善かれ悪しかれ yokare ashikare For Better Or For Worse

善かれ悪しかれ says whichever way it falls, for good or for ill, whatever the outcome. As the Daijisen's example has it, good or bad, all one can do is wait for the result. The English for better or worse means the same; in the wedding vow of the Book of Common Prayer, for better for worse sits inside a promise, and the promise is in the verbs around it. Said of a husband and wife, it stands beside the vow and is not the vow itself.

The phrase joins two old imperatives, よかれ and あしかれ, let it be good, let it be bad, and is known first from a letter of Hōnen (1133–1212), in the collection of his words that Shinran wrote out in 1256, where it tells a follower to leave the good and bad of other people alone.

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