The Best Revenge

September 2026

All passages below are my paraphrases from public domain translations, condensed for readability. Citations are there so you can check them. Specific numberings can vary across editions and translations.

Revenge seems like one of the earliest social lessons we learn. He pushed me, so I push him. The reaction feels as rigidly programmed as Newton's Third Law. However, many philosophical and religious traditions caution us against this reflex. What interests me about these teachings isn't that they all reject revenge, but that they reject it for different reasons and that one of them doesn't reject it at all. Let's dive in.

Teachings

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 6:6

I've always found this teaching fascinating. It doesn't say don't take revenge based on immediate moral grounds; don't do it because it's not worth the return on investment. He's identifying the cost of revenge — your character. If tit-for-tat revenge is junk food, then Marcus is eating his salad. The other thing that must be mentioned is this teaching comes from a Roman Emperor who had a very wide range of consequence-free revenge options. He chose this because he felt it was better play, not because he had to.

Moreover, we have a vivid story of him living up to his values. While Marcus was writing Meditations, one of Marcus's best generals, Avidius Cassius, received a false report that Marcus had died. Avidius named himself emperor. Marcus marched east, according to some accounts intending to offer him clemency. Before the meeting could happen, one of Avidius's own soldiers decapitated him. His head was delivered to Marcus, who refused to look at it and ordered it buried. Marcus also burned all Avidius's correspondence without reading it, meaning he would not know who else was involved and couldn't use that knowledge to punish everyone else. (Historical facts above sourced from: Cassius Dio, Roman History 71.22–29, trans. Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library 177, Harvard University Press, 1927, vol. 9.)

Dhammapada 5

There is a very interesting myth from the Dhammapada Commentary about how this teaching was delivered. The story goes that there was a barren wife, who not wanting to be cast aside, found a second wife for her husband. However, the first wife's jealousy grew. She poisoned the second wife, leading to the death of the second wife and her unborn child. The second wife swore revenge. She was reborn as a cat and the first wife as a hen. The cat ate the hen's eggs and killed the hen. Then the cat was reborn as a doe and the hen as a leopardess. The leopardess ate the fawns and the doe.

Finally the doe was reborn as an ogress and the leopardess as a noblewoman. After she gave birth the ogress began to search for her. She fled to the Buddha and asked him for sanctuary. He then revealed their stories to them and delivered his famous teaching. The ogress released her hostility and began her path towards enlightenment.

Coming back from Shrek's swamp, hundreds of years before Marcus was concerned about running an empire, the Buddha was preaching about how to live what he saw as an ideal life. This shows through clearly in the tone of the teachings. Note, this is not as simple as there being a more practical alternative to revenge. This is describing the mechanisms through which we make a better world for ourselves. A theme which will continue in the following teaching.

Matthew 5:39

I'm far from the first person to point out similarities between Jesus's and the Buddha's teachings. This is another perfect example. With no known contact between the two, they are delivering very close lessons. In order to stop the seesaw of violence someone needs to choose to get off it instead of kicking it back into the air. Similar to our favorite Stoic Emperor, the Galilean teacher also puts these teachings into personal action. According to the Biblical account of Jesus's arrest, one of his disciples cut the ear off one of the arresting party. Jesus responded by delivering his famous live by the sword, die by the sword teaching (Matthew 26:51-52), then healing the maimed ear (Luke 22:51).

What's interesting is that Jesus directly contrasts his turn the other cheek teaching with another one of the most quoted verses, "eye for an eye" (Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-20, Deuteronomy 19:21). However, the context of the eye-for-an-eye verses is about proportional judicial punishment, not sanctioning personal revenge. This shifting of responsibility from the individual to a different authority is also seen in one of the Tanakh's (or Old Testament) teachings on revenge.

Deuteronomy 32:35 — in this teaching, “mine” is God speaking

Note, this teaching is not taking any moral stance against revenge as a concept. It is prohibiting personal revenge because it's above your pay grade. If eye for an eye shifts punishment from the street to the courtroom, this shifts it again to Heaven. Under the Ancient Jewish view, God sees all and is keeping a ledger. He is saying that you don't need to take revenge; he saw me push you, and he will balance that account at a more fitting time.

It's also worth noting that Romans 12:19 calls back to this verse. In Deuteronomy, this is more of a claim. It is a line within the Song of Moses, not one of the commandments or other laws. However, in Romans, Paul turns this into an explicit instruction to other Christians. Teachers iterating upon older teachings is a recurring theme and worth pointing out when we are connecting similarities between traditions.

For the final teaching we'll take a look at a notable dissension among the group:

Confucius, Analects 14:36 (or 34 depending on edition and translation)

Confucius is believed to be somewhat contemporaneous to the Buddha and many of their teachings are similar. Clearly this is not one of those instances. Note the reasoning here: if we react with kindness no matter what someone does, what is the reward for being nice? This has an interesting way of shifting the focus away from only one's reaction to incentivizing other people's behavior.

Moreover, Confucius takes this teaching much further in the Book of Rites, Tan Gong I, Section 24. Confucius essentially says that if someone kills your parent you must drop everything else in your life to avenge them — "he must be determined not to live with the slayer under the same heaven." What makes this more interesting is that Confucius's guidance on revenge is graduated by the closeness of the familial relationship.

For a brother, it becomes ok to continue to live your life so long as it is not in the same state as the killer. Additionally, you can postpone your revenge if you meet the killer while traveling under your ruler's orders. For a cousin, one is allowed to play a supporting role and forgo leading the charge. I think this graduation shows that this is more of a form of justice than blind bloodlust. It makes it clear that justice is a priority, not the only priority one has in their life. However, depending on the severity of the incident, justice can supersede those other priorities. This is an interesting nuance that other teachings have omitted.

The Pattern

If this were a democracy, we could probably pass a law against revenge with everyone voting for different reasons. Marcus doesn't think the bill is worth the cost. The Buddha and Jesus see it as only continuing a never-ending cycle. Deuteronomy has faith the score will be settled by a different power. Confucius dissents.

Unfortunately the world is rarely simple enough to take unequivocal stances. Sri Yukteswar, guru of Paramhansa Yogananda, had an excellent quote in Autobiography of a Yogi: "This world is inconveniently arranged for the literal practice of ahimsa (pacifism). Man may be compelled to exterminate harmful creatures. He is not under a similar compulsion to feel anger or animosity." This is the real heart of all these teachings: resist your Newtonian emotional response. Maybe that response will cost you too much. Maybe it will perpetuate an endless cycle. Maybe it needs to give way to dispassionate justice. No matter the reason, pushing him back because he pushed you is probably not the best answer to the test.