An Atheist Explores the Dhammapada Part Nineteen: More Yoda, More Jesus, And Obscure Recluses (Impurity/Malavagga)

Dhammapada Part Eighteen: Impurity (Malavagga)

More Yoda, More Jesus, And Obscure Recluses.

“Like a withered leaf are you now; death's messengers await you. You stand on the eve of your departure, yet you have made no provision for your journey!”

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 Eighteen: Impurity (Malavagga)

The first half of this section looks at a person near the end of their life, in the “presence of Yama, the King of Death” and how, if they haven’t removed their impurities (from whence the title) they do not escape the cycle of rebirth, because “Rid of impurities and cleansed of stain, you shall not come again to birth and decay”.

These “impurities” are what stops a person from entering “the celestial abode of the Noble Ones”. I can only assume that otherwise one is bound to the samsara, but that isn’t elucidated in this section.

We are told that “One by one, little by little, moment by moment, a wise man should remove his own impurities, as a smith removes his dross from silver”. It’s a gradual process, not a sudden and easy giving up of the impurities. In fact, once again we are told that the dark side is quicker, easier, more seductive – “Easy is life for the shameless one who is impudent as a crow, is backbiting and forward, arrogant and corrupt” while “Difficult is life for the modest one who always seeks purity, is detached and unassuming, clean in life, and discerning”.

This latter part of the section deals more with what actually entail the impurities. The translation I’m using rather unfortunately keeps referring to “taints”, as in “Taints, indeed, are all evil things, both in this world and the next”. Which is fine, unless you think of the slang use of the word for the perineum (because ‘t’ain’t one thing or another), in which case rather than noble wisdom, these verses suddenly look comically bawdy.

The worst of all the taints is ignorance, and the gradual collection of taints is likened to a messy home, the result of neglect and the accumulation of a thousand tiny acts of carelessness. We get a little bit of good old misogyny as well – “Unchastity is the taint in a woman”. Men, one presumes, can be as unchaste as they like.

There’s also an interesting note about “evil things are difficult to control” – once you start down the path to the dark side, forever will it control your destiny. “There is no fire like lust; there is no grip like hatred; there is no net like delusion; there is no river like craving” and also “One who destroys life, utters lies, takes what is not given, goes to another man's wife, and is addicted to intoxicating drinks — such a man digs up his own root even in this world”. So it’s good to get some concrete examples of what constitutes collecting stain on one’s soul. It’s still all very Star Wars though, isn’t it?

And then we get something very like removing the log from your own eye before complaining about the splinter in your neighbour’s (or however it goes). “Easily seen is the fault of others, but one's own fault is difficult to see.” Much more direct than the tortured metaphor given by Jesus. And it goes on to describe how being a bit of a sanctimonious tool damages your own soul – “He who seeks another's faults, who is ever censorious — his cankers grow. He is far from destruction of the cankers”. Once again, I find that this is useful advice, even when stripped of the idea of supernatural effects and turned entirely to mundane psychological effects.

The section ends on what to me is a very impenetrable verse – “There is no track in the sky, and no recluse outside (the Buddha's dispensation). There are no conditioned things that are eternal, and no instability in the Buddhas”. I may need to check an alternative translation to that. I think the second part means that only a Buddha is eternal and stable. “Recluse outside the Buddha’s dispensation” though? I’m baffled by that.