The Dhammapada by G. Buddha

Author:G. Buddha
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2142-9
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1936-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Ship me somewheres East of Suez, where the best is like the worst,

Where there ain’t no Ten Commandments, an’ a man may raise a

thirst;

For the temple bells are callin’ an’ it’s there that I would be, —

By the old Moulmain Pagoda lookin’ lazy at the sea.

If the temple bells are calling the British private to ‘raise a thirst,’ to what, one may inquire, are they calling the native Burman? Certainly not to be ‘lazy’ and irresponsible. Kipling himself would no doubt warn us against pursuing any such unprofitable inquiry, in virtue of the principle that ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ The fact is that they are meeting more and more, with the attendant danger that this meeting will be only on the material level. Kipling’s line is rightfully resented by Orientals: it is true about in the sense that John is John and James is James and never the twain shall meet, or, if there is any difference between the two statements, it is one of degree and not of kind.

If we refuse then to admit that the point of view of Buddhist Burma is necessarily unintelligible to us and turn for information to an authentic document like the Dhammapada, what we find is that a central admonition of Buddha may be summed up in the phrase: Do not raise a thirst! Nothing perhaps throws more light on what actually goes on in Burma today than the type of education given to the children of the country by the members of the Buddhist Order. This education consists largely in the memorizing of certain sacred texts. One of the passages especially favoured for this purpose, we learn from a recent book on Burma, is Buddha’s discussion of the nature of true blessedness, which runs in part as follows:

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