Footprints of the Dhamma

Reading guide

The teaching in one sentence

Four things — contentment, good will, mindfulness, immersion — are where the teaching has left its mark, and nobody sensible disputes them.

What a dhammapada is

Pada is a foot, a footprint, a track, and by extension a step or a line of verse. Sujato’s ‘footprints of the Dhamma’ takes the concrete sense, and it is the right choice for this discourse: these are the places where the teaching shows.

The same word gives the Dhammapada its name, where it is usually rendered by way of the ‘verse’ sense. Knowing both senses is useful. A pada is what something leaves behind, and a line of verse is what a teaching leaves behind in memory.

AN 3.2, in the Threes, said that wisdom shines in its traces — apadāna, from the same root. This discourse names four traces and does not argue for them.

The selection

Contentment (anabhijjhā, literally non-covetousness), good will (abyāpāda, non-ill-will), right mindfulness, and right immersion. Note that the first two are stated negatively in the Pāli and positively in the English.

The set is a compressed path. The first two are the negations of the first two unwholesome roots as they show up in conduct; the second two are the last two factors of the eightfold path. So: what must not be there, and what must be. Greed and hatred absent, mindfulness and immersion present.

Delusion, the third root, is not on the list, and its absence is worth noticing. The counter to delusion is wisdom, which arises from the two positive members rather than standing alongside them. The list is arranged so that the fourth item is the one from which the missing thing comes.

The borrowed frame

Every word of the surrounding formula is AN 4.28’s. Primordial, long-standing, traditional, ancient; uncorrupted since the beginning, not being corrupted now, not going to be; sensible ascetics and brahmins do not look down on them.

Two discourses in a row, the same frame, different contents. This is the Aṅguttara’s method in its clearest form, and the two lists are genuinely different: AN 4.28 gave practices of the monastic life, this gives qualities of any mind. The frame asserts of both that they are the durable part.

The claim that sensible ascetics and brahmins do not look down on them is the most interesting element. It is an appeal to cross-sectarian agreement: whatever else the schools dispute, no reputable teacher of any of them disparages contentment, good will, mindfulness, or composure. AN 4.30, the next discourse, will take that claim and turn it into a challenge.

The abbreviation

The Pāli here is abbreviated almost to nothing — the four are named once and the frame is restated, with the intermediate expansion left out entirely. Sujato’s translation preserves the gaps.

In performance each of the four would have been expanded with its own definition, as AN 4.28’s items are. What survives on the page is a skeleton. That is worth saying plainly rather than treating the brevity as significant in itself: this discourse is short because it was written down short, not because it was taught short.

The verse

One verse, four lines, and it converts the list into an instruction: live with contentment, and a heart of good will, mindful, with unified mind, serene within.

That is the whole discourse made usable, and it is the part worth memorizing. The four items in order, in the imperative, with one addition — ajjhattaṁ susamāhita, well composed within — which restates the fourth item as an interior condition rather than an attainment.

Key terms