Cultivating Calm: The Bodhisattva's Journey to Equanimity

0:00 Hi, this is Margaret Maloney and welcome to the Death Dhamma podcast. In a series I used to read, occasionally one character would say to the other, may you live in interesting times. It was understood that this was a curse where interesting times meant chaos and difficulty. Well, we do live in interesting times. I mean, don't we always? So this season together we will explore equanimity and chaos. Recognizing that many aspects of life are beyond our control. Let's find a sense of balance and peace amid external chaos.

0:31 Hello, my friends. Today I am bringing you a story of how the Buddha maintained or taught himself some equanimity in a past life. And the story comes from the Mahalo Mahamsa Charya and that is from the Kuda Nikya. And this section of the Kuda Nikya, the Charya Pitaka, is dedicated towards talking about the Buddha in former lives, kind of like Jataka tales, only these ones don't usually include animals or they're not about him as an animal in a past life. And it is about exhibiting behaviors known as the perfections.

1:14 And there is one that is dedicated to equanimity, and that's why we're going to look at it. So here we go. In a past life, the Buddha was born to a family of wealth. And when the time came for his education, he went to a well known teacher. After completing his education, he returned to his parents and he looked after them after they died. His relatives told him that he should protect and increase all of the riches that he had inherited. However, he had developed fear of all the realms of existence and his fear was based on the nature of impermanence of all conditioned things.

1:55 He also had perceived that the body was loathsome and he had no desire to be entangled in the thicket of defilements associated with household life. That's us. Did you know we were entangled in a thicket of defilements? But we can be. It's harder as a householder. So in fact, his desire to get out of the world of sensuality had been growing like this had been something that had risen in him and now he had a chance to do something about it. So he wanted to renounce the world and, you know, after abandoning his wealth, but because of the fact that people knew who he was and he had come from a family that was well known, wealthy, he knew that if he renounced everything he had, that in itself would make him famous.

2:44 And he didn't want fame or, you know, any honor. He just wanted to, you know, live a simple life. So he didn't renounce everything. What he did was to test himself, to see whether he could unshakeably stand up to the vicissitudes of life. He went ahead and, wearing his usual clothes, left the house. He had this desire to fulfill the highest form of the perfection of equanimity. And he figured he could do this by enduring the ill treatment of others. So leading a noble life, an austere life, he was thought by people.

3:23 People just assumed he was kind of feeble minded and eccentric, wandering around. He never showed anger to others. But generally people thought he was someone that could be treated with impudence, like just, you know, treat him disrespectfully, play jokes on him. And so he roamed about villages and towns, small, large. And he spent usually just one night at each place. But he did stay longer. Wherever he was shown the greatest insolence or disrespect and, you know, his clothes began to wear out.

3:56 And when they did, he tried to cover himself with whatever, you know, little remnant of clothing was left. And when a piece of clothing was torn away, he didn't accept anything from anyone. He just tried to cover himself with whatever he could and he kept moving. And he lived this way for a long time. And he arrived at a village where the children were aggressive and had a reputation for being unsteady and conceited and fickle and gossipy and behaving inappropriately. And they wandered around playing practical jokes on others.

4:34 They liked to pick on people who were aging, and they liked to pick on poor people. Maybe they'd follow them and throw ashes on them. They would take nettles and put them under the arms of older people just to, you know, poke them and make them feel uncomfortable. And then when older people turned around to look at them, to figure out, you know, what happened and why am I getting poked, then they would mimic them, right? They would mimic them, make fun of them. They just thought it was funny. And they would laugh and laugh.

5:09 So when the Bodhisattva, that's the Buddha in his former life, saw these children, he thought, well, I found a good means of support for the fulfillment of the perfection of equanimity. So he stayed in that village. And the children seeing him, of course they picked on him too. They tried to make fun of him. And he pretending as though he couldn't handle them and that he was afraid of them, he ran away. But the children followed him wherever he went. So there he was on the run. He reached a cemetery and he thought to himself, well, this is a place where no one will prevent these children from doing harm.

5:46 I have now a chance to fulfill the perfection of equanimity to a high degree. So he goes into the cemetery and he sleeps there, using a skull as a pillow, as one does, right? Getting in. Well, when you're sleeping in a cemetery, why not getting an opportunity to indulge in devilry? The children went where he was and insulted him. They spit on him, they did other nasty things, and then they went away. And so they just treated him poorly. Every day, seeing these acts done by these wicked children, some wise people stopped the children, and they developed the knowledge that the Bodhisattva was.

6:27 Was clearly a holy man of great power. And they all paid respects to him with lots of reverence. And he, the Bodhisattv, kept the same attitude towards both the children and the wise people who defended him. He showed no affection to those who honored him, and he didn't show aversion to the children who insulted him. Instead, he took a neutral stance between affection and aversion with regard to both parties. In this way, he fulfilled the perfection of equanimity. You've been listening to the Death Dhamma podcast with your host, Margaret Maloney.

7:06 Thank you so much for being here. Come find me on margaretmaloni.com M A R G A R E T M E l o n I.com and until we meet again, may you be well, may you be happy, may you be at ease, and may you be free from suffering. Bye for now.