An Atheist Explores the Dhammapada Part Seventeen: Run Away! It Might Be Sad! (Affection (Piyavagga))

 Dhammapada Part Sixteen: Affection (Piyavagga)

Run Away! It Might Be Sad!

“Seek no intimacy with the beloved and also not with the unloved, for not to see the beloved and to see the unloved, both are painful.”

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 Sixteen: Affection (Piyavagga)

This is a very short section, dealing mostly with overcoming attachment. I can’t help but think of Anakin Skywalker here, since the chapter is concerned with how attachment can lead to grief and fear (it doesn’t follow Yoda’s progression of fear leading to anger and anger leading to hate, and I wonder if the Dhammapada thinks that it is the case anyway).

What it does do, for verses 212-216, is to repeat the formula (given here from Verse 212) “From endearment springs grief, from endearment springs fear. For one who is wholly free from endearment there is no grief, whence then fear?” Simply replace “endearment” with affection, attachment, lust and craving, and you have the full set of verses.

The chapter then segues onto more spiritual aspects of this detachment, via Verse 217 which tells us “People hold dear him who embodies virtue and insight, who is principled, has realized the truth, and who himself does what he ought to be doing”. Which is a kind of virtue ethics; pretty vague in terms of what virtue is and what “he ought to be doing” is, to the extent of being pretty much a truism. Integrity is a favourable attribute in a person.

We next learn that to be intent on nibbana, no longer bound to sensual pleasures, one becomes “One Bound Upstream”, an anagami, a “Non-Returner”. So here we see that the Buddhist spiritual is that by abandoning all of the attachment, endearment, etc., one sets off on what seems to be an irrevocable path towards Nirvana/Nibbana. The concept of backsliding doesn’t seem to be possible; I’m guessing that if one has even the slightest remnant of possible going back to attachment, one hasn’t yet set out on the “correct” path.

Finally, there’s an interesting little simile, where “As kinsmen welcome a dear one on arrival, even so his own good deeds will welcome the doer of good who has gone from this world to the next”. Virtue is its own reward, in other words.

Now, I have to take issue with the notion of abandoning affection, because the Dhammapada claims that “separation from the dear is painful”. This, to me, is to give up a lot of what it means to be human. Yes, loss is painful, but, as the old saying goes, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Surely, it’s better to follow something closer to stoic doctrine, and learn to accept loss as part of life. Learn to let go of things, but don’t shun them, particularly relationships with other people, simply because you’ll be upset if they end. That, to me, is running away from life, and not living it. And definitely not living it well or virtuously.