“Your work is to discover your work
And then, with all your heart,
To give yourself to it.”
Dhammapada v 166
Trans. Thomas Byrom

So I’m starting by cheating! This talk is about Chapter 8 of the Dhammapada (verses 100 – 115) – “The Thousands”, but the verse I’ve chosen as the title of my talk is actually from Chapter 12 (“The Self”). It’s the last verse of that Chapter and I’ve been very taken with it all this term, since I first came across it (which was actually on a postcard pinned to a notice-board in the studio of an artist friend of mine). It feels like it sums part of the “why” I like the “Thousands”… but I’m not going to spell that out now, I’ll just leave it hanging as a question which will hopefully be answered by the time we get to the end.

I knew, as soon as we started to talk about having the Dhammapada as the theme for this term that this was the Chapter I’d like to explore. It’s always been my favourite. When I worked in the Wholefood Shop in Croydon, each morning we’d have a morning meeting, salute the shrine, read some Dharma… I remember often hearing this verse and every time feeling inspired by it.

Why I like it

So why do I like it.

First of all, I like it because it gives me hope. I have spent a lot of the last 15 years that I’ve been practising fretting about all the time I waste, how I’m not “doing enough” and wishing to be more wholeheartedly engaged. Why I feel that way says a lot about my conditioning and habits… and I won’t go into that now!

What this chapter says to me, to put it very simply, is “don’t focus on/fret about what you haven’t done, don’t spend time dwelling on time you’ve wasted… focus and make the most of the times when you are engaged, inspired, able to be wholehearted in your practice.”

Years before I became a Buddhist I had quite a fascination with time management and how our attitudes towards our time (and our energy!) are profoundly affected by how we think about them. Back in about 1990 I was reading a book on time management by John Adair and I came across the “Pareto Principle”. Simply put, it states that we get 80% of our “results” from 20% of our effort… It was something studied in the workplace, looking, for example, at teams of Sales People – 20% of them would often bring in about 80% of the business. And intuitively I could sense that this was probably also true in terms of my own time and energy – that actually a lot of what I’d achieved (eg in studying for my degree) was probably done in about 20% of my time! In the past I’d always fretted about the 80% of time I’d “wasted”, but coming across the Pareto Principle (and later, the Dhammapada’s “Thousands”) I began to see that I could take a different attitude to that.

At this point I should mention that I’m a poet and not a mathematician, so it bothers me not one jot that the Pareto Principle compares 80% with 20% whilst the Dhammapada compares “one day” with “a thousand years”…. what interests me is the principle underneath – never mind about the “other” 80% of your time or the 99 years and 364 days… “Better” is the “single day” that “brings peace” – focus on that. (I’ll unpack the meaning of “better” in a bit, by the way.)

Meanwhile, there are two more reasons (both poetic) why I like the “thousands” – when I was reflecting on and reading the verse at the weekend I realise that it reads a bit like a “list poem” – a fairly well-known form of modern poetry which Ananda and Manjusvara teach sometimes on their Wolf at the Door writing workshops (indeed, Ananda has a whole book about list poems)…. I’ve always liked lists (it’s one of the reasons I’m a Buddhist – that and tea-drinking…) and reflecting on why that might be I realised that, at least in part, it’s to do with the way that a list sounds quite like an incantation or almost a spell. There’s something slightly mesmerising about the repetition… a bit like in music, Bach, say, when you get a gorgeous cycle of notes that repeats harmonically, but within that one bit changes and it evolves… well, a list poem is like that. The “thousands” chapter is like that.

Mentioning the words “incantation and spell” makes me think of magic, I also wanted to say something about the (slightly) magical process of writing this talk. I’ve been mulling over in my mind all term, but it’s only been this last weekend that I’ve sat down to look at it systematically…and when I did, it was a bit like pulling a rabbit out of a hat…. As I say, I’ve always loved and been fascinated by this chapter in a slightly woolly-poetic-intuitive way, without really ever delving very deeply or systematically into it. When I did start to look more fully at these 15 short verses, lo! I found that hidden in it (well, not that hidden, but I really hadn’t been looking that hard!) is the whole of the Noble Eightfold Path AND the Threefold Way!

So, I’ve begun by telling you why I like the thousands. Why my heart engages with it….what fascinates me about it. I like it, I enjoy it… now I’ll say a bit about how I’ve gone on to engage with it for the purpose of writing this talk and to tell you about the rabbit I found inside, as well as the hat…..

How I’ve approached this talk

One of the things Bhante has always been very “hot” on is our use of language. As you know, he’s made his own translation of the Dhammapada, the better to bring out the meaning of the words in the light of his own understanding of the Dharma. In many, many of his talks he takes time to clarify exactly what is meant by a particular word – and it’s not just semantics. If “our lives are the creation of our minds” the words we pick up can be like the tools we shape them with… and it’s good to be clear exactly what tools we’re using and how, and not use them indiscriminately.

So, the word that’s repeated again and again in this Chapter is “better”… I asked my friend, Dhivan (who’s a Pali scholar) what the actual word is that’s translated as “better” and what it really means. He said:

“the word translated ‘better’ in the thousands chapter in the Dhammapda is ‘seyya”, meaning “better” or “good” or “happiness”. So in Pali, the verses are slightly more powerful than when translated into English because the word has a wider range. For instance, taking verse 100 (the first one) it literally means,

“than a thousand speeches
which are composed of pointless/meaningless words
one valuable/meaningful word is better/is excellent
which having heard one is calmed.” [repeat]

So not only is one meaningful word better than a thousand meaningless words, but it is excellent and good in itself. There is the same positive ambiguity in the word “seyyo” in many of the verses….”

Next I decided to look at a number of different translations in order to get a “poet’s eye view” of what was being said in each of the verses… because “factual truth” is not everything in the spiritual life… poetic truth is also important.

I looked at:

Juan Mascaro- – the Penguin translation and the one I am most familiar with. Interestingly it’s a translation from Pali into English by a Spanish man….

then I looked at Bhante’s translation (and was interested to notice that he introduces a fair few extra words (in square brackets) to make clear the context in which the Buddha was speaking these verses, ie in the context of Hindu, Vedic culture… that the Dhamma at the time is being spoken into a culture where vedic verses and practises are the familiar norm.

I also looked at Buddharakkhita’s (fairly literal translation) published by the Maha Bodhi Society in Bangalora – I like this version as it has a parallel pali text on the left-hand page, so you can get an idea of what the actual original pali word was, which has helped in getting a sense of the overall structure of this chapter.

then I looked at the translation in the Shambala pocket classics edition by Thomas Byrom (as recommended by Jvalamalini) – I like the translation for its poetic quality (and there’s a delightful introduction by Ram Dass evoking how it would be to hear the Dhammapada if you’d been walking across India for weeks trying to track down the Buddha before you heard it….). There are some bits where this translation is loose to the point of being a bit-misleading, but there’s a lot that’s good about it – not least the verse I chose as the title for this talk!

and finally I looked at a “rendering” of the Dhammapada by Ajahn Munindo, a friend of Dhivan’s who’s a monk at the Aruna Ratnagiri Monastery in Northumberland. This is not a literal translation, but a “Dhammapada for reflection” that “aims to communicate the living spirit of the text, unencumbered by rigid adherence to formal exactness”. In the introduction to this edition, Dhivan writes:

“The book that you hold in your hands is a sparkling basket of light, full of illumination of the human situation”

(My only reason for quoting this is gratuitous pleasure… I think it’s such a fantastic image that I wanted to share it – and also, it’s not always how we see the Dhammapada…!)

So I looked at these five translations (and the key pali words) and compared what they had to say about each verse and then, inspired by Sagaravajra’s talk a few weeks ago, I began to look at the structure of the Chapter to see what, if anything, that might reveal. This wasn’t something I’d probably have thought of doing, but I was very taken with the way that he saw a whole “mandala” structure in the Chapter 9 (Evil) (I think it was that Chapter!).

The Structure and the Teachings Contained in the Chapter

What became fascinatingly clear, when I started to look more closely into how this Chapter was put together, is what a huge amount of Dharma there is packed into it! Now that might sound daft… but let’s go through and look at it systematically, a bit at a time:

100 Better than a thousand meaningless words collected together (in the Vedic oral tradition) is a single meaningful word on hearing which one becomes tranquil.
101 Better than a thousand meaningless verses collected together (in the Vedic oral tradition) is one (meaningful) line of verse on hearing which one becomes tranquil.
102 Though one should recite a hundred (Vedic) verses, (verses) without meaining, better is one line (or: a single word) of Dhamma on hearing which one becomes tranquil.

It seems to me that these verses relate to the experience of “Perfect Vision” (in terms of the Noble Eightfold Path) or, we could say, to the “Fourth Sight” (the sight of the holy man) in the Four Noble Truths. Either way, we can see them as relating to a moment of true contact with the Dharma – and I imagine that many if not all of us can remember the significance of the moment in our lives at which we really first heard the Dharma, the point where some of it really “went it”… and that that single moment stands out amidst the thousands of other moments which surrounded it….

The next three verses bring in the “battle” imagery and are, I think, about helping us to establish what the “real battleground” of the spiritual life is:

103 Though one should conquer in battle thousands upon thousands of men, yet he who conquers himself is (truly) the greatest in battle.
104 It is indeed better to conquer oneself than to conquer other people. Of a man who has subdued himself, (and) who lives (self-)controlled,
105 neither a god nor a celestial musician (gandhabba), nor Mara together with Brahma, can undo the victory – the victory of a person who is (subdued and controlled) like that.

Now. I’m going to take us on a bit of a diversion at this point to explore what the point is that’s really being made here. I think it links straight back to the very first verse of the Dhammapada – “our life is the creation of our mind” (v1, Mascaro translation). Just as we can get distracted from engaging with our spiritual practice by fretting about all the time we’ve already wasted, we can also get distracted by blaming other people (or engaging in conflict with them)… by feeling that “if only we can get so-and-so to do or be some different way, then we’ll be able to get on with our practice”. This is a red herring. We need to name and recognise that we are our own biggest distractions in the spiritual life.

There’s a wonderful essay by the poet Mary Oliver called “Of Power and Time” and in it, she’s explicitly talking about the process of writing, but she makes the point that what she’s saying applies to “creative work” of any kind – and that includes spiritual practice. She’s talking about how easy it is to get distracted from the task in hand, and she says:

“But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley’s birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course. Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.

It is this internal force – this intimate interrupter – whose tracks I would follow. ” (Blue Pastures, p 1)

As I say, she’s talking specifically about the process of writing and distracting herself from writing, but it’s easy to see how this applies, for instance, to sitting on the meditation (and being able to stay there are not get distracted and get up and do something “more important”).

At the end of the essay, she evokes that wonderful feeling, when one has broken free of the gravitational pull of teeth, mustard and Uncle Stanley’s birthday….

“On any morning or afternoon, serious interruptions to work, therefore, are never the inopportune, cheerful, even loving interruptions which come to us from another. Serious interruptions come from the watchful eye we cast upon ourselves. There is the blow that knocks the arrow from its mark! There is the drag we throw over our own intentions. There is the interruption to be feared.

It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.” (Blue Pastures, p7).

I hope this conveys something of the spirit that I feel connects the “battle” verses of the Dhammapada and the work of Mary Oliver… There’s a quote from Thoreau – a suitably battle-ish quote – where he talks about following the beat of “a different drum”. I think these two first “chunks” of the “Thousands” Chapter are in the same territory… they talk about hearing the Dharma and then “conquering” oneself sufficiently to be able to follow the “beat” of that drum, not getting distracted by hearing (or reciting) irrelevant verses or unnecessary battles with other people….

The next “chunk” of verses relate to reverence and worship and the importance of having the right object of devotion – and again, there is reference to the Hindu/Vedic traditions from which the Buddha was endeavouring to help his followers to be free.

106 If month after month for a hundred years one should offer sacrifices by the thousand, and if for a single moment one should venerate a (spiritually) developed person, better is that (act of) veneration than the hundred years (of sacrifices).
107 Though one should tend the sacred fire in the forest for a hundred years, yet if he venerates a (spiritually) developed person even for a moment, better is that (act of) veneration than the hundred years (spent tending the sacred fire).
108 Whatever oblations and sacrifices one might offer here on earth in the course of the whole (Vedic) religious year, seeking to gain merit thereby, all that is not a quarter (as meritorious) as paying respect to those who live uprightly, which is (indeed) excellent.
109 For him who is of a reverential disposition, four things constantly increase: life, beauty, happiness, and strength.

Reflecting on this, I feel the verses are about positive emotion – the second limb of the Noble Eightfold Path. It’s making a distinction between the common (Vedic) practices at the time of making offerings with the motivation of gaining merit and the much more positive consequences of veneration, paying respect and having a reverential disposition to “those who live uprightly” (ie practice the Dharma) simply because they are “worthy of respect”. The list of the “benefits” which result from such other-regarding reverence at the end reminds of that list of benefits which result from practising the “metta bhavana” – another form of cultivating positive emotion. We can see this verse as reminding us that worship and reverence are practices whose aim is to enable us to develop positive emotion, to change ourselves rather than as some semi-superstitious rite carried out in the hope of “gaining merit”.

In verses 110 and 111 we have the whole of the 3- fold path(!)…

110 Though one should live a hundred years unethical and unintegrated (asamahita), better is one single day lived ethically [that’s ETHICS!] and absorbed (in higher meditative states). [that’s MEDITATION]
111 Though one should live a hundred years of evil understanding and unintegrated, better is one single day lived possessed of wisdom and absorbed (in higher meditative states). [that’s WISDOM]

So in verse 110 with its mention of ethics, we cover the 3rd to the 5th stages of the Noble Eightfold Path – perfect speech, perfect action and perfect livelihood. I won’t go into this in more detail here, now, but move on to verse

112 Better than a hundred years lived lazily and with inferior energy is one single day lived with energy aroused and fortified.

And so this verse is about cultivating energy or virya which connects with Perfect Effort – the 6th limb (or stage) of the Noble Eightfold path. As I said earlier, I find this chapter inspiring when I’m getting despondent about wasted time and energy and so I can take it quite literally.. that OK, I might have wasted an awful lot of days “living lazily and with inferior energy”, but hey, I’ve (finally) noticed and now I can give my full attention and energy to making the most of the next day or bit of time – and who knows what good might result from that. (I can’t resist repeating here – as I so often do – my favourite quote from Bhante’s teacher Dhardo Rimpoche – “If you work hard, in the right way, the effect will spread like light.” I guess that’s kind of how I feel about the “seizing the moment” feel that this verse gives me…OK, I’ve wasted time, but I’ve still got this very next moment and who knows what might result from this if I can only apply myself “with energy aroused and fortified”….)

The final three verses cover the last two stages of the Noble Eightfold Path and the culmination of the spiritual life:

113 Better than a hundred years lived unaware of the rise and fall (of conditioned things) is one single day lived aware of the rise and fall (of conditioned things).

So the focus of this verse is awareness or recollection, often translated as ‘mindfulness’. The fore-going stages or limbs of the path have been about establishing a basis of perfect vision, emotion, ethics and energy), which can then enable us to turn our minds (really to turn our minds) to conditionality, to pratitya-samutpada, the central teaching of the Buddha – that all things arise in dependence on conditions and, in the absence of those conditions, cease. I think it’s worth re-stating here an important point which Bhante makes about the Noble Eightfold Path – and that is that it isn’t a linear path. In pali it’s the arya astangika marga. “Arya” means noble, “asta” means “eight” and “anga” means limb. (“Marga” is way or path). The importance of this word “anga”, meaning limb, is that it opens up idea that actually it’s much more like growing a tree with 8 limbs, rather than plodding in a step by step way from one to the next, leaving each behind as one “progresses”. As I was writing this, I was thinking “Oh yes, and how our practice goes is that we do get little bits of each “limb” at different times…” and that made me think about how that ties in with what I see as the overarching “message” of this Chapter of the Dhammapada, which is “don’t discount small amounts of time, energy, little glimpses of the truth and little acts of kindness”. Each moment we turn our minds to the Dharma, each time we practice the ethical precepts, each time we become just that little bit more aware, we’re adding droplets of practice, tiny bits to each of the “limbs” of the Noble Eightfold path.. and it’s all cumulative. It all has an effect. None of it is ever wasted. So there’s no need to spend precious time berating ourselves for all that we don’t do or haven’t done…

Which brings us to the final two verses:

114 Better than a hundred years lived unaware of the Deathless State is one single day lived aware of the Deathless State
115 Better than a hundred years lived unaware of the Supreme Truth (dhammana uttamam) is one single day lived aware of the Supreme Truth.

The final limb of the 8-fold path is samyak-samadhi – which Bhante says is only inadequately translated by the phrase “perfect meditation”. He doesn’t offer a particular alternative, saying “As a general rule the more advanced the stage of spiritual development, the less there is to say about it.” But he does tell us that the word “samadhi” literally means the state of being firmly fixed or established. So I think we can understand these last two verses to be talking about us gradually having our awareness firmly fixed or established in the state of the deathless or supreme truth.

There’s a whole other talk about what that might be (or even a lifetime of talks!), so instead I’m going to end with a poem which is a poetic leap connecting with what, for me is the spirit of this Chapter of the Dhammapada – which in essence is to say “make the most of every moment you can (but don’t fret about the ones that get away).

Before I read it I just wanted to express my gratitude for having the opportunity to give this talk – I’ve learnt such a lot in the process. I’d like to thank Saccanama for suggesting that we study the Dhammapada this term. I’d like to thank Sagaravajra for inspiring me (with his talk – he doesn’t know he’s done it (yet)!) to dig a bit more deeply into what’s going on in this Chapter and I’d like to thank Bhante for dreaming up the Order and the Movement as a context in which I feel I can live my life out more fully than I would ever have imagined possible.

/continued over

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, towards silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over I want to say; all my life
I was a bride, married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing, and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

Satyalila
Bristol
23/11/08