धम्मपद
The Buddha · c. 3rd century BCE
All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
The most beloved collection of the Buddha's sayings: verses on the mind, craving, and the path to peace.
Four hundred and twenty-three verses, arranged in chapters on the mind, anger, the wise, the fool, happiness, and craving. Its central claim is psychological: suffering is produced by the mind, and so can be ended by training the mind.
Preserved in the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism, the Dhammapada gathers teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in northern India in the fifth century BCE. It is recited daily across Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand.
Suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, built into a life of craving.
Craving: the thirst that makes getting what we want feel empty.
Between indulgence and self-punishment lies the path.
Each passage is cited and credited. Classical lines open character by character: the reading, the sense, and what is hiding inside a single character. Paraphrases are marked where the best translations are still under copyright.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.
For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love; this is an old rule.
Well-makers lead the water wherever they like; fletchers bend the arrow; carpenters bend a log of wood; wise people fashion themselves.
If one man conquer in battle a thousand times thousand men, and if another conquer himself, he is the greatest of conquerors.
Self is the lord of self, who else could be the lord? With self well subdued, a man finds a lord such as few can find.
All created things perish; he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way that leads to purity.
From greed comes grief, from greed comes fear; he who is free from greed knows neither grief nor fear.
A modern translation
Long before cognitive behavioral therapy, the Dhammapada taught that thoughts shape feelings, and that attention can be trained.
Map it onto your own decision