Meritorious deeds bring joy in this life and future lives
Dhammapada verse 16
By Dr. Ari Ubeysekara
Introduction
Lord Gautama Buddha lived and preached in India during the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Throughout the ministry of forty five years from enlightenment at the age of thirty five to passing away at the age of eighty, Lord Gautama Buddha, through compassion for other beings, travelled from place to place mainly in North Eastern India, teaching the path out of suffering to a diverse range of people. Since the first Buddhist council that was held three months after the passing away of the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings were categorised into the now well-known Pāli Canon consisting of the three baskets. The teaching of the Gautama Buddha which is believed to consist of around 84,000 items is contained in the three baskets (tipitaka).
- Basket of the disciplinary rules for the monastic community (vinaya pitaka)
- Basket of the discourses (sutta pitaka)
- Basket of the Buddha’s higher teaching (abhidhamma pitaka)
The basket of the discourses (sutta pitaka) consists of:
- Collection of long discourses (dīgha nikāya)
- Collection of middle length discourses (majjhima nikāya)
- Collection of connected discourses (samyutta nikāya)
- Collection of numerical discourses (anguttara nikāya)
- Collection of minor discourses (khuddaka nikāya)
Collection of minor discourses (khuddaka nikāya) consist of 15 divisions of a variety of small discourses and others. The second division is the Dhammapada, the other divisions being Khuddaka pātha, udāna, itivuttaka, sutta nipātha, vimānavatthu, petavatthu, thera-gāthā, theri-gāthā, jātaka stories, niddesa, patisambhidā magga, apadāna, Buddhavamsa and cariya pitaka.
The Pāli word “Dhamma” seems to have several meanings such as the natural law, natural phenomena, objects of the mind, religious doctrines and specifically the Lord Gautama Buddha’s teachings. The word “Pada” means path, step, word or the foot. So, the word Dhammapada has been described as the “Path of Righteousness”. The Dhammapada containing a collection of the sayings of the Buddha in verse form, is one of the best known books in Buddhism familiar to almost all of the practising Buddhist disciples universally as well as to others who study the teachings of the Buddha.
Dhammapada contains 423 verses said by the Buddha in different contexts. Most of the verses have been taken from the discourses of the Buddha. It has been noted that more than two thirds of the verses are taken from the discourses contained in the two collections of the Buddha’s discourses known as the Samyutta Nikāya and Anguttara Nikāya. The 423 verses are divided into 26 chapters or vaggas each with a particular heading. The first chapter is named “Yamaka vagga” meaning the chapter of “The Twin Verses”, which contains 20 verses said by the Buddha. The back ground story of the 16th verse, which is the 16th verse of the Yamaka vagga is about a lay disciple of the Buddha who was reborn in a heavenly worlds as a result of his meritorious deeds in this life.
Background story of verse 16
At one time the Buddha was staying at the Jetavana monastery in Sāvatti which was donated to the Buddha by the chief benefactor Anāthapindika.
At that time a lay disciple named Dhammika was living in Sāvatti. He was a lay disciple of the Buddha who was a virtuous person by observing the precepts of morality. He was also a very charitable person and engaged in the meritorious activity of generously offering food and other requisites to the order of monks. He made these offerings on a regular basis as well as on special occasions. He was the leader of five hundred virtuous lay disciples of the Buddha who were living in Sāvatti at that time. The lay disciple Dhammika had seven sons and seven daughters and like him, all his children were also virtuous and charitable.
Dhammika felt seriously ill and was on his death bed when he made a request to invite the monks to come to his house and recite the sacred scripts so that he can listen to them from his death bed. The Monks duly arrived at the house and began chanting the Mahā Satipatthāna sutta by Dhammika’s bedside. It is said that while the monks were reciting, six decorated chariots from the six sensual heavens arrived in order to invite Dhammika to their respective sensual heavens.
[According to Buddhist cosmology, there are six planes of heavenly beings (deva loka), in which rebirth takes place due to highly meritorious, skilful, and wholesome volitional actions performed during one’s previous existence. They are:
- Cātummahārājika heaven
- Tāvatimsa heaven
- Yāma heaven
- Tusita heaven
- Nimmānarati heaven
- Paranimmita Vasavatti heaven]
Dhammika asked them to wait until the reciting was over as he did not want the reciting by the monk disrupted. However, the monks who were reciting mistook his signal to stop as a signal to them to stop reciting the scriptures. They stopped reciting and left Dhammika’s house.
After the monks had left, Dhammika told his children about the six decorated chariots from the six sensual heavens who were waiting for him. He decided to choose the chariot from the Tusita heaven and asked one of his children to throw a garland to that particular chariot. Having chosen the Tusita heaven, he passed away and was reborn as a deity in the Tusita heaven. Thus, the person who engages in meritorious deeds experience joy both in this world and future worlds.
With reference to the lay disciple Dhammika, the Buddha recited the following verse, which is recorded as the 16th verse of the Dhammapada.
“Idha modati pecca modati,
katapuñño ubhayattha modati,
so modati so pamodati,
disvā kamma visuddhimattano.”
“Here he rejoices, hereafter he rejoices,
the meritorious one rejoices in both places,
he rejoices and he greatly rejoices,
seeing the purity of his own deeds.”
References
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