EVERYDAY LIFE · DHAMMAPADA 302
Living the Teaching
It is hard to leave the world (to become a friar), it is hard to enjoy the world; hard is the monastery, painful are the houses; painful it is to dwell with equals (to share everything in common) and the itinerant mendicant is beset with pain. Therefore let no man be an itinerant mendicant and he will not be beset with pain.
Dhammapada 302 · Chapter 21, Miscellaneous · trans. F. Max Müller · Read the full text at Project Gutenberg
Reflection
The verse begins, “It is hard to leave the world (to become a friar), it is hard to enjoy….” In its chapter, this image points toward finding the teaching in mixed, everyday circumstances. Its value is practical when it changes how you meet one choice, relationship, or difficult feeling today. Because this is a historic English translation, test the teaching in experience rather than treating its wording as a demand for belief.
Practice prompt
Leave one place or conversation a little better than you found it.