Dhammapada: personer, tidslinje og steder

The teachings connect harmful thoughts with pain and pure thoughts with happiness, urging love, restraint, and actual practice.

Earnestness, mindfulness, restraint, and meditation are presented as protection and a path toward Nirvana.

The verses urge people to guard restless thoughts, linking mental discipline with happiness and freedom from Mara.

Flower images support teachings about virtue, bodily fragility, meaningful action, and attention to one's own faults.

The verses expose possessiveness and false confidence, then urge the Buddha's disciple to abandon the hunger for honor.

People are urged to accept wise correction, choose virtuous friends, and develop steady conduct.

Meaningful speech, self-mastery, and respect for wise people are ranked above empty words, military victories, and repeated sacrifices.

The verses urge repeated good actions and explain that small deeds accumulate even when their results are delayed.

Shared fear and love of life become reasons to reject killing, cruelty, and harsh speech.

Images of bodily decay challenge pleasure and pride, while the closing verses warn against neglecting discipline in youth.

Each person is urged to practice self-discipline before teaching others and to accept responsibility for personal conduct.

The speaker urges active virtue and uses fleeting images to challenge attachment to the world.

The verses distinguish unreliable shelters from refuge in the Buddha, the Law, and the Church.

The speaker connects happiness with freedom from hatred, greed, and attachment to winning, while recommending wise companions.

The verses trace grief and fear to attachment and praise virtue, truthfulness, and longing for Nirvana.

The speaker urges people to answer anger with love and restrain harmful actions, speech, and thoughts.

With death approaching, the speaker urges steady purification through effort, wisdom, and restraint, naming ignorance the greatest stain.

The verses define justice and spiritual standing through fair judgment, patience, wisdom, restraint, and compassion rather than appearances.

The speaker presents the Eightfold Path and insists that teachers can guide, but each person must practice.

The speaker warns that misconduct and careless religious practice bring suffering, punishment, and hell, urging wholehearted discipline.

Elephant training provides a model for enduring insults, controlling thoughts, and escaping harmful conduct.

Images of roots and creepers explain why desire must be removed at its source to escape suffering.

The verses describe a Bhikshu through restraint, contentment, wise speech, kindness, and devotion to the law.

The speaker defines a Brahmana through wisdom, harmlessness, restraint, and freedom from attachment rather than ancestry or appearance.