Tradition
Dhammapada
Overview
The Dhammapada (Pali: धम्मपद; Sanskrit: धर्मपद, romanized: Dharmapada) is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form and one of the most widely read and best known Buddhist scriptures. The original version of the Dhammapada is in the Khuddaka Nikāya, a division of the Pāli Canon of Theravāda Buddhism.
The Buddhist scholar and commentator Buddhaghosa explains that each saying recorded in the collection was made on a different occasion in response to a unique situation that had arisen in the life of the Buddha and his monastic community. His translation of the commentary, the Dhammapada Aṭṭhakatha, presents the details of these events and is a rich source of legend for the life and times of the Buddha.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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According to this explanation, a person that has a true knowledge of the whole Law is called wise in a double sense; he is wise because the Law instructs him in the highest truths, and secondly, because it teaches him good morals. But as the truths contained in the Law are taught by way of tradition, not by a philosophical method, the knowledge of the Law, and the acquisition of true wisdom, are treated in the books…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
States what Dhammapada is.
Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Dhammapada is.
By the Books of Holy SCRIPTURE, are understood those, which ought to be the Canon, that is to say, the Rules of Christian life. And because all Rules of life, which men are in conscience bound to observe, are Laws; the question of the Scripture, is the question of what is Law throughout all Christendome, both Naturall, and Civill. For though it be not determined in Scripture, what Laws every Christian King shall…
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
States what Dhammapada is.
Philosophers who discussed Dhammapada
Related ideas
- Sarvastivada
- Buddhahood
- Majjhima Nikāya
- Anattā
- Brahmin
- Sanskrit
- Pali Canon
- Buddhaghosa
- Theravada
- Buddhism
- Max Müller
- The Buddha
- Harvard Oriental Series
- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
- Lokottaravāda
- Buddhist texts
- Taṇhā
- Cambridge University Press
- Dhammapada (Radhakrishnan translation)
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of love.