— The Dhammapada, verse 168 (tr. F. Max Müller, 1881)
About this quote
हिन्दी में
उठो! आलस्य मत करो! धर्म के मार्ग पर चलो। धर्म पर चलने वाला इस लोक में और परलोक में — दोनों जगह सुख से रहता है।
What it means
The shape is three quick commands and then one calm reason. Rouse thyself is reflexive — the waking is not something done to you — and the idleness warned against is not laziness in general but not-starting, which is why all the urgency sits in the first half and all the stillness in the second.
What is easy to skip past is in this world and in the next. Half the payment is claimed here, not deferred. And the verse supplies no content for virtue at all — Müller’s law of virtue stands in for dhamma, the path itself; the verse states urgency and result and leaves the substance to the rest of the collection.
What it teaches you
Notice which half of that last clause actually moves you. If only the next-world half registers, half the argument is going unused — and it is the half you can test, since whether walking straight makes this week lighter shows up in your sleep, your temper, and what you are willing to be asked about in public. Note too that the commands aim at the gap before beginning, not at finishing; the ease is described as what follows.
अर्थ और सीख
पद की बनावट देखिए — तीन तेज़ आदेश, और फिर एक शांत कारण। उठो में कर्ता स्वयं आप हैं; और जिस आलस्य से बचने को कहा गया है, वह शुरुआत न करना है। सुख का वादा आधा यहीं है और आधा आगे — यानी परलोक की प्रतीक्षा किए बिना भी इस मार्ग का फल इसी जीवन में जाँचा जा सकता है।
Where it comes from
This is verse 168 of the Dhammapada, from the chapter called The World — seeing the world as bubble and mirage, and rising above it.
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.
