[22] 12.
If one should know oneself as dear,
one should guard oneself well guarded;
during one or another of the three watches
the wise man should keep watch over himself.
One should first establish
oneself in what is proper,
and then instruct another:
the wise man would not be defiled.
If one would oneself do
just as one instructs another,
then, being well tamed indeed, one might tame others —
for the self, it is said, is hard to tame.
Self indeed is the protector (nātha) of self,
for who else could be one's protector?
With self well tamed
one gains a protector hard to gain.
The evil done by oneself,
born of oneself, arisen from oneself,
crushes the man of poor wisdom,
as a diamond crushes a gem made of rock.
He whose utter immorality overspreads him,
as a māluvā creeper overspreads a sāla tree,
does to himself
just what an enemy wishes for him.
Easy to do are things not good
and unbeneficial to oneself;
but what is beneficial and good —
that indeed is supremely hard to do.
The man of poor wisdom who, relying on an evil view,
scorns the teaching of the arahants,
the noble ones who live by the Dhamma,
bears fruit for his own destruction,
like the fruits of the bamboo (kaṇṭaka).
By oneself alone is evil done,
by oneself is one defiled;
by oneself is evil left undone,
by oneself alone is one purified.
Purity and impurity are one's own affair:
no one can purify another.
Let one not neglect one's own good
for another's good, however great;
having directly known one's own good,
let one be intent upon one's own true good.
The Chapter on the Self (Attavagga), the Twelfth.
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The Verses of the Dhammapada: the Thirteenth, the Chapter on the World (Lokavagga).
English translation from the Pali (Siam Raṭṭha edition) — under review, not for citation.