Dhammapada Reflections | Part Three | Chapter Four
CHAPTER 4
FLOWERS
4:1. Who shall overcome this earth, this realm of Yama and this sphere of men and gods? Who shall bring to perfection the well-taught path of wisdom as an expert garland-maker would his floral design?
4:2. A striver-on-the-path shall overcome this earth, this realm of Yama and this sphere of men and gods. The striver-on-the-path shall bring to perfection the well-taught path of wisdom, as an expert garland-maker would his floral design.
4:3. Realizing that this body is like froth, penetrating its mirage-like nature, and plucking out Mara’s flower-tipped arrows of sensuality, go beyond sight of the King of Death!
4:4. As a mighty flood sweeps away the sleeping village, so death carries away the person of distracted mind who only plucks the flowers of pleasure.
4:5. The Destroyer brings under his sway the person of distracted mind who, insatiate in sense desires, only plucks the flowers of pleasure.
4:6. As a bee gathers honey from the flower without injuring its color or fragrance, even so the sage goes on his alms-round in the village.
4:7. Let none find fault with others; let none see the omissions and commissions of others. But let one see one’s own acts, done and undone.
4:8. Like a beautiful flower full of color but without fragrance, even so, fruitless are the fair words of one who does not practice them.
4:9. Like a beautiful flower full of color and also fragrant, even so, fruitful are the fair words of one who practices them.
4:10. As from a great heap of flowers many garlands can be made, even so should many good deeds be done by one born a mortal.
4:11. Not the sweet smell of flowers, not even the fragrance of sandal, tagara, or jasmine blows against the wind. But the fragrance of the virtuous blows against the wind. Truly the virtuous man pervades all directions with the fragrance of his virtue.
4:12. Of all the fragrances, sandal, tagara, blue lotus and jasmine, the fragrance of virtue is the sweetest.
4:13. Faint is the fragrance of tagara and sandal, but excellent is the fragrance of the virtuous, wafting even amongst the gods.
4:14. Mara never finds the path of the truly virtuous, who abide in heedfulness and are freed by perfect knowledge.
4:15. Upon a heap of rubbish in the roadside ditch blooms a lotus, fragrant and pleasing.
4:16. Even so, on the rubbish heap of blinded mortals the disciple of the Supremely Enlightened One shines resplendent in wisdom.
SENSEI MICHAEL COMMENTARY
CHAPTER IV
The garland-maker, someone who takes the flowers before them and creates something wondrous! Mind is creating the world we experience, and the garland-maker has to discern where each flower belongs, not if they belong. Every color, every shape, every condition becomes part of what is being created. The question is whether we are awake enough to lead the cart, or whether the karmic causes and conditions we have accumulated are dragging us along behind it.
To overcome the realm of men and gods, even the realm of Yama (the ancient Indian lord of death and ruler of the realm of the dead), does not require us to travel somewhere else. These realms are being created right here. We construct heavens and hells out of longing and aversion, memory and anticipation, approval and rejection. We cling to them and then call them “reality”. Liberation does not mean destroying the world we have created, but no longer being governed by it. The garland is ours to make.
Then the Dhammapada calls the body froth and mirage. This body will change and disappear, it is impermanent. We need to see through the solidity we have assigned to it. The body we call “me” is itself arising through causes and conditions, interpreted and reconstructed moment after moment. It is real as lived experience, but not in the fixed way the karmic self imagines. Mara’s flower-tipped arrows become dangerous when we mistake one beautiful appearance for the whole of reality.
The plucking of flowers matters when we pluck from the field of experience only what the karmic self wants to keep. Selecting the pleasant and rejecting the unpleasant, we hold tightly to what confirms us and push away what threatens us. In doing so, we cease to Include Everything. We make a little bouquet out of the parts of life we prefer and then wonder why it dies in our hands.
The bee shows us another way. It enters the flower completely, receives what is offered, and leaves the color and fragrance unharmed. This is intimacy without possession. We receive the gift and allow the gift to continue flowing. The moment we grasp it and insist that it belong to us, it ceases to function as a gift. Compassion works in much the same way. It is not something we accumulate and then dispense to others. It flows when we stop interrupting the exchange by asking what we can keep.
This is why the teaching immediately turns us away from finding fault with others and back toward our own acts, done and undone. Fault-finding is another way the karmic self stabilizes itself. I establish what is wrong with you so that I can know who Iam. Self and other crystallize and the flow stops. Taking responsibility means giving up that refuge and looking at what is actually being created here. What have I done? What have I left undone? What can be transformed now?
Words without practice is a beautiful flower without fragrance. Just as Dogen reminds us that we cannot nourish ourselves on a picture of a rice cake, neither can we smell a picture of a flower. We can create a perfect image of practice, talking about compassion, describing liberation. But if nothing is moving, nothing is nourishing us–fragrance only appears when the flower is alive.
We do not need to collect good deeds in order to build a better karmic self. Compassionate activity is the natural creative movement of a mind no longer burdened by maintaining itself. The garland-maker keeps making garlands. The bee keeps moving from flower to flower. The gift keeps flowing. Virtue becomes fragrant precisely because it is not trying to announce itself as virtue.
This is the fragrance that can move even against the wind. Maintain Wonder, Include Everything, and something naturally begins to emanate from the life we are living: compassion is allowed to arise. When karmic crystallization loosens, virtue has its own fragrance. Compassion flows because there is less and less self standing in its way.
This is also what it means for Mara to lose our trail. Perfect knowledge is not the final certainty of the karmic self. It is clarity unobscured by conjectural knowing. Mara cannot find somewhere to attach because the structure that longing, aversion, and certainty ordinarily maintain has stopped crystallizing. Nothing needs to be possessed, and nothing needs to be discarded.
The chapter ends in the place we might least expect to find a flower: a rubbish heap beside the road. And yet there the lotus blooms. This is not a teaching that says we have to escape the rubbish in order to find something beautiful. The very place of difficulty, the very thing we would rather discard, becomes a fountain of wonder. We do not have to clean up our life before it can become the field of awakening. Nothing has to be pushed outside the gate.
