Impurity (DHP235-255)

You are now like a yellowed leaf.
Even Yama’s men have come for you.
You stand at the mouth of death,
With no provisions for the journey.

Make an island for yourself.
Strive quickly. Be wise.
Clear, with impurities removed,
You will enter the divine realm of the noble ones.

And now, with life almost finished,
You have entered into Yama’s presence.
There is no place to rest in between;
There are no provisions for the journey.

Make an island for yourself.
Strive quickly. Be wise.
Clear, with impurities removed,
You will not come to birth and old age again.

Like a metal-smith who,
Little-by-little, moment-by-moment,
Cleanses dross from silver,
So too the wise one cleanses his impurities
gradually.

Just as rust eats the iron from which it has arisen,
So the monk who lives excessively
Is led by his own deeds into a woeful rebirth.

Sacred texts are profaned by non-recitation;
Houses are broken down by neglect;
Beauty is compromised by sloth;
And vigilance is undermined by negligence.

Bad conduct is the impurity of a woman.
Stinginess, the impurity of a giver.
Impurities are evil things,
In this world and in the next.

More impure than these is ignorance,
This is the supreme impurity.
Having renounced this impurity,
O monks, be pure.

Easy to live is the life of the shameless,
The unconscientious, offensive, pushy, reckless, and
corrupt.

Hard to live is the life of one with conscience,
Who always strives to be pure,
Who is open, careful, perceptive, and clean-living.

Whoever kills a living being,
Speaks falsely,
Takes whatever in the world is not given,
Goes to another’s wife,

And gives himself to drinking liquor,
Uproots himself in this very world.

Know this friend: evil things are reckless.
Let not greed and injustice subject you to long
suffering.

People give according to their faith, according to
their trust.
The one who is disconcerted by others’ food and
drink,
Will never attain samādhi, neither by day nor by
night.

But one who has cut off, destroyed at the root,
And removed this consternation,
Will attain samādhi, day or night.

There is no fire like passion;
There is no fetter like ill will;
There is no snare like delusion;
There is no river like craving.

It is easy to see the faults of others,
But truly difficult to see one’s own.
One sifts out the faults of others like chaff,
But conceals one’s own,
As a deceitful gambler conceals a corrupt dice
throw.

The one who finds faults with others,
Always watching and critical:
His toxins only grow ever-farther from their
dissolution.

There are no tracks in the sky;
The renunciant is not outside;
People delight in impediments;
The Tathāgatas are without impediments.

There are no tracks in the sky;
The renunciant is not outside;
No conditioned things are eternal;
Unshaken are the Buddhas.

© Peter Feldmeier, 2013.

First published in Dhammapada — The Way of Truth : A Fresh Translation and Commentary on Buddhism’s Most Beloved Text by Buddhist Publication Society.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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