The work as a whole elaborates on this distinction, showing in more detail both the path
of the wise person and that of the fool, together with the rewards of the former and the
dangers of the latter: the path of the wise person can lead not only to happiness within the
cycle of death and rebirth, but also to total escape into the Deathless, beyond the cycle
entirely; the path of the fool leads not only to suffering now and in the future, but also to
further entrapment within the cycle. The purpose of the Dhammapada is to make the wise
path attractive to the reader so that he/she will follow it—for the dilemma posited by the
first pair of verses is not one in the imaginary world of fiction; it is the dilemma in which the
reader is already placed by the fact of being born
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