Deep Commentary

This Dhammapada verse was taught by the Buddha at Jetavana Monastery, concerning a Brahmin. "A certain Brahmin thought: 'The ascetic Gotama often calls his disciples holy men (brahmins). I am born into a Brahmin family, so he should call me by that title.' Thinking thus, he approached the Buddha and requested this. The Buddha said: 'I do not call anyone a holy man simply because they are born from a Brahmin mother. One who does not possess worldly wealth, who does not chase after worldly things—that one alone I call a holy man.' (Excerpted from Dhammapada Stories, Vol. III, p. 344). Usually we are accustomed to living according to conventional logic rather than counterintuitive truth. Living conventionally, we tirelessly pursue and cling tightly to the flow of life without direction. The more we chase and cling to material brand names, the more we suffer. Because the essence of those labels is false and unreal. Clinging to the unreal is like playing with shadows—forgetting oneself to chase shadows is the common state of all of us. Sometimes in our dark stupor, we flash a bit of awakening, realizing we are playing shadow-chasers. But only for a moment, then we fall back into darkness as before. We still see all phenomena appearing before us as real. From this mistaken perception, we become slaves to desire. We have been swept away by the current of life, sinking and floating in the ocean of birth and death. All phenomena in this world are empty names, unreal. But for so long, we have been obscured by habitual defilements, clouding our minds so we can no longer see clearly according to truth. To see reality, we must urgently remove the tinted glasses of wrong view. Without deluded grasping or stubborn attachment to anything, the Buddha says, that one is worthy of the name 'holy man.' 'Holy man' is just an empty label, with no intrinsic meaning. Yet for ages, people have slaughtered each other simply due to clinging to such hollow names and labels. They are bound together in mistaken consciousness and concepts about names and forms. From this, they form factions of attachment to views, following the current of ignorance and karmic consciousness, creating countless evil karmas and suffering together. This is the collective karma that all humanity is enduring today."