Q0300

Dhammapada

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas.
Thinker Dhammapada
School Early Buddhism
Source Dhammapada 183
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Dhammapada 183, within the tradition of Early Buddhism. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Dhammapada's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Dhammapada. (n.d.). To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300

MLA: Dhammapada. “To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good,….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300.

Chicago: Dhammapada. “To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good,….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300.

Same thinker

More from Dhammapada

  1. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.
  2. One is one's own refuge; who else could be the refuge?
  3. Let one not regard the faults of others, nor what others have done or left undone; let one regard rather one's own deeds, done and undone.
  4. You yourselves must strive; the Buddhas only point the way.
  5. Hatreds never cease through hatred in this world.

All quotations by Dhammapada

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme