“It is a significant fact and worth pondering upon that the Bible commences with the words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth….", while the Dhammapada … opens with the words "Mind precedes things, dominates them, creates them".”

—  Nyanaponika Thera

Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 21
Context: It is a significant fact and worth pondering upon that the Bible commences with the words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth....", while the Dhammapada … opens with the words "Mind precedes things, dominates them, creates them". These momentous words are the quiet and uncontending, but unshakeable reply of the Buddha to that biblical belief. Here the roads of these two religions part: the one leads far away into an imaginary Beyond, the other leads straight home, into man's very heart.

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Nyanaponika Thera photo
Nyanaponika Thera 30
German Buddhist monk 1901–1994

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