Deep Commentary

This Dhammapada verse was taught by the Buddha at Pubbarama in connection with Venerable Revata. This story is told in full in the commentary to the verse beginning with “Whether village or forest.” One day, the monks were discussing in the Dharma hall how great the gain and merit of the young novice Revata must be, since one person had been able to build five hundred dwellings for five hundred monks. The Buddha came and asked what they were discussing. When they told Him, He said that Revata had neither merit nor demerit, for he had let go of both. Human suffering arises from heavy attachment. People cling to external objects, body, and mind, and rarely let anything go. Even though external things are outside oneself, people hold them tightly, especially possessions they have made or acquired. In the teachings, this is called attachment to self and to what belongs to self; more broadly, attachment to self and to phenomena. The strongest attachment is attachment to this body. Everyone takes the body to be real. Even with the last breath, people cling to it. Because self-love is so strong, as soon as one body is lost, one seeks another. This grasping at self keeps us wandering in birth and death. Attachment to objects and body are coarse attachments; if we cannot abandon even these outer attachments, how much harder it is to abandon attachment to mind. Mind is the stream of knowing and thinking that arises and passes away continuously. People fail to see its momentary arising and ceasing and assume it to be real. Because they take it as real, they cling to it, and because they cling to it, it carries them endlessly along. In this verse, the Buddha teaches that we should not cling even to good and evil. Good and evil represent all pairs of opposites in the world. Whatever depends on opposition is not ultimately real. We speak of evil only because there is good, just as we speak of beauty only because there is ugliness. Without ugliness, beauty has no fixed meaning. Good and evil, beautiful and ugly, are conceptual labels created by the deluded mind. They are relative names, not ultimate realities. To cling to what is not real is like trying to catch a shadow. A wise person would call someone who spends a lifetime chasing shadows deluded. A person in a dream cannot accept that the dream is false until he wakes up; only when awakened does he know without doubt that the dream was unreal. The Buddha says that we are like dreamers. However much Buddhas and sages explain, we cannot truly see the dream as false until we awaken. Once awakened, we see worldly phenomena as illusory, like dreams, lightning flashes, bubbles, and passing reflections. The Buddha said Revata had skillfully let go of both merit and demerit. He no longer saw himself as possessing merit or lacking merit. This is seeing phenomena as they truly are, seeing the emptiness of all things. It is the vision of prajna wisdom: all phenomena are empty in nature, unborn and undying. Whoever sees in this way becomes free, at ease, and liberated. Whoever does not remains bound by mental objects and continues to suffer.