— The Dhammapada, verse 29 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
प्रमाद में डूबे लोगों के बीच सजग, सोए हुओं के बीच जागा हुआ — बुद्धिमान व्यक्ति उसी तरह आगे निकल जाता है जैसे तेज़ दौड़ने वाला घोड़ा थके हुए टट्टू को पीछे छोड़ देता है।
What it means
The verse defines the wise man entirely by contrast, and by position: he is among the thoughtless and among the sleepers, not away from them. No withdrawal is described and no special knowledge is claimed — only that he is awake in a room where the others are not.
The racing image repays a pause. A racer and a hack are not two levels of effort; they are two kinds of horse, and the distance between them opens steadily rather than in one burst. Nothing is done to the hack either — it is not beaten or blamed, merely outpaced — so the line measures alertness by the gap it produces over time, not by any single act of will.
What it teaches you
Check where you have quietly changed your surroundings instead of your attention — left the group, waited for a calmer week, planned to begin once the house is empty. This verse assumes the thoughtless and the sleepers are still in the room, and puts the entire difference in one person staying awake in that same room.
अर्थ और सीख
यहाँ बुद्धिमान की पहचान उसके ज्ञान से नहीं, बल्कि इस बात से होती है कि वह उन्हीं लोगों के बीच रहते हुए जागा हुआ है जो सोए पड़े हैं — कहीं जाने या अलग होने की बात नहीं है। घोड़े और टट्टू की उपमा बताती है कि फ़ासला किसी एक झटके से नहीं, धीरे-धीरे और लगातार बनता है। सीख यह कि जगह या संगत बदलने से पहले अपनी सजगता बदलिए।
Where it comes from
This is verse 29 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called On Earnestness — the praise of appamada — vigilance — as the path of the deathless.
The Dhammapada is a collection of 423 verses in Pali, among the oldest and most widely read records of the Buddha’s teaching. This English translation is by F. Max Müller (1881), the pioneering Oxford scholar of Indian texts; the verse number is cited with this quote.
