What a wandering mind can do
Dhammapada verse 37
By Dr. Ari Ubeysekara
Introduction
Lord Gautama Buddha lived and preached in India during the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Throughout the ministry of forty five years from enlightenment at the age of thirty five to passing away at the age of eighty, Lord Gautama Buddha, through compassion for other beings, travelled from place to place mainly in North Eastern India, teaching the path out of suffering to a diverse range of people. Since the first Buddhist council that was held three months after the passing away of the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings were categorised into the now well-known Pāli Canon consisting of the three baskets. The teaching of the Gautama Buddha which is believed to consist of around 84,000 items is contained in the three baskets (tripitaka).
- Basket of the disciplinary rules for the monastic community (vinaya pitaka)
- Basket of the discourses (sutta pitaka)
- Basket of the Buddha’s higher teaching (abhidhamma pitaka)
The basket of the discourses (sutta pitaka) consists of:
- Collection of long discourses (dīgha nikāya)
- Collection of middle length discourses (majjhima nikāya)
- Collection of connected discourses (samyutta nikāya)
- Collection of numerical discourses (anguttara nikāya)
- Collection of minor discourses (khuddaka nikāya)
Collection of minor discourses (khuddaka nikāya) consist of 15 divisions of a variety of small discourses and others. The second division is the Dhammapada, the other divisions being Khuddaka pātha, udāna, itivuttaka, sutta nipātha, vimānavatthu, petavatthu, thera-gāthā, theri-gāthā, jātaka stories, niddesa, patisambhidā magga, apadāna, Buddhavamsa and cariya pitaka.
The Pāli word “Dhamma” seems to have several meanings such as the natural law, natural phenomena, objects of the mind, religious doctrines and specifically the Lord Gautama Buddha’s teachings. The word “Pada” means path, step, word or the foot. So, the word Dhammapada has been described as the “Path of Righteousness”. The Dhammapada containing a collection of the sayings of the Buddha in verse form, is one of the best known books in Buddhism familiar to almost all of the practising Buddhist disciples universally as well as to others who study the teachings of the Buddha.
Dhammapada contains 423 verses said by the Buddha in different contexts. Most of the verses have been taken from the discourses of the Buddha. It has been noted that more than two thirds of the verses are taken from the discourses contained in the two collections of the Buddha’s discourses known as the Samyutta Nikāya and Anguttara Nikāya. The 423 verses are divided into 26 chapters or vagga, each with a particular heading. The third chapter is named “Citta vagga” meaning the chapter on “Mind”, which contains 11 verses said by the Buddha. The back ground story to the fifth verse of the Citta vagga is about a novice monk named Sangharakkhita, who could not control his wandering mind and un-intentionally hit his senior monk who happened to be his own uncle.
Background story of verse 37
When Lord Gautama was staying at the Jetavana monastery in Sāvatti, there was a senior monk named Sangharakkhita who was also staying in Sāvatti. When his sister gave birth to a baby boy, she named him Sangharakkhita after the uncle. The boy came to be known as Sangharakkhita Bhāgineyya meaning nephew Sangharakkhita. When he grew up, he too joined the order of monks as a novice monk following the steps of his uncle Sangharakkhita thera.
Following his ordination as a monk, nephew Sangharakkhita monk used to stay in a village monastery during the rainy season. While he was residing in the village monastery, the devotees of the village offered him two sets of robes. He decided to keep one set of robes for himself and to offer the other set of robes to his uncle Sangharakkhita thera who was staying at Sāvatti. So when the rainy season was over, he went to Sāvatti to pay respect to his uncle Sangharakkhita thera and at the same time offered the set of robes that he had brought from the village monastery. But the senior Sangharakkhita thera did not accept the set of robes saying that he already had enough robes with him.
The nephew Sangharakkhita monk made repeated requests to uncle Sangharakkhita thera to accept the set of robes as he had brought it specially for him, but uncle Sangharakkhita thera repeatedly declined the offer giving the same reason that he already had enough robes. This repeated refusal by uncle Sangharakkhita thera made nephew Sangharakkhita monk feel sad and disheartened. He felt so disheartened that he thought that it would be better for him to disrobe and return home to live as a householder.
From the moment when he felt like disrobing to return home, his mind started wandering away and the following train of thoughts occurred in his mind. He thought that after disrobing and becoming a lay person, he will sell the set of robes and buy a she-goat. He thought that the she-goat will start breeding and very soon he will have a big herd of goats. He thought that he will then have enough money for him to be able to get married. When his wife gives birth to a son, he will take his wife and the son to pay a visit to his uncle Sangharakkhita thera at the monastery in Sāvatti. He will find a small cart to travel to Sāvatti and while they are travelling in the cart along the way to Sāvatti, he will say to his wife that he wants to carry their little son. However, his wife will tell him not to bother about carrying the son but to keep driving the cart. They will have an argument about it and he would then try to grab the son from his wife. During their struggle, the son will fall on the cart track and the wheel of the cart will pass over the son. Seeing that he will get extremely angry with his wife and will hit her with the goading stick in his hand.
At the time that his mind wandered away and the above train of thoughts was going on in his mind, he was actually fanning his uncle Sangharakkhita thera with a palmyra fan. So when in his mind he was hitting his wife, he actually hit uncle Sangharakkhita thera’s head with the palmyra fan. Uncle Sangharakkhita thera who knew what was going on in his nephew’s mind said to him: “You were not able to hit your wife; why did you have to hit an old monk instead?”
Nephew Sangharakkhita monk was very much surprised and felt embarrassed about what uncle Sangharakkhita thera said and at the same time he was also extremely frightened. So he decided to run away but as he was running away, the other novices and the monks at the monastery chased after him and caught him. They took him to the presence of the Buddha. They reported to the Buddha that nephew Sangharakkhita monk was fanning his uncle Sangharakkhita thera with a palmyra fan and that he accidentally hit the head of uncle Sangharakkhita thera. When uncle Sangharakkhita thera said to him: “You were not able to hit your wife; why did you have to hit an old monk instead?”, he became embarrassed and frightened and started to run away. Having heard the details of the whole episode, the Buddha said that the mind is able to think about any object even though it happens to be in a far away place and that one should make every effort to liberate oneself from the bondage of greed (rāga), hatred (dosa) and delusion (moha). The Buddha then recited the following verse to the monks which is recorded as the 37th verse of the Dhammapada.
“Dūrangamaṁ ekacaraṁ,
Asariraṁ guhāsayaṁ,
ye cittaṁ saññamessanti,
mokkhanti mārabandhanā.”
“The mind wanders far alone,
without a body, hidden in the cave of the heart,
those who restrain the mind,
will be released from the bonds of the Māra. (1)
It is said that at the end of this discourse by the Buddha, nephew Sangharakkhita monk attained the first supra mundane stage of Stream Enterer (Sotāpanna) of the Buddhist spiritual path of liberation from suffering.
The mind has the ability to roam around wherever it wants to, not only in relation to the present time but also to the past and the future. The thoughts that are involved in this process of mind wandering are known as conceptual or mental proliferations (papanca). Our interactions with the outside world take place when the six sense doors of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and the mind receive corresponding sense objects namely; visual objects, sounds, smells, tastes, tangible objects and mind objects such as thoughts and memories. Conceptual proliferation is the automatic and spontaneous mental process that takes place in the background of our mind when we receive a sense perception through any one of the six sense doors. Initially, what one receives through a sense door is just a bare sense experience which then sets off an effortless series of subsequent mental events elaborating on the initial sense experience to develop an endless series of concepts and perceptions based on past memories as well as future dreams or fears. (2)
Mental proliferation can be described as a chattering mind. According to Buddhist teaching, there are three fundamental inner drives which are responsible for the phenomenon of mental proliferation in the mind of one who is not yet enlightened. They are:
- Craving (tanhā)
- Conceit or pride (māna)
- Wrong view (ditthi)
Initially, it takes place at an unconscious level and hence we are not aware that it is going on. However, as the mental proliferation continues, magnifying and multiplying by itself, one becomes familiar with the process. Later it may occur even at a conscious level. By the time one becomes conscious of the fact that mental proliferation is taking place, one may have no control over it or one may allow it to continue. The concepts developed can distort the sense experience with no resemblance to the initial sense object received and will lead to various emotions, feelings, evaluations, opinions, judgements, desires and expectations. They will invariably lead to unwanted negative thoughts, suffering and conflicts. The person experiencing these automatic mental proliferations becomes a passive victim with no awareness or control over the process, but will have to face the negative consequences both internally and externally.
References
- https://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=037#:~:text=Verse%2037%3A%20The%20mind%20wanders,from%20the%20bonds%20of%20Mara.
- Bhikkhu K. Nānananda 1971, Concept and Reality in Early Buddhist Thought, Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka.
End.
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