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The Dhammapada · 1 of 1 · tr. F. Max Müller

Chapter XVI, Section 1

p. 56 CHAPTER XVI. PLEASURE. 209. He who gives himself to vanity, and does not give himself to meditation, forgetting the real aim (of life) and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation. 210. Let no man ever look for what is pleasant, or what is unpleasant. Not to see what is pleasant is pain, and it is pain to see what is unpleasant. 211. Let, therefore, no man love anything; loss of the beloved is evil. Those who love nothing and hate nothing, have no fetters. 212. From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear. 213. From affection comes grief, from affection comes fear; he who is free from affection knows neither grief nor fear. 214. From lust comes grief, from lust comes fear; he who is free from lust knows neither grief nor fear. 215. From love comes grief, from love comes fear; he who is free from love knows neither grief nor fear. 216. From greed comes grief, from greed comes fear; he who is free from greed knows neither grief nor fear. 217. He who possesses virtue and intelligence, [214. See Beal, Catena, p. 200.] p. 57 who is just, speaks the truth, and does what is his own business, him the world will hold dear. 218. He in whom a desire for the Ineffable (Nirvâ n a) has sprung up, who is satisfied in his mind, and whose thoughts are not bewildered by love, he is called ûrdhva m srotas (carried upwards by the stream). 219. Kinsmen, friends, and lovers salute a man who has been long away, and returns safe from afar. 220. In like manner his good works receive him who has done good, and has gone from this world to the other;--as kinsmen receive a friend on his return. [218. Ûrdhva m srotas or uddha m soto is the technical name for one who has reached the world of the Av ri has (Aviha), and is proceeding to that of the Akanish th as (Akani tth a). This is the last stage before he reaches the formless world, the Arûpadhâtu. (See Buddhaghosha's Parables, p. 123; Burnouf, Introduction, p. 599.) Originally ûrdhva m srotas may have been used in a less technical sense, meaning one who swims against the stream, and is not carried away by the vulgar passions of the world.]
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Themes
Detachment Gelassenheitpraxis

Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.

Verse 211 explicitly commands loving nothing and hating nothing to achieve freedom from fetters.

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Good Thought Word Deedethics

The Zoroastrian triad of right thought, right speech, and right action as the foundation of ethical life; truth-in-living.

Verse 217 lists virtue, intelligence, justice, truth, and doing one's own business as the foundation for being held dear by the world.

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Meditationpraxis

Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.

Meditation is presented as the antidote to vanity and the path to freedom from grief and fear.

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Opposites Transcendedanthropology

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

The liberated state knows neither grief nor fear, transcending the binary opposition of positive and negative emotions.

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Paradox As Teachingethics

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

Verse 210 teaches that not seeing pleasure is pain, using a paradoxical reversal to destabilize ordinary understanding.

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Poverty Of Spiritanthropology

Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).

The instruction to love nothing and hate nothing aligns with the concept of radical emptiness of will and desire.

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Renunciation Of Wealthethics

The spiritual danger of attachment to material possessions; wealth as a spiritual obstacle.

Verse 216 links greed directly to the arising of grief and fear, warning against attachment to material possessions.

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Self Knowledgesoteriology

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

The text emphasizes knowing one's own mind and state as the path to liberation from suffering.

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Spiritual Ascentpraxis

A staged journey of the soul upward through heavenly realms or levels of being toward the divine source.

Verse 218 uses the metaphor of being 'carried upwards by the stream' to describe reaching higher spiritual stages. [quarantine-w2: spiritual_ascent x buddhism — see rellm data/quarantine/dossiers.jsonl]

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