The Dhammapada

by Eknath Easwaran

Nirvana is aroga, freedom from all illness; shiva, happiness; kshema, security; abhaya, the absence of fear; shanta, peace of mind; anashrava, freedom from compulsions; ajara, untouched by age; amata, unaffected by death. It is, in sum, parama sukha, the highest joy.

Those who attain the island of nirvana can live thereafter in the sea of change without being swept away. They know what life is and know that there is something more. Lacking nothing, craving nothing, they stay in the world solely to help and serve. We cannot say they live without grief; it is their sensitiveness to the suffering of others that motivates their lives. But personal sorrow is gone. They live to give, and their capaci...

If life were not a process, if thought were continuous, we would have no freedom of choice, no alternative to the human condition. It is because each thought is a moment of its own that we can change.

“Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.” That is the essence of the Buddha’s universe and the whole theme of the Dhammapada.

Destructive ways of thinking can be rechanneled, constructive channels can be deepened, all through right effort and meditation. “As irrigators lead water to their fields, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their lives.”

“The universe is hostile,” Wernher von Braun once said, “only when you do not know its laws. To those who know and obey, the universe is friendly.” When understood, the Buddha’s universe too is anything but alien and inhibiting. It is a world full of hope, where everything we need to do can be done and everything that matters is within human reach. It is a world where kindness, unselfishness, nonviolence, and compassion for all creatures achieve what self-interest and arrogance cannot. It is, simply, a world where any human being can be happy in goodness and the fullness of giving. We have the path to this world in the Dhammapada.