ecome easier to see why it became so popular. The human condition is the same for people of all cultures, races, and geographical locations, and viewing Wordsworth's poetry through Buddhist eyes only reinforces this fact.
             Wordsworth's first published work was the Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge in 1798. Wordsworth prefixed the Lyrical Ballads by saying the poems in the collection were "to be considered as experiments" (Stillinger 443). At first, the experimental poems received bad reviews because critics did not understand what Wordsworth was attempting to accomplish with his poetry. To clarify, Wordsworth added a preface, which explained his thoughts on poetry, to the next addition. Wordsworth outlined what he was attempting to do with his poetry. In the preface, Wordsworth wrote that with his experimental poetry he hoped "to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and the quantity of pleasure may be imparted" (446). Wordsworth chose "incidents and situations from common life" as the subjects of his poems, because by tracing these situations "the primary laws of our nature" emerge, and "because in that condition the passions of man are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature" (447). Wordsworth believed that using the language of the common man was most effective in accomplishing his task because "being less under the influence of social vanity [common men] convey their feeling and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions" (447).
             Wordsworth's pursuit of simplicity in language mirrors the simplicity of The Dhammapada, which contains the fundamental teachings of the Buddha. Eknath Easwaran, in the introduction to his translation of The Dhammapada, compares it to the Sermon on the Mount of the Old Testament (1). This comparison shows the significance of The Dhammapada to the Bud...