Dhammapada Reflections | Part Five | Chapters Seven & Eight
CHAPTER 7
THE ARAHAT: THE PERFECTED ONE
7:1. The fever of passion exists not for him who has completed the journey, who is sorrowless and wholly set free, and has broken all ties.
7:2. The mindful ones exert themselves. They are not attached to any home; like swans that abandon the lake, they leave home after home behind.
7:3. Those who do not accumulate and are wise regarding food, whose object is the Void, the Unconditioned Freedom—their track cannot be traced, like that of birds in the air.
7:4. He whose cankers are destroyed and who is not attached to food, whose object is the Void, the Unconditioned Freedom—his path cannot be traced, like that of birds in the air.
7:5. Even the gods hold dear the wise one, whose senses are subdued like horses well trained by a charioteer, whose pride is destroyed and who is free from the cankers.
7:6. There is no more worldly existence for the wise one who, like the earth, resents nothing, who is firm as a high pillar and as pure as a deep pool free from mud.
7:7. Calm is his thought, calm his speech, and calm his deed, who, truly knowing, is wholly freed, perfectly tranquil and wise.
7:8. The man who is without blind faith, who knows the Uncreate, who has severed all links, destroyed all causes for karma, good and evil, and thrown out all desires—he, truly, is the most excellent of men.
7:9. Inspiring, indeed, is that place where Arahats dwell, be it a village, a forest, a vale, or a hill.
7:10. Inspiring are the forests in which worldlings find no pleasure. There the passionless will rejoice, for they seek no sensual pleasures.
CHAPTER 8
THE THOUSANDS
8:1. Better than a thousand useless words is one useful word, hearing which one attains peace.
8:2. Better than a thousand useless verses is one useful verse, hearing which one attains peace.
8:3. Better than reciting a hundred meaningless verses is the reciting of one verse of Dhamma, hearing which one attains peace.
8:4. Though one may conquer a thousand times a thousand men in battle, yet he indeed is the noblest victor who conquers himself.
8:5–6. Self-conquest is far better than the conquest of others. Not even a god, an angel, Mara or Brahma can turn into defeat the victory of a person who is self-subdued and ever restrained in conduct.
8:7. Though month after month for a hundred years one should offer sacrifices by the thousands, yet if only for a moment one should worship those of perfected minds, that honor is indeed better than a century of sacrifice.
8:8. Though for a hundred years one should tend the sacrificial fire in the forest, yet if only for a moment one should worship those of perfected minds, that worship is indeed better than a century of sacrifice.
8:9. Whatever gifts and oblations one seeking merit might offer in this world for a whole year, all that is not worth one fourth of the merit gained by revering the Upright Ones, which is truly excellent.
8:10. To one ever eager to revere and serve the elders, these four blessings accrue: long life and beauty, happiness and power.
8:11. Better it is to live one day virtuous and meditative than to live a hundred years immoral and uncontrolled.
8:12. Better it is to live one day wise and meditative than to live a hundred years foolish and uncontrolled.
8:13. Better it is to live one day strenuous and resolute than to live a hundred years sluggish and dissipated.
8:14. Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things.
8:15. Better it is to live one day seeing the Deathless than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Deathless.
8:16. Better it is to live one day seeing the Supreme Truth than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the Supreme Truth.
SENSEI MICHAEL COMMENTARY
CHAPTERS VII-VIII
The Arahat has completed the journey. We might be tempted to imagine this as some tremendous spiritual achievement, but completing the journey just means the end of the need to get somewhere else. The fever has broken because the seeking has ended. We have come home to what is here and left behind the abode of the striving small self.
This is why the Buddha compares the mindful ones to swans leaving lake after lake behind–they are not attached to any home. When there is no fixed place for the karmic self to settle, the whole universe becomes home. We leave home after home behind because every time we establish some identity, role, belief, accomplishment, or state of mind as the place where “I” finally reside, we have made another enclosure. The swan simply flies on. When no particular place has to become home, we discover ourselves at home everywhere.
The path of the liberated person cannot be traced, just as the flight of a bird leaves no track in the sky. The bird certainly moves. It does not disappear into some passive emptiness. It flies completely, but nothing is left hanging in the air declaring, I was here. This was mine. Remember what I did. Awakened activity does not need to construct a monument to the one who acted. Such a life as this emerges from the Void, the Unconditioned Freedom. This is absolute wonder. It is encountering wisdom directly, before the world has crystallized around what we believe it to be.
The unconditioned does not mean that causes and conditions have somehow stopped operating. The bird still encounters wind. The body still requires food. The world continues to arise and pass away. But we are no longer dragged helplessly behind the cart of those conditions. We encounter what is here directly and respond.
This returns us once again to the image of the well-trained horses and their charioteer. Liberation is not achieved by destroying the senses or preventing conditions from arising. The horses still run, the world still moves. The question is whether we are leading the cart or being dragged behind it. When sight, sound, pleasure, pain, praise, and blame cease to dictate who we must become, the whole field opens.
The Arahat is then compared to the earth, resenting nothing. But what is there to resent? The earth receives rain and garbage, flowers and ashes, blood and sunlight without creating an identity around any of it. Resentment requires someone standing apart from what has occurred, insisting that reality should have arrived differently. When that distinction is no longer being continually manufactured to maintain the small self, what is there to defend?
This is the source of the calm thought, calm speech, and calm action. Peace is not something we manufacture by forcing the mind to become quiet. If we are not at war trying to create a small self from every distinction that arises, we are already at peace. The energy previously consumed by maintaining me against you, this against that, success against failure, is released. Calmness is the natural abode of a life no longer divided against itself.
The Buddha then extols the virtues of the one who is “without blind faith.” Faith cannot finally mean belief-as-certainty. Belief-as-certainty gives us another structure to inhabit, another answer with which to protect ourselves from the vulnerability of actually seeing. Genuine faith has always asked something more difficult of us: the courage to remain open. When belief-as-certainty drops away, absolute wonder becomes possible. We do not merely believe the world to be sacred, interconnected, empty, or wondrous. We experience it directly.
When we truly experience this, we are moved by what is present. We join the dance rather than merely reciting the score. This may be why the Dhammapada says that wherever an Arahat dwells becomes inspiring, whether village, forest, valley, or hill. A liberated person does not merely occupy space. The quality of their participation changes the field. When nothing is being held back for the preservation of a separate self, life begins responding to life directly.
The forests where ordinary people find no pleasure are therefore places of joy for the passionless. The small self constantly requires something from the world. Entertain me. Confirm me. Comfort me. Tell me who I am. Without that demand, the quiet forest is no longer empty. Nothing is empty in the impoverished sense. Everything is present.
Chapter eight pivots by overturning our usual way of measuring things. Better than a thousand useless words is one word that brings peace. Better than a thousand meaningless verses is one verse of Dharma that actually opens us. Quantity has nothing to do with transformation.
In Zen we practice with one such word: Mu.
A monk asks Joshu whether a dog has Buddha-nature, and Joshu says, Mu. One word. We can write a thousand pages explaining Buddha-nature and never taste what Joshu offers. Mu does not give us more information to possess. It takes away the places where our knowing has settled. We bring our judgments, our fears, our expectations, our ideas of practice, our explanations, and eventually even the one who thinks they are practicing, and place all of it into Mu. What remains cannot be understood from a distance. It has to be encountered directly.
This is what makes one word worth more than a thousand. The thousand words can remain outside of us. We can admire them, memorize them, repeat them, and use them to build a beautiful Buddhist self. But one living word can break the whole structure open. We stop reciting the score and join the dance.
One who conquers himself is a greater victor than someone who defeats a thousand times a thousand people in battle. If self-conquest, however, means that one part of the karmic self declares war upon another part, we have only created another battlefield. The self cannot finally conquer the self through greater aggression. The conquest comes when the need for the small self to rule collapses. This is a very different kind of victory. No god, no Mara, no Brahma can overturn it because there is no fixed possession called victory to take away. We are no longer defending the throne. There is no one left who needs to win.
The Dharma Math continues by comparing a moment of genuine reverence with a hundred years of sacrifice. Again, the Buddha overturns quantity. We can perform thousands of rituals, accumulate merit, tend fires, give offerings, and spend a lifetime becoming a very accomplished religious person while the small self remains seated comfortably at the center of the entire enterprise. One moment of genuine reverence may accomplish something far greater because, in that moment, we bow.
This matters deeply in Soto Zen. Our practice is carried through lineage, through teacher and student, through people who received the Dharma, embodied it, and handed it forward. When we bow to the Buddhas and ancestors, when we bow to our teacher, when teacher and student bow to one another, we enter a relationship that is larger than our own private certainty. Reverence does not require surrendering discernment. It requires relinquishing the conceit that our own opinions are the final measure of the Dharma.
The Soto lineage itself is not valuable because it gives us another pedigree to possess. If lineage becomes something we use to establish authority, status, or spiritual superiority, we have simply returned to the fool of Chapter Five. Lineage matters because the Dharma is alive in relationship. Someone points. Someone receives. Someone verifies. Someone carries it forward. The gift continues to flow.
Thus: better to live one day virtuously and meditatively than a hundred years without restraint. Better one day wisely than a hundred years foolishly. Better one day in resolute practice than a hundred years dissipated. Better one day seeing arising and passing than a hundred years never seeing it at all.
After all, what is the measure of a life? We usually answer in years, but a hundred years can pass while we continually live somewhere else. We live in what happened, what should have happened, what might happen, what we hope will happen. Yet all of it is appearing here. Past and future merge with this present because there is nowhere else for them to appear. Everything is here if we open to it.
To see this even for one day changes the measure of the whole life. Better one day seeing the Deathless than a hundred years without seeing the Deathless. Better one day seeing Supreme Truth than a hundred years without seeing it. We do not need to turn either phrase into another metaphysical certainty. The Deathless is not someplace waiting for us after we escape this life. When our understanding is no longer exhausted by the small self that is born, changes, and dies, something immeasurably larger becomes apparent.
Mind creates the world we experience. We become bound when we mistake our creation for fixed reality and construct a self that must constantly possess, reject, defend, and know. Practice begins to loosen that certainty. We discover that everything belongs. We learn intimacy without possession. We become corrigible. We stop needing knowledge, reputation, austerity, or even practice itself to hold us together.
Finally, the journey ends by coming home.
One word is enough. One day is enough. One breath is enough, because nothing is missing from what is here. Past and future, birth and death, the whole universe, all arrive in this place. When we stop striving to make this moment into something that can complete the small self, we discover that it was never incomplete.
The bird crosses the sky and leaves no track.
Mu!
