— Modern rendering of Dhammapada 61 and the Khaggavisana Sutta
About this quote
हिन्दी में
यदि साधना के मार्ग पर साथ देने वाला कोई न मिले, तो अकेले ही चलो।
What it means
The sentence is a conditional, and the condition is easy to skip. It does not recommend solitude; it assumes you looked for company first and failed to find it. What it rules out is the third option people actually take — waiting, or quietly abandoning the practice because no one else is doing it.
The usual reading turns this into lone-wolf self-sufficiency, a declaration that one needs nobody. The line says almost the reverse: company would have been better, and walking alone is the fallback, chosen because the alternative is not walking. It is also worth reading the condition strictly — it is about the absence of genuine support, not about disagreement with people who are supporting you.
What it teaches you
Check whether any of your practices are actually attendance habits. If a discipline reliably dies in the week a group disbands, a friend moves, or a teacher stops replying, the practice was borrowed. Keep one of them going for a month with no one aware of it, and you will know which category it belongs to.
अर्थ और सीख
यह वाक्य शर्त के साथ है, और वही शर्त अक्सर छूट जाती है: पहले साथी खोजिए, न मिलें तब अकेले चलिए — यह एकांत की सिफ़ारिश नहीं है। लोग इसे ‘मुझे किसी की ज़रूरत नहीं’ के अर्थ में पढ़ते हैं, जबकि आशय यह है कि संगति बेहतर होती, पर उसके अभाव में रुक जाना सबसे बुरा विकल्प है। परख यह है कि यदि समूह बिखरते ही आपका अभ्यास छूट जाता है, तो वह अभ्यास आपका नहीं, उधार का था।
Where it comes from
A modern rendering of a genuine canonical theme: Dhammapada 61 — ‘if a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool’ — and the famous refrain of the Khaggavisana Sutta: ‘wander alone like a rhinoceros.’
