Uttishthata Jagrata

Spoken by Yama to the boy Nachiketa, who has waited three nights at death's door to ask his third question. The four imperatives — arise, awake, having reached, learn — are all plural, addressed past Nachiketa to whoever is listening. The second line is where the verse earns its reputation. Kṣurasya dhārā is literally a razor's edge: niśitā, whetted, and duratyayā, hard to get across. Nothing about it is reassuring, which is the point. The verse is widely known in India as the line Swami Vivekananda took as a motto, usually quoted in the form "Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached" — a paraphrase rather than a translation of this text. One word of caution on the reading: varān can be taken as "the boons" or as "the excellent ones", and commentators differ. The rendering above follows the second, which is the more common in printed translations.