The Dhammapada (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By Charles Horne

This classic Buddhist verse scripture on the subject of virtue was traditionally attributed to the Buddha himself. Chapters include: “The Earliest Suttas,” “The Earliest Account of Buddha’s life,” and “The Dhammapada or Path of the Law.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Feb 22, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411438965

Book preview

THE DHAMMAPADA

OR PATH OF THE LAW: THE MOST CELEBRATED OF BUDDHIST TEACHINGS

CHARLES F. HORNE

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-3896-5

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE TWIN-VERSES

CHAPTER II. ON EARNESTNESS

CHAPTER III. THOUGHT

CHAPTER IV. FLOWERS

CHAPTER V. THE FOOL

CHAPTER VI. THE WISE MAN

CHAPTER VII. THE VENERABLE

CHAPTER VIII. THE THOUSANDS

CHAPTER IX. EVIL

CHAPTER X. PUNISHMENT

CHAPTER XI. OLD AGE

CHAPTER XII. SELF

CHAPTER XIII. THE WORLD

CHAPTER XIV. THE BUDDHA—THE AWAKENED

CHAPTER XV. HAPPINESS

CHAPTER XVI. PLEASURE

CHAPTER XVII. ANGER

CHAPTER XVIII. IMPURITY

CHAPTER XIX. THE JUST

CHAPTER XX. THE WAY

CHAPTER XXI. MISCELLANEOUS

CHAPTER XXII. THE DOWNWARD COURSE

CHAPTER XXIII. THE ELEPHANT

CHAPTER XXIV. THIRST

CHAPTER XXV. THE BHIKKU

CHAPTER XXVI. THE BRAHMIN

THE DHAMMAPADA

THE MOST CELEBRATED TEACHING OF GOTAMA,

THE BUDDHA

TRANSLATED BY F. MAX MULLER

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.

— DHAMMAPADA.

A man is not an elder because his hair is gray. His age may be ripe, but he is called Old-in-vain. He in whom there are truth, virtue, love, restraint . . . he is called an elder.

— DHAMMAPADA.

'These sons belong to me, and this wealth belongs to me,' with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth!

— DHAMMAPADA.

THE DHAMMAPADA

(INTRODUCTION)

THE Dhammapada, or Footsteps of the Law, is to Western peoples the best known of all the Buddhist Scriptures. This is doubtless because it consists of a collection of aphorisms or epigrams, sharp of point, strong in wisdom, easy to remember. Some of its concentrated essence must linger in the form of quotation in every reader's mind. Who, for instance, who has read it, will ever quite forget that keenly phrased summary of the eternal evil consequences of evil, which thus dismisses the evil-doer as a blinded fool. An evil deed, like newly drawn milk, does not turn suddenly; smoldering, like fire covered by ashes, it follows the fool.

The Dhammapada is thus a mass of many thoughts, each separate and each condensed into tablet form. Every saying has been phrased with a care which is somewhat lost in translation. Thus the entire book gives the impression of a clean-cut, highly polished gem. It is the most literary of the Buddhist Scriptures. This may have come about because, as devout Buddhists explain, each sentence has been preserved exactly as it came from the lips of Buddha. Yet most of the master's teaching, as preserved by the Suttas, is in a different form, more continuous and more like narrative, dealing with a running theme. Hence a critic might perhaps incline rather to look on the Dhammapada as a later work containing the separately constructed epigrams of many Buddhist teachers.

If we look at the book from this view-point, we shall be inclined to place it as one of the latest Suttas, perhaps of not much earlier date than the time of the fully established written form of the entire canon, about 70 B.C. The Dhammapada is therefore held to the close of the strictly religious writings in the present volume; and surely it serves well its purpose in thus summing up the accepted Buddhist attitude toward life. Whether the