— The Dhammapada, verse 62 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
“ये पुत्र मेरे हैं, यह धन मेरा है” — ऐसे विचारों में उलझा मूर्ख दुख भोगता है। वह स्वयं अपना नहीं है; फिर पुत्र और धन उसके कैसे हों?
What it means
The verse never argues directly that your sons and your money are not yours. It sets up a prior condition instead: to own anything you would first have to own yourself, and that is the claim it denies. Everything else follows as a smaller case of the same failure — how much less.
Note also where the pain is placed. The fool is tormented by such thoughts, present tense, with nothing yet lost. So this is not the consolation for bereavement it is often quoted as, and not a general observation that nothing lasts. It locates the torment in the word mine itself, while the sons are still alive and the wealth still in hand. The pairing of a child with a property holding as two objects of the same possessive is the uncomfortable part, and it does not look accidental.
What it teaches you
Listen for how much weight my is carrying in the sentences you use about people — my son, my wife, my team. The verse offers a test rather than a rebuke: before the claim of ownership goes through, you would need to establish that you belong to yourself, which is the one case it says fails. Where the possessive is doing real work, that is where the torment it describes is already operating.
अर्थ और सीख
यह श्लोक सीधे यह नहीं कहता कि पुत्र और धन तुम्हारे नहीं हैं; वह पहले यह पूछता है कि जो स्वयं अपना नहीं है, वह किसी और का स्वामी कैसे होगा। ध्यान दें कि दुख किसी नुक़सान से नहीं, ‘मेरा’ कहने के विचार से ही शुरू होता है — बेटा जीवित है, धन हाथ में है, फिर भी पीड़ा है। सीख यह है कि लोगों के बारे में बोलते समय देखें कि ‘मेरा’ शब्द कितना बोझ उठा रहा है।
Where it comes from
This is verse 62 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called The Fool — the marks of folly, and the first wisdom of knowing one’s own foolishness.
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.
