The seventh sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya is the Vatthupama. This is the simile of the cloth. The basic point of this sutta, this teaching given by the Buddha himself, is an analogy with the dyeing of a cloth.
The Buddhist monks wore a robe, do wear a robe, and this is called a kashaya, or in Japanese it has been shortened to kesa. The word kashaya means dyed. When a cloth has been dyed, it is soaked in a dye which imparts a color.
The monks traditionally would collect scraps of cloth from the charnel grounds. There is a close association between Buddhist practice and the charnel grounds, the grounds where bodies were burned and the remains were sometimes taken away by animals and so on, the places of death. When bodies were burned, they were wrapped up in a shroud, usually white, and the body was burned.
But after the burning, there would be scraps of cloth laying around. The monks would collect these, stitch them together, and then dye the resulting patchwork cloth in a dye, usually a yellow-brown ochre dye. This is the traditional color of the Buddhist robe, and this is how it came to be.
There are a number of analogies, metaphors, and so on around cloth and the dyeing of cloth. The monk who wears the stained robe should not have stains of character and so on. In this particular sutta, the Buddha says, if you dye a cloth, the result depends quite a lot on the character of the cloth that you dye.
If the cloth that you put into the dyeing vat is already stained, perhaps it's oily, perhaps it's deficient in some way, then the cloth that comes out, the result, will not be impressive. There will still be marks. So the analogy here is essentially that, in order to learn the Dharma, one needs to have a clear, clean character, a clean mind.
Buddhism is not essentially a system of morality. The moralities in Buddhism are a preparation. They are to make the cloth clean so that it can then be dyed.
The dyeing is the training of the mind, the acquisition of wisdom, all the practices that transform daily life into a spiritual path. But for this to be effective, for this to work well, the cloth that is dyed, the character of the person, needs to be stainless to begin with. So many of the Buddhist texts say, first clean up your character.
Don't kill, don't steal, and so on. Live a good life. When you've established a good character mind, this will be a first-class foundation for learning the meditation, the jhanas, and so on.
Of course, many people nowadays want to plunge into meditation without doing anything about their character first, but that's as may be. This is the teaching of the sutta. Get a clean cloth before you attempt to take the dye.
The sutta also includes many other interesting new elements, but I'll speak about those in a separate podcast. The basic meaning of the sutta is this analogy with the dyeing of a piece of cloth, comparing it with the purification of character that is necessary as a foundation for the character training, meditational training, wisdom development that the Buddha then wants to teach.
Thank you very much. Namo Amida Bu.
This is the second podcast about the Vatthupama, the simile of the cloth sutta from the Majjhima Nikaya, and in this second podcast I just want to draw attention to what might be thought of as a few supplementary points that come out in the sutta.
Firstly, the Buddha says that if you have this clean character, then it's easy to have faith in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and in the course of saying this, he lists the epithets of the Buddha, the epithets of the Dharma and the epithets of the Sangha, which have become traditional in Buddhist ritual. When we are doing our pujas, we chant, These are the epithets of the Buddha, the characteristics of the Tathagata. And within the Majjhima Nikaya, they first appear in this particular sutta.
The second interesting point in regard to the what you might call the supplementary matters is that this sutta also is the first place in the Majjhima Nikaya where we come across the four Brahma Viharas, the metta meditation, the meditation of pervading all the many directions with love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. This is a very key practice in traditional Buddhism and in the Majjhima Nikaya, the first time it occurs is in the Vatrupama Sutta.
So we might give a longer discourse on this matter at some point, but it's interesting to note that it occurs here as a natural expression of the faith in Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.
Another very interesting natural expression of faith in Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, also in this sutta, is that the Buddha says, if a bhikkhu were to eat alms food consisting of choice hill rice, along with various sauces and curries, even that will be no obstacle for him. This is a very interesting point.
In other words, if the bhikkhu eats luxurious food, this won't be an obstacle. This won't get in the way of his spiritual practice, because his mind is so pure that he won't be, the implication is, it doesn't actually spell it out, but he won't be afflicted by greed, covetousness, gluttony and so on. He'll be able to eat whatever comes along, whether it's rich, whether it's poor, it won't matter. But it's interesting that he says eating good food will not be an obstacle to the bhikkhu who has a pure mind.
Then the final and fourth supplementary point, which comes out in the Vatupama, is that there is present a brahmin, Sundalika Bharadwaja, who listens to this discourse and says, you've talked about being steeped in the dye of the Dhamma. What about being steeped in the holy river? Can one not achieve purity by bathing in the holy river? And the Buddha totally rejects this idea. The Buddha says a fool may bathe in the river for as long as he likes: he won't be any less foolish. The point is that you can bathe in the holy river as much as you like, but it won't make any difference one way or the other. It's a silly thing to do.
So these are the supplementary matters that come out in the Vatupama. Very nice, nice to reflect upon.
Thank you very much. Namo Amida Bu.
As a corollary to the Vatthupama, I'd like to make one or two remarks about the relationship between faith and ethics, which is somewhat spelled out in this sutra. The sutra is saying if you have a pure mind, you will have pure behavior. If you have a pure mind, then it is easy to take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
Equally, if you take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, then you will have a pure mind. And if you have a pure mind, it will be easy to behave in an ethical way. So we can say that there is a reciprocality between taking refuge and ethical behavior.
Or you can say it's a cycle. One creates the other, the other creates the one. One should not think of Buddhism primarily as an ethical system in the sense that ethics are not the raison d'etre of Buddhism.
It is truer to say of Buddhism that ethical behavior is a foundation for faith than the other way round. Many people do become involved in Buddhism because they admire its ethics, its peacefulness and so on. And they see that as a justification for the practices, the faith, the doctrine and so on.
But from a Buddhist point of view, it's really rather the other way round. If you tidy up your life, then you have a purer mind and if you have a purer mind, you'll be able to take refuge more fully.
If I put this in pure land Buddhist terms, the ability to say nenbutsu, which is to take refuge, in a sincere, profound and generous way - these are the three minds, the pure mind, the profound mind, the mind that transfers merit, sincerity, profundity, generosity - in order to do this, you need a pure mind.
Or to do it is to have a pure mind. To be able to do it in that way is to have a pure mind because if one is not sincere, if one is not deep, if one is not generous, then these are the foundations of an unethical life. They are impurities or blemishes in the mind. So in a sense, these are all just different ways of saying the same thing. The pure mind is the mind of refuge which is the mind that produces ethical behavior. There is an equivalence here between the three things.
Anybody can say the nenbutsu: "Namo Amida Buddha". Anybody can do it. And if you say the nenbutsu with increasing sincerity, with increasing profundity, with increasing generosity, then this will purify the mind and if you purify the mind, naturally good behavior will follow.
So sometimes Buddhism is presented in the way of, first you must perfect the sila, the ethics, as a foundation. Sometimes it's presented as, if you have faith, then you will have good behavior. It can be run either way.
If we have an approach to Buddhism that starts from the nenbutsu, then the purification proceeds, as we might say, unconsciously. It proceeds in the depths of the mind and gradually one's life is changed, but that is not the justification of the nenbutsu. It's simply the natural product of it. It's the outflow from taking refuge.
The important thing is to take refuge. Namo Amida Buddha is the meaning of it all. It is the window through which all of Buddha's teachings can be perceived.
Namo Amida Bu. Thank you very much.
Replies