Dhammapada verses 273–289 emphasize the eightfold path as the foremost way to liberation, seeing the impermanent, unsatisfactory, and not-self nature of all things. Further, the verses mention the relation of meditation and wisdom, They mention restraint, how wisdom through meditation, on cutting off the forest as well as the undergrowth, and making swift effort to purify by the way of practice leading to Nibbāna.

Dhammapada verses 334–359 depict craving as a binding force, likening it to a creeping vine, a trapped hare, and a spider’s web. The wise cut these bonds, free from passion, aversion, illusion, and longing, crossing beyond birth and aging. The highest gift is the Dhamma, surpassing all wealth and pleasures, and the destruction of craving is the greatest victory. Offerings to those free from defilements bear the greatest fruit.

Dhammapada verses 383–423 redefine 'Brāhmaṇa' (sage) by inner attainment, not birth or appearance. Through effort, a true sage cuts craving, understands reality, and realizes Nibbāna. Fearless, detached, pure, and restrained, they embody non-violence and patience. Free from defilements and attachments, having overcome suffering and rebirth, the sage achieves the ultimate goal, radiating wisdom and peace.

Overcome by two kinds of wrong views, some get stuck, while others overreach. But those with vision see.

The Blessed One describes how beings are affected by respect and disrespect, and how this affects their rebirth. The true person is one who is collected, detached, and delights in the ending of grasping.

The Buddha teaches that one could be far from him despite being physically close, and one could be near to him despite being physically far. When one sees the Dhamma, one sees the Buddha.

The Buddha explains why he is called the Tathāgata, the one who has perfectly understood the world, its arising, cessation, and the way of practice leading to its cessation.

The Buddha explains the difference between cultivation and lack of cultivation with regard to body and mind, and recounts his own journey to full awakening.

The wanderer Māgaṇḍiya holds the view that sensual indulgence is spiritual growth and harshly criticizes the Buddha for teaching sense restraint, calling him a destroyer of spiritual growth. The Buddha skilfully reveals the true nature of sensual pleasures through vivid similes such as a leper finding relief by scorching himself over burning coals and a blind man mistaking a filthy rag for a spotless white cloth.

The Buddha teaches in detail how to develop mindfulness while breathing in and out through sixteen naturally unfolding steps, showing how their cultivation fulfills the four establishments of mindfulness, which in turn fulfill the seven factors of awakening, culminating in true knowledge and liberation.

Verses depicting the path to liberation through the central metaphor of a serpent shedding its skin. Each stanza illustrates how a bhikkhu abandons defilements like anger, passion, craving, and conceit, thereby casting off attachment to this world and the next.

Verses depicting the uncertain, brief, and suffering-laden nature of mortal life, emphasizing the inevitability of death for all beings, like ripe fruits fated to fall. The Buddha counsels against futile grief and lamentation over the departed, urging the wise to understand the world's relentless course of decay and death.

The young deity Kassapa shares a verse on the instruction for a bhikkhu.

The Buddha explains how difficult it is for an uninstructed person to become disenchanted with the mind. A learned disciple of the Noble Ones wisely applies the mind to dependent co-arising.

The Buddha explains to a brahmin that the cycle of existence is without a discoverable beginning, and that it is not easy to calculate the number of aeons that have passed by and gone.

What is the burden and who bears it, what is the taking up of the burden and the putting down of it.

The Buddha teaches the things to be fully understood and what full understanding is.

Consciousness, while persisting, might persist attached to form, feeling, perception, and intentional constructions. When passion for these is abandoned, the support for the establishment of consciousness is completely cut off. That consciousness, being unestablished, does not grow, and by not intentionally constructing, is liberated.

After examining the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and the changing nature of the five aggregates, the Buddha teaches how to see them with proper wisdom, as not being suitable to identify with.

Everything, when not directly known, not completely comprehended, not detached from, and not let go of, is incapable of resulting in the wearing away of suffering.

The Buddha teaches the Dhamma for the complete comprehension of all clinging through seeing the dependent co-arising of feeling through the six sense bases.

The Buddha explains how the Dhamma is directly visible, immediate, inviting one to come and see, applicable, and to be personally experienced by the wise through the six sense bases.

The Buddha uses the simile of a log of wood carried by a river to explain the eight obstacles to reaching Nibbāna.

The Buddha shares the importance of recollection of the Buddha, Dhamma, Saṅgha, one's virtue, generosity, deities, in-and-out breathing, death, body, and peace.

The Buddha expresses an inspired utterance after reflecting on his own giving up of the proliferation of conceptual perceptions.