— The Dhammapada, verse 356 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
खेत खरपतवार से नष्ट होते हैं, और मनुष्य राग से; इसलिए जो राग से मुक्त हैं, उन्हें दिया गया दान महान फल देता है।
What it means
The line is doing arithmetic, not just moralising. Weeds do not attack a field from outside; they grow in the same soil and quietly take what the crop was meant to get. That is the exact charge being laid against passion in a person — not an invader, a competitor for the same ground. The second half then draws a conclusion most modern readers slide past: the reward of a gift is being measured by the recipient, not by the giver.
It is worth keeping because it is honest about what it is — a verse about where to direct support, addressed to householders who fed a community of renouncers. The popular reading flattens it into desire is bad, stay calm. The line actually says something more awkward than that: generosity is not self-validating, and a gift handed to someone who will burn it on their own wanting yields less than the same gift handed to someone who will not.
What it teaches you
When you give — money, time, a recommendation, an introduction — the line asks a question about the far end rather than about your own warmth: what will this person’s wanting do with what they receive. It also cuts the other way. If you are the one being given to, the verse says the value of what you were handed depends on how weedy your own ground is, because the same help lands differently in a person who is chasing something and a person who is not.
अर्थ और सीख
जैसे खरपतवार खेत की उपज भीतर ही भीतर चट कर जाती है, वैसे ही राग यानी चाह मनुष्य को भीतर से खोखला करती है। इसीलिए यह पद कहता है कि दान का फल केवल देने वाले की उदारता से तय नहीं होता, बल्कि इससे भी तय होता है कि लेने वाला कैसा है — जो चाह से मुक्त है, उसे दिया गया दान सबसे बड़ा फल देता है। सीख यह है कि देते समय यह भी देखें कि आपका दिया हुआ किसके हाथ में जाकर क्या बनेगा।
Where it comes from
This is verse 356 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.
