War & Peace Quote by Buddha

Desire doesn’t just reach for what it lacks; it also tightens around what it already has, turning gifts into obligations and possessions into identity. Buddha’s line works because it targets that double bind with surgical economy: don’t inflate your winnings, don’t stare at your neighbor’s. Both habits are different masks for the same craving, the same mental habit of taking the temperature of the self by comparing it to the world.

“Do not overrate what you have received” isn’t a call to ingratitude. It’s a warning about attachment dressed up as appreciation. When what you’ve “received” becomes proof of your worth, you’re suddenly guarding it, advertising it, fearing its loss. The subtext is almost political: status is a trap because it makes the mind outsource its stability to changing conditions.

Then comes envy, the more obviously corrosive impulse. Buddha doesn’t moralize it as a sin; he diagnoses it as a condition incompatible with peace. Envy is a treadmill that cannot stop because it requires an ever-moving target: there is always another person with more, better, newer, happier-looking. By defining the harm as the loss of “peace of mind,” he shifts the conversation from social fairness to inner consequence. The penalty isn’t cosmic punishment; it’s the immediate psychological cost.

Context matters: this comes from a teacher trying to end suffering, not win arguments. The rhetoric is simple on purpose, a practical instruction for laypeople and monks alike: stop feeding the comparison engine. Not because you should be nicer, but because you want out.