Commentary on the Dhammapada–by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Seeing Wrong
There are a lot of jokes about people who cannot see correctly–the Mr. Magoo films and television programs are a prime example, and before Mr. Magoo the readers of the newspaper “comics” were treated to the vagaries of Weakeyes Yokum in the Li'l Abner comic strip. But in real life it is no joke, and in the more real life of the spirit it is even less so. Wherefore Buddha assures us:
“To see the essence in the unessential and to see the essence as unessential means one can never get to the essence, wandering as one is in the road of wrong intentions.”
Instead of “essence/unessential” Max Muller and Sanderson Beck render it “truth/untruth,” T. Byrom: “true/false” and the Venerable Thanissaro Bhikkhu: “essence/non-essence.” This latter is perhaps preferable to the rendering of John Richards that I am using for this commentary, but the ideas are basically the same: mistaking the real for the unreal and the unreal for the real. Since Buddha avoided metaphysical speculation as much as possible, I think we can be safe in assuming that he was not referring to the True, the Real, or the Essence in the sense those terms would be used in the Upanishads–as indications for Brahman, the Absolute Spirit. Instead, his words are a focus on our minds and their function and the consequences they incur.
Literal negativity
The word “negative” is tossed about a lot, often to mean something we do not like, whatever its real character. (This is particularly the practice of nasty-mouthed “positive” people.) Its essential character, though, is best revealed by a photographic negative. Everything is backwards: what is light is seen as dark, and what is dark is seen as light. So to be truly negative is to see things exactly opposite to what they really are. This is an essential point, for the most common frailty of the egocentric mind is to pretend to see things as of a character different from their actual quality, or to try to make others see them in a manner opposite to how they really are. But in those cases the truth is known–only being ignored or denied. Buddha, however, is speaking of truly seeing things completely opposite to their reality and believing it fully. This is the situation for all human beings, though in varying degrees, otherwise we would not be human beings, but be living in a higher world than this.
To mistake the unreal for the real and the real for the unreal is a terrible condition that distorts our perception and response to everything we encounter, both inwardly and outwardly, including our own self. Such a condition is absolutely hopeless in and of itself. It is not something that can be turned back on itself for alleviation or extrication. It will lead to nothing but increasing distortion. It must be either destroyed or thoroughly cast off.
As the individual consciousness evolves and becomes further entangled in this mess, there are moments when it is put into total or partial abeyance through outer influences such as the holy atmosphere of a sacred place, person, or object. Words sometimes momentarily shock the individual out of the grip of this dynamic ignorance. Whatever the nature of the outer force or the length of its duration, this clearing away of the mist of delusion cannot be permanent. Consequently such events are almost always completely useless, and many times are taken up by the deluded mind and distorted for further involvement in illusions. In time, however, the memory of those moments persists and becomes a stimulus from which arises the desire to escape the nets of delusion. For a while that, too, is of little meaning, for the deluded person begins wandering about seeking external factors to free him from his darkness. This is understandable since his moments of temporary sanity have usually come from external contact of some kind. After a while he either gives up or intuits that freedom must occur from within. Then the hope of freedom dawns. Once the understanding that meditation is the key to the prison is established in his consciousness, then his escape is assured–though he will no doubt have to wander down the byways of worthless (or even destructive) meditation teachers and practices before hitting on the real road out of the tangle. But once he does start on the road it is only a matter of...not time, but eternity.
False experience
“To see the essence in the unessential and to see the essence as unessential....” These words are frightening, for they express an actual experience on the part of the wanderer, not just some crack-brain ideas or concepts held only in the intellect. All of us consider that we know something when we have experienced it. So the firm-binding illusions have arisen from our own wrong-seeing. “I know it for myself” is usually nothing more than the raving of the strait-jacketed lunatic. “I seen him when he done it” is a horrific compound of delusion about “I,” “him,” and “doing.” And things can only get worse. Illusions of “truth” and “enlightenment” abound in the world of the “awakened.” And as Buddha points out, we cannot get to the perception of reality as long as these errors exist.
Wrong intent
It is not just our mistaken perceptions that prevent our escape from bondage. Rather, they give rise to another ingredient in the stew of our samsaric misery: wrong intention. Our whole purpose is wrong! Our goals are themselves delusive. We want “things” or power, or exalted positions–even in heaven-worlds. In other words, we want some more chains to hang around our necks rather than to slip out of the bonds and be free–free not only from such stuff, but free from even the capacity to desire them.
In the seventh chapter of the Bhagavad Gita Krishna lists four kinds of spiritual seekers: “The world-weary, the seeker for knowledge, the seeker for happiness and the man of spiritual discrimination.”
The first he calls artas: one who is aware of a sense of loss or emptiness, who is aware of oppressions inner and outer, and who is suffering from it all.
The second is jijnasus: one who desires to know, to gain knowledge.
The third he calls artharthi: one who wishes to attain the summun bonum of life in the form of Highest Truth.
The fourth is the pure jnani: one who is a man of wisdom, who seeks not to either gain something or be divested of something, who is not motivated by desire or aversion, but aims for the entrance into his essential nature. Who seeks for What IS for itself alone.
Now if we look close we will see that these four types embody the Four Noble Truths enunciated by Buddha. The first is aware of suffering; the second knows that suffering has a cause and wants to know what to do about it; the third knows that the cessation of suffering is possible and is the paramartha–the highest aim and attainment–for all beings; and the fourth has known the way to end suffering and looks to that goal alone, knowing that knowledge (jnana) alone is the way to the goal.
“The man of discrimination [jnani] is the highest of these. He is continually united with me. He devotes himself to me always, and to no other. For I am very dear to that man, and he is dear to me.
“Certainly, all these are noble:
But the man of discrimination
I see as my very Self.
For he alone loves me
Because I am myself:
The last and only goal
Of his devoted heart.
“Through many a long life
His discrimination ripens:
He makes me his refuge,
Knows that Brahman is all.
How rare are such great ones!”>
Getting the right idea
“But to see the essence in the essential and the unessential as the unessential means one does get to the essence, being on the road of right intentions.”
Through Right Meditation–one of the factors of the Noble Eightfold Path–a complete changearound is accomplished, and the seeker comes to see the real as real and the false as false. What a pity that fake religion sends its adherents running about frantically–literally out of their minds–in search for everything but this one necessary thing: Right Seeing, for it “means one does get to the essence, being on the road of right intentions” as Krishna points out.
To possess viveka, the ability to tell the difference between the true and the false, is itself a foretaste of the ultimate Freedom.
1) Dhammapada 11
[Go back]
2) Bhagavad Gita 7:17-19. When reading these verses, we need to keep in mind that in the Gita Krishna is the voice of our own true self, not some external deity to which we must be “devoted” and who we must “serve” in the slavish ways of external religion. For Krishna continues: “Men whose discrimination has been blunted by worldly desires, establish this or that ritual or cult and resort to various deities, according to the impulse of their inborn natures.” (Bhagavad Gita 7:20) [Go back]
3) Dhammapada 12 [Go back]
