The Dhammapada and the study of classical text

[Part 3]

The root image of motion which lies at the heart of what I term the first sub-discourse of the Dhammapada is reinforced, and given nuanced evaluation, in manifold ways, as is made clear in the following verses.

Some enter the womb; evil doers go to hell; the virtuous go to heaven; those free from worldly desires attain Nirvana

This world is dark, only few can see. Like birds escaped from the net, a few go to heaven.

Therefore, just as the moon follows the path of stars, one should follow the wise, the intelligent, the learned, the much enduring, the dutiful, noble; one ought to follow a god and wise man

Him whose thirty-six channels flowing towards the pleasures of sense are very strong, whose thoughts are set on passion, the waves will carry away the misguided man.

Men driven on by craving run about like a trapped hare. Bound in its fetters, they undergo agony for long periods of time, again and again.

Image of motion

The first sub-discourse of the Dhammapada, then, is constructed around the root image of motion. Similes, metaphors, symbols, turns of phrase related to the idea of journey, path, arrival, crossing, running, swiftness, and mobility form a dense tissue which contribute to the reinforcement of the root image of motion.

The second sub-discourse inscribed in the Dhammapada, in my judgment, centres on the root image of tranquility. Of the 423 verses gathered in this poem, about 225, by my count, deal with this image. The opening verses of the poem, which in many ways, set the tone for the verses that are to follow, call attention to the need for mental control and restraint as a mans of achieving tranquility of mind.

Indeed, the final destination of the thoughts, imaginings and strivings outlined in the Dhammapada is this cherished mental calm.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought, is based on our thoughts, is made up of our thoughts. If a person speaks or acts with an evil thought, sorrow will follow him like the wheel that follows the foot of the ox that draws the cart.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought, made up of out thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness will follow him like a shadow that is resolved never to desert him.

The need for control of the senses, which eventually leads to mental tranquility, is repeatedly underscored in the Dhammapada through memorable imagery.

As the wind brings down a weakened tree, so indeed does the Tempter overcome him who lives looking for pleasure, uncontrolled in his senses, immoderate in food, idle and weak.

As a wind does not bring down a rocky mountain, so the Tempter does not overthrow him who lives disregarding pleasures, well controlled in his senses, moderate in food, with faith and strength.

Buddhism

What is interesting about these pairs of verses is that through the calculated deployment of some of basic images like wind, tree, mountain culled from nature, the poet has succeeded in calling attention to the fundamental and guiding tenets of Buddhism.

Another point of interest about these two verses, one that should not be lost on us – and one that recurs throughout the poem – is that its clever juxtaposition of the positive and negative, constructive and destructive, so as to highlight and give added luster to the central message inscribed in the poem.

This point can be further illustrated by the following pair of verses.

As rain breaks through an ill-thatched house, so passion breaks through an unreflective mind.

As rain does not break through a well-thatched house, so passion des not break through a reflective mind.

Once again, easily to understand juxtaposition, the use of elemental imagery, serve to impress on the ordinary readers the point that the poet is labouring to enforce.

Significantly, the chapter from which these verses are taken is titled Yamakavaggo (The Twin Verses). However, it is important to point out that this technique of binary illustration is not confined solely to this chapter. This is indeed a rhetorical strategy pressed into service throughout the poem by the poet to establish and emphasise his central theme.

Carnal pleasure

Mental control, abandonment of carnal pleasure, restraint, the pursuit of virtue invariably results in mental tranquilility. The second root image of the poem – tranquility – is reinforced by a chain of vivid locutions.

The wise man, by rousing himself, by dint of earnestness, by restraint, may make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm. Commenting on this poem, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan says that the wise person can make for himself an island in the ocean of samsara which no flood of ignorance and craving can overwhelm.

Although I do not necessarily agree with some of Radhakrishnan’s observations on Buddhism in general and the Dhammapada in particular, on this point, the religious symbolic valence that the poem carries, I am in agreement with his observation.

The following verses, too, serve to call attention to the successful rhetorical strategies deployed by the poet to emphasize steadfastness, control and tranquility.

As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, so wise men do not falter amidst blame and praise.

Just as a deep lake is smooth and calm, wise men become tranquil after they have heeded the words of the dhamma.

The gods envy him whose senses are subdued like horses well tamed by the charioteer, who is free from pride and free from blemishes.

What is interesting about the imagery that organise these verses is that they are accessible, drawn from the familiar environment and evoke a ready response in ordinary readers and listeners.

These aesthetics of simplicity is a defining feature of the Dhammapada. The following verses which are supposed to have been uttered by the Buddha at the moment that he attained enlightenment, reinforce this point. here, the builder of the house is to be understood as craving, desire, passion. it sets in motion the process of rebirth. It is only by annihilating craving, desire, that one is able to free oneself from inexorability of the wheel of existence.

Painful birth

I have run through a course of many births looking for the maker of this dwelling and finding him not; painful is birth again and again.

Now you have been spotted, O maker of the house, you will not build the house again. All your rafters are broken and your ridge-pole is destroyed. The mind set on the attainment of nirvana has realised the extinction of desires.

Once again the theme is the necessity for the putting out of desires as a means of achieving the supreme tranquility, that of Nirvana.

Throughout the Dhamapada, this second root image related to tranquility is fed by a cluster of additive tropes. These are but a few of them.

He who holds back his rising anger like a speeding chariot, him I all a real charioteer; others but hold the reins.

Cut out the love of self as you would an autumn lily with the hand. Cherish the path to peace. The site of Nirvana has been indexed by the Buddha.

Cut down the whole forest of lust not only a unitary tree. When you have cut down both the forest and its undergrowth, O mendicant, you will surely attain ultimate freedom.

As a frontier town is well guarded within and without, so let a person guard himself impenetrably. Do not let the moment slide away, for they who permit the moments to pass suffer when they are in hell.

This mind of mine would wander formerly as it liked, as it wished, as it pleased. But I shall now control it thoroughly as the rider holding the hood controls the rutting elephant.

Tranquillity

What is interesting about these verses is the ease with which the central point of the importance of tanquillity is made through the display of accessible imagery. Just as the tenth chapter – The Path – deals with the root image of motion, the entire chapter twenty-five, titled Bhikkuvaggo (The Mendicant) addresses questions of mental restraint and calm, and thereby reinforcing the salience of the root image of tranquillity. These are a few representative examples from that chapter.

As the Vassika plant sheds its withered leaves O mendicants, so should you dispose of passions and hatred.

The mendicant who acts with friendliness and who is calm in the doctrine of the Buddha, will attain the natural desires and excitements cease.

A mendicant with a tranquil heart has entered the empty house, feels more than human delight when he discerns the law clearly.

In these verses, we see how the idea of tranquillity is repeatedly reinforced. These, then, are the two discourses that constitute the central poetic discourse of the Dhammapada. As I pointed out earlier, the first sub-discourse deals with motion and the second with tranquillity. The one flows natural into the other, all the while highlighting the latter as the final and privileged destination of the journey.

After all the poem celebrates the value of the purity of heart, which indeed is the privileged goal of those dedicated to the pursuit of spiritual liberation by traversing the path of virtue. A number of verses contained in the Dhammapada state directly the predominant message of the poem.

Refraining from all evil, the perfecting of the good, the purifying of one’s mind, this indeed is the teaching of the Buddha.

Even the gods emulate those who are enlightened and reflective, who are committed to meditation, who are wise, ad who delight in the peace of retirement.

Tensions

A point of interest about the two sub-discourses that I have discussed so far is that very often they appear interactively within the same verse, giving rise to creative tensions within the fabric of the text and enhancing the life of the poem.

One need hardly add that this predilection for creative tension with a text is discernible in the best poetry written both in the East and the West.

For example, the following verses derive their poetic life and animating power from this creative tension.

Those who will restrain their mind which travels afar, travels alone, incorporeal, and which resided in the inner cavern of the heart, will free themselves from the fetters of death.

The gods envy him whose senses are subdued like horses well tamed by the charioteer, who is free from hubris and free from blemishes.

The Dhammapada, then, I wish to argue, is a work of conscious literary art. It is a very different work from the Therigatha that I discussed some weeks ago; there the focus was on the psychological complexities of the individual nuns and how their path to liberation was captured in vivid language and tropes within a confessional setting. Here, the literary beauty emerges from a complex verbal organisation some aspects of which I have uncovered in this essay.

By identifying the root images, as indeed I have sought to do, one can better understand the nature of the verbal organisation, the textual weave, of this poem. We saw that the poetic discourse of the Dhammapada consists of two intersecting and mutually constitutive, and root images that quickened the argument of the poem.

It is indeed interesting to observe that these two sub-discourses and the central discourse that they support enact that very meeting. In other words, at a deeper level of analysis, one can describe the Dhammapada as re-enacting the essential message of Buddhism.

Four Noble Truths

The central message of Buddhism is that the world is full of suffering, and therefore we need to find the way of eliminating this suffering or overcoming it. The Four Noble Truths (cattari ariyasaccani) and the Noble Eightfold Path (ariya attangika magga), which lie at the heart of Buddhism, highlight this message.

The Four Noble Truths were expounded by the Buddha in his very first sermon. They are suffering – origin of suffering – cessation of suffering- and the path leading to the cessation of suffering. And the path leading to the cessation of suffering is referred to as the Noble Eightfold Path. The eight categories which constitute this path are: correct understanding – correct thought – correct action – correct speech – correct action – correct livelihood – correct effort – correct mindfulness – correct concentration.

A person who does not comprehend the validity of the Four Noble Truths and the Nobel Eightfold Path will be born again and again, incessantly going from birth to both, unable to purge himself or herself of the craving for life. For such a person, what is in store is a never-ending motion in the never-ending rounds of life.

On the other hand, people who curb their desires and can see the truth that the Buddha had expounded through mental concentration they are able to achieve the supreme bliss of tranquillity or Nirvana.

The never-ending journey through Samsara and the achievement of the supreme bliss of tranquility through purity of mind are images at the intellectual center of Buddhism.

It is indeed interesting to observe that not only do many of the verses in the Dhammapada state this directly but the poem, through its verbal structure and rhetorical ploys, seems to re-enact it.

The celebrated French philosopher Paul Ricoeur who has written so perceptively on issues of textual production says that a literary work is a work of discourse that can be distinguished from every other work of discourse, especially scientific discourse, in that it brings an explicit and implicit meaning into productive interaction.

And he also asserts that literature can be regarded as that use of discourse where several things are specified at the same time and where the reader is not required to choose among them. In our discussion of the Dhammapada we saw how the explicit and implicit meanings unite in a subtle verbal texture.

The central poetic discourse of the Dhammapada is shaped by the power of one root image – the intermingling of motion and tranquillity.

David Tracy, an eminent scholar of religious studies, maintains that every main religion of the world is grounded in certain root metaphors.

In the case of Buddhism, that contrast and the logical connection between motion and tranquility, as exemplified in the Dhammapada, constitutes this root metaphor.

An interesting aspect of the interplay of motion and tranquillity in the Dhammapada is the way that these two phenomena are mapped onto the concepts of body and mind.

To be sure, this is not a simple equation, and it operates at a deeper level of artistic apprehension. However, there is an equation established in the poem with mind as tranquillity and body as notion.

This inter-animation of motion and tranquility, body and mind, runs through the entirety of the text. The two opening verses of the poem, as I pointed out earlier, frame the poetic discourse of the poem in an interesting way. First, let us consider some of the ways in which the idea of the body has entered into the discourse of the poem.

He who seeks pleasure in physical objects, who has no control over his senses, is immoderate in food, idle and weak, him Mara will overpower, as the wind overpowers the weal tree.

He who seeks no pleasure in physical objects, who has complete control over his senses, is moderate in food, full of faith and is energetic, him Mara will not overpower any more than the wind can power the rocky mountain.

In the following verses, too, the body is contrasted with the mind, and the ideas of motion and tranquility are displaced on to the body and mind respectively.

Fortress

Knowing that the body is fragile like a clay plot, and fortifying the mind like a fortress, one should fight Mara with the sword of wisdom, guard what has been gained, without any attachment.

Alas! Before long this body will lie on the earth, unattended, bereft of consciousness, like a useless dog.

Knowing this body to be like foam, and realising its mirage-like nature breaking the flower-arrows of Mara, one may go beyond the domain of the King of Death.

In all these verses, we observe the way that the body is contrasted with the mind, and the fragility and evanescence of the former as opposed to the solidity and worth of the latter; this contrast is securely established. We see, how in many of the verses, how a need for restraint, mindfulness, self-control is underlined through the descriptions of the body. Consequently, the body becomes a metaphor for everything that needs controlling and restraining. In some other stanzas, the body becomes a symbol of time and its inexorable power.

Look at this beautiful image, covered with wounds, huddled together, full of illness, higly fancied, without any permanence or stability.

Disease

This body is frail and a nest of disease. It is perishable. It ends in death.

The bleaching bones are like gourds discarded in autumn. What delight is there looking at them?

Here is a city made up of bones, plastered with flesh and blood, where decay and death pride and deceit dwell.

In these stanzas the correlation between the body and time is vividly present; the body is subjected to the ravages of time, and to see it in any other way is to fall victim to an illusion. The Dhammapada repeatedly points out that the body needs to be controlled as a way of achieving spiritual liberation. so it becomes a challenge, an object for contemplation and conquest.

Those sages who refrain from violence, who are capable of controlling their bodies, go to the unchanging abode, where having reached it, they do not suffer any more.

Those who are constantly mindful of the body, who refrain from what is proscribed, who labour to do the deeds that are prescribed, who are attentive and restrained – in such people evil potentialities will come to an end.

The disciples of the Buddha are always well-awake, well-enlightened. Their thoughts, day and night, center on the body.

As we examine the verses in the Dhammapada, what we note is not an insistence on a rigid bifurcation of the human personality into the mind and body, but rather a higher synthesis born of the possibilities as well as the limitations of the body. By disposing the body, by perceiving its limitations and possibilities, by making use of it as a challenge to the realisation of higher spiritual values, the Dhammapada enjoins thoughtful people to achieve a higher synthesis.

In the Dhammapada, the word commonly used to designate the body is kaya. Occasionally, the words sarira and rupa are also employed. The body is constantly pitted against citta (mind); occasionally, the words manas, panna, dhamma are used or this purpose. There is an interesting interplay between the kaya and citta, and this is central to the structure of the poem.

And this interplay can be very subtly mapped on to the interplay between motion and tranquillity (the two dominant images in the poem) that I have been discussing in this column. Any perceptive literary critic who is interested in uncovering the complex literary organisation of this poem will surely be interested in focusing on this interplay and mapping.

So what we find in the Dhammapada is the deft use of mind and body to define the potentialities of each other and promote a synthesis that can best be understood as an understanding that leads towards human achievement. This intersection of mind and body finds an echo in the interface of motion and tranquility.

An exploration of the root images in the Dhammapada, ultimately, opens interesting doors not only to understanding the structure and organisation, and therefore the literary worth of this poem, but also to the doctrinal centre of the poem as well.

As I have been arguing throughout this column, these two facets of the text are interconnected; they are mutually reinforcing. Hence it can be asserted that the structure and organisation of the poem are reflective of the theme and message of the poem.

Message

There is indeed another sense in which this poem enacts its own message. The Dhammapada states both directly and obliquely that the body is subject to change, the mind is subject to change as indeed are thoughts and feelings. This conviction ties into the root image of motion.

What the author(s) has sought to do is to give a kind of permanence to this through the weave of the text. But, as readers of texts, we can read that itself as an illusion, because language changes too along with forms of reception and interpretation privileged by various generations of readers. Hence, this text can, and will be read in different ways by different readers, and this is sanctioned by the very vision of the poem. And interestingly, here there is a perfect fit with modern literary theory.

(To be continued)