“There are those who discover
they can leave behind confused reactions
and become patient as the earth;
unmoved by anger,
unshaken as a pillar,
unperturbed as a clear and quiet pool.”
I was asked about this one earlier today, after a reader spotted it on the Facebook feed of Spirit Rock retreat center, who seem to have created a graphic of it (which has since been deleted, although I managed to retrieve it from my browser cache) attributing the quote to the Buddha, and giving Dhammapada verse 49 as the source.
Obviously the person who asked me about it was suspicious. I was too, at least about parts of it.
First, though, the attribution given is clearly wrong. Dhammapada verse 49 is about monks going from village to village as bees go from flower to flower.
“Confused reactions” is also not exactly the kind of expression you get in the early Buddhist scriptures. It’s a term from modern psychology. The similes, though, are very traditional. For example verses 81 and 82 of the Dhammapada contain similar imagery in the same order:
Just as a solid rock is not shaken by the storm, even so the wise are not affected by praise or blame.
On hearing the Teachings, the wise become perfectly purified, like a lake deep, clear and still.
My guess was that the quote in question was more likely to be a paraphrase or adaptation of these, or some other verse or verses, from the Dhammapada.
Dhammapada verse 95 was the obvious candidate:
There is no more worldly existence for the wise one who, like the earth, resents nothing, who is firm as a high pillar and as pure as a deep pool free from mud. (Buddharakkhita’s translation)
And this turned out in fact to be the case. This is taken from Ajahn Munindo’s “A Dhammapada for Contemplation.”
The title suggests that Munindo was aiming to produce an adaptation rather than a translation: a text that is more relatable than the more literal versions.
In this verse, for example, Munindo does an interesting treatment of the original term “samsara,” which literally means “faring on,” and which refers traditionally to the endless rounds of rebirth. Buddharakkhita rendered to this as “worldly existence.” Thanissaro renders samsara as “traveling on,” which is literal but not very helpful to the reader not familiar with Buddhism. Samsara is from a verb meaning “to go, flow, run, move along,” and a prefix, sam-, which means together. It has the meaning of “to go on endlessly,” or “to come again and again.”
Munido renders this as “confused reactions,” which are of course to be abandoned. This a good way to shift our attention to the present-moment experience of the mind , and from the concept of rebirth (which is not here and not now). It’s worth pointing out that samsara is right here and right now, and that on a psychological scale it does involve the process of confused grasping and aversion, or “reacting,” in modern parlance.
In terms of practice and reflection Munido’s framing of samsara is useful. It’s more an interpretation than a translation, though. Of course all translation involves interpretation to a degree, especially when it comes to terms like samsara, which are not part of the reader’s cultural frame of reference.
Since this quote also takes great liberties with the overall structure and style of the Dhammapada verse, I have to say it doesn’t do a good job as a literal translation, although of course that a literal translation wasn’t Munindo’s intent. So I’m categorizing this as “fakish” rather than fake or genuine. This version of Dhammapada verse 95 is so different from the original that I really think it should be credited to Ajahn Munindo and not the Buddha.