[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [music] So the Buddha tells the parable of the burning house. And of course, like most parables, like most stories, it begins with once upon a time. And the Buddha says once upon a time there lived a great elder. And he was very, very rich indeed. He was a businessman, it seems, and what we would call a multi-millionaire. And he lived in an enormous mansion. And this mansion was inhabited by hundreds of people. His servants, his dependents, and so on. But though so large and in a way magnificent, the mansion was very, very old. And it was also rather tumbled down. It had lots of pillars which were partly decayed. And many of the windows were broken, and some of the floorboards were fractured. And some of the walls were crumbling with a real old ruin. A sort of, if you like, stately home that hadn't been kept up very well by the present owner. And that's where he lived with his dependents. And the Buddha further said that in odd holes and corners of this old crumbling, decayed mansion, they lurked all sorts of ghosts and evil spirits. So this was the scene, this was the situation. And the Buddha further said that one day it so happened that suddenly the whole building caught fire. And because it was so old and the timbers were so dry, in an instant it was all ablaze, all burning merrily, all on fire. Now the elder apparently was safe outside. He wasn't inside the building, but his children were. He had apparently, no wives or mothers are mentioned, but he had apparently a very large number of children indeed. The sutra says up to thirty, and they were all inside. And they were all quite small, quite young. So the children playing there in the midst of that burning mansion were all in danger of being burned to death. But the children were not aware of this, they didn't realize this. They hadn't had that sort of experience before apparently. They didn't realize that they were in great danger and might die. So they made no effort to escape at all, they just carried on plane. So the elder was very, very writing, and he wondered what he should do. And at first he reflected that he was strong and able, and he might be able to catch the children in his arms and carry them out of the burning mansion by main force. But reflecting a bit more he sees that this isn't really, very practicable. So eventually he decides to call out to the children, to call out to them loudly and warn them of their great danger. So he does this, he calls out to the children. That the mansion is on fire, you'll be burned, you'll die, come out quickly. But the children take no notice of him whatever. They're all absorbed in their games, they're playing. And they don't take any notice at all of their father. They don't even know what he's talking about, what he means by the mansion being on fire and their lives being in danger. They just carry on running to and fro, engaged in their various games, and they just glance at their father as they run past. They don't take any serious notice of him at all. So the father sees that there's no time to be lost, otherwise the children will all be burned, they'll perish in the fire. The house is about to crash any moment. So he decides in desperation to have recourse to an expedient. He knows the natures of these children. He knows what they dislike, what they like, what they're fond of, what they're attracted by. And he knows that especially they're all very, very fond of different kinds of toys. And he knows that different children like toys of different kinds. So again he calls out, and he calls out this time saying that he's brought for them the best and most beautiful toys that they'd ever seen. Not ordinary toys, he's brought for them carts to play with, carriages to play with, some drawn by deer, some drawn by goats, some drawn by bullocks, and they're all standing just outside the gate. So he calls out to the children, come quickly, the toys are all there at the gate, just come out and get them. So when the children hear these words, they're overjoyed, they're delighted, they're very eager to get the toys, very eager to get the carts to ride in them, to play with them. So they all come rushing and tumbling, helter-skelter out of the burning house, and they're all so eager to get out that they're pushing and shoving one another in their eagerness. So in this way, the whole thirty of them, the whole tribe, they come out, and the elder sees that they're all outside the burning house. The shooter doesn't say so, but he probably can't hit them, he probably knew exactly how many he had. So having ascertained that they're all there, all out in the open, he sits down with a great sight of relief, and he's very pleased and very happy. To all the children are safe, they've all been rescued. So as he does that, the children come clamoring around him, and they start demanding their toys, their carts of various kinds. So what does the elder do? He gives each of them a magnificent cart, a magnificent carriage drawn by bullocks. He doesn't give them different carriages, carriages of different kinds, he gives them each one, the same kind of carriage, but bigger and better and more magnificent than they could possibly have imagined in all their wildest dreams. And the shooter asks, or the Buddha asks, "Why does he do this?" He does it because his wealth is very great, tremendous, infinite. And because he wants to give his children, of whom he's very fond, the very best that he has. So he hasn't acted deceitfully in promising them, wanting and giving them something else, because it was all motivated by his desire for the welfare, the happiness, the safety, and the security of the children. So this is the parable, the parable of the burning house. Now in a sense, the parable carries its meaning on its surface, it means just what it says, and it therefore makes, to a great extent, its own impact. And therefore, again, no explanation is required when just has to let it all sink in. But I'd like to underline just a few points, just a few incidents in the whole parable and then proceeds to a few general considerations. Now the first thing that people usually want to know of course is, who is the elder? Well the elder is the Buddha, the enlightened one, and the mansion in which he lived with his servants and dependents, this mansion is the world. Not just this world, this earth, but the whole universe, the whole of conditioned existence itself, the whole of mundane existence, if you like, all worlds. And the mansion, later to say this world, this universe is inhabited by all kinds of living beings. Not just human beings, but living beings have all kinds, some less developed the man, some according to Buddhism, even more developed than man. Now the mansion is old, and it is decayed. So what does this mean? It means that this world, this universe, is subject to all sorts of imperfections. It isn't perfect by any means. To begin with is impermanent, it's changing all the time, it's mutable, it's unreliable, you can't remain in it for long. If you can't have any security in it, you're just a traveler, it's more like a hotel than a home. And then again the sutra mentions ghosts in the corners. And what does this mean? This means we could say that this world of ours, especially the world in which we live, is haunted. We're haunted by what? Haunted by the past. We like to think that we live in the present, but more often than not, we live in the past. And the ghosts of the past are all around us. And these ghosts are our own projections from our own unconscious minds. We don't usually know that they're projections, we think that they're there, out there, that these projections are objectively existing beings, situations. But actually they all come from our own mind, all ghosts of the past, that we're carrying along with us all the time, and by which only too often we're surrounding it. So these are the ghosts lurking in the corners of this mention of the world. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. And thank you. [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
