Reading guide
A sharper opening rebuke than SN 9.1's
Where the previous discourse opened with sympathetic observation, this one opens with pointed, almost aggressive questioning — ‘get up, mendicant! why lie down?’ — a harsher register matching the more concrete failure of falling fully asleep.
An image of injury applied to ordinary drowsiness
The deity's rhetorical question — how can the afflicted slumber, pierced by an arrow strike? — treats the monk's spiritual complacency with the urgency of physical injury, a deliberately jarring comparison for something as mundane as falling asleep.
A monk who answers back, rather than staying silent
Unlike SN 9.1's monk, who says nothing and is simply struck with urgency, this monk responds directly in verse — a notable structural difference this reading guide flags rather than glosses over.
A claim of attainment that resists easy verification
The monk's reply describes someone free of desire, beyond ignorance, sorrowless and unstressed, energetic and resolute — language that could describe genuine arahantship or could equally be a sleepy monk's defensive self-flattery; nothing in the text settles which, and this reading guide presents both readings rather than choosing one.
A repeated refrain framed as rhetorical challenge
‘Why bother a renunciate?’ closes each of the monk's four stanzas, the repetition itself functioning less as genuine inquiry than as a pointed pushback against the deity's rebuke — whatever the monk's actual state, his tone is clearly not fully chastened.
Key terms
The text
§1At one time one of the mendicants was staying in the land of the Kosalans in a certain forest grove. Now at that time that mendicant went for the day’s meditation, but fell asleep. The deity haunting that forest had sympathy for that mendicant, and wanted what’s best for them. So they approached that mendicant wanting to stir them up, and addressed them in verse:
§2“Get up, mendicant! Why lie down? What’s the point in sleeping? How can the afflicted slumber, inflicted by an arrow strike?
§3You should amplify the faith that led you to go forth from the home life to homelessness. Don’t fall under the sway of slumber.”
§4“Sensual pleasures are impermanent and unstable, but dullards still fall for them. Among those who are bound, they’re free and unattached: why bother a renunciate?
§5By removing desire and greed, by going beyond ignorance, that knowledge has been perfectly cleansed: why bother a renunciate?
§6By breaking ignorance with knowledge, by the ending of defilements, they’re sorrowless, unstressed: why bother a renunciate?
§7Energetic, resolute, always staunchly vigorous, aspiring to extinguishment: why bother a renunciate?”
Self-check quiz
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