423. He is the Brahmin indeed who knows his former lives, and who knows heaven and hell, who has reached the end of births, the sage whose knowledge is perfect, and who is perfect with all perfection.

THE END

OF

THE DHAMMAPADA

NOTES

1, 2. THESE stanzas contain two ideas which are of the very warp and woof of Buddhism:

(a) The view depends upon the point of view;

(b) Thought is potent in influencing man's destiny.

The Chinese Commentary illustrates both these ideas: Two merchants listened to the Buddha's preaching; one was delighted, the other angry: men hear what they are prepared to hear. Soon after one was killed, the other became King: so potent is thought!

8. Cf. Luke vi, 48.

9, 10. The Buddha often used a play upon words to arrest men's attention and help their memory. The Pali of these stanzas contains a pun of this kind, which cannot be imitated in English: Kasavam means either the yellow robe of the mendicant, or impurity, stain, sin.

11, 12. The work of Gautama as a preacher lay largely in this directing of men's efforts: the great reality is character; this and this alone is man's business upon earth.

All else are "shadows" not worth pursuing. Cf. St. John's words: "Little children, flee idols" (i.e. "shadows"), 1 John v, 21. So St. Paul speaks of covetousness as "idolatry"--the pursuit of the great "shadow," Mammon (Col. iii, 5).

When the Buddhist puts on the yellow robe, he symbolises his belief that "virtue is the truest wealth": the gold of character is alone worth striving after. (Cf. Dhammapada, 75 and note.) On the day of his ordination (upasampada) the candidate adorns himself with all the jewellery he can obtain, and doffs it only to don the yellow robe.

15-18. Here and Hereafter: i.e. in this birth and the next. Man may be reborn upon earth, or in one of the

hells or in one of the heavens. A demon who does well may become a man or a god: a god who lives unworthily may become a man or a demon.

Tormented when he goes to hell. The Buddhist Temples are full of frescoes of these torments: men who have killed animals are being slowly devoured by them; other sinners are being forced by demon torturers to climb spiky trees, or burnt in fires most realistically drawn, or made to swallow balls of red-hot iron; low-caste men who have offended the high castes are being crushed by great rocks!

The Buddha's own discourses contain minute detail of such torments. It is not clear whether he was using an argumentum ad hominem, or really believed in a hereafter of physical torment. In any case his moral code has been strangely perverted in modern Buddhism.

18. The reward for virtue is twofold--the approval of conscience and a good rebirth.

19. Cf. Matt. xxiii, 2; John x, 12.