We’ve spent the last three weeks studying the passage, “The Saint”. And we’ve enjoyed an opportunity to become familiar with a new passage without expectations. We’ve also been reminded about the benefits and beauty of reviewing passages outside of meditation, similar to spiritual reading, or contemplation. We’ve absorbed Easwaran’s commentary on themes central to “The Saint” from the Dhammapada.
Do you now feel familiar enough with this passage to try memorizing it? Are there some phrases or lines already stuck in your mind? Have a look at our memorization worksheet and see if it helps you.
If you are moved to memorize it and use it in meditation, please let us know how that goes for you. If you’d rather, please share how you’ve worked with challenges to memorization in the past. Are there any tips you’d like to share, or questions you have about memorization?
They have completed their voyage; they have gone beyond sorrow. The fetters of life have fallen from them, and they live in full freedom.
The thoughtful strive always. They have no fixed abode, but leave home like swans from their lake.
Like the flight of birds in the sky, the path of the selfless is hard to follow. They have no possessions, but live on alms in a world of freedom. Like the flight of birds in the sky, their path is hard to follow. With their senses under control, temperate in eating, they know the meaning of freedom.
Even the gods envy the saints, whose senses obey them like well-trained horses and who are free from pride. Patient like the earth, they stand like a threshold. They are pure like a lake without mud, and free from the cycle of birth and death.
Wisdom has stilled their minds, and their thoughts, words, and deeds are filled with peace. Freed from illusion and from personal ties, they have renounced the world of appearance to find reality. Thus have they reached the highest.
They make holy wherever they dwell, in village or forest, on land or at sea. With their senses at peace and minds full of joy, they make the forests holy.