Traditions: Pāli Majjhima Nikāya; Pāli Dhammapada Motif: Resentment is fed by rehearsing injury Connection verdict: Related ethical teaching using prose challenge and verse Article status: Expanded Date: 2026-10-29
Summary
MN 21 tests loving-kindness under harsh speech and harm; Dhammapada 3–5 warns that nursing grievances keeps hostility alive.
Read the two scenes
Dhammapada 3–5 quotes the inner refrain of someone counting injuries and then argues that resentment is not ended by resentment. MN 21 turns such concern into a hard test: how should a trained mind respond when others speak cruelly or inflict harm? The discourse does not pretend injury is good or deny the reality of danger. Its challenge concerns what a practitioner cultivates rather than a command to abandon all protection. Verse and prose serve different purposes: one catches a repeated mental pattern, the other pushes it to an extreme.
What connects—and what does not
The discourse uses extreme cases and direct instruction; the verses contrast the thoughts that sustain hostility with those that release it.
The ethical link is strong, but the passages do not report one shared historical scene.
Why read them side by side?
The connection asks how a memorable maxim about anger holds up when circumstances are actually hostile.
Sources and reading notes
- MN 21, The Simile of the Saw — Pāli Buddhist text and translation; inspect the wider discourse.
- Dhammapada verses 3–5 — Pāli Buddhist text and translation; inspect the wider discourse.
Research limit
A named parallel can establish literary reuse or related tradition; a general resemblance alone cannot prove borrowing. Linked editions and translations vary. Where a source is identified as secondary orientation, the comparison does not claim direct close reading of that tradition’s primary text.