— The Dhammapada, verse 9 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो स्वयं को पाप से शुद्ध किए बिना काषाय वस्त्र धारण करना चाहता है, जिसमें न संयम है और न सत्य — वह उस काषाय वस्त्र के योग्य नहीं।
What it means
The target is the emblem. A robe announces renunciation, and the verse says plainly that wearing it confers none of what it announces — the man who takes it up unchanged has acquired the sign and not the thing. Two specific conditions are named, temperance and truth, and both happen to be verifiable only where there is no audience.
It is also a criticism from inside, aimed at the tradition’s own most visible symbol rather than at outsiders. That is what keeps it usable: the line is not equipment for detecting other people’s hypocrisy, but a warning about how easily a badge is mistaken for a qualification, including one’s own.
What it teaches you
Find where you are currently drawing credit from a marker rather than the state it stands for — a title, a public vow, an observance, a degree. Then apply the two tests the verse names, since neither requires a witness: what you did on an occasion when restraint was genuinely inconvenient, and whether you said the true thing when a small untruth would have passed unnoticed.
अर्थ और सीख
श्लोक कहता है कि जो भीतर से शुद्ध हुए बिना काषाय वस्त्र पहनता है, और जिसमें संयम तथा सत्य नहीं, वह उस वस्त्र के योग्य नहीं — चिह्न धारण कर लेने से वह गुण नहीं आ जाता जिसका वह चिह्न है। यह आलोचना बाहर वालों पर नहीं, अपनी ही परंपरा के सबसे दिखाई देने वाले प्रतीक पर है। सीख यह है कि जहाँ आप किसी पद, उपाधि या सार्वजनिक संकल्प के भरोसे बैठे हैं, वहाँ इन दो कसौटियों को लगाएँ — जो दोनों बिना किसी दर्शक के जाँची जा सकती हैं।
Where it comes from
This is verse 9 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called The Twin-Verses — paired verses contrasting the outcomes of a corrupted and a purified mind.
The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 verses in Pali, among the oldest and most widely read records of the Buddha’s teaching. This English translation is by F. Max Müller (1881), the pioneering Oxford scholar of Indian texts; the verse number is cited with this quote.
