Original recording of The Mother’s recitations of the Dhammapada and her Explanations in French language
Music by Michel Montecrossa: ‘Peace Flute’ • ‘Peace Dance’
9 May 1958
Do not follow the way of evil. Do not cultivate indolence of mind. Do not choose wrong views. Do not be of those who linger in the world.
Arise. Cast off negligence. Follow the teaching of wisdom.
The sage knows happiness in this world and the other.
Follow the teaching of wisdom and not that of evil. The sage knows happiness in this world and the other.
One who looks upon the world as a bubble or a mirage, Yama the King of Death cannot find him.
Come, look upon the world as the brightly-coloured chariot of a Raja, which attracts the foolish, but where, in truth, there is nothing attractive.
One who, having been negligent, becomes vigilant, illumines the earth like the moon coming forth from behind the clouds.
One whose good actions efface the evil he has done, illumines the earth like the moon coming forth from behind the clouds.
The world is wrapped in darkness and few are those who find their way, who, like a bird escaping from a net, soar up towards heaven.
The swans take the path of the sun. Those who possess occult powers fly through the air. The sages leave this world after defeating Mara and his army of evil.
No evil is impossible to him who transgresses one law of the Doctrine, who utters falsehood and who disdains the higher world.
In truth, misers do not attain to the world of the gods and fools do not know the happiness of giving. But the sage delights in giving and thus knows happiness in the other world.
Rather than ruling the earth, rather than reaching heaven, rather than reigning over the worlds, it is better to enter the upward current.
Dhammapada
“If you keep a child in a special atmosphere and if, from a very early age, you in still in him a special atmosphere, a special purity, he has a chance of not making a wrong choice. But a child who is taken from the world as it is and is placed in a society where there are good and bad elements will go straight to those who can spoil him, teach him wrong things, that is to say, towards the worst company.
A man who has no intellectual culture, if you give him some mixed ideas, just at random, to choose from, he will always choose the stupid ones; because, as Sri Aurobindo has told us, this is a world of falsehood, of ignorance and an effort is needed, an aspiration; one must come in contact with one’s inmost being – a conscious and luminous contact – if one is to distinguish the true from the false, the good influence from the bad. If you let yourself go, you sink into a hole.”
Mira Alfassa – The Mother
Tracks:
- Peace Flute
- 9.5.1958 ‘The World’
- Peace Dance
