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MAHA-PARINIBBÂNA-SUTTA.
117
Unequalled among all the men that are, Successor of the prophets of old time, Mighty by wisdom, and in insight clear
Hath died?!' 16. When the Blessed One died, Sakka, the king of the gods, at the moment of his passing away from existence, uttered this stanza : 'They're transient all, each being's parts and
powers, Growth is their nature, and decay. They are produced, they are dissolved again : And then is best, when they have sunk to rest ?!'
1 Brahmâ, the first cause, the highest result of Indian theological speculation, the one God of the Indian Pantheists, is represented as using expressions full of deep allusions to the most characteristic Buddhist doctrines. The Samussaya is the result of the temporary collocation of the 'aggregations' (khandhâ) of mental and material qualities which give to each being (bhùto, that is, man, animal, god, ghost, fairy, or what not) its outward and visible shape, its individuality. Loka is here not the world in our sense, but the 'locality' in the Buddhist universe which such an individual occupies until it is dissolved. (Comp. Chap. II, $$ 14, 34.) Brahmâ appears therefore as a veritable Vibhagga vâdî.
? On this celebrated verse see below the Introduction to MahâSudassana Sutta. It must be the original of the first verse in the Chinese work, Fa Kheu Pi Hu (Beal, Dhammapada, p. 32), though it is there so changed that every clause has lost its point.
Whatever exists is without endurance. And hence the terms “flourishing" and "decaying." A man is born, and then he dies.
Oh, the happiness of escaping from this condition ! The very meaning which is here the most essential connotation of sankhârâ is lost in the phrase "whatever exists.' By a misapprehension of the, no doubt, difficult word Dhamma, which, however, never means 'term,' the second clause has lost its point. And by a grammatical blunder the third clause in the Chinese confines the doctrine, erroneously, to man. In a Chinese tale, called
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| SR No. | 007674 |
| Book Title | Dhammapada |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Max Muller |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1881 |
| Total Pages | 2540 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 45 MB |