The Mother Commentaries On The Dhammapada

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Back of the Book:

This book contains a translation of the Dhammapada and Mother's commentaries on it. The commentaries do not systematically cover all the verses of this great Buddhist scripture, but they do take up most of its central ideas. The Mother gave these commentaries in the late 1950s during her Friday evening class at the playground of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Publisher's Note

The Mother's commentaries on the Dhammapada were given between August 1957 and September 1958 to the members of her Friday class at the Ashram Playground. The class consisted of a large gathering of students and Ashram members, including school teachers. After reading a chapter of the text, the Mother spoke about the points which interested her and then asked the class to meditate on them. She did not systematically discuss all the Dhammapada verses, but she did cover most of the central ideas in the text.

The text and commentaries, both presented originally in French, were first published in 1960 as Commentaries sur le Dhammapada. An English translation was serialised in the quarterly journal Advent from November 1960 to February 1965. This translation, revised, then appeared in 1977 as part of Questions and Answers, Volume 3 of the Mother's Collected Works, pages 183-298; those pages are photographically reproduced here.