Dhammapada 1 The Pairs (Yamakavagga)
Don’t Be A Leaky Roof
“Mind precedes all
mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an
impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him like the wheel that
follows the foot of the ox”
Welcome to
the first instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Dhammapada).
In this
series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Dhammapada, commenting on it
from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more
detail, see the introductory post https://bit.ly/3IbwtwE
For the
online Dhammapada that I use, see here https://bit.ly/3IgCiJr
And now:
Dhammapada 1 The Pairs (Yamakavagga)
I’m going to admit that I had this chapter already written
up, and then accidentally saved over it, so this is a rerun and will probably
be (mercifully) shorter.
This first chapter is known as “Pairs” because it is
written as a series of paired verses, each one playing off its partner. The
quote above is the first line, the second one runs “Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all
mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him
like his never-departing shadow.”
You can see the theme here, with each half of the couplet having
some statements in common and some giving opposites. It’s a little like all of
the “A Wise Man is Wise, but a Fool is
Foolish” stuff in the Book of Proverbs, but better. Not all of the verses
follow this form, sometimes the dichotomy is given within a single verse, for
example Verse 5; “Hatred is never
appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This
is a law eternal.”
The main message running through this chapter is that the
mind is the master of the thoughts, and a controlled mind controls thoughts,
controls actions, and thus leads a person to worthy behaviour, not driven by
the passions such as anger – “Just as
rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, so passion penetrates an undeveloped
mind.”
There is talk of avoiding “depravity”, but what’s interesting here is that, unlike the Bible
or Qur’an, although “The evil-doer
grieves here and hereafter; he grieves in both the worlds”, this is not due
to any kind of divine punishment, but simple guilt. “The thought, "Evil have I done," torments him, and he suffers
even more when gone to realms of woe.”
Although, having said that, the evil-doer goes to the “realms of woe” and the doer of good to
the “realms of bliss”. Which is a
little odd, since I thought this was a religion about reincarnation and
escaping the cycle, not one life and one afterlife as seems to be implied here.
Possibly these are very early verses in Buddhist thought (although that would
seem to go against the Four Noble Truths which are surely, by tradition, the
foundation of Budhhist thought?) Well, maybe things will be made more clear as
I go.
One other thing, there is mention of Mara (“Just as a storm throws down a weak tree, so
does Mara overpower the man who lives for the pursuit of pleasures, who is
uncontrolled in his senses, immoderate in eating, indolent, and dissipated”),
who is a kind of devil figure, an evil deity and tempter leading people astray
from the path.
And so my first impressions are of a mix of something not
unlike cognitive behavioural therapy (which draws from mindfulness teachings,
so I’m not surprised), but laced with afterlives, eternal laws, and demonic
tempters, which is a little disappointing (I had hoped for less obvious
supernatural stuff). But, so far so good. It’s very readable, and short, and
the translators have done a good job capturing the poetry.
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