I continued to read from The Buddhist Tradition: In India, China and Japan edited by William Theodore de Bary, once again at lunch; once again a page or two at a time.

I read a few verses from the Dhammapada, sometimes translated as The Way of Truth. It is a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha. The particular passage I read from is introduced by the editor as a precursor (or at least as rather similar) to the Christian idea of “turning the other cheek.”

The translation reads:

Never in the world is hate
Appeased by hatred.
It is only appeased by love—
This is an eternal law.

“Eternal law” here is a translation of the term Sanatana dharma, which appears to mean something like “duty inherent to all things” and is a core Hindu concept, here (noted by the editor) redefined in terms of Buddhist ethics.

However, the verse that really caught my attention was the following one. The biggest reason for this is Mahler. Recently I thought about Mahler, classical music, triumph, tragedy, and acceptance: his music ends1 on a serene acceptance that is decidedly neither triumphant nor tragic (though both of the latter occur extensively throughout his symphonies).

And so, as I read the following translation, I experienced déjà vu; I had encountered in text what had been expressed within the Western classical music tradition by this culminating composer — a translation of a 2600-year-old idea:

Victory breeds hatred
For the defeated lie down in sorrow.
Above victory or defeat
The calm man dwells in peace.

A few other translations

A few more translations of this Verse 201 from the Dhammapada:

1 What does it mean, for it to end? The last thing he wrote? He was still writing music as he died — there is the unfinished 10th. However, the 9th symphony, and particularly its finale, is what I consider to be the “end.” I have felt the intuition that the part of the 10th that is finished (the first movement), as lyrical and melodically flowing as it is at parts — it almost feels like the most flowing, expansive, believable romanticism ever written — as well as striking in its atonal, clustered passage of sheer terror — that it somehow is — beyond the “end.” And it is unfinished after all. Nevertheless, it’s pretty awesome to encounter this first movement of the 10th and to realize that after all, the 9th wasn’t a true “end” after — all. Life went on, even after that “acceptance,” if only for a little while. Come to think of it, maybe there’s no other way. If there really were an end, it might become a “triumph” — the defeated would lie down in sorrow…