The Dhammapada

by Eknath Easwaran

To capture this vision will require many metaphors. Like snapshots of the same scene from different angles, they will sometimes appear inconsistent. This should present no problem to the modern mind. We are used to physicists presenting us with exotic and conflicting models – phenomena described as both particles and waves, parallel futures where something both takes place and does not, universes that are finite but unbounded. The mathematics behind these models is the best that imagination can do. And we laymen are satisfied: we cannot check the mathematics, but we are quite content to get an intuitive sense of what such radical ideas mean. Let us give the Buddha the same credence. Beneath the simple verses of the Dhammapada he will show us a universe every bit as fascinating as Bohr’s or Einstein’s.