The Dhammapada: Verses on the Way-Fast Shipping

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Trembling and quivering is the mind,
Difficult to guard and hard to restrain.
Theperson of wisdom sets it straight,
As a fletcher does an arrow.

The Dhammapada introducedthe actual utterances of the Buddha nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, when themaster teacher emerged from his long silence to illuminate for his followers thesubstance of humankind’s deepest and most abiding concerns. The nature of the self,the value of relationships, the importance of moment-to-moment awareness, the destructivenessof anger, the suffering that attends attachment, the ambiguity of the earth’s beauty,the inevitability of aging, the certainty of death–these dilemmas preoccupy us todayas they did centuries ago. No other spiritual texts speak about them more clearlyand profoundly than does the Dhammapada.

In this elegant new translation, Sanskritscholar Glenn Wallis has exclusively referred to and quoted from the canonical suttas–thepresumed earliest discourses of the Buddha–to bring us the heartwood of Buddhism,words as compelling today as when the Buddha first spoke them. On violence: All tremblebefore violence./ All fear death./ Having done the same yourself,/ you should neitherharm nor kill. On ignorance: An uninstructed person/ ages like an ox,/ his bulk increases,/his insight does not. On skillfulness: A person is not skilled/ just because he talksa lot./ Peaceful, friendly, secure–/ that one is called “skilled.”

In 423 versesgathered by subject into chapters, the editor offers us a distillation of core Buddhistteachings that constitutes a prescription for enlightened living, even in the twenty-firstcentury. He also includes a brilliantly informative guide to the verses–a chapter-by-chapterexplication that greatly enhances our understanding of them. The text, at every turn,points to practical applications that lead to freedom from fear and suffering, towardthe human state of spiritual virtuosity known as awakening.

Glenn Wallis’s translationis an inspired successor to earlier versions of the suttas. Even those readers whoare well acquainted with the Dhammapada will be enriched by this fresh encounterwith a classic text.