The Dhammapada ethical hand book of Buddhism

The "Dhammapada," or "Path to Goodness," is one of the most applicative honorable hand-books of Buddhist Faith. It is included in the ravine of Buddhist Scriptures, and is one of the Northeastern books which can be construe with gratify to-day by those who are classed as comprehensive readers.
It is divided into twenty-six chapters, and the keynote of it is struck by the sentence "The virtuous man is happy in this world, and he is happy in the next; he is happy in both. He is happy when he thinks of the good he has done; he is still more happy when going on the good path."

The first step in the "good path" is earnestness, for as the writer says, "Serious-mindedness is the path of immortality (Nirvana), thoughtlessness the path of death; those who are in earnest do not die, those who are thoughtless are as if dead already." Earnestness, in this connection, evidently means the power of reflection, and of abstracting the mind from mundane things. There is something very inspiring in the sentence,"When the learned man drives away vanity by earnestness, he, the prudent, climbing the terraced heights of goodness, looks down upon the fools: discharged from regret he looks upon the sorrowing crowd, as one that stands on a mountain looks downwardly upon them that stance upon the earth."

The beauties of the "Dhammapada" can only be realized by a measured musing of this wizardly production, for instance,  what is a doctor of prosperous advice to all readers of books: "The disciple will find out the plainly shown path of virtue, as a clever man finds the right flower."

  The origination of the "Dhammapada" is unknown , but there is determinate grounds that this canon existed before the Christianity era. Galore scholars agree in ascribing its utterances to Gautama himself, while others are of the content that it is a compilation prefab by monks from different sources.