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StillnessProverb

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

Often attributed to the Buddha

PhilosophyProverbs

The story behind the card

Though often credited to the Buddha, the saying appears in no Buddhist scripture. It looks like a modern reworking of a line by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. In ‘El Dorado’, an essay collected in Virginibus Puerisque (1881), he wrote that ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour’: we are happiest while we still have something to strive for. The Buddha, by contrast, taught a path with a clear goal: freedom from suffering.

Türkçe oku
İyi yolculuk etmek, varmaktan yeğdir.
Buda'ya atfedilir

Bu söz sık sık Buda'ya atfedilir, ama hiçbir Budist metinde geçmez. Define Adası'nın yazarı İskoç Robert Louis Stevenson'ın bir cümlesinin modern bir uyarlaması gibi görünür. Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque (1881) kitabındaki “El Dorado” denemesinde, umutla yol almanın varmaktan daha iyi olduğunu, asıl başarının emek vermek olduğunu yazar: İnsan, uğruna çabalayacağı bir şey varken daha mutludur. Buda ise açık bir hedefi olan bir yol öğretmişti: acıdan kurtuluş.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Buddhism
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