Dhammapada Verse 270: The Ariya

0:03Today we are studying Dhammapada verse 270, which reads as follows, Which means, one is not an arya when one harms living beings from not harming all beings one is truly or rightly called an arya so a simple verse but this was taught in relation to a fairly memorable story so the story goes that there was a fisherman named Arya and of course the word Arya means literally something like victor or conqueror But it came to be used as the word for noble or the aristocracy, someone who is high, someone who is exalted, someone who is noble.

1:39So a translation we often use for Arya is noble. So the high class people in India called themselves Arya. I'll explain a little bit of the history as well. But anyway, for the purpose of the story, this fisherman, for some reason or other, his parents named him Arya. And the Buddha, at the time, the Buddha was in the habit of waking up early in the morning and considering who in the world was best ready and able to appreciate his teachings or benefit from his teachings.

2:24And so every day he would come up with someone who he could find to benefit and using his penetration of the minds of beings was able to find people, beings who were ready to hear his teachings. And on this day he found Arya in his mind's eye and he looked back and came to understand that Arya had what we call Upanisaya means he had the potential not from this life of being a fisherman but from past lives of perhaps cultivating good deeds or practicing asceticism or meditation.

3:17And as a result of those deeds he was actually able to understand, he would actually be able to benefit from the Buddha's teaching and as a result of teaching would be able to cultivate the knowledge of the truth and become a Sotapanna So on that day the Buddha went with a large group of monks wandering for alms and came to where Arya was staying and gathered together with many of his senior disciples and entered into a conversation about names within earshot of Arya.

4:09And so they were talking about Sariputta's name. How did Sariputta get his name? Because, well, his mother was Sariputta, means son. So Sariputta means he's the son of Sari. And so that's a good reason to name someone Sariputta. Moggallana, he asked the name Moggallana and Moggallana was able to explain that it was the village where he was born or the family that he was born into was Moggallana and so he was named or as a monk he took on the name of his village an appropriate name which was innocuous, sort of unassuming self-effacing not self-aggrandizing by any means just the name of his village to keep him humble and to remind him of his roots and so Arya was listening to this conversation and thought to himself oh here I am maybe the Buddha will ask me about my name and so somehow the Buddha came to ask Arya his name and he said oh my name is Arya and the Buddha said but you're a fisherman And he said, yes, I am.

5:29Buddha said, how can you be called Arya when you are a fisherman? And he taught this verse. So the lessons we can draw from it, it's a simple verse, a simple story, but There is some valuable meaning here. The first, of course, is in relation to fishing and this word that we use to describe such a torturous, barbaric practice, somewhat like hunting. But it's interesting how even those who are averse to hunting large animals, deer and wild game, often have little problem or no problem with engaging in what they call fishing.

6:28And it's difficult to understand as a Buddhist meditator how entertaining or how interested people are in the practice of hooking and torturing and killing living beings in this way. And it has a lot to do probably with how different fish are from human beings, how we're able to dissociate ourselves from it. But the point for us, the interesting lesson in regards to fishing for people engaged in the practice of Buddhism is how dissociated we are from reality without the practice of mindfulness, without the practice of meditation.

7:19How possible it is for people to, for beings to engage in practices that are so incredibly horrific and dissociated from their own inclinations, ambitions, desires. Clearly, obviously no one who engages in the practice of fishing is at all okay with the same sorts of fate being met by themselves. Nobody who engages in fishing is at all okay with being hooked and dragged out of the water and sliced up and killed in such a barbaric way. And without the practice of meditation, this all seems fine.

8:15It seems even entertaining and attractive to people looking to consume, eat the fish. or just to enjoy the hunt, the chase, and the gratification of getting what you want, the gratification of catching a fish. But why this is such an important lesson in relation to what it means to be noble, what it means to be great, is because of how horrific and how corrupted the mind has to be to even consider this to be an agreeable or beneficial activity to engage in.

9:10A person who has the quality of mindfulness and clarity of mind to see things in their true light would never be able to even consider to engage in such brutality of placing a trap with bait for another living being to skewer them on a hook and drag them in such panic with such fear and such aversion to drag them from their living environment to pull them out of the environment that they can even live in, take them out of the air that they breathe, the water that they breathe, to cut off their head or cut open their belly, to stun them, to throw them in the bottom of a boat, to drag them home, to cook them and eat them.

10:15There's very few people who would consider doing this to a human being. But our inability to see the nature of the act regardless of what sort of being it is, to appreciate the nature and the impression that it leaves and the effect that it has on the being that is the victim of the act is incredible. This is obviously something that has nothing or is antithetical to the cultivation of goodness and to the forwarding of one's own self-worth, one's own deserving of happiness and peace and if one brings such violence such pain such suffering to others it's hard to say that one in any sense of the word deserves happiness and peace and freedom from suffering for themselves so the idea of fishing worth considering worth thinking about gives us some idea of the level of delusion that ordinary activities involve, how an ordinary state of mind is so caught up and corrupted by delusion, greed, anger, cruelty and so on.

11:49The second thing we can take from this though is how complicated our minds actually are. And this is related to the idea of Upanisaya because in the case of this fisherman there's no reason to think that he would be in any way capable of understanding the subtle teachings of the Buddha. Certainly not the sort of person you would think would be interested in engaging in meditation. Not the sort of person you would think of as having any claim on the status of an arya, a sotapan or anything like it.

12:38And as the Buddha said many times, if you look at this latest life, of course you would think that. But with the ability to see the past lives of beings and the qualities that they have cultivated, you are able to appreciate that this life that we live It's such a small part of who we are. And you can see this when you compare and observe people who practice the Buddha's teaching. Some have a hard time with it, some have an easy time with it. Some are quickly able to appreciate and realize the Buddha's teaching, some take longer.

13:16It's certainly not worthwhile to obsess about such things and judge ourselves or critique our practice. What's value about it is to remind us that any goodness has value regardless of the outcome. But sometimes the results of our practice are uninspiring. Sometimes they appear to be non-existent. Where we practice, we put out effort and we still see such obstacles and such conflicts in our minds preventing us from finding peace, happiness, freedom from suffering, the pollution in our minds being deeply embedded.

14:15So the idea of Upanisaya means that even in this life we may not become a Sotapanna or a Sakadagami, an Anagami, an Arahant. We may not become an Arya. Some people who practice meditation don't come to do intensive practice. They're only able to practice a little bit on a daily basis. They're able to keep the precepts for the most part and they're able to cultivate goodness on a foundational level. And we consider this to be valuable. to not be a worthless endeavor, even though they might never become an Arya in this life.

14:53This is the case with so many of the Buddha's disciples who in past lives were able to practice to some level but never were able to truly realize the truth of his teachings. But life after life through the cultivation of good deeds the power that it cultivated meant that in their past life even people like Arya who for a short time in this life got on the wrong path and was born into a family of fishermen and as a result became a killer of fish but with the help of the Buddha was able to get back on track reminding him.

15:28I think the lesson here is that the Buddha was able to remind him of something more noble or more valuable than this very crude and basic value related to catching and eating or selling the flesh of other living beings. And this is I think the third lesson that There is potential in all beings. And if you're born a human being, it shows that you have some great potential for goodness. Many beings never have the opportunity to be born as a human. They're born in the various animal realms or in the hell realms or that sort of thing.

16:13But being born a human being means there is some potential. But the third lesson is that the Buddha had this capacity to unlock that potential, something we can learn from, something we can take as a lesson for ourselves, that sometimes it takes more than just direct expression of the teaching or the path or the truth. in order to unlock that potential and the Buddha was very good at finding skillful means of doing this for various of his listeners so in this case we have an example of where he was able to use the word Arya use the word, the name of this man as a means of making him consider what is truly of value.

17:00When you use this word Arya, it was such a powerful word at the time. It was a word that denoted something meaningful and was able to have him consider and put in perspective what he had dedicated his life to and to appreciate that maybe there was something better to do with his time and to appreciate the negative consequences of that which he was engaged in because at the time it was There was a sense that killing was problematic on a spiritual level, that spiritual people tried their best, generally speaking, to give up killing.

17:46It was a fairly well agreed upon principle. And so thinking of what it meant to be an Arya, to be noble, to be someone with a high mind or some sort of special state of being, was able to pull him out of his evil tendencies. And so when the Buddha said, you can't really, this name, you're not living up to your namesake. And this is, I think, the final lesson we can get from this story is the power of names. And it relates to our practice of using a mantra or using a word that names that which we experience.

18:30Names have this capacity to focus one's attention and to stabilize one's attention on a specific object. So just like words that are charged with emotion can be used to evoke positive or negative emotions, but likewise a name that has some kind of spiritual meaning to it can be used to steady the mind or direct the mind as a reminder. Naming human beings therefore can be a very powerful thing and you see this in Buddhist societies that humans or Buddhists are often given names like Kusala, which means wholesomeness.

19:17Arya, I guess, is sometimes used. But you see in other societies that other types of names are used. But in Buddhist society, there's a good reason for giving significant names to children. Because, of course, of the value it gives in reminding you of what is valuable. And so this was a means by which this man was able to direct his attention in a good way by considering this quality of the Arya which was so close to his mind, close to his heart because it was his name.

20:02But it's a reminder of the power of words and the power of names for our practice, how we use a word to encapsulate an idea, encapsulate an experience, and as a result we're able to study the mind and focus the mind on an object. Names have power and there is value in naming your children after such positive qualities. But a simple story, not much to it. Certainly something that we can consider to be a success, an intervention. If you think about the people in the world who engage in these sorts of practices, it's the sort of thing that we ourselves, many of us who come to practice Buddhist meditation, fell into ourselves before the practice.

21:04It's something that makes you appreciate the simple value of being given a path to follow, being given instruction, direction. Without the teaching, even on the five precepts, very easy to get caught up in the wrong path, to engage in activities that are to your great detriment. But that's the story. The verse is equally simple, but there's two principles in the verse. The first is ahimsa, which means non-harming, and the other is the concept of the arya.

21:39So I'll go into detail now about what this word actually means and what significance it has. But first, ahimsa. On a superficial level, it just means not physically harming other living beings. You can say with actions or speech, either way, there are these two ways of harming others. If you harm with body, this is through acts of physical violence, cultivating pain and dis-ease in others. The physical acts could even be through scaring them, through threatening them, through violence to their possessions or creating loud noises, sights and sounds and smells, anything to torture or create dis-ease or disquiet or disturbance to make them upset and especially to cause them suffering, cause them physical harm, injury or death.

22:50With speech, of course, can be similar where you scare them or threaten them or that sort of thing. But on a deeper level, ahimsa can relate even to one's own suffering so ahimsa means non-harming it can relate to any kind of suffering that we cause suffering to ourselves suffering to others might not be direct violence towards another being but it could be in in terms of leading them on the wrong path, engaging them in activities that cultivate greed, addiction, partying, festivities, these sorts of things, engaging in sensuality, sexuality, these activities that lead people in a direction that cultivates addiction.

23:45We can engage in activities like gossiping to make people angry or upset. And we can cause suffering to ourselves by harming others or by harming ourselves through stress and worry and fear, through cultivating bad habits and through addiction, through clinging to sensuality, clinging to our desires and our ambitions, clinging to our possessions, these sorts of things. And it's this deeper meaning, the meaning of causing suffering suffering to ourselves and suffering to others that it relates directly to the idea of the Arya but it's a simple concept that does really well in encapsulating what it means to be enlightened that you don't cause suffering if you want to explain very succinctly what it means to be an Arya or what is the path that will lead us to be an Arya it's the path of non-harming which relates directly back to the Four Noble Truths of giving up or letting go or abandoning the cause of suffering it's another way of saying that but really easy to understand if you talk about non-harming because immediately it It prevents us or helps to restrain us from harming others, violence.

25:18But step by step also leads us to give up habits and activities that cause stress and suffering in ourselves and others. So the idea of ahimsa is a great one for summing up what it means to practice the Buddha's teaching and what it is that leads us to find peace, happiness and freedom from suffering and to become noble, which is the second part of the verse, the idea of the arya. So Arya historically was used by a warlike group of people. Ari means enemy.

25:57So Arya means someone who conquers or overcomes their enemies. It's a very warlike sort of word. and so originally was not a very good word it was a word that was used by people who killed other groups of people they would invade and kill and pillage it's the same group of people that were the Vikings this group of people that invaded other lands burnt and pillaged and brought violence to other civilizations that also invaded India and brought violence to India, and their records even attest to this.

26:39They talk about driving out the dark-skinned demons who have been the people in India with a darker shade of skin, and then these lighter-skinned horse-riding warrior nomads from the north. But they established a society in India and set themselves up as being the overlords and they had slaves, I guess. I mean, the history is not really that clear, but it's the general idea of it. Eventually the society became stable and this word Arya and the language that it came from, the Sanskrit types of language that it came from, became common use.

27:24And so the word Arya took on this meaning of noble in the same way that it did in Europe because it was the same sort of group of people who were keen on being the overlords. It's the same sorts of people who colonized other countries and The whole global colonialism in North America, in Asia, in Sri Lanka even. The sorts of people who came and invaded and set themselves up as the rulers over the indigenous populations. And so this word has the same sort of meaning as the European noble, these people who set themselves up as higher.

28:06But it also, just like in Europe, just like in the English language, took on a different meaning, a more subtle, a more general sort of meaning of being noble, being actually what we now say as noble, being high-minded, being great, being special. So these people would often put themselves up as being special out of birth. Obviously the Buddha didn't agree with that and it's one of the important things that he reiterated again and again about the Arya.

28:36Because by the time the Buddha came around I guess it was already used in this sort of way as being a general sort of betterness or greatness, high-mindedness or highness. Like when we call a king or we call them your majesty, your highness. So this highness, this specialness that we attribute to nobility, so true nobility, we even say in English, is sort of a quality of one's individual mind or individual heart. And so the Buddha appears to be one of the few people who actually tried to use this word Arya in a great way.

29:20This was of course long before it was used in the English language and today it's used in such a terrible way to support the supremacy of people with lighter skin or people of a certain race or that sort of thing, the Aryan race. It was used in Germany by the Nazis to justify incredible atrocities. And it's interesting how even 2,000 years ago, 2,500 years ago, the Buddha was already saying that this is antithetical to what it means to be noble. And this is what this verse encapsulates.

29:58So if you think about how Arya has been used by the people who originally used the word to describe themselves invading and conquering, torturing and pillaging and murdering peaceful societies, and in modern times used by Nazis and by racists and by white supremacists and those sorts of people. The Buddha simply said, this is antithetical to what it means to be noble. You've failed the very first test of what it means to be noble, which is to not harm any living being.

30:39So the Buddha reinterpreted the word and, I mean, again, used it in its more general sense of being noble, truly noble, that we can all appreciate. We don't immediately think of specific people wearing crowns or having a certain bloodline when we use the word noble today. Someone is noble because of how great they are. And the Buddha was certainly noble. His followers strived to be noble. Many of his followers did become truly noble. And we ourselves hold this up as to be the noble way, the Arya Atangika Magga, the Eightfold Noble Path.

31:21The Buddha did specifically say what it means to be noble. The teaching that we have is that there are a set of things, I guess six or seven qualities that it means to be noble. And it goes like this. Someone who is noble, one is not angry. if you want to describe what it means or define what it means to be noble, the first quality, the first characteristic is that one doesn't get angry. So someone who gets angry clearly has a lack of mobility. Anger is the cause for suffering for oneself and it's the prime cause for us to engage in activities that harm others, violence and speech and actions for the purpose of of harming and hurting others someone who wants to be noble has to deal with their anger and has to overcome it and find ways to cultivate kindness through the practice of kindness of being kind in action and speech and having an attitude of kindness, having a state of mind that is friendly and wishing for the well-being of others.

32:47The second quality, anupanahi. Anupanahi means not holding grudges or not responding with anger. So akodano means to not get angry, anupanahi means to not respond with anger, or not respond to anger with anger basically, to not continue or cultivate animosity. And the difference here is that getting angry is an ordinary occurrence for ordinary individuals. in the world gets angry from time to time unless they come to the state of being truly noble from time to time they're going to be angry and so the people around you are often going to blow up with anger or irritation maybe they will don't dislike something you've done and get angry at you say angry words This sort of thing can be considered normal, can be considered somewhat innocuous.

33:48It's the sort of thing that we should let blow over. We should, as friends and as fellow human beings, find ways to forgive and make allowance for. You consider it to be just ordinary behavior, you can overcome it, you can let it pass, you can let it go. But the real danger, and this is the Buddha said, the greater evil than getting angry, for example, is when someone gets angry in response. When someone reacts to other people's negative emotions.

34:26When one cultivates a conflict. through response. This is anupanahi. A noble one doesn't do this. A noble one is able to, through their lack of anger, if nothing else, they're able to respond with anger by patience, by forbearance, by friendliness, by compassion and sympathy, and the appreciation of the suffering that one who gets angry is going through, rather than feeling attacked or thinking about only one's own well-being in response to someone getting angry.

35:11We think of the individual's well-being. or at the very least we acknowledge the reality that that person is going through, rather than being triggered by it, being upset by it. another quality that those aspiring to be enlightened should adhere quite closely to, especially in a Buddhist monastery or meditation center where you're in such close proximity with other people. You have to appreciate that sometimes even meditators will get upset, will get angry, will trigger you in various ways and it's the sort of thing that we have to be very careful about and we have to learn We have to learn patience and forgiveness to allow people to be triggered and express their emotions and learn to overcome them, to give them the space that they need to overcome them.

36:12Don't react when people get upset. Don't react negatively. Number three, amakhi means not looking down on others And I think this one specifically is included here because this would be a dig at the conventional nobility People who claim to be noble by birth, a king or an aristocrat or that sort of thing, someone who has a pure bloodline or that sort of thing, would generally look highly upon themselves and look down on other beings. Ammaki means to depreciate others, to depreciate their worth.

36:53And so a true quality of a noble that has nothing to do with the conventional use of this word Arya, people who thought they were stronger than others, better than others physically because they could kill and they could conquer. This isn't what makes one an Arya. An Arya is someone, or a noble. A noble is someone who doesn't look down on others, who doesn't see themselves as greater, as better, or try to assert their dominance over other beings.

37:23They've given up this sort of games of trying to be on top or trying to be powerful or exert their power over others. They don't even try to exert their power over themselves. They learn to let go and let things go and be free. Number four, visuddho, they are pure. A noble one is pure in body, in speech and in mind. Their actions are engaged in with mindfulness. Their speech is through thoughtfulness and engaged for benefit rather than simply to hear themselves speak.

38:12And their thoughts are well organized, their thoughts are pure, their thoughts are related to that which is of true benefit. Their thoughts are on ethics, their thoughts are on concentration, their thoughts are on wisdom. Their thoughts are free from greed, free from anger, free from delusion. Their thoughts are pure, their thoughts are focused, their thoughts are well directed. Number four, number five, a noble goes to purity, goes to that which is pure, which is nibbana.

38:55That someone is noble because they are noble as a result of going to the purest of all, which is nibbana, which is freedom from suffering. It means they enter into states of freedom. They're able to let go of not just ordinary desires or attachments, but they let go of everything. They let go of their body, they let go of their mind, they let go of samsara entirely and they attain true freedom and they enter into that which is pure and free from suffering, free from the incessant experience of seeing and hearing and smelling and tasting.

39:33And feeling and thinking that we're constantly bombarded with here in samsara. They're able to free themselves from that. Go to that which is the most pure. Go to Nibbana. Number six, sampanaditi, they have right view, they have view that is in line with the Four Noble Truths, they understand suffering, meaning they understand that nothing is worth clinging to, not their own body, not their own mind, not seeing, not hearing, not smelling, not tasting, not feeling, not thinking, not any idea or concept.

40:08But it's all none of it worth holding on to, none of it truly satisfying, none of it the true source of happiness. None of it possibly can be. They see impermanence, they see non-self, they see that things are arising and ceasing in accordance with their own nature, and they don't cling to anything in the world. They have the right view to see in this way. Someone who has wrong view or thinks that this is worth clinging to, this ambition is worth attaining, something in the world is worth holding on to.

40:40We see many nobles hoarding their wealth, amassing their possessions, clinging to control, clinging to power. It's again just antithetical to anything close to what it means to be truly noble. And number seven, Maidhavi, they are wise a true quality, a true characteristic that you can see in those who are noble is that they are wise, that they are able to see the truth in any situation. They're able to find solutions to challenges, solutions to problems.

41:19They're able to express themselves in ways that bring peace and happiness to others. They're able to engage in thoughts and speech and actions that are for purpose and for benefit. out of kindness out of compassion out of clarity of mind they're able to be patient they're able to forbear suffering bear with suffering they're able to bear with other people to be patient with others to be helpful beneficial to others they're able to be still and at peace through the power of their wisdom they're able to understand the nature of the world which is such a valuable quality, nothing else really comes close to it.

42:08With wisdom of course any other good quality can be cultivated through the knowledge and the clear understanding of its goodness. So this is what it means to be a noble. The Buddha did enumerate it in this way. Of course, simply put, noble means good. Noble means great. It means perfect. It means pure. Noble means noble. And it's worth thinking about. It's a very important term. Again, it's the name of the Eightfold Path that the Buddha taught. It's the Noble Eightfold Path.

42:48And just a memorable little story about this fisherman who had the unfortunate or fortunate fate to be born a fisherman named Arya and how the name was a powerful tool that the Buddha was able to simply use to evoke some higher qualities and to remind him of things that he had forgotten from past lives all the goodness that he had in his heart that he was destroying through the actions in this life of torturing and murdering his fellow living beings So for us as meditators, the takeaway relates to the Arya and how this is our goal and how we all come from less than perfect backgrounds.

43:37We have bad qualities that we're working to overcome. We have karma that we've performed in this life and past lives that is dragging us down. And so we struggle and we work. And we slowly slowly purify ourselves and better ourselves and improve our minds, improve our qualities of mind. and bring ourselves closer and closer to this ideal of being an Arya. This is what it means to practice the Buddha's teaching. This is the direct result of the practice of mindfulness, which purifies the mind and creates the clarity to allow us to see the bad habits that we cling to and cultivate in our ignorance, and allows us to change our minds, to free our minds from these bad habits and cultivate good habits.

44:32So that's the Dhamma for today. Thank you all for listening.