Now, Dhammapada

Verse 2

Verse 2: Heartmind precedes all experience. Heartmind leads all experience. All experience is heartmind molded. If with a clear heartmind we speak or act, happy wellbeing follows like our friendly shadow. Originally posted via awakewax.substack.com For more and related works of p.m.cheevers see/hear: www.awakewax.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit awakewax.substack.com [https://awakewax.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Ch.1 Paired Extremes, Verse 1

Please Note: If your podcast reader truncates the accompanying text below please read the full text on my Substack: awakewax.substack.com 1. Paired Extremes Now, heartmind precedes all experience. Heartmind leads all experience. All experience is heartmind molded. If with a disturbed heartmind we speak or act, discontent follows like the back wheels follow the front wheels of an earth bound vehicle. (1) 1,2,3 Recording Note: You may notice a change in speed/tone with the audio well into the recording and an apparent edit/jump cut @7:48”. This was a hiccup in the recording/substack system. The lost dialog was minimal and immaterial to the message– though it is a somewhat jarring cut. It does seem that “bugs” and weirdness with Substack will be with us… so, notes like this should be looked for if you are wondering about recording anomalies. I will embrace the imperfections/limitations of the system and I hope you will too! Notes like this should explain any of these episode related oddities🧐 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit awakewax.substack.com [https://awakewax.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Preface (continued)

Below is the text of what is voiced in this episode, it is basically a continuation of the previous episode but in manuscript form it is from the one preface of Now, Dhammapada. At times you may find it comforting to pluck a single verse or fragment out of the 423 verses that make up most translations of the Dhammapada. Its natural to want to simplify the depth of what the Buddha was getting at and cherish it as the entirety of the Buddha’s teaching. Taking a verse or two as representative of the entirety of the Buddha’s teaching would be a big mistake yet it is an unfortunate side effect of the aphoristic form that the Dhammapada presents. Humans have this deep need to label and simplify lived experience. Subjectively it is perhaps more helpful than communally to rely on these simplifications.  This four-pronged iconic framework of the Dhamma therefore can perhaps clarify and help us keep in perspective the larger whole that a phrase is a part. Lapsing into thinking the Buddha said or the Buddha didn’t say is a conventional way of speaking, however to truly believe this way of speaking is delusion. All too common delusion. Truly believing the accuracy of knowing what a person said thousands of years ago requires something well beyond knowledge. It requires belief. And belief is very handy sort of shorthand to recollecting experience, however it is absolutely inaccurate if blind belief, a belief not tested or experientially verified, becomes a sort of proxy for practiced experience. At the heart of what the Buddha taught is experiential not simply intellectual. The Buddha didn’t say any of this and the Buddha said all of this. It is for you to test out. Now, Dhammapada is an interpretation of translations into contemporary, at times colloquial North American usages of the English language. It is intended to relay the spirit of the Dhamma, the Way, translated for today. Simile and metaphor are a large part of the character and appeal of the Dhammapada, however many of the reference points, images and realities of long ago can be easily missed or totally not be relevant in today’s world. For example when is the last time you rode in or saw a chariot? When points of reference are very faint in relation to today’s lived experience I have taken the liberty of transposing the subjects of the simile or metaphor to a more easily relatable and thus understood subject and footnoted accordingly. For example instead of a chariot I have used a vehicle in parts of Now Dhammapada. Of great importance and easily misunderstood are the many verses pointed at monastic concerns which are often not relevant to lay life. In these verses I have paired down or at times drawn out the lay concerns that are at the heart of the teachings. In some particularly liberal interpretations, I have footnoted the instance.  But readings of other Dhammapada’s will be necessary for you to get the widest interpretation of the multifaceted fabric of the Dhammapada. Though I hope this take on the Dhammapada is of help to you please understand that you really should checkout some other more traditional versions of the Dhammapada  as you live your life of practice. You will notice that there are quite a few paragraphs that are very similar to immediate antecedents and they actually read as almost inadvertent typographic doubles. Likely having come into the translations over the course of a couple thousand years worth of telling. This too should be another level of reminder to the fact that the Dhammapada is a collection of translated words, a product of a primarily monastic lineage with undoubtedly multiple authors who have translated how to live wisely and kindly as taught well over two thousand years ago by one particular person. Each Dhammapada is just one anthology of key ingredients constituting a life of  release from discontent as reported to have been taught by the Buddha, a once real person who walked and talked across the north of present day India.    Lastly, please note that if you do not have a practiced experience with the Eightfold Path paired with some reading of the canon, there are likely to be many verses of the Dhammapada that will seem rather random or maybe even platitudinous. No worries, get to know the Dhammapada and then again in the future after having practiced the Eightfold Path read it a knew and see it a knew. The Dhammapada at its best is a reminder of what you have practiced wisely and what you continue to practice more wisely over time. Now, Dhammapada… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit awakewax.substack.com [https://awakewax.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Preface

Below, in support of the episode is the text of the Now, Dhammapada manuscript: Preface What follows are not the words of the Buddha. This book contains concentrated wisdom for individuals’ lives. This Dhammapada is not a belief system. In fact, who can truly attest to what the historical Buddha said with the exception of Sidharta Gotama? And Sid died about 2500 odd years ago, so the truth is this nor that is what was actually said. That said, I just got to say something…. so Now, Dhammapada. One can take a cue from these words and text and test them out, follow the recipe as if the textual indications are instructions to put into action, to see for yourself if they are accurately applicable you your life. This is what I have done and continue to do and you can do it too! You can learn, develop and know a sublimely peaceful way of life still full of brightness and at times excitement. The Dhammapada has proven to me, by way of practice based upon the various translations I have read over the years, to be a fascinating and informative reminder of what to remember, what to do and what to remember again. It is not a dogmatic work, it is concise set of practices, contemplations and actions to live.  A happier, healthier and continuingly brighter way of life comes along with this practice. But it is a practice: something you do over and over again, with others. This book is a work created from experience based in part on various scholarly sources and various contemporary takes on scholarly sources all called Dhammapada. Numerous translations from various Pali versions are at the root of the source. Now, Dhammapada is therefor an interpretation of many English translations of various Pali sources of what is the most popular “title” of the vast Pali canon, tested and thus interpreted for today’s world. The Pali canon is made up of tens of thousands of onion-skin-thin English language pages. Forty-odd volumes of words recorded as being the teachings of the historical Buddha, Sid Gotama, a rebel of his time who taught for over forty-five years around the Ganga in the North of India. A human who died, soon after a disagreeable meal, at the age of approximately eighty years of age Gotama was and is a phenomenon. Some people take Gotama to be divine and a creator of a religion. I however take the person variously called Gotama, Sid, or Buddha in this Dhammapada to have been someone who lived a life of early suffering. The Tathagata, a term the historical Buddha, reportedly used to describe self and which has been translated to mean one who has come and one who has gone, taught to different audiences skillfully. Which means that Gotama tailored the teachings to the audience of the moment. If the Tathagata was speaking to monastics he would explain things in a certain way that may not come down again when he was speaking to lay people or to his biological son.  Basically, in the parlance of today the Buddha would say I’ve done that and now I am doing better, I’m sort of a big deal. You are too. Do better for yourself and for others— even those you don’t like or fear. You are the biggest deal at this moment in your actual life— get over it! Sid ultimately refined the teachings he received in his time and practiced a way that he in turn taught to many individuals from various social classes. This way was not totally foreign to many of the existing teachings of the time however the Buddha’s path of how to be happy, free and connected to the greater reality of existence was far more egalitarian than the hierarchical Brahman ways —the norms at that time. Sid not only taught this way of recognizing the suffering brought on by unskillful living and how to move beyond suffering and even pain, but he also established a way of living in parallel with the world that is not living in this way yet is still connected and mutually beneficial to all living beings. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit awakewax.substack.com [https://awakewax.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Now, Dhammapada

The intention of this podcast is to bring my voice and further explanation to my written interpretation of the Dhammapada. The audio/podcast is really primary and the Substack writing is support to the audio, which is support to the manuscript. Weird. I write to understand, and this post is helping to clarify the rather strange approach or entry i am having to this platform. Grammar will be a bit irregular as phone key taps are likely to be the way i post and iphone screens are biased toward the lowercase free of punctuation My use and desire is sort of reverse of how Substack developed. An old school physical keyboard and word processing writing seems to be the spacetime the platform sprung from— The term “newsletter”! The slow, at least weekly release schedule should allow for the absorbtion of the often dense verses of said Dhammapada. Reflect a bit, maybe exchange verse specific thoughts on the Substack. Also with this pace, and with Subs integrated online “newsletter” delivery option and the integrated website, the textual record of the podcast is available outside of podcast readers… I have been looking for a different phone based way to podcast and have it be textually synched with episodes outside of pod readers— hopefully this does it! Maybe i’ll even fold my other podcasts into the stacks… ps Already the naming and sequencing geekiness is sort of absent from this podcast episode, i wonder if i’ll find I need to name/code episode titles over time? pps The auto save on the phone is disturbingly invisible… and using the phone to do all this is going to lead to very random use of punctuation. I will be embracing the lowercaseness and neologating. They don’t have an app! and the phone display of the desktop pedigree is wonky but actually better than a lot of word processing functionality on phones This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit awakewax.substack.com [https://awakewax.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]