As I have said, the “Instruction of the Seven Buddhas” is a compendium of Buddhist teachings on practical faith. To understand it accurately, it is important to take into consideration the discrepancy between the Chinese translation, which is the version that passed into Japan, and the original Pali version. In Chinese, the stanza is couched in the imperative: Commit no evil; do all that is good; purify your mind; this is the teaching of all the Buddhas. The Pali version (Dhammapada 183), on the other hand, is not in the imperative mode: To do no evil, to do all good, and to purify one’s own mind are the teachings of all the Buddhas. In the Chinese reading, the teaching is no more than ordinary morality. In the Pali, however, it is a lofty teaching of free and autonomously chosen ethical morality. (Page 160-161)