WorkGautama Buddha

The Dhammapada

Four hundred and twenty-three short verses on the mind, anger and craving, arranged in twenty-six chapters and read in many languages and schools.

by Gautama Buddha44 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Dhammapada
Original language: Pali

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Overview

In 1892 a birch-bark scroll came to light near Khotan, in Central Asia, and reached Europe in two parts, one in Paris, one in St Petersburg. It held a version of the Dhammapada, "verses on the teaching", in Gāndhārī, an old language of the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, copied in the first or second century CE, one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of any Indian text. The find showed that this collection of the Buddha's sayings had circulated in several early schools, each with its own recension. John Brough, the Sanskritist who edited the scroll in 1962, found that the versions share some 330 to 340 verses and sixteen chapter headings, which points to a common ancestor rather than to copying. The Pāli version, the one the Theravāda tradition hands down, has 423 verses in twenty-six chapters, grouped by theme: the mind, the fool and the wise man, old age, anger, craving. Its opening pair states the claim that runs through the rest: what a person becomes is built from what they think, so that pain follows an evil thought and happiness a pure one. Hatred never ends by hatred, only by its absence. A commentary ascribed to Buddhaghosa supplies 305 stories, telling on what occasion the Buddha is supposed to have spoken each verse. In 1855 Viggo Fausbøll, a Danish scholar, made the Dhammapada the first Pāli text to receive a critical edition in Europe, with a Latin translation. Max Müller, the Oxford philologist, published the first complete English version in 1870 and revised it for the Sacred Books of the East in 1881, rendering the Buddha's dhamma as "the law".

Key concepts

What does 'earnestness' mean in the Dhammapada?

It is Müller's word for appamāda, unflagging watchfulness: staying awake to what one thinks and does instead of drifting. A whole chapter is given to it, and it stands against 'thoughtlessness', living on autopilot. The earnest monk, the verses say, moves about like fire, burning all his fetters, small or large, while the thoughtless sleep. Nothing else in the path is possible without it.

What is the 'immortality' the verses promise?

Not living forever, but the end of dying again: nirvāṇa, release from the round of rebirth, which Müller marks in his English with the Pāli word itself. Earnestness, the verses say, is its path. 'Those who are in earnest do not die' means that the one who has woken up is no longer subject to the death that waits for every born being.

How can 'self is the lord of self' fit a teaching of no-self?

Because the verse is about responsibility, not about a soul. No god, teacher or ritual can purify a person or make them evil, so no one else can be their lord. 'By oneself the evil is done, by oneself one suffers.' The self the verses address is the one who acts and is trained, as horses are broken in by their driver, not a permanent inner thing.

Who is the maker of the tabernacle?

Craving. Two verses speak to the builder of the body's house, sought through birth after birth, and end on the extinction of all desires: now you have been seen, you will not build this house again, its rafters are broken and its ridge-pole shattered. Rebirth, on this image, is a house craving keeps putting up, and awakening is finding the builder out.

Why can a fool beside a wise man learn nothing?

Because wisdom is not caught by contact, only by one's own understanding. A fool who stays with a wise man all his life, the verses say, perceives the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of the soup, while an intelligent person learns it in a moment, as the tongue does. And the fool who knows he is a fool is to that extent wise.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

What We Think, We Become

If a person is built from their thoughts, then the work of a life is done on the mind before anywhere else. The verses ask what that work looks like and who else could do it.

The opening pair sets the claim: all that we are is the result of what we have thought, and pain follows an evil thought as the wheel follows the ox. Hatred does not cease by hatred, only by love. A wise man straightens his trembling thought as a fletcher straightens an arrow. Self is the lord of self, and one who conquers himself is greater than one who conquers a thousand times a thousand men. Nowhere, not in the sky or the clefts of the mountains, can anyone escape their own evil deed.

self-discipline
self-mastery
self-restraint
self-cultivation
moral responsibility
karma
hatred
patience
nonviolence
ethical conduct

Enter a dialogue

Earnestness, the Path to the Deathless

Death comes for everyone, often while they are busy with something else. The verses ask what a person should be doing with the time, and answer with one word: earnestness.

Earnestness is the path of immortality, thoughtlessness the path of death: the earnest do not die, the thoughtless are as if dead already. By earnestness and restraint the wise make themselves an island no flood can overwhelm. The body is froth, as unsubstantial as a mirage. In two verses the builder of the house, craving, is seen at last and its rafters broken. And no teacher can do the work: you yourself must make an effort, the Buddhas only show the way.

heedfulness
mortality
impermanence
craving
desire
awakening
liberation
renunciation
solitude
wisdom

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 44
distinct concepts: 94
by passages held, corpus-wide: #670

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “desire” and “liberation”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 18 pairings. 41 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
desire	liberation	5
liberation	nonattachment	5
liberation	rebirth	5
liberation	wisdom	5
nonattachment	rebirth	3
desire	rebirth	2
impermanence	liberation	2
impermanence	virtue	2
nonattachment	wisdom	2
virtue	wisdom	2
desire	impermanence	1
desire	nonattachment	1
desire	wisdom	1
karma	rebirth	1
karma	virtue	1
karma	wisdom	1
liberation	virtue	1
rebirth	wisdom	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1892 Buddhistische Anthologie
A book assembled by its translator, not a book of the canon, and the start of a sequence: Neumann went on to translate the Dhammapada in 1893 and the verses of the monks and nuns in 1899.
DE
Dialogues of the Buddha (Dīgha Nikāya)
Of the five collections of the Buddha's discourses in the Pāli Canon, this one comes first and holds the longest pieces. Many of them stage an encounter: a brahmin, a king or a rival ascetic arrives with a question.
EN
Psalms of the Early Buddhists I: Psalms of the Sisters (Therīgāthā)
The companion to the Theragāthā, the verses of the elder monks, and less than half its length.
EN
Psalms of the Early Buddhists II: Psalms of the Brethren (Theragāthā)
Twenty-one chapters ordered by the length of each poem, from single verses up to Vaṅgīsa's seventy-one, ascribed to the Buddha's first monks.
EN
Sutta-Nipāta
An anthology rather than a single discourse: five chapters of verse and verse-dialogue, gathered into the miscellaneous fifth collection of the canon.
DEEN
The Book of the Kindred Sayings (Saṃyutta Nikāya)
Built by topic rather than by length, unlike the two collections before it: here causation, the aggregates of a person and the six senses each receive a book of their own.
PIEN
The Dhammapada (Dhammapada) you are here EN
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Majjhima Nikāya)
Where the Dīgha stages debates, this collection shows the Buddha at work as a teacher, with monks, householders and ascetics. Neumann's version, the first complete one in a European language, keeps the German spelling of the 1890s, with forms such as giebt and Gleichniss.
DE
The Udāna: Inspired Utterances of the Buddha (Udāna)
Prose scenes, each with its verse: a mixed form among the books of the miscellaneous fifth collection, where the Dhammapada and the Theragāthā are verse alone.
DE

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