An Atheist Explores the Dhammapada Part 23: Why a Monk’s Life is Like Sharp Grass (Hell/Nirayavagga)

Dhammapada Part Twenty Two: Hell  (Nirayavagga)

Why a Monk’s Life is Like Sharp Grass.

“The liar goes to the state of woe; also he who, having done (wrong), says, "I did not do it." Men of base actions both, on departing they share the same destiny in the other world.”

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 Twenty Two: Hell  (Nirayavagga)

For a chapter given the heading “Hell”, there’s not really much about afterlife punishment here at all. The liars and Bart Simpson (“I didn’t do it, nobody saw me, you can’t prove it”) share a “destiny” in “the other world”, as the opening quote suggests, and later on the Dhammapada warns that anybody who doesn’t guard themselves like a “border city” and who lets a chance for spiritual growth pass them by will “grieve indeed when consigned to hell”.

But, part from a very Qur’anish admonishment that “It would be better to swallow a red-hot iron ball, blazing like fire, than as an immoral and uncontrolled monk to eat the alms of the people”, what this chapter really warns about are actions that will lead to rebirth in “states of woe”; but also addresses the more temporal results of unwise actions.

Adultery, for example, will lead to “acquisition of demerit, disturbed sleep, ill-repute, and (rebirth in) states of woe” according to the text. Three of these are very much material world effects, and if one takes out what is evidently the implied text of “rebirth in”, one could easily argue that “states of woe” include being miserable in life because of the repercussions of your actions.

There’s a relatively large amount on the conduct of monks, but also on the effects of the monastic life, likened to kusa grass that cuts the hand if incorrectly handled. A monk runs the risk that “Any loose act, any corrupt observance, any life of questionable celibacy — none of these bear much fruit”. Held to a higher standard, I guess, but the Dhammapada recognises that living a monastic life can lead to an increase in desires for the things that one misses (it could include food but it feels here like the text is really talking about sex), and does its own take on the saying that “The devil makes work for idle hands”, with “A lax monastic life stirs up the dust of passions all the more”. Keep those monks (and nuns) too busy to think naughty thoughts.

We finish with a little quartet of verses sharing a motif, starting “Those who are ashamed of what they should not be ashamed of, and are not ashamed of what they should be ashamed of — upholding false views, they go to states of woe”.

It seems a bit harsh on people who have been made to feel ashamed of things that they should feel no shame about. Likewise those who “see something to fear where there is nothing to fear”. But the verses are about clarity (of thought, really, I think, rather the perception), because after three verses where we are told that “upholding false views, they go to states of woe”, we are then given the opposite – “Those who discern the wrong as wrong and the right as right — upholding right views, they go to realms of bliss”. Possibly, these verses are talking about a “hell” of the person’s own making, where they punish themselves for faults that they believe they have (and also that this kind of thinking stops them from living a fulfilled life).

Hooray! It all sounds so easy….