Few lines of text have been memorized by as many human beings over as many centuries as this one:

You don’t have to know the language to glean that it is verse. It consists of two pairs of eight syllables–a pattern that repeats for many subsequent lines after this one. Gama rhymes with dhamma, and three different words begin with mano.

You can’t tell from the Latin characters alone, but this line scans in a classic rhythm called siloka in Pali, which uses “light” (short) and “heavy” (long) syllables. You could get some sense of the metrical pattern by reading aloud the following string of English words:

Short short longer longer
Short longer longer longer
Short short longer longer
Short short short longer

These features make the line enjoyable and work as mnemonics. Regular verse is easier to memorize than prose.

All the words are very abstract, and they mark out zones of meaning that have no equivalents in English. In fact, some translators use the Sanskrit dharma to render the Pali word dhamma in English. Dharma can mean law, duty, doctrine, righteousness, experience, phenomena, thing, or truth. A modern English-speaker may get more from that one famous Sanskrit word than from any single English word chosen to render it.

There is no verb, because Pali, like Latin, can leave the verb “to be” implied.

The first person who translated this line into English, F. Max Müller, wrote, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thought” (1898).

Asked to translate it literally, ChatGPT proposes, “Phenomena have mind as their forerunner; mind is their chief; they are made by mind.” Claude says, “Mental phenomena are preceded by mind, mind-chief, mind-made.”

Gil Fronsdal (2018) has:

All experience is preceded by mind, 

    Led by mind, 

    Made by mind.

His version employs the open typography and plainspoken diction of modernist verse to offer a valuable perspective on the ancient text, which is dense, formal, and abstract.

I cannot do better than Fronsdal (or AI), but I can explore alternatives. For example, what if we tried to make the English mnemonic?

In advance of whatever we find is mind. 
The mind is in charge; it makes the mind.

Or what if we expanded each Pali word into several English counterparts, to indicate its range of meanings?

Things, or what we experience, the truth--
What comes before and is responsible
For all this is the conscious stream. Mind is 
The chief and what's foremost. Mind is mind-made.

The next verse begins with the same four Pali words as the first one, but to repeat my extended translation of them would become tiresome. So I could make that line more concise, and continue:

Mind comes before all experience and truth:
If the mind is serene and bright, then ease
Follows like a shadow that will never depart.

By the way, I am not sure I agree with this text. If you suffer pain because of an injury or violence, I don’t think it’s all in your head. Nor does a serene mind inevitably bring ease; the eternal note of sadness rolls back in.

This verse comes with a whole metaphysical basis that is worth considering but not necessarily correct. But it could also support some sensible ordinary advice: when something seems bad, you may be able to change your reaction to it rather than altering the thing itself.

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The text is the Dhammapada (v.1). I got help from both ChatGPT and Claude. See also: the fetter; The Tangle; This is beautiful, scolds the mind; on translation as spiritual practice; Caedmon’s Hymn and modern responses; and Mani Rao’s innovative Sanskrit translations (with a mention of Anne Carson).