— The Dhammapada, verse 233 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
मन के क्रोध से सावधान रहो, और अपने मन को वश में रखो! मन के पापों को छोड़ो, और अपने मन से ही पुण्य करो!
What it means
The sharp claim here is the second clause: the sins of the mind. The verse treats anger that is never spoken and never acted on as an offence in its own right, not as a harmless pressure valve. That contradicts the common modern reading of this teaching as being about self-control in public — about not letting it show. Nothing is shown in this verse. The whole transaction is internal, and it is still counted.
The last clause is stranger and easy to skip: practise virtue with thy mind. The mind is named as the offender and then handed back as the instrument. So this is not a verse about suppression — suppression would satisfy only the middle clause and leave the mind idle. It asks that the same faculty that rehearses the grievance be put to a different use.
What it teaches you
Notice the rehearsed argument — the conversation you conduct in your head with someone who is not in the room, where you always have the better line. This verse says that is the thing to leave, not a private indulgence that costs nobody. A usable check: after the rehearsal ends, has anything changed in the world, or only your temperature? And the positive half gives the replacement — turn the mind to something it can actually do for the person or the problem, because an unoccupied mind returns to the grievance by default.
अर्थ और सीख
यह श्लोक कहता है कि मन का क्रोध भी पाप है — भले ही वह कभी बोला या किया न जाए। लोग अक्सर इसे केवल बाहरी संयम समझ लेते हैं, पर यहाँ तो कुछ बाहर आया ही नहीं, फिर भी वह गिना जा रहा है। अंतिम पंक्ति और भी महत्वपूर्ण है: उसी मन से पुण्य करो — यानी मन को दबाना नहीं, बल्कि उसे दूसरे काम में लगाना है, क्योंकि खाली मन फिर उसी शिकायत पर लौट आता है।
Where it comes from
This is verse 233 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called Anger — the mastery of anger in body, speech and mind; overcoming anger by love.
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.
