Chanakya

Every line we carry

Each one links to its source, what it means, and the shirt in any of our looks.

1. What is too heavy for the strong? What is too far for the driven?

   Chanakya asks four questions that answer themselves: what load is too heavy for the capable, what distance too far for the determined, what land foreign to the learned, who a stranger to the kind-spoken. Capacity, drive, knowledge and warmth make most obstacles disappear. Build those four and the world gets smaller.

   Chanakya Niti 3.13, our translation from the Sanskrit

2. No disease like desire. No enemy like delusion. No fire like anger.

   Chanakya ranks the dangers inside a person above the ones outside. Craving sickens, confusion betrays and anger burns hotter than any flame. The fourth line gives the remedy: no happiness is higher than knowledge. Know yourself and the three lose their power.

   Chanakya Niti 5.12, our translation from the Sanskrit

3. Don't be too straight. The straight trees are the ones they cut.

   Go look at the forest, Chanakya says: woodcutters take the straight trunks and leave the crooked ones standing. Total transparency and naivety make you easy to use. Be honest, but do not be so simple that anyone can take you for timber.

   Chanakya Niti 7.12, our translation from the Sanskrit

4. Don't grieve the past. Don't fret the future. The wise live in the present.

   What is gone does not deserve your grief and what has not come does not deserve your worry. Chanakya says the clear-sighted conduct their lives in the present moment, where action is actually possible. Regret and dread both steal from the only time you can use.

   Chanakya Niti 13.2, our translation from the Sanskrit

5. Learning you don't practice is poison.

   Chanakya lists things that turn toxic in the wrong conditions, and first among them is knowledge without practice, like food that is never digested. Information you never use clutters the mind and breeds false confidence. Read less, and do more of what you read.

   Chanakya Niti 4.15, our translation from the Sanskrit

6. What can a mirror do for a man with no eyes?

   Books cannot help someone who has no judgment of their own, Chanakya says, any more than a mirror helps the blind. Advice only works on a mind willing to see. Before you hand someone wisdom, check whether they have eyes for it, including when that someone is you.

   Chanakya Niti 10.9, our translation from the Sanskrit

7. Earth has three jewels: food, water and good words. Fools call stones jewels.

   Chanakya resets the value of things. The real treasures are food, water and wise speech; it is foolish people who count chips of stone as gems. Notice what actually keeps you alive and well, and stop paying jewel prices for rocks.

   Chanakya Niti 13.21, our translation from the Sanskrit

8. Keep the plan in your head. Don't say it out loud.

   A plan thought out in the mind should not be announced, Chanakya says; guard it in secret and put it into action. Talk spends the energy a project needs and warns the people who would block it. Let the result be the announcement.

   Chanakya Niti 2.7, our translation from the Sanskrit

9. Who are my friends? What is my strength? Ask it again and again.

   Chanakya gives a standing audit: what are the times, who are my friends, where am I, what comes in and what goes out, who am I and what can I really do. He says to think about these again and again, not once. Most bad decisions come from answering them out of date.

   Chanakya Niti 4.18, our translation from the Sanskrit

10. Time stays awake while everyone sleeps.

    Time ripens all beings and gathers them in, Chanakya says, and it keeps watch while they sleep; no one gets past it. You can stop paying attention to time, but it never stops paying attention to you. Use it as if it were counting, because it is.

    Chanakya Niti 6.7, our translation from the Sanskrit

11. Money, friends and land can be won again. Not this body.

    Chanakya lists what can be lost and recovered: wealth, friends, a spouse, land. The body is not on the list. Train it, feed it well and rest it, because it is the one asset you do not get a second time.

    Chanakya Niti 14.2, our translation from the Sanskrit

12. Learning is kept alive by practice. A family by character.

    Knowledge is held by practice, a family's name by conduct, a noble person is known by their virtues and anger shows in the eyes. Chanakya says nothing good keeps itself; everything worth having needs maintaining. Skills fade without use and reputations fade without behavior.

    Chanakya Niti 5.8, our translation from the Sanskrit

13. Who sees every living being as himself is wise.

    Chanakya's test of wisdom is moral, not intellectual: treat others' spouses as your mother, others' wealth as clods of earth, and all beings as yourself. The last line is the root of the other two. If you really saw others as you see yourself, you would not cheat or wound them.

    Chanakya Niti 12.14, our translation from the Sanskrit