Dhammapada

SR No.: 007674
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

Page 698

INTRODUCTION.
241
disintegration1. For to the unborn there is no such thing as state, and there is no such thing as a state which is without disintegration. Thus are all compounds, having attained to the three characteristic marks (of impermanency, pain, and want of any abiding principle 2), subject, in this way and in that way, to dissolution. All these component things therefore, without exception, are impermanent, momentary 3, despicable, unstable, disintegrating, trembling, quaking, unlasting, sure to depart, only for a time, and without substance;-as temporary as a 'phantom, as the mirage, or as foam!
5
'How then in these, dear lady Subhaddâ, is there any sign of ease? Understand rather that "then is best, when they have sunk to rest;" but their sinking to rest, their cessation, comes from the cessation of the whole round (of life), and is the same as Nirvana. That and this are one". And hence there is no such thing as ease.']
And when Mahâ Sudassana had thus brought his discourse to a point with the ambrosial great Nirvâna, he made exhortation also to the rest of the great multitude, saying, 'Give gifts! Observe the precepts! Keep the sacred days!' and became an inheritor of the world of the gods.
[When the Master had concluded this lesson in the truth, he summed up the Gâtaka, saying, 'She who was then Subhaddâ the queen was the mother of Râhula, the great adviser was Râhula, the rest of the retinue the Buddha's retinue, and Mahâ Sudassana I myself.']
1 Bhango.
* Anekkam, dukkham, anattam. See Gâtaka I, 275; and, on the last, Mahâparinibbâna Sutta I, 10, and Mahâ Vagga I, vi, 38-47.
s Khanikâ. See Oldenberg's note on Dîpavamsa I, 53.
Pâyâtâ, literally 'departed.' The forms payâti and payâto, given by Childers, should be corrected into pâyâti and pâyâto. See Gâtaka I, 146.
5 Tâvakâlikâ. See Gâtaka I, 121, where the word is used of a cart let out on hire for a time only.
Tad ev ekam ekam, which is not altogether without ambiguity.
This paragraph, too, is omitted in the Sutta.
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