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The Dhammapada
Chapter Ten: Violence
All tremble at violence;
All fear death.
Seeing others as being like yourself,
Do not kill or cause others to kill.
All tremble at violence;
Life is dear for all.
Seeing others as being like yourself,
Do not kill or cause others to kill.
If, desiring happiness,
You use violence
To harm living beings who desire happiness,
You won't find happiness after death.
If, desiring happiness,
You do not use violence
To harm living beings who desire happiness,
You will find happiness after death.
Don't speak harshly to anyone;
What you say will be said back to you.
Hostile speech is painful,
And you will meet with retaliation.
If, like a broken bell,
You do not reverberate,
Then you have attained Nirvana
And no hostility is found in you.
As, with a stick, a cowherd drives
Cows to pasture,
So aging and death drive
The lives of beings.
Even while doing evil,
Fools are ignorant of it.
Like someone burned by fire,
Those lacking wisdom are scorched by their own deeds.
Whoever uses violence to harm
The nonviolent and innocent
Quickly goes to one of ten conditions:
Intense pain or great loss,
Bodily injury or insanity,
Serious illness or vicious slander,
Oppression from rulers or the loss of relatives,
Houses consumed by fire or wealth destroyed.
And with the breakup of the body
The unwise one falls to hell.
No nakedness or matted hair,
No filth, dust, or dirt,
No fasting or sleeping on bare ground,
No austerities in a squatting posture
Purify a mortal who has not overcome doubt.
Even though well adorned,
If one lives at peace,
Calmed, controlled, assured, and chaste,
Having given up violence toward all beings,
Then one is a brahmin, a renunciant, a monastic.
Where in this world does one find
Someone restrained by conscience,
Who knows little of blame,
As a good horse knows little of the whip?
Like a good horse alert to the whip,
Be ardent and alarmed.
With faith, virtue, effort,
Concentration, and discernment,
Accomplished in knowledge and good conduct,
Mindful,
You will leave this great suffering behind.
Irrigators guide water;
Fletchers shape arrows;
Carpenters fashion wood;
The well-practiced tame themselves.
...excerpt from The Dhammapada
Continue to Chapter Eleven...
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