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WHAT IS SADDHAMMA ?
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“Why should ancestry and lineage not have a place in determining the status of a man ?”
To this question the Buddha replied thus : “As against pride of ancestry, the station into which a man happens to be born determines only his designation be it noble or Brahmin or middle-class or peasant. Even as a fire is called after the material out of which it is kindled, and may thus be called either a wood-fire, or a chip-fire, or a bracken-fire, or a cowdung fire, just in the same way the noble, transcendant doctrine; I aver, is the source of true wealth for every man, birth merely determining his designation in one of the four classes.
“Lineage does not enter into a man’s being either good or bad : nor do good looks or wealth. For, you will find a man of noble birth who is a murderer, a thief, a fornicator, a liar, a slanderer, a man of bitter tongue, a tattler, a covetous person, a man of rancour or of wrong views, and therefore I assert that noble birth does not make a good man. Or again you will find a man of noble birth who is innocent of all these vices ; and, therefore, I assert that it is not lineage which makes a man bad.”
The third question which Esukari raised was with regard to the ways of earning a living assigned to each class.
The Brahmin Esukari said to the Lord : “Brahmins give a fourfold assignment of income, from alms, for Brahmins ; from his bow and arrows, for the noble ; from ploughing and tending cattle, for the middle class man ; and for the peasant, by the carriage of crops on the pole slung over his shoulder. If anyone of these deserts his vocation for something else, he does what he should not do, not less than a guardian who appropriates what is not his. What does the reverend Gotama say on this ?”
“Is the whole world in accord with this Brahmin classification ?” asked the Lord.
“No,” replied Esukari.
To Vasettha he said : “What is important is high ideals and not noble birth.
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