Indian stream·Pāli Tipiṭaka·Dhammapada·Chapter XVII. Anger.
Krodha — overcoming anger by non-anger
Fourteen verses on anger. 'Let a man overcome anger by love; let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth.'
Source context
- Theme
- conquest of anger as prerequisite for inner freedom and ethical self-mastery
- Soul-faculty
- Intellectual Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Stoic philosophy (Seneca, De Ira)Stoic teaching identifies anger as a judgment-error of the rational soul and prescribes its extirpation through disciplined reason, paralleling the Dhammapada's insistence that the one who abandons anger conquers what charioteers cannot.
- Vedantic ethics (Bhagavad Gita III–IV)The Gita treats krodha (anger) as arising from thwarted desire and as a gateway to delusion, ruin, and loss of discriminative intelligence — a structural cross-tradition congruence with the Dhammapada's causal chain linking anger to moral collapse.
- Christian mystical tradition (Desert Fathers, Evagrius Ponticus)Evagrius lists thumos (irascibility) among the eight logismoi obstructing prayer and describes its transformation into dispassion (apatheia) as prerequisite for contemplative ascent, mirroring the Pali chapter's framing of anger-mastery as the mark of the true brahmin.
Chapter XVII. Anger.
CHAPTER XVII.
ANGER.
221Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own.
222He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.
223Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!
224Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.
225The sages who injure nobody, and who always control their body, they will go to the unchangeable place (Nirvâ*n*a), where, if they have gone, they will suffer no more.
226Those who are ever watchful, who study day and night, and who strive after Nirvâ*n*a, their passions will come to an end.
227This is an old saying, O Atula, this is not only of to-day: 'They blame him who sits silent,
[221. 'Name and form' or 'mind and body' is the translation of nâma-rûpa, the ninth of the Buddhist Nidânas. Cf. Burnouf, Introduction, p. 501; see also Gogerly, Lecture on Buddhism, and Bigandet, The Life of Gaudama, p. 454.
223Mahâbh. XII, 3550, asâdhu*m* sadhunâ *g*ayet. Cf. Ten *G*âtakas, ed. Fausböll, p. 5.
227It appears from the commentary that porâ*n*am and a*gg*atanam are neuters, referring to what happened formerly and what happens to-day, and that they are not to be taken as adjectives referring to âsînam, &c. The commentator must have read atula instead of atulam, and he explains it as the name of a pupil whom Gautama addressed by that name. This may be so (see note to verse 166); but atula may also be taken in the sense of incomparable (Mahâbh. XIII, 1937), and in that case we ought to supply, with Professor Weber, some such word as 'saw' or 'saying.']
they blame him who speaks much, they also blame him who says little; there is no one on earth who is not blamed.'
228There never was, there never will be, nor is there now, a man who is always blamed, or a man who is always praised.
229., 230. But he whom those who discriminate praise continually day after day, as without blemish, wise, rich in knowledge and virtue, who would dare to blame him, like a coin made of gold from the *G*ambû river? Even the gods praise him, he is praised even by Brahman.
231Beware of bodily anger, and control thy body! Leave the sins of the body, and with thy body practise virtue!
232Beware of the anger of the tongue, and control thy tongue! Leave the sins of the tongue, and practise virtue with thy tongue!
233Beware of the anger of the mind, and control thy mind! Leave the sins of the mind, and practise virtue with thy mind!
234The wise who control their body, who control their tongue, the wise who control their mind, are indeed well controlled.
[230. The Brahman worlds are higher that the Deva worlds as the Brahman is higher than a Deva; see Hardy, Manual, p. 25; Burnouf, Introduction, pp. 134, 184.]
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