Dhammapada
Why the Buddha's Words Are Like Knives
We spent two episodes breaking down Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā,
The Eightfold Negation,
The Tetralemma—
Logic so tight it leaves you breathless.
If you've followed along and haven't dropped out,
Congratulations.
Your brain just finished a high-intensity philosophical marathon.
Today,
take a breather.
I want to take you back to an earlier, quieter place.
No Nagarjuna,
no sectarian debates,
no layers of logical deduction.
Just the Buddha alone,
facing a specific person,
addressing a specific confusion,
and speaking a single sentence.
Just one.
But that one sentence,
even after twenty-five hundred years,
still cuts to the quick.
Hello,
everyone.
I am Wang Lijie.
Today, let's talk about the Dhammapada.
In Pali, it's called Dhammapada.
‘Dhamma’ means truth or law;
‘pada’ means foot,
which can also be translated as verse or path.
So Dhammapada means
“the footprint of the Dhamma.”
The footprints left behind
on the path the awakened one has walked.
It's the shortest and most direct scripture in the Pali Canon.
A total of 423 verses,
divided into 26 chapters.
Each verse is what the Buddha said
to a specific person in a specific situation.
It's not a lecture,
it's not a sermon;
it's just a conversation.
If you've read the Analects of Confucius,
you'll immediately get the feel of it.
The Analects record the master's daily deeds and words.
The Dhammapada also records the Buddha's daily teachings.
These two books share one thing in common:
take any single entry out,
place it in any era,
and it still holds true.
But their frames of reference differ.
The Analects mostly answer
how people should treat one another—
benevolence, ritual, and trust;
the five relationships
and social order.
The Dhammapada answers a different question.
It has only one theme:
What is your mind doing?
The coordinate system isn't between people;
it's between you and your own consciousness.
Let me read a few lines
so you can feel it.
The very first verse,
Chapter 1, Verse 1.
The Buddha starts right off by saying:
Mind is the forerunner of all experiences.
Mind is primary;
all things are mind-made.
If one speaks or acts with an impure mind,
suffering follows as a consequence,
just as the wheel follows the hoof of the ox.
Then comes the second verse.
The same structure,
but flipped:
Mind is the forerunner of all experiences.
Mind is primary;
all things are mind-made.
If one speaks or acts with a pure mind,
happiness follows close behind,
like a shadow that never leaves.
These two verses
reveal the core premise of the entire Dhammapada.
The Buddha didn't start by talking about reincarnation,
or Nirvana,
or the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination.
He spoke only of one thing:
The state of your mind
determines the state of your entire world.
Translating this into the Yogacara terms we've been using:
it means that
the seeds stored in your Alaya-vijnana determine the image rendered by your consciousness.
If the seeds are pure,
the image is pure.
If the seeds are defiled,
the image is defiled.
And that critical turning point
happens in the instant of every single thought.
The Buddha used the analogy of an ox pulling a cart
to explain this more clearly than any philosophical treatise.
This is the power of the Dhammapada.
It doesn't argue;
it doesn't build systems;
it lets you see directly.
Let me read a few more verses.
Chapter 3, Verse 33:
The mind is flickering and unsteady,
difficult to guard,
difficult to control.
The wise person straightens their mind,
as a fletcher straightens an arrow.
Chapter 6, Verse 76:
If you meet someone who points out your faults,
you should follow them,
as if following a guide to hidden treasure.
Following such a person
will only lead to good,
never to harm.
Chapter 10, Verse 129:
All beings fear punishment;
all beings treasure life.
Putting yourself in another's place,
one should not kill
nor cause another to kill.
Chapter 17, Verse 223:
Overcome anger with non-anger;
overcome evil with good;
overcome stinginess with giving;
overcome falsehood with truth.
And one verse I particularly love,
Chapter 12, Verse 166:
Let no one neglect their own task for the sake of another's.
Clearly understand your own duty,
then focus on doing it.
What's your first reaction to this?
Don't you feel
like it's talking exactly about you?
Spending an hour scrolling through celebrity gossip
while leaving your own work untouched.
Worrying all day about a friend's marriage,
while your own emotions are a mess.
The Buddha saw through this 2,500 years ago.
The thing humans are best at
is using other people's scripts to avoid their own performance.
Listen to an even more powerful one.
Chapter 21, Verse 290:
If by giving up a lesser happiness,
one could obtain a greater happiness,
the wise should let go of the lesser
and look toward the greater.
You can hear this on two levels.
The first level
is very practical:
don't sacrifice long-term well-being for instant gratification.
Spend thirty minutes less on your phone,
spend thirty minutes more reading.
That's self-discipline 'chicken soup.'
But that's not the level the Buddha was talking about.
He was talking about the second level.
That "greater happiness"
is not about greater sensory indulgence,
but rather that absolute freedom
realized when you are no longer enslaved by any pleasure.
Lesser happiness is about gaining something;
greater happiness is about no longer needing to gain.
You see,
regarding the same sentence,
a beginner hears time management,
but the enlightened hear liberation.
This is the ingenious design of the Dhammapada.
It functions like a multi-layered code;
everyone receives the answer corresponding to their own level.
Have you noticed?
These words don't require you to learn any theories beforehand.
You don't need to understand the Eight Consciousnesses,
nor the Three Natures,
nor Dependent Origination and Emptiness.
The Buddha is like an elder who is exceptionally good with words;
he pulls you close
and uses the simplest analogies
to make you see exactly what you are doing.
A flickering mind is like a crooked arrow—
can you straighten it?
A critic is like a guide to hidden treasure—
can you keep up?
You fear pain;
others do too.
You worry about others' business
while your own homework remains undone.
It is that simple.
But it is precisely this simplicity
that is the most difficult.
Because complex theories can stay in your head.
You learn the Middle Way of the Eight Negations,
feel you understand it,
and then life goes on as usual.
But the Dhammapada doesn't play that game.
Every word is like a finger
pointing at your face, saying:
"Look at yourself.
When you argued with someone last week,
were you overcome by anger?
When you took advantage of someone today,
were you truly honest with yourself?"
Theory makes you feel you are progressing;
the Dhammapada reveals you are standing still.
This is why in Theravada Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka,
Myanmar, and Thailand,
the Dhammapada is the most frequently recited sutra in daily life.
Not because it is the most profound,
but because it stings the most.
Alright.
Now I want to discuss something very interesting.
The Chinese version of the Dhammapada
and the original Pali version
are not actually the exact same book.
The Pali Dhammapada
consists of 423 verses
in 26 chapters.
This version preserved by Theravada Buddhism
is generally considered by scholars to be closest to the original form.
The Chinese Dhammapada was brought to China in 224 AD
by Vighna during the Wu Kingdom of the Three Kingdoms period.
Later, Zhu Jiangyan added content for 13 more chapters,
and it was finally compiled by Zhi Qian,
becoming the version with 39 chapters and 758 verses we see today.
The quantity almost doubled.
Why is there so much more?
Because the Chinese Dhammapada is not based on the Pali version;
it comes from Sanskrit and Prakrit versions from the Gandhara region.
As Buddhism spread out of India,
different sects collected verses they believed were spoken by the Buddha
and compiled their own collections.
The Pali version was preserved in Sri Lanka along the Southern route,
while what entered China via the Silk Road
was a version from a different lineage.
It contains more content
from more diverse sources.
By the Northern Song Dynasty,
During the Northern Song Dynasty, Tian Xizai translated a longer version called the Dharmapada-sūtra.
It contains over nine hundred verses.
What does this mean?
It means that the Dhammapada
was never a sacred text fixed by one person on a single day.
It's more like a living collection of quotes.
When the Buddha was alive,
his disciples memorized his words.
After the Buddha entered Parinirvana,
different monastic communities took their memories in different directions.
Hundreds of years later,
people collected these scattered verses from different regions
and compiled their own versions of the Dhammapada.
Its fate is almost exactly like that of the Analects of Confucius.
Confucius didn't write the Analects.
The text we see today
took shape only after generations of disciples added and filtered content.
But this fact doesn't weaken the value of the Dhammapada;
it makes me respect it even more.
Because sentences that survive centuries of oral tradition,
must have been used by every generation.
Every generation felt they couldn't live without them.
That is why they survived to this day.
This is natural selection at a cultural level.
The sentences that survive
are the most powerful ones.
If you compare the Pali and Chinese versions, you'll find something interesting.
The verses included in both versions
are highly consistent.
This shows that across two lineages,
having spread independently for hundreds of years,
they maintained almost the same appearance.
If a sentence is remembered simultaneously in Sri Lanka, South India,
and Gandhara in Central Asia,
with almost identical content,
how powerful must its resonance be?
These verses weren't preserved by authority;
they were preserved by utility.
Each generation verified them with their own lives,
making them impossible to forget.
Speaking of translation,
I want to address a very important misunderstanding.
A viewer once asked in the comments
what "suffering" in Buddhism actually means.
Why does Buddhism sound so negative,
telling you from the start that life is suffering?
The answer to this question
is hidden in a translation error.
The Buddha repeatedly used a word in the Dhammapada,
called "dukkha" in Pali.
The Chinese translated it as "ku" (suffering).
But the original meaning of dukkha isn't suffering at all.
Regarding the origin of this word,
there is a widely spread explanation.
"Du" means bad or difficult.
"Kha" means an axle hole.
The original image of Dukkha
is a wheel with a misaligned axle hole.
Imagine it:
the axle hole isn't centered.
When put on a cart,
it goes "clunk, clunk" as it turns.
It's not smooth;
it doesn't flow.
The whole cart is jolting.
Though scholars have other theories on its etymology,
such as some believing it means "unsteady standing,"
regardless of the explanation,
they all point in the same direction.
The true meaning of Dukkha
isn't suffering,
but "out of joint" or "maladjustment."
It's when a system isn't aligned.
It's a structural bias in how you function,
making things go wrong no matter how hard you try.
This is a completely different feeling from "suffering" in Chinese.
Suffering is an emotional experience,
but dukkha is a description of a systemic state.
It's like your computer isn't broken,
but the underlying configuration is wrong.
Every program runs with a slight lag.
The original translators translated 'dukkha' as 'bitterness' (suffer).
In Chinese, this word 'ku' carries too much emotional weight.
For nearly 1,800 years,
when Chinese people read Buddhist scriptures,
their first reaction has been:
'Buddhism says life is suffering.'
'That is so pessimistic!'
But the Buddha wasn't saying life is suffering.
He was saying,
'Your system has a structural misalignment.'
And this misalignment can be fixed.
These two statements have completely different meanings.
One is a sentence of despair,
while the other is an actionable diagnosis.
Go back and read every instance of 'dukkha' in the Dhammapada,
replace 'suffering' with 'misalignment,'
and the entire tone of the scripture changes instantly.
It's no longer a pessimistic manual for resignation;
it's a system debugging guide.
Now,
speaking of the moment of the Buddha's enlightenment,
there are two particularly famous verses in the Dhammapada.
Legend says these were the first words the Buddha spoke
the moment he attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
Verses 153 and 154 of the eleventh chapter.
The essence is this:
Through many births I wandered in samsara,
seeking but not finding the builder of this house.
Birth after birth,
there was unbearable misalignment.
O house-builder,
you are seen now.
You shall build no house again.
Your rafters are broken,
your ridgepole is shattered.
The mind has attained the unconditioned,
achieving the end of all craving.
This passage is truly incredible.
The Buddha didn't say,
'I have realized the universal truth.'
He said,
'Something has been building houses for you,'
'and you have been trapped inside them.'
You searched for countless lifetimes
and never found who that builder was.
Until one day,
you saw it.
You saw who was doing the building.
In that moment,
the whole structure collapsed.
Because seeing
is itself the act of dismantling.
In the language of Yogacara,
that house-builder
is the seventh consciousness, the Manas.
The deep-seated grasping that constantly glues 'me' to every experience.
To see it
is the moment of transforming consciousness into wisdom.
You didn't defeat it;
you simply saw it.
Once seen,
it loses its power to build.
Twenty-five hundred years ago,
the Buddha used the metaphor of house building
to spoil the core mechanism of Yogacara.
And notice his phrasing.
He didn't say, 'I destroyed the builder.'
He said,
'House-builder,'
'you are seen.'
Not defeated,
not annihilated,
but seen.
This distinction is vital.
The more you try to eliminate attachment,
the more attached you become.
Because the act of elimination is itself a form of attachment.
But if you just see it,
without judgment...
Not resisting.
By seeing the hidden mechanism clearly,
it naturally stops.
It's like tripping over a rope in the dark a thousand times.
You don't need to cut the rope;
you only need to turn on the light.
Once the light is on,
you naturally won't trip anymore.
This is the deepest secret of practice within the Dhammapada.
All change
starts not with resistance,
but with seeing.
This is the energy of the Dhammapada.
It doesn't require complex theory.
Just one sentence,
but that sentence plants a seed inside you.
Perhaps many years later,
during a sleepless morning,
or a moment when life has pushed you into a corner,
this sentence suddenly resurfaces from your memory,
and it pierces right through you.
Theory is for the mind;
the Dhammapada is for your life.
Do you know how the Dhammapada is used
in Theravada Buddhist monasteries?
It's not just for academic research.
Monks chant it every morning;
laypeople carry verses on slips of paper.
They look at them whenever they face difficulties.
It's like a motto you'd save on your phone,
but far more powerful.
Every word in the Dhammapada has been tested
by 2,500 years of human fate.
A motto that survives to this day
is never just empty platitudes.
The Dhammapada is also perfect for modern people
because it is short.
Each verse is just two or three sentences.
You don't need an hour to read scripture.
On the subway,
during lunch,
or before bed,
just open to any page,
read a verse,
reflect on it,
and that's enough.
It's an awakening manual for busy people.
Not because the Buddha knew we'd be busy 2,500 years later,
but because things that truly matter
never require many words.
Finally, let's talk about attitude.
Many think Buddhist classics must be difficult and deep.
Madhyamaka, Vijnaptimatrata, the Shurangama Sutra—
the more brain-burning, the better.
They think the Dhammapada is too simple,
something even a child can understand,
so they think it lacks value.
I used to have this bias too.
Then I realized something:
the simplest things are the hardest to do.
The most famous verse in the Dhammapada says:
"Avoid all evil,
cultivate all good,
purify your own mind;
this is the teaching of the Buddhas."
Do you think you don't know this?
Of course you do.
The question is, can you do it?
There is a story from the Tang Dynasty.
Bai Juyi visited Zen Master Niaoke
to ask for the essence of the Dharma.
Master Niaoke said:
"Avoid all evil,
cultivate all good."
Bai Juyi was dissatisfied
and said even a three-year-old child knows that.
Master Niaoke replied:
"A three-year-old can say it,
but an eighty-year-old can't do it."
Every word of the Dhammapada is like that.
You understand them at a glance,
but you cannot practice them.
And the reason you can't
is exactly the deep structure we've explored in the previous seven episodes.
The Four Noble Truths reveal the root of dysfunction;
Dependent Origination shows how all things operate;
Prajna tells you that no phenomenon has a fixed essence;
Madhyamaka teaches that even the phrase "no fixed essence"
cannot be clung to.
You need these theories,
not to understand the Dhammapada.
The Dhammapada itself is clear enough;
it needs no commentary.
These theories exist to let you see
why you cannot live out the Dhammapada.
So, the Dhammapada is not an introductory text;
it is the finish line.
When you finish all the theories,
after going in a full circle,
and finally return to the Dhammapada,
you will realize
the Buddha put the answer here from the very beginning.
It's just that back then,
your eyes hadn't yet grown.
And the pair of eyes
might be hidden in one of these 423 verses,
waiting for you.
Waiting for your life to reach that specific crossroad
before it lights up.
Have you ever had such an experience?
Where a very ordinary sentence,
at a particular moment,
suddenly becomes extraordinary?
If so,
I’d love to know
which verse it was,
and at what moment
it struck you.
You can tell me in the comments section.
I am Wang Lijie.
See you next time.