— The Dhammapada, verse 351 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
जो पूर्णता को पा चुका है, जो काँपता नहीं, जो तृष्णा और पाप से रहित है — उसने जीवन के सारे काँटे तोड़ डाले हैं: यही उसका अंतिम शरीर होगा।
What it means
Read the clauses as a sequence rather than a list. Without thirst is the cause; does not tremble is the test. This is not a man who has trained himself to hold steady under pressure — it is one for whom the thing that made steadiness necessary is gone. Thorns catch and hold; what has been broken is the mechanism by which a life snags on a person.
The last clause is the one usually dropped in quotation. This will be his last body is not a figure of speech for inner peace; it is a claim about rebirth — that the series ends here. Read as a serenity line the verse loses its argument, which is technical: craving is what keeps the process running, so cutting it does not improve a life, it stops the production of further ones.
What it teaches you
Use the trembling as the instrument. Calm is easy to perform and hard to verify, but the small flinch is checkable — when the message arrives, when the name comes up, when the result is announced. Trace any of them back and there is usually one specific thing you still need to happen. That needed thing is what this verse calls thirst, and naming it is more useful than trying to look unruffled.
अर्थ और सीख
श्लोक को क्रम में पढ़िए: तृष्णा का न रहना कारण है, और न काँपना उसकी पहचान। यह उस व्यक्ति का वर्णन नहीं जिसने अभ्यास से ख़ुद को शांत कर लिया, बल्कि उसका जिसके भीतर काँपने का कारण ही शेष नहीं — इसीलिए ‘यही उसका अंतिम शरीर होगा’, यानी जन्म-मरण की शृंखला यहीं समाप्त। सीख यह कि शांति का दिखावा करने के बजाय अपने छोटे-छोटे झटकों को पहचानिए: हर झटके के पीछे कोई न कोई चीज़ होती है जिसका होना आपको अब भी ज़रूरी लगता है — वही तृष्णा है।
Where it comes from
This is verse 351 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called Thirst — tanha, craving — the creeping vine whose root must be cut by knowledge.
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.
