— Close rendering of a Bhagavad Gita verse on kama, krodha and lobha
About this quote
हिन्दी में
आत्मनाश और नरक के तीन द्वार हैं — काम, क्रोध और लोभ।
What it means
Notice the metaphor: these are called gates, not sins. A gate is something you walk through, usually on your own feet and often without noticing you have crossed anything. The line also puts the damage in a particular order — self-destruction first, hell second. The ruin described is something that happens to the person here, in this life and in their own character; the afterlife is the lesser half of the warning.
Most lines circulated under Krishna’s name on the internet are loose paraphrase or pure invention. This one is unusual in that it tracks an actual verse of the Bhagavad Gita almost word for word, which is why the triad kama, krodha, lobha is familiar to readers who have never opened the text. Popular retellings usually keep anger and quietly drop greed, which is the one most people are least willing to see in themselves.
What it teaches you
Treat the three as a sequence rather than a list. The next time you are genuinely angry, ask what you wanted that did not arrive — anger is almost always a blocked want wearing a louder costume. Tracing it back one step usually turns an argument you were about to win into a piece of information about yourself.
अर्थ और सीख
यहाँ काम, क्रोध और लोभ को पाप नहीं, द्वार कहा गया है — यानी ऐसे दरवाज़े जिनसे आदमी अपने पैरों से गुज़रता है, अक्सर बिना जाने। ध्यान दीजिए कि पहले ‘आत्मनाश’ कहा गया है और नरक बाद में; असली नुक़सान इसी जीवन में, अपने स्वभाव में होता है। व्यवहार में सीख यह है कि क्रोध आने पर एक क़दम पीछे जाकर पूछें — कौन-सी चाह अटकी थी, क्योंकि क्रोध प्रायः रुकी हुई इच्छा का ही तेज़ रूप है।
