The second task is accomplished at the same time. And this is the abandoning of the cause of suffering. The point being that, again, we only suffer because we cling, because we are invested in the nature of our experiences, wishing that this would not be, wishing that that that we don't have would be.

22:09wanting things to be other than what they are, or stay the way they are, or so on. Wishing and wanting and hoping and expecting, any kind of clinging. The duty is to abandon it, and we abandon it through understanding. Once you see that it's causing you suffering, you abandon it. It's a very simple principle. We just simply don't see that we're causing ourselves suffering. If we did, we'd abandon all of our attachment, all of our inclination to act and speak and even think.

22:40in those ways that are clearly causing us such stress and suffering. The third task is that we should see for ourselves, experience for ourselves the cessation of suffering, which again comes in the same process as the first two. The cessation of suffering is freedom from suffering. It's the reality that we call nibbana or nirvana. And it simply is, it's very simply, it's hard to understand, but very simply is the consequence of the mind completely letting go.

23:19When the mind is clinging, it triggers further and further experiences of seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting and feeling and thinking, constantly, constantly experiencing. But when the mind has had enough, gets fed up and lets go, it's like it drops, it turns off, it's like a power out, and there's cessation, complete peace and freedom. And it's like, it's as though all of the shouting in your ear suddenly ceases. One has to see it for oneself to truly appreciate it, but appreciate it one does.

23:54After experiencing it, it changes one's life. It leads to a bone-deep sense of peace and assurance and safety, a sense that nothing really has the power to hurt or affect one on a deep level. It changes one's perspective away from seeking fulfillment in samsara to letting go as a means of finding peace and happiness because one has tasted true peace and true happiness. But one can then compare with superficial, ephemeral and clingy sorts of happiness that only lead to greater and greater addiction and attachment.

24:47And the fourth task, of course, is the path that we should cultivate the path which leads to all of this And that simply says that we should practice kiccha we should do that which needs to be done And the path that we should practice, of course, is the Eightfold Noble Path. So our fourth duty is to cultivate all eight parts of this path, which for practical purposes is easily summarized by three trainings. We know the training of ethics and morality where we keep moral precepts, don't engage in actions and speech.

25:21That would cause harm to others or harm to ourselves. And as meditators be very, very, very careful about all of our actions and speech. As a mindfulness meditator we take this to the nth degree and we're very conscientious about this with good reason. We can create incredible states of purity and clarity through simple ethics, watching what we say, saying only what needs to be said. For a meditator this goes to an extreme. You just don't talk unless you need to talk.

25:50I mean, it's quite simple, it's quite reasonable, but it's very powerful because we have so much useless speech and harmful speech that we engage in day to day. and our actions. For ordinary people, ethics is something like, don't kill, don't steal. For a meditator, it's don't walk unmindfully. All of these bad things that we do are because we were very, very unmindful when we kill, when we steal. For a meditator, you make a determination to walk mindfully, so that my walking will be pure, my eating will be pure.

26:26my showering, my urinating and defecating will be acts of purity. The Buddha used these words. He said, when urinating and defecating, everything that we do, no exceptions, this is an incredible practice that we have this special opportunity to engage in as Buddhist meditators and monastics. And the second training, of course, concentration, focusing the mind through mindfulness, when we focus the mind on the actual experience, by reminding ourselves, this is seeing, this is hearing, this is pain, keeps us focused on the experience rather than on our extrapolations and the narrative we tell ourselves about what we have to do about it, how to fix it, how to change it, how to control it, how to keep it, how to get rid of it, and so on.

27:21We focus our minds, seeing is just seeing and so on. As a result we obtain the third training. The third training comes in sequence. After ethics comes concentration, after concentration we start to see clearly. We see that this isn't worth clinging to, nothing that we experience is stable, satisfying or controllable. All the things that we thought were stable are unstable. Things we thought were satisfying are unsatisfying. What we thought was controllable is uncontrollable.

27:53all of this is not worth clinging to. And so we see this. This is the wisdom that allows for the other three noble truths to arise or involves the other three noble truths. These are the kiccha. This is what should be done. The Buddha makes it quite simple in the actual verse, reminding us that regardless of how many factors there are to the path or trainings there are the ultimate practice is quite simple and he says this in two places so just to review over the verses the first verse talks about what should not be done people who do what should not be done and give up abandon what should be done monks who come to come to them come to ordain and then just don't do anything of any value they are this is insolent unalana I don't really know what the word means something like insolent or not familiar with the word the dictionary says stubborn I guess or arrogant The idea here is that these monks were not listening to the teacher.

28:53They were not approaching the Buddha or not asking for instruction or not engaging in practice at all. Instead they were making shoes. So I guess that just not following the instruction the Buddha taught them and instead they were doing something else. So that's insolent, that's stubborn, that's arrogant. But the more important was pamāda. They are negligent. They neglected to do what's being done. And as a result of this, the defilements, the impurities of mind grow that's the first verse the second verse though says a couple of things in a couple of places first it says initiative those who have proper initiative this means the effort they actually say hey look I have this opportunity born a human being have the opportunity to practice why would I waste this time and they have the initiative to get up and go and they actually do something and what they do the Buddha said, is nityang kaya gatasati.

29:48Their mindfulness is always nityang, always gone to the body or focused on the body. Why is this? The body is our best tool to begin the practice of mindfulness. We use the body as an entry to the cultivation of mindfulness. It's something that's always with us. It's always accessible. It's why mindfulness of the breath is so popular. because it's simple, it's clear, it's an easy entry to the cultivation of mindfulness. If we were instead to try to focus on the mind, for a beginner meditator that's much more difficult.

30:22In fact, even for advanced meditators the best way to observe the mind is still to begin by focusing on the body so that when the mind reacts and interacts with the body you are there to catch it. The body is the best way, the Buddha said, to cultivate the path of practice to attain enlightenment and to become free from suffering. Always keeping the mind with the body, not letting the mind go to the past or the future, to external activities, external entities or things.

30:55outside of our bodily experience, because all of our experience stops at the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body and the mind. All of this within this six-foot frame, the Buddha said, the beginning of samsara and the end of samsara, the beginning of suffering and the end of suffering is all to be found just here, just in this body. And then he says, the second thing he says in this regard is that These who practice well and give up what should not be done and are constantly engaging in what should be done, they have two qualities and that is sati and sampajanya which we have learned about on various occasions.

31:38Sati, as we are aware, we translate as mindfulness but it really means something like remembrance, it's reminding yourself. It's the activity that comes from the noting practice. When you use a mantra, you can use a mantra based on a concept, but in Buddhist teaching we use a mantra focused on reality, just to remind ourselves to keep ourselves focused just on the experience. Because it's easy to say, I will pay attention to the present moment, pay attention to my experience, but without a concrete activity or technique to do that it's of course easy to it's inevitable that we'll get lost in greed or anger bad habits of delusion and so on when we're strict and vigilant with ourselves methodical seeing is just seeing hearing is just hearing when we remind ourselves in this way this is sati and the the accomplice or the the accompanying quality that comes with sati is called sampajanya because it's important for sati that we're aware of the experience you wouldn't want to note something if you weren't actually experiencing it it's common for meditators in the beginning to get lost in their thoughts and lost in the words so that they're just saying stepping right and they're not actually being aware of the movement of the right foot and stepping left and they're not actually being aware but sampajanya means this and it also means that

33:15the knowing of the experience becomes clear as a result of mindfulness. So, first of all we know that the foot is moving, then we say, stepping right as we know that it's moving. And as a result of saying that to ourselves we create clarity. So these go together, not really one causes the other. but the knowledge and the mindfulness come together. So, the grasping of the object is the same experience of seeing the object clearly as a result of grasping the object.

33:45This is stepping, this is seeing, this is hearing, this is pain, this is thinking. the clarity evolves accompanying that mindfulness. And this is the meaning of sampajanya, wisdom. As a result of being mindful and through the process of mindfulness we're aware of the experience just as it is. Mindfulness is something that keeps that from changing and keeps that consistent, that we're constantly aware this is what it is and we see things arising and ceasing, we see the impermanence of our experiences.

34:19We see that nothing is stable, nothing lasts forever. And we see the suffering aspect, that we cause ourself suffering when we have expectations, needing it to stay, needing it to go, clinging to it as me, as mine, under my control. And we see that the experiences that we have are none of them me or mine or under our control. We see that the expectation and the need for things to be me and mine is always going to be met with disappointment as reality is unpredictable, not under our control.

34:57More important, not worth being thought of as me or mine, not worth it. worth letting go, worth being free from. Sati and Sampajanya. This is a brief explanation of the Kiccha. There are many other things that we have to do and are required to do as human beings, as monastics even, as meditators. We still have some duties. But ultimately the only one thing as far as the Buddha was concerned that we have to do is this pair of qualities that we have to cultivate, sati and sampajanya.

35:34Being aware of our experiences, noting them, grasping them correctly, seeing them just as they are, understanding them. and as a result becoming free from the suffering that comes from clinging to things that are unable to satisfy or provide any kind of refuge, safety, security, happiness or freedom. So as Buddhist meditators, the first thing we can do is appreciate and be happy that we have the capacity to undertake this teaching, that we have undertaken this teaching, that we are undertaking this teaching, and that we continue to undertake this teaching.

36:19We can appreciate that we are doing what needs to be done. We should feel confident and not necessarily proud, but reassured that what you are doing is something that the Buddha himself encouraged us to do. Sati Sampajanya. But we should always, of course, be on guard to notice when we are engaged in frivolity. Don't go making shoes. Not of any kind. It's not worth it. Don't get caught up in many of the silly things that we could get caught up in.

36:51And as Buddhists meditate, as people here for a short time, when you're engaged in an intensive course, you have to really be vigilant with this. Don't engage in any sort of frivolity. Every moment of your day is precious. When you shower, your showering should be a time of mindfulness. When you eat, eating should especially be a time of great care and mindfulness. And of course this goes for everyone, not just those doing intensive practice. The more we can do that which is of true value, obviously the more valuable we will be, the more value we will get out of this short life as human beings.

37:25So it behooves us to take this seriously and to apply ourselves and to make the best use of our short, short time that we have on this earth, to do what should be done and to give up that which should not be done or even limit our engagement in that which is not that which should be done. So that's the Dhammapada for today. Thank you for listening. Thank you, sir.