Did the Buddha really say anger is like “grasping a hot coal”?

The version you’ve probably seen

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”

Not in the Dhammapada: Müller’s translation has no hot or burning coal. Quote Investigator traces the image to Buddhaghosa, a Buddhist commentator writing about a thousand years after the Buddha, and finds the modern wording first credited to the Buddha in a 1988 self-help book.

In plain words

Verse 3 describes the loop: keep replaying “he abused me, he beat me, he robbed me”, and the hatred never ends. Verse 5 names the way out and calls it an old rule: hatred doesn’t end by answering it with more hatred, only by its opposite. Neither verse says the harm didn’t happen. They say the replaying is what keeps it burning.

Worth knowing

The Dhammapada is a collection of verses attributed to the Buddha, preserved in Pali. Verse 222 has its own image for anger: “He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.” The coal simile is genuinely Buddhist, just not the Buddha’s own words.