table of contents
| DISPLAY‐DHAMMAPADA(6) | display-dhammapada man page | DISPLAY‐DHAMMAPADA(6) |
NAME¶
display‐dhammapada
SYNOPSIS¶
display‐dhammapada [ARGUMENT] [TRANSLATION]
Augments fortune-dhammapada to use locale (de or pl), prints a specified or random verse from the Dhammapada, and includes translation notes.
DESCRIPTION¶
The Dhammapada is an anthology of 423 verses from the Kuddaka Nikaya part of the Theravada Pali Canon. It contains Buddhist ethical and spiritual precepts.
Translations available: 2 English translations (by John Richard or F. Max Muller), German, or Polish.
NOTE: Verses may have multiple paragraphs or numbers associated with nature of the Dhammapada.
ARGUMENTS¶
number [1-423] Print the given number verse.
all Print all the verses.
about Print translation notes.
TRANSLATIONS¶
Defaults to German or Polish locale, otherwise all other locale default to the English translation by Richards.
r | ‐r : Use Richard's translation (default).
m | ‐m : Use Muller's translation.
de | ‐de : Use the German translation (default for Polish locale).
pl | ‐pl : Use the Polish translation (default for German locale).
EXAMPLES¶
display‐dhammapada : Displays a random verse from Richard's translation.
display‐dhammapada -m : Displays a random verse from Muller's translation.
display‐dhammapada 1 : Displays verse 1 from Richard's translation.
display‐dhammapada m 32 : Displays verse 32 from Muller's translation.
display‐dhammapada all : Displays all verses (default Richard's).
display‐dhammapada about : Displays translation notes (default Richard's).
SUGGESTIONS¶
Not guaranteed to work as these rely on external programs.
To display a verse each time you log in on a console or open a terminal, put display‐dhammapada in your ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.login, as appropriate for your shell.
To use display‐dhammapada with cowsay:
display‐dhammapada | cowsay ‐W 120 ‐t
To use display‐dhammapada with zenity
display‐dhammapada | zenity ‐‐text‐info ‐‐title="Dhammapada Verse" ‐‐width=600 ‐‐height=200
display‐dhammapada can be used with the KDE "amor" in the kdetoys package. Refer to the KDE documentation for details.
One can automatically attach Dhammapada verse in e-mail footer. To do this with mutt add set signature=display-dhammapada| in your ~/.muttrc file.
FILES¶
/usr/games/display‐dhammapada
/usr/share/display-dhammapada/dhammapada.about
/usr/share/display-dhammapada/dhammapada.m.about
/usr/share/display-dhammapada/dhammapada.de.about
/usr/share/display-dhammapada/dhammapada.pl.about
BUGS¶
Please report bugs on : https://gitlab.com/bodhi.zazem/display-dhammapada
SEE ALSO¶
fortunes-dhammapada fortune-mod
AUTHORS¶
display-dhammapada was originally written by Richard Cepas <rch@online.lt> and later modified by bodhi.zazen to be compatible with fortune.
Copyright GPL v3
Home Page: https://gitlab.com/bodhizazen.net/display-dhammapada
Richards' English translation of the Dhammapada: Copyright (C) 1993 John Richards, Pembrokeshire (UK), permission granted for use here. See http://eawc.evansville.edu/anthology/dhammapada.htm
Muller's translation of the Dhammapada: Public Domain, used here courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
Polish translation (by Zbigniew Becker): Public Domain, as explained at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain See also http://mahajana.net/dhammapada/
German translation (by http://www.zeno.org - Contumax GmbH & Co. KG): Public Domain (Gemeinfrei, as explained at http://www.zeno.org/Zeno/-/Lizenz%3A+Gemeinfrei
| January 2026 | 2.0 |