MERITORIOUS DEEDS BRING JOY IN THIS LIFE AND FUTURE LIVES
The background story of verse 16
At one time the Buddha was staying at the Jetavana monastery in Sāvatti which was donated to the Buddha by the chief benefactor Anāthapindika.
At that time a lay disciple named Dhammika was living in Sāvatti. He was a lay disciple of the Buddha who was a virtuous person by observing the precepts of morality. He was also a very charitable person and engaged in the meritorious activity of generously offering food and other requisites to the order of monks. He made these offerings regularly as well as on special occasions. He was the leader of five hundred virtuous lay disciples of the Buddha who were living in Sāvatti at that time. The lay disciple Dhammika had seven sons and seven daughters and like him, all his children were also virtuous and charitable.
Dhammika felt seriously ill and was on his deathbed when he requested to invite the monks to come to his house and recite the sacred scripts so that he could listen to them from his deathbed. The Monks duly arrived at the house and began chanting the Mahā Satipatthāna sutta by Dhammika’s bedside. It is said that while the monks were reciting, six decorated chariots from the six sensual heavens arrived to invite Dhammika to their respective sensual heavens.
[According to Buddhist cosmology, there are six planes of heavenly beings (deva loka), in which rebirth takes place due to highly meritorious, skillful, and wholesome volitional actions performed during one’s previous existence. They are:
1.Cātummahārājika heaven
2. Tāvatimsa heaven
3. Yāma heaven
4. Tusita heaven
5. Nimmānarati heaven
6. Paranimmita Vasavatti heaven]
Dhammika asked them to wait until the reciting was over as he did not want the reciting by the monk disrupted. However, the monks who were reciting mistook his signal to stop as a signal to them to stop reciting the scriptures. They stopped reciting and left Dhammika’s house.
After the monks had left, Dhammika told his children about the six decorated chariots from the six sensual heavens who were waiting for him. He decided to choose the chariot from the Tusita heaven and asked one of his children to throw a garland to that particular chariot. Having chosen the Tusita heaven, he passed away and was reborn as a deity in the Tusita heaven. Thus, the person who engages in meritorious deeds experiences joy both in this world and future worlds.
Concerning the lay disciple Dhammika, the Buddha recited the following verse, which is recorded as the 16th verse of the Dhammapada.
“Idha modati pecca modati,
katapuñño ubhayattha modati,
so modati so pamodati,
disvā kamma visuddhimattano.”
“Here he rejoices, hereafter he rejoices,
the meritorious one rejoices in both places,
he rejoices, and he greatly rejoices,
seeing the purity of his deeds.”