No narrative frame is given — the shortest and most compressed poem in this run of discourses, without a “So I have heard” opening
Speaker
Not identified within the text itself; traditionally reckoned among the words of the Buddha
Form
Four short verses of urgent, direct address
Length
~1 minute to read
Difficulty
★☆☆☆☆ — brief and forceful, built on the single image of an arrow already struck
Why this discourse, the tenth
Get Up! is the shortest poem in this stretch of the Sutta Nipāta, and its brevity is the point — four verses that refuse to let the listener imagine death as a distant concern. The arrow has already struck; the King of Death has already caught the heedless in his sway. The only response the poem offers is immediate: rouse yourself, train, and pluck out the dart before the moment passes.
Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
A short, urgent exhortation to rouse oneself, sit up, and train diligently rather than lying around negligently — because death, imagined throughout as an arrow strike already delivered, does not wait for a convenient moment.
Already struck
The poem opens mid-command, with no narrative frame at all: “Get up and meditate! What’s the point in your sleeping? How can the afflicted slumber when inflicted by an arrow strike?” The image is deliberately not future tense — the listener is not warned that an arrow might come. They are addressed as someone already struck, for whom sleep is not neutral rest but a strange refusal to notice the wound.
Caught heedless
The second verse repeats the opening command and sharpens the threat into a figure: “Get up and meditate! Train hard for peace! The King of Death has caught you heedless — don’t let him fool you under his sway.” Death here is not an abstraction but an active agent who has already gained a hold through heedlessness, and who continues to work by deception (“fool you”) rather than force alone — negligence is what lets him keep his grip.
The moment that will not return
Verse 3 widens the address to “needy gods and humans,” both “held back by clinging,” and issues the poem’s central instruction in the plainest possible terms: “get over it” and “don’t let the moment pass you by.” The consequence of missing it is stated without softening: “if you miss your moment you’ll grieve when sent to hell.” This is the poem’s sole appearance of a specific negative destination, underlining how much weight it places on urgency over patience.
Dust and the dart
The closing verse names negligence directly as a kind of contamination — “negligence is always dust; dust follows right behind negligence” — before returning to the discourse’s one sustained image, introduced almost in passing at the very start and only now made explicit: “through diligence and knowledge, pluck out the dart from yourself.” The opening “arrow strike” and the closing “dart” frame the whole poem — not as advice to avoid some future wound, but as urgent instruction to attend, right now, to one already lodged.
Key terms
“an arrow strike” — the poem’s opening and closing image (echoed as “the dart” in the final verse), describing the listener’s condition as an existing wound rather than a future risk.
the King of Death — personified as an active agent who has “caught you heedless” and continues to operate through deception rather than force alone.
“the moment” — the poem’s central practical instruction: not to let it pass, since missing it is said to lead to grief “when sent to hell.”
“negligence is always dust” — the closing verse’s image of negligence as a contaminant that trails behind itself, answered only by diligence and knowledge.
The text
The discourse in full — four short verses with no narrative frame, among the most compressed and urgent in the collection. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0, SuttaCentral).
Already struck
Verse 1Get up and meditate!
What’s the point in your sleeping?
How can the afflicted slumber
when inflicted by an arrow strike?
Caught heedless
Verse 2Get up and meditate!
Train hard for peace!
The King of Death has caught you heedless—
don’t let him fool you under his sway.
The moment that will not return
Verse 3Needy gods and humans
are held back by clinging:
get over it.
Don’t let the moment pass you by.
For if you miss your moment
you’ll grieve when sent to hell.
Dust and the dart
Verse 4Negligence is always dust;
dust follows right behind negligence.
Through diligence and knowledge,
pluck out the dart from yourself.
· · ·
Self-check quiz
Ten questions. Click an answer to see immediate feedback. No score is recorded — this is for your own checking.
Question 1 of 10
How does the discourse open?
Correct: A. The poem opens mid-command with no narrative frame at all.
Question 2 of 10
What image does verse 1 use for the listener's present condition?
Correct: C. The image is not a future warning but a present, already-existing wound.
Question 3 of 10
According to verse 2, who "has caught you heedless"?
Correct: B. Death is described as continuing to operate by fooling the heedless, not by force alone.
Question 4 of 10
What two groups does verse 3 say are both "held back by clinging"?
Correct: D. The instruction that follows — "don't let the moment pass you by" — is addressed to both alike.
Question 5 of 10
What does verse 3 say happens to someone who misses "the moment"?
Correct: C. This is the poem's one explicit mention of a specific unfortunate destination.
Question 6 of 10
What does the closing verse call negligence?
Correct: A. The image of dust trailing negligence closes the poem's warning.
Question 7 of 10
What two things does the final verse say are needed to "pluck out the dart"?
Correct: D. This closing image answers the "arrow strike" named in the opening verse.
Question 8 of 10
Does this discourse include a narrative setting naming a place or audience?
Correct: B. Get Up! is one of the shortest and most unadorned poems in this chapter.
Question 9 of 10
How many verses does the discourse contain?
Correct: A. Its brevity matches its urgent, compressed tone.
Question 10 of 10
What phrase is repeated to open both verse 1 and verse 2?
Correct: C. The repeated command gives the poem its title and its driving urgency.
