Summaries & Analyses
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Chapters 15-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Happiness”
Chapter 15 celebrates the happiness that comes with attaining enlightenment, as opposed to the misery experienced by those who have not attained enlightenment. The Buddha compares this happiness to that of feasting gods. The juxtaposition between the extreme happiness of the enlightened and the sadness of the unenlightened is a key example of the text’s tendency towards dualism.
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Dear”
This chapter expands upon the second of the Four Noble Truths, explaining the connections between attachment to others and suffering. The Buddha asserts, “From the dear comes grief / From the dear comes fear / If you’re freed from the dear /You’ll have no grief, let alone fear” (v. 212). By developing a dispassionate attitude towards other people and things, an individual protects themselves from suffering.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Anger”
Like love, anger is another passionate emotion that the Buddha teaches is an obstruction to enlightenment. This chapter addresses individual anger, as well as collective social anger. An individual’s ability to restrain themselves from giving into anger is presented as a particularly impressive form of self-control.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Rust”
The themes of this chapter are very similar to the themes of Chapter 11, “Old Age.” Here, rust is a symbol of decay more broadly, both physical and spiritual. Whereas physical decline occurs inevitably, spiritual decline is the result of an individual’s failure to follow the Eightfold Path. As in Chapter 11, the Dhammapada presents the Dhamma as the only escape from physical and spiritual decay.
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Just”
This chapter compares the earthly judicial system with spiritual justice, asserting that,
Someone is not a justice
Because he tries a case in haste:
The learned one, who looks into
What’s the case and not the case,
Who not hastily but justly,
Fairly, leads others—
Protected by the Dhamma, the wise one
Is called a justice (v. 256-57).
This is a rare instance in which an original Pāli pun translates successfully into English, and in this example, the double-meaning of “case” draws attention to how both the judges and the Buddha claim to be ultimate arbiters of truth. The earthly justice of a judge, however, is portrayed as inferior to the spiritual justice of the Buddha. The rest of the chapter focuses on other high-status individuals, like monks and nobility, and how Buddhists reject material definitions of these terms. This is a theme that will be returned to in the final chapters, “The Monk” and “The Brahmin.”
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Path”
The title of this chapter refers specifically to the Eightfold Path; its title in Pāli, “Maggavago,” literally means the chapter about the “Eightfold Path,” using a different root word than the word “padda,” which means footpath in a more general sense. The verses in this chapter repeat the promise in various ways that following the Eightfold Path is the key to detachment from suffering, and subsequently, enlightenment.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Miscellaneous”
Unlike in other chapters, the verses in this one are not tied together by a common theme or symbol. Important verses in Chapter 21 include 294-295, which recount a fable about a Brahmin killing his mother, father, and two kings (the original words for mother, father, and kings in Pāli carry the double meaning of craving, conceit, and extreme views). Another important pair of verse is 302, which elaborates on the recurring metaphor of a house as the body.
Chapters 15-21 Analysis
There is not a clear defining logic that ties together this group of chapters in terms of its order, especially because Chapter 21 is a compilation of miscellaneous verses that do not fit elsewhere in the text. Amidst this chaotic assemblage of themes, however, there is a striking resonance between Chapters 15-17, all of which deal with strong emotion. In Chapters 16 and 17, these strong emotions are decidedly negative fetters that block the path to nibbana, with the Buddha continuing to teach The Importance of Exercising Self-Restraint to escape the suffering of uncontrolled feeling.
Of affection, the Buddha advises, “Never associate with those who are dear / Or with those who are not dear / Not seeing dear ones is painful / And so is seeing those not dear” (v. 210). The original Pāli word that Roebuck translates as “painful” here is dukkha, which carries spiritual meaning in addition to the physical and emotional connotations of “painful” in English. The verse can thus be interpreted as warning that affection and disaffection can damage the spirit, in addition to the emotions and body. Likewise, anger is warned against as causing spiritual harm. “Those sages who abstain from harm / Ever restrained in body / Go to the imperishable state,” the Buddha promises (v. 225).
While anger and earthly affection are two emotions treated negatively, the spiritual happiness of Chapter 15 is held up as a goal that all Buddhists should aspire to, deepening the text’s exploration of The Nature of Opposing Universal Forces. The exclamatory opening verses of the chapter, spoken from the perspective of the enlightened, have a clearly celebratory tone that contrasts enlightenment with suffering:
Ah, how happily we live,
Without hatred among those who hate!
Without hatred we dwell
Among people who hate.
Ah, how happily we live,
Healthy among the sick!
Healthy we dwell
Among people who are sick.
Ah, how happily we live,
Carefree among the careworn!
Carefree we dwell
Among people who are careworn (v. 197-99).
While enlightenment brings ultimate spiritual happiness following death by ending the cycle of rebirth, it also brings enlightened Buddhas and Arahats joy during their lives in the earthly realm. The word translated by Roebuck as “happiness” is sukha, dukkha’s antonym. Like dukkha, sukha has a spiritual meaning that is not fully captured by any English word. The happiness being discussed in this chapter, then, is not the normal human emotion, but rather a heightened sense of contentedness that arrives after one achieves nibbana. Through the use of the antonyms dukkha and sukha, readers can understand that in these chapters the opposing forces of happiness and suffering are in direct conversation with one another.
The subtle changes in meaning that occur when translating Chapters 15-17 from English to Pāli illustrate the difficulties that arise for translators of the text who seek to convey meaning accurately with limited options, as well as readers who might not have much familiarity with Buddhism but believe that the Dhammapada will be an easy entry point. If Roebuck had decided not to translate dukkha and sukha, this would have placed the burden of intellectual labor on readers to learn what those words mean, and therefore would have made the text less accessible. As it is, a great deal of meaning is lost in the simplification of the words to “happiness” and “pain.” Since English and Pāli are so far removed from one another in terms of time, culture, and linguistic structure, the Dhammapada is filled with translational dilemmas like this one.
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