2 Kings 19:28 · World English Bible
Because of your raging against me, and because your arrogance has come up into my ears, therefore I will put my hook in your nose, and my bridle in your lips, and I will turn you back by the way by which you came.’
Māna: Conceit Conceit is the mind measuring itself against others. Arrogance that comes up into someone's ears has already given itself away, since swelling of this kind has to be announced: Sennacherib's officers stood at the wall and shouted their taunt in Hebrew so the whole city would hear it.
From the Buddhism reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
BUDDHISM
Māna: Conceit Conceit is the mind measuring itself against others. Arrogance that comes up into someone's ears has already given itself away, since swelling of this kind has to be announced: Sennacherib's officers stood at the wall and shouted their taunt in Hebrew so the whole city would hear it. A boast is pressure looking for an outlet, like a kettle that has to whistle, and the sound carries straight to the one it was aimed at.
Kodha: Anger Anger is the mind burning toward what stands in its way. Raging at the God of one hill town, after swallowing Hamath and Arpad and Samaria without difficulty, shows what anger runs on: it needs a fresh enemy to stay lit. Carrying it is like picking up a hot coal to throw at someone, and the hand that grips it burns before the throw.
Kamma: Action and its fruit Deeds ripen back on the one who does them. Turning back by the way you came is that ripening drawn as a map: the same road, the same siege train, the same king, all of it running in reverse. Whatever you carried up that road waits for you on the way down.
Dama: Taming Taming is bringing your own mind under your own hand. Hooks and bridles belong on oxen and horses, so lips that never learned to hold a boast get fitted with tack and led, the driver choosing the road from here. Anyone who will not take up their own reins is eventually driven with someone else's.
Nivāta: Humility Humility is lowness of heart, counted among life's blessings. Hezekiah met the same army by carrying the letter up into the temple and spreading it open, with nothing of his own added to it. A bowed head needs no bridle, and low ground is the one place nothing can drag you down from.
Buddhism lens
What are you announcing loudly enough that it gives you away?
Fill a cup to the brim and it spills, sharpen a blade to its limit and the edge soon dulls. Pride in wealth or success lays up its own undoing.
Marcus writes that the best revenge is to be unlike the one who wronged you, and that anger harms the one carrying it more than the one it is aimed at. The person who cannot govern their own temper is governed by it.
Rivers and seas rule the hundred valleys because they lie below them. Lowness is not weakness; it is the position everything naturally flows toward.
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Buddhism