Heedfulness is the path to the Deathless. Heedlessness is the path to death. The heedful die not. The heedless are as if dead already.

Heedfulness — appamāda in Pali — is the central virtue of the entire Dhammapada, and this is its inaugural verse. The Buddha equates heedlessness with death itself. To be heedless, the verse claims, is not a smaller form of life — it is a kind of pre-mortal condition, going through the motions while no one is watching the motions. Heedfulness, by contrast, is "the path to the Deathless." The teaching is severe and freeing at the same time: the line between life and death is not biological. It is one of attention.