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Theravāda — Pali Canon · Khuddaka Nikāya — The Minor Collection
Dhp 60–755. Fools
Pāli / Sanskrit:Bālavagga
📖429 words · ~2 min read
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Full translation (English)
– Minor Collection
Sayings of the Dhamma 60–75 5. The Fool
Long is the night for the wakeful;long is the league for the weary;long transmigrate the foolswho don’t understand the true teaching.If while wandering you find no partnerequal or better than yourself,then firmly resolve to wander alone—there’s no fellowship with fools.“Sons are mine, wealth is mine”—thus the fool frets.For even your self is not your own,let alone your sons or wealth.The fool who thinks they’re a foolis wise at least to that extent.But the true fool is said to be onewho imagines that they are wise.Though a fool attends to the wiseeven for the rest of their life,they still don’t understand the teaching,like a spoon the taste of the soup.If a clever person attends to the wiseeven just for an hour or so,they swiftly understand the teaching,like a tongue the taste of the soup.Fools and simpletons behavelike their own worst enemies,doing wicked deedsthat ripen as bitter fruit.It’s not good to do a deedthat plagues you later on,for which you weep and wail,as its effect stays with you.It is good to do a deedthat doesn’t plague you later on,that gladdens and cheers,as its effect stays with you.The fool imagines that evil is sweet,so long as it has not yet ripened.But as soon as that evil ripens,they fall into suffering.Month after month a fool may eatfood from a grass-blade’s tip;but they’ll never be worth a sixteenth partof one who has appraised the teaching.For a wicked deed that has been donedoes not curdle quickly like milk.Smoldering, it follows the fool,like a fire smothered over with ash.Whatever fame a fool may get,it only gives rise to harm.Whatever good features they have it ruins,and blows their head into bits.They’d seek the esteem that they lack,and status among the mendicants;authority over monasteries,and honor among other families.“Let both layfolk and renunciants thinkthe work was done by me alone.In anything at all that’s to be done,let them fall under my sway alone.”So thinks the fool,their greed and pride only growing.For the means to profit and the path to quenchingare two quite different things.A mendicant disciple of the Buddha,understanding what this really means,would never delight in honors,but rather would foster seclusion.
Translation source: HT. Thích Minh ChâuLicense: CC0-1.0 (Sujato) · personal-use (Minh Châu)
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