Heedful among the heedless, wide awake among the sleeping, the wise man advances like a swift horse leaving behind a weak hack.

A racetrack image, surprising in this most contemplative of texts. The wise one is the swift horse; the heedless are the slow hack he is leaving behind. The verse does not moralize about the slowness of the hack. It simply describes a difference in pace. The wise person, by being heedful where others are not, moves through life on a different time signature. The image is competitive only on its surface. Underneath, it is a description of how attention sets velocity.