Quotes from the Dhammapada and a Quick Reaction

I read through the Dhammapada (a translation by Acharya Buddharakkhita), which is one of the best known and most widely esteemed religious texts in the world and the sacred scriptures of Theravada Buddhism.

Here are some quotes I found particularly interesting:

From the introduction: "To his followers, the Buddha is neither a god, a divine incarnation, or a prophet bearing a message of divine revelation, but a human being who by his own striving and intelligence has reached the highest spiritual attainment of which man is capable--perfect wisdom, full enlightenment, complete purification of mind. His function in relation to humanity is that of a teacher--a world teacher who, out of compassion, points out to others the way to Nibbana (Sanskrit: Nirvana), final release from suffering. His teaching, known as the Dhamma, offers a body of instructions explaining the true nature of existence and showing the path that leads to liberation."

From the introduction: "Always shining in the splendor of his wisdom, the Buddha by his very being confirms the Buddhist faith in human perfectibility consummates the Dhammapada's picture of man perfected, the Arahat."

From the introduction: "In contrast to the Bible, which opens with an account of God's creation of the world, the Dhammapada begins with an unequivocal assertion that mind is the forerunner of all that we are, the maker of our character, the creator of our destiny."

From the introduction: "If this is done repeatedly [contemplation for application], with patience and perseverance, it is certain that the Dhammapada will confer upon his life a new meaning and sense of purpose. Infusing him with hope and inspiration, gradually it will lead him to discover a freedom and happiness far greater than anything the world can offer."

1:11 - "Those who mistake the unessential to be essential and the essential to be unessential, dwelling in wrong thoughts, never arrive at the essential."

1:18 - "The doer of good delights here and hereafter; he delights in both the worlds. The thought, 'Good have I done,' delights him, and he delights even more when gone to realms of bliss."

2:25 - "By effort and heedfulness, discipline and self-mastery; let the wise one make for himself an island which no flood can overwhelm." 

3:36 - "Let the discerning man guard the mind, so difficult to detect and extremely subtle, seizing whatever it desires. A guarded mind brings happiness."

3:42 - "Whatever harm an enemy may do to an enemy, or a hater to a hater, an ill-directed mind inflicts on oneself a greater harm."

4:51 - "Like a beautiful flower full of color but without fragrance, even so, fruitless are the fair words of one who does not practice them."

5:75 - "One is the quest for worldly gain, and quite another is the path to Nibbana. Clearly understanding this, let not the monk, the disciple of the Buddha, be carried away by worldly acclaim, but develop detachment instead."

6:76 - "Should one find a man who points out faults and who reproves, let him follow such a wise and sagacious person as one would a guide to hidden treasure. It is always better, and never worse, to cultivate such an association."

8:115 - "Better it is to live one day seeing the Supreme Truth than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Supreme Truth" 

9:122 - "Think not lightly of good, saying, 'It will not come to me.' Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good."

11:154 - "O house-builder, you are seen! You will not build this house again. For your rafters are broken and your ridgepole shattered. My mind has reached the Unconditioned; I have attained the destruction of craving." -  these verses are the Buddha's "Song of Victory," his first utterance after his Enlightenment The house is individualized existence in samsara, the house-builder craving, the rafters the passions and the ridge-pole ignorance.

13:178 - "Better than sole sovereignty over the earth, better than going to heaven, better even than lordship over all the world is the supramundane Fruition of Stream Entrance."

14:183 - "To avoid all evil, to cultivate good, and to cleanse one's mind - this is the teaching of the Buddhas."

15:202 - "There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates (of existence) and no bliss higher than the peace (of Nibbana)."

16:211 - "Therefore hold nothing dear, for separation from the dear is painful. There are no bonds for those who have nothing beloved or unloved."

17:228 - "There never was, there never will be, nor is there now, a person who is wholly blamed or wholly praised." 

18:251 - "There is no fire like lust; there is no grip like hatred; there is no net like delusion; there is no river like craving."

20:273 - "Of all the paths the Eightfold Path is the best; of all the truths the Four Noble Truths are the best; of all things passionlessness is the best: of men the Seeing One (the Buddha) is the best."

24: 348 - "Let go of the past, let go of the future, let go of the present, and cross over to the farther shore of existence. With mind wholly liberated, you shall come no more to birth and death." 

26:405 - "He who has renounced violence towards all living beings, weak or strong, who neither kills nor causes others to kill - him do I call a holy man." 

26:418 - "He who, having cast off likes and dislikes, has become tranquil, is rid of the substrata of existence and like a hero has conquered all the worlds - him do I call a holy man." 


I naturally contrast this teaching with that of Christianity. I find that Buddha really latches on well to the human sin condition with its roots in desires and gives a great analysis of how this effects all of life. However, the Bible teaches that the cause of our unsatisfactory existence (from our sinful cravings) is because of the Fall of Adam and Eve and the solution is Jesus Christ. Passions were originally "good" and they were lived out perfectly in Jesus and in the new heaven and new earth passions and life will be as it was meant to be. I find that Buddhist teaching on getting to the heart of an issue, your own body and the world as your obstacles, an 'eternal' (so to speak) focus, and receiving good for good has a lot of overlap with Christian ideas.

The Buddha works from a view of reality wherein there is reincarnation and one must achieve aloofness and enlightenment by their own strength in response to the human condition. The Christian view teaches where desire comes from and its proper function and how one day this situation of unsatisfactoriness we find ourselves in will be put to an end by God. We were designed to be in perfect bliss and satisfaction with our Creator and all creation. The Bible teaches that only one man overcame the sin condition and we are invited to overcome it by faith in Him, because on our own we will never be able to do so. We are invited to entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ, the truly perfect one (fully God and fully man) who truly conquered the passions and lived them purely and so was a perfect substitute for mankind on the cross, so that we can be redeemed from sin and participate in this promised righteousness partially now and fully in the life to come.

There is a lot more that could be said and has been said by more learned men than I; however, these are just some mused thoughts after looking a lot more into Buddhist thought and teaching.

Soli Deo gloria,
The Reader

Prose that Sings from Criswell

This is a re-post of a Trevin Wax article:

Watch how Criswell communicates the cosmic significance of the crucifixion:

So Jesus bowed His head on the cross and cried, “It is finished!”
The drops of blood that poured out from the cross to the dust of the ground whispered to the grass, saying, “It is finished!”
The grass whispered to the herbs, “It is finished!”
The herbs whispered to the trees, “It is finished!”
The trees whispered to the birds in the branches, “It is finished!”
The birds spiraling upwards to the clouds cried, “It is finished!”
The clouds spoke to the stars in the sky, “It is finished!”
The stars in the sky cried to the angels in heaven, “It is finished!”

The angels in glory went up and down the streets of the heavenly city echoing this glad refrain, “It is finished!”
The crucifixion of our Lord was God’s redemption for the sin of the world.

Notice the way Criswell shows how sin leads to the curse of death:

If one sins against a friend, something dies within him.
If one sins against a partner, something will die between them.
If one sins against his home, something will die in it.
If one sins against himself, something will die in him.
When one sins against God, something dies between him and the Lord.
When sin is added to anything – to any gift, any virtue, any achievement – it will spell grief and misery and death.
A gun plus sin will produce violence and murder.
Success plus sin will produce egotism, pride, and overbearing ostentation.
Money plus sin will produce greed, bribery, and blackmail.
Love plus sin turns to lust.
A home plus sin will produce an atmosphere like hell.
Alcohol plus sin – a car plus sin – any gift of God plus sin is damned to misery and perdition. God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” There is a curse in sin.

Now watch how vividly Criswell paints the crucifixion scene. He puts the listener in the place of all the main characters and then drives home the theological truths of the cross by addressing the congregation personally:

What do you see when you look at the cross?
The Roman soldiers looked and they saw garments to be coveted and a robe for which to gamble.
The priests looked and they saw an enemy to be destroyed.

The curious passersby, who sat down and watched Him there, saw a scene in which to idle away a weary hour.

One malefactor looked and saw another criminal, like himself, being crucified.
The other thief looked and saw hope for heaven: “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”
The centurion looked and said: “Surely this man was the Son of God.”
The ruler of the Passover feast looked and saw a polluted body that had to be removed before the Sabbath Day drew on.

Pilate’s quaternion of soldiers looked and were commissioned with three deaths to be ascertained. Two of the three certainly expired with the breaking of their bones by heavy mallets, and the other was declared certainly dead with a spear, opening His heart and His side.

John looked and saw a fountain of blood and water for atonement and the cleansing of our sins.
Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus looked and saw a precious body to be lovingly laid away.
God the Father looked and saw the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son.

When you look upon the cross, what do you see? When Jesus stands before you, upon His brow the crown of thorns, mocked, rejected, scourged, bleeding, dying, what do you feel? Surely, surely we are conscience-stricken, for His suffering is a revelation of the judgment of God upon the sin of our own hearts. It is our sins that placed upon His brow the crown of thorns. It is our sins that laid upon His back the cruel and heavy stripes. It is our sins that nailed Him to the tree. Surely it is our sins that we see in the sufferings of His cross, in His tears, in His sorrows, in His wounds, and in His death.

When you look at the cross, what do you see? Do you see the love of God for a lost humanity? He died in our stead. It is by the love of God for us that we are delivered from so terrible a penalty.
When you look upon the cross, what do you see? Do you see our victory over sin and death and the grave? Through the torn veil of His flesh, we have our entrance into heaven.
When you look upon the cross, do you hear God’s call to the human heart? Do you not feel God’s entreaty to your own soul?

And here’s my all-time favorite section from a Criswell sermon. It is one of the most poetic portrayals of the gravity of Christ’s death ever delivered from a pulpit:

He was raised between the heaven and the earth, as though both rejected Him, despised by men and refused by God.
And as though abuse were not vile enough, they covered Him with spittle.
And as though spittle were not contemptuous enough, they plucked out His beard.
And as though plucking out His beard was not brutal enough, they drove in great nails.
And as though the nails did not pierce deeply enough, He was crowned with thorns.
And as though the thorns were not agonizing enough, He was pierced through with a Roman spear.
It was earth’s saddest hour, and it was humanity’s deepest, darkest day.
At three o’clock in the afternoon it was all over. The Lord of life bowed His head and the light of the world flickered out.
Tread softly around the cross, for Jesus is dead. Repeat the refrain in hushed and softened tones: the Lord of life is dead.
The lips that spoke forth Lazarus from the grave are now stilled in the silence of death, and the head that was anointed by Mary of Bethany is bowed with its crown of thorns.
The eyes that wept over Jerusalem are glazed in death, and the hands that blessed little children are nailed to a tree.
And the feet that walked on the waters of blue Galilee are fastened to a cross, and the heart that went out in compassionate love and sympathy for the poor and the lost of the world is now broken; He is dead.
The infuriated mob that cried for His crucifixion gradually disperses; He is dead.
And the passersby who stop just to see Him go on their way; He is dead.
The Pharisees, rubbing their hands in self-congratulation, go back to the city; He is dead.
And the Sadducees, breathing sighs of relief, return to their coffers in the temple; He is dead.

The centurion assigned the task of executing Him makes his official report to the Roman procurator, “He is dead.”
And the four, the quaternion of soldiers sent to dispatch the victims, seeing the Man on the center cross was certainly dead, brake not His bones, but pierce Him through with a spear; He is dead.

And Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus of the Sanhedrin go personally to Pontius Pilate and beg of the Roman governor His body, because He is dead.
Mary His mother and the women with her are bowed in sobs and in tears; He is dead.
And the eleven apostles, like frightened sheep, crawl into eleven shadows to hide from the pointing finger of Jerusalem and they cry, “He is dead!”

Wherever His disciples met, in an upper room, or on a lonely road, or behind closed doors, or in hiding places, the same refrain is sadly heard, “He is dead. He is in a tomb; they have sealed the grave and set a guard; He is dead.”

It would be almost impossible for us to enter into the depths of despair that gripped their hearts.
Simon Peter, the rock, is a rock no longer.
And James and John, the sons of Boanerges, are sons of thunder no longer.
And Simon the Zealot is a zealot no longer.
He is dead, and the hope of the world has perished with Him.
Then, then, then…

Soli Deo gloria,
The Reader

Post-Capitalism?

I read an intellectual piece in a magazine I am starting to look at more these days called n+1. The piece can be found here.

The author gives quick references to various capitalistic theories and offers some reflections. The biggest questions being where is the capitalistic cycle of replacing worker with machine and so the taking of worker's control; the elites benefiting from the creative uses of debt; and the trend to political socialism taking us in the future?

I thought some of the following quotes were interesting:

     All this[open source code, info capitalism], Mason imagines, offers a way out—as long as some (nearly impossible) political conditions are achieved. “Once firms are forbidden to set monopoly prices,” he suggests as a first step, “and a universal basic income is available . . . the market is actually the transmitter of the ‘zero marginal cost’ effect, which manifests as falling labor time across society.” In other words, he imagines antimonopoly laws becoming robust (in the absence of a populist movement), so that companies like Google lose their hegemony and networked indignados can take over production (in the absence of a labor movement), using Amazon-like tools of tracking to calculate societal needs, and produce everything for free (in the absence of anyone desiring to make money). All the problems of the world dissolve in a warm open-source bath! Capitalism loses on the playing fields of Valve Software.
      But the potential for this sort of mass liberation of everything isn’t a guarantee that it will ever take place: to refute the theory of a tendency toward “zero marginal costs,” one only need provide a single instance of its opposite. And Mason in fact provides several: to wit, Google, Facebook, and Apple, which have a near monopoly on search, social networking, and music. Even a company that begins from open-source models—GitHub—finds ways to make its operations profitable.

      The familiar cycle—workers continue to go into debt to make up for weak income; this debt is turned into lucrative financial instruments by downtown wizards; these instruments collapse when their basis is revealed to be valueless; eventually new instruments are founded on new kinds of debt—continually reasserts itself.

     The vision of the accelerationists breaks with an idea that has been with the left for generations: that work itself would be liberated and redeemed under socialism. Free time would become more abundant, but work, too, would become more joyous. Craftsmanship would alternate with leisure. The tribune of this idea has always been William Morris, who wrote that “art is man’s expression of his joy in labour.”

     Automation isn’t a neutral, inevitable part of capitalism. It comes about through the desire to break formal and informal systems of workers’ control—including unions—and replace them with managerially controlled and minutely surveilled systems of piecework. An entire political and legal infrastructure has been built up to make these so-called tendencies seem like the natural progression of capitalism, rather than the effects of fights—sometimes simple, sometimes violent—to deprive people of whatever sense of control they have over their work. 


All in all, I think a good question from the article was "what is the social vision appropriate for a jobless future?"  I don't feel in any way adequate to face these kind of economic questions but find it interesting to think about them and the desire to learn more.

Soli Deo gloria,
The Reader