Reading guide
An everyday cruelty, interrupted
The setup is almost anticlimactic: “between Sāvatthī and the Jeta Grove, several boys were tormenting some fish.” The Buddha, on his ordinary morning alms round, “saw the boys tormenting the fish” and went to them. Nothing marks this as a special occasion — it’s the kind of small, casual harm that could happen anywhere, any day, and easily go unnoticed by anyone in a hurry to get somewhere.
A question, not a lecture
What the Buddha actually says to the boys is worth noticing for its restraint: “Boys, do you fear pain? Do you dislike pain?” He doesn’t tell them to stop, doesn’t explain why what they’re doing is wrong, doesn’t invoke authority. He asks about their own experience. Their answer is immediate and unembarrassed: “Yes, sir, we dislike pain.” The entire ethical argument that follows depends on nothing more exotic than this shared, obvious fact — the same move at work in Ud 5.1’s verse on self-love, where an honest look at one’s own experience becomes the ground for how to treat someone else.
No escape by evasion
The heartfelt saying comes in two short stanzas. The first draws the direct consequence from the boys’ own admission: “If you fear pain, if you dislike pain, don’t do bad deeds either openly or in secret.” The phrase “openly or in secret” matters — it rules out the common hope that what nobody sees doesn’t count. The second stanza closes any remaining loophole: “If you should do a bad deed, now or in the future, you won’t be freed from suffering, though you fly away and flee.” The image of flying away and fleeing is almost comic applied to fish-tormenting boys, but the point is serious and general — there is no distance, physical or temporal, that outruns the consequence of a harmful act.
Placed among this chapter’s short scenes
Like Ud 5.7 and Ud 5.9 elsewhere in this same chapter, this udāna is built from almost nothing — a glance, a brief exchange, a verse — and offers no follow-up about whether the boys actually stopped. The teaching sits complete in the moment itself; the collection trusts the reader to carry it further than the text does.
Key terms
The text
§1So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. Now at that time, between Sāvatthī and the Jeta Grove, several boys were tormenting some fish.
§2Then the Buddha robed up in the morning and, taking his bowl and robe, entered Sāvatthī for alms. He saw the boys tormenting the fish. He went to them and said, “Boys, do you fear pain? Do you dislike pain?” “Yes, sir,” they replied. “We dislike pain.”
§3Then, understanding this matter, on that occasion the Buddha expressed this heartfelt sentiment:
§4“If you fear pain,
if you dislike pain,
don’t do bad deeds
either openly or in secret.
§5If you should do a bad deed,
now or in the future,
you won’t be freed from suffering,
though you fly away and flee.”
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