An Atheist Explores The Dhammapada Part Ten: The Steady Drop of Evil (9 Evil/Papavagga)

Dhammapada Part Nine: Evil (Papavagga)

The Steady Drip Of Evil

“Hasten to do good; restrain your mind from evil. He who is slow in doing good, his mind delights in evil.”

Welcome to the next 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 Part Nine: Evil (Papavagga)

This chapter doesn’t actually delineate what “evil” is (nor “good” for that matter), but perhaps we’ve got a reasonable sense from the previous verses.

What it does, instead, is give a series of aphorisms about avoiding evil, and how evil (and good) affect a person in similar yet opposite ways. Evil is likened to poison, and “if on the hand there is no wound, one may carry even poison in it”. In other words, as the next line makes clear, a person with no spiritual “wound” will not be poisoned by evil – “Poison does not affect one who is free from wounds. For him who does no evil, there is no ill.”

Likewise, evil redounds on the doer if the target is a pure person, like dust blown into a headwind – “Like fine dust thrown against the wind, evil falls back upon that fool who offends an inoffensive, pure and guiltless man.”

There are some nice couplets, which by now seem pretty typical for the Dhammapada, contrasting good and evil. For example, the steady drip-feed of evil, of the gradual degradation of moral character, is warned against “Think not lightly of evil, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the fool, gathering it little by little, fills himself with evil.”

But also, goodness can be gained gradually as well – “Think not lightly of good, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good.” These are true, I think, in that one does not generally gain or lose a moral sense or empathy in one fell swoop, usually a multitude of little factors will shape a person’s personality, and here the Dhammapada is alerting us to be aware of these, and to cultivate them in the “right” direction – “Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good”, it says, but also “Should a person commit evil, let him not do it again and again. Let him not find pleasure therein, for painful is the accumulation of evil”, recognising the phenomenon of acclimatisation.

Good and bad deeds may not bring their desserts right away, says the Dhammapada, but sooner or later they will. It’s not clear if it’s talking of some kind of supernatural reward/punishment system, or if it’s purely psychological, the evil deeds of a bad person crushing them under the weight of their conscience like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Finally this chapter ends in an almost Revelation-esque fashion, proclaiming that “Neither in the sky nor in mid-ocean, nor by entering into mountain clefts” can one escape the effects of evil deeds, or death. Again this is split across two near-identical stanzas, it’s not clear if death is equated to the results of evil deeds, or is merely one of them. Since death, however, comes to all anyway, perhaps not.