Psalms 34:14 Meaning Depart From Evil

Pahāna: Letting go "Depart from evil" sounds like a walk your feet must take, yet the leaving happens in the hand. You set the harmful thing down the way you put down a heavy bag carried too far, and the moment your fingers open, you have departed. Evil keeps its hold only while your grip stays shut, so each time an old grudge or craving reaches for you again, you loosen your hand and let it fall.

Kusala: The wholesome Good here means skillful, the way a doctor's care is skillful, measured by what it heals. "Do good" asks for the deed that builds health in you and in the people around you: kindness, honesty, and a patient tongue. You can weigh any act by the wake it leaves behind, how much ease it adds to a room and how little harm.

Kamma: Action and its fruit Every deed carries a seed of its own result inside it. So "seek peace" can follow "do good" as harvest follows planting: the peace you chase is the ripened fruit of the good you set in the ground, arriving in its own season like apples years after the sapling. Leave evil and its bitter crop stops feeding you; do good and a quieter life slowly comes ripe.

Santi: Peace Peace here is the cool quiet left in the mind when the fires of wanting and anger burn down to ash. "Seek peace" points past any truce between enemies toward this inner stillness, the calm of a house the morning after a long storm has blown through. Buddhists call it the highest happiness, the settled ground that departing from evil and doing good have been aiming at all along.

Appamāda: Diligence "Pursue it" turns peace into quarry you have to chase, and no single day's hunt runs it to ground. Diligence is the steady care that keeps after the good and lets no hour slip past unguarded, the way a night watchman stays awake so nothing is lost while the household sleeps. The Buddha spent his last breath on this one word: keep at it, and do not coast to a stop.