This lesson goes over Payasi Sutta, DN 23.

Questions

What is Payasi’s stance?

How does Kassapa try to turn Payasi’s mind to sublime phenomena?

What is Payasi’s argument about deceased relatives and Kassapa’s objection?

What is Payasi’s argument that hermits continue their earthly life without leaving it for the sake of heavenly peace? What is Kassapa’s objection?

What is Payasi’s argument about the executed thieves. What is Kassapa’s objection?

What is Payasi’s argument for the comparison of the weight of a living and dead body? What is Kassapa's objection?

What is Payasi’s argument for the cessation of the activity of the senses? What is Kassapa's objection?

What is Payasi’s argument about the absence of jiva in some part of the body? What is Kassapa's objection?

Why does Payasi decide to stick to his views? How does Kassapa warn him?

How must one reach the other world in the right way?

What parables does Kassapa tell Payasi on the need to reject obsolete views?

What is the story of Kassapa and Paysi’s conversation a collection of?

What makes the true true for a person and the false false?

What two principles does the main point of Kassapa’s teaching boil down to?

Further questions

How does Kassapa's argument (with the trumpetter and conch, in response to the argument for the cessation of the activity of the senses) counter what Payasi says?

1. Regarding the trumpeter who blows the conch. Payasi says that the activity of the senses ceases, and the activity of the mind ceases; there is no more living being. Kasappa gives him this example of a trumpeter with a conch because he compares the body and the senses to a conch. If there were no trumpeter behind that, if there were no jiva behind that consciousness, then on their own, the senses wouldn’t function. And that point where he puts down the conch and says “Blow”, this point signifies the point of death. At the point of death, there is the body and the senses, but they are not active, they dissolve and cease their activity. Because the trumpeter left. He explains to him that life does not depend on bodily senses, not on the conch, but on the one who stands behind those senses, on the consciousness that, like a trumpeter, sets these things in motion.

What is the relation between “another world, self-created divine beings, consequences of good and bad deeds” to “In no part or layer of the body—such as skin, muscles, bones, or marrow—can one see a living being.”

1. The answer is in many ways similar to the first. Payasi says that there is nothing divine in any part of the body. Since such a thing as consciousness, or memory, or jiva, or a god cannot be found in any part of the body, then where are the consequences of bad and good deeds kept? The body simply lives and dies without consequences. Kasapa brings him an example very similar to the trumpeter and the conch: the boy splits the twigs into pieces, desiring to find fire, that is, desiring to find the activity of consciousness and the manifestation of a god. Here, the fire in this metaphor is the divine, it is consciousness. And he doesn’t find it. Just as Payasi didn’t find it. And Kasappa says that an old hermit comes around and explains to him that the fire consumes the wood or twigs, and because the fire comes and consumes, they burn. So only because gods and the flow of karma engulfs the body during the moment of birth, it lives and acts. When the flow of karma separates from the body, the fire disappears. In this case, it’s not like in Vachagotta sutta. There, the fire represents something else, but here fire expresses the activity of consciousness. When the fire leaves, when these twigs burn through, then we can no longer find the force that would set them in motion, because in themselves, this force does not exist. So he says that only because the body is engulfed by gods and consciousness, it lives and acts. When the gods and consciousness leave the body, the body ceases to act, even if it hasn’t burned to ashes.

Why “living people, seeing with ordinary eyes, do not see a living being leave the body."?

1. One can see with the eye of wisdom, with the third eye.
2. Consider a radio receiver. It sees and hears radio waves. Or a TV. It sees tele-waves, radio-waves, and transmits forms, sounds, but we, while sitting in the room, with our physical eyes and physical ears, do not see or hear those waves the TV produces sound and image from. Similarly, the subtle body has the power to see and hear what the physical eyes do not see and hear.

“Sometimes I look at the mirror and see that it’s a body looking, not myself”

1. When ones looks at the body, there is often a strange feeling in which there is doubt, and to transform this feeling from strange to good, we need to contemplate: “The mind, I am, — yes, we can use the word I here — in relation to the body, is in the same position as a rider is in relation to his horse. The body is like a horse, and you are like the rider. And you shouldn’t experience a sense of dislike, aversion or disgust. The rider shouldn’t have feelings for his horse that this is his most valuable, most important thing he has in his life. However, at the same time, he should take care of this horse. A good rider cares for the horse having enough rest and receiving enough food. He also doesn’t want to beat it or be cruel to it; he wants to be good to it, so that this horse suffers less. All those things, when you look at your body, are how one should treat their body. When one develops such an attitude, one has peace of mind and happiness.