Dhammapada Chapter 20: The Path

The Path chapter contains the Dhammapada's most compact statement of the whole Buddhist program. Of paths, the Eightfold is best; of truths, the Four Noble; of states, dispassion; of humans, the seeing one (20.1). This is the path — there is no other for the purification of vision (20.2). And then the verse that defines the tradition's entire stance on authority: you yourselves must strive — the Buddhas only point the way (20.4).

At the chapter's core stand the three marks of existence, each with the same hinge: all conditioned things are impermanent (20.5); all conditioned things are unsatisfactory (20.6); all things are not-self (20.7) — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering: this is the path to purification. The remaining verses are trail maintenance: rise when it is time to rise (20.8); purify actions of body, speech, and mind (20.9); wisdom grows from application and wanes without it (20.10); cut down the whole forest of desire, not just one tree (20.11). The closing images warn the postponer: death carries off the person absorbed in family and possessions as a flood carries a sleeping village, and neither sons nor kin can shelter one seized by the end (20.15–20.16).