on what the Buddha taught
In AN5.3.8 we find the following comparison:
‘He overflows, completely flows, completely fills up, completely spreads this very body with pleasantness and happiness by means of seclusion. There isn’t anything, from all of the body, not spread with pleasantness and happiness by means of seclusion. Just as, almsmen, or an able barber or an able barber’s apprentice would knead, in a bronze dish, bathing powders with water, sprinkling around and around finishing a ball from oil, affected with oil, from the inside and outside spread with oil and does not drip.‘
I have always been intrigued by the last part of not dripping. Why would this matter? If you spread out pleasantness and happiness through and through, all over, why would dripping be a concern? Suppose you would paint a whole room, from top to bottom, ceiling, walls, floor everything; why would dripping on the floor matter? Not making such a mess that it piles up, just dripping. Besides... how would one even drip pleasantness and happiness?!
Today I washed my hands in a very tiny washing basin; the soap is on a shelf on another wall. So I wet my hands (closed the crane), picked up de soap, turned it in my hands a few times and was about to put it back when I noticed the soap water dripping. I turned the soap around a few times more, which made this soap water a bit thicker, so it wouldn't drip when put back. Then I thought about this sermon. The not dripping is not about not splashing it everywhere all around, it means it is to thin to work with; it can't be put in good use because it falls away. And it needs more of the same work first, to make it thicker, to be able to put it into good use.
Because of the oily ball part in that sermon, the instruction itself was not lost (to thin and the ball itself would fall apart). ‘Establish it‘ or ‘Establish it, else it is not workable‘ do not differ in ‘what to do‘. And there are more sermons stating the same (for example AN9.4.4 where a wise cow establishes her forefeet well before raising her hind feet in an unknown rocky area). Thus though it was not an issue, it is fun seeing this clarified.