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Upon the Tip of a Needle (Mahā Niddesa 1.42)

Sutta Study
Andrew Olendzki
Fall 1998

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jīvitaṃ attabhāvo ca
sukhadukkhā ca kevalā
ekacittasamāyuttā,
lahuso vattati kkhaṇo.

cullāsīti sahassāni kappā
tiṭṭhanti ye marū,
na tv eva te pi jīvanti
dvihi cittehi samāhitā.

ye niruddhā marantassa
tiṭṭhamānassa vā idha,
sabb’ eva sadisā khandhā,
gatā appaṭisandhikā.

anantarā ca ye bhaṅgā
ye ca bhaṅgā anāgatā,
tadantare niruddhānaṃ
vesammaṃ n’atthi lakkhaṇe.

anibbattena na jāto,
paccuppannena jīvati,
cittabhaṅgamato loko,
paññatti paramatthiyā.

anidhānagatā baṅgā,
puñjo n’atthi anāgate,
nibbattā yeva tiṭṭhanti
āragge sāsapūpamā.

nibbattānañ ca dhammānaṃ
bhaṅgo nesaṃ purekkhato,
palokadhammā tiṭṭhanti
purāṇehi amissitā.

adassanato āyanti bhaṅgā,
gacchanti dassanaṃ,
vijjuppādo va ākāse
uppajjanti vayanti cā ti.

Life, personhood, pleasure and pain
—This is all that’s bound together
In a single mental event
—A moment that quickly takes place.

Even the spirits who endure
For eighty-four thousand aeons
—Even these do not live the same
For any two moments of mind.

What ceases for one who is dead,
Or for one who’s still standing here,
Are all just the same aggregates
—Gone, never to connect again.

The states which are vanishing now,
And those which will vanish some day,
Have characteristics no different
Than those which have vanished before.

With no production there’s no birth;
With becoming present, one lives.
When grasped with the highest meaning,
The world is dead when the mind stops.

There’s no hoarding what has vanished,
No piling up for the future;
Those who have been born are standing
Like a seed upon a needle.

The vanishing of all these states
That have become is not welcome,
Though dissolving phenomena stand
Uncombined from primordial time.

From the unseen, [states] come and go,
Glimpsed only as they’re passing by;
Like lightning flashing in the sky
—They arise and then pass away.

 

 

This remarkable and powerful poem, found buried amid the rather dry linguis­tic commentary of the Niddesa (a canoni­cal commentary on the Aṭṭhakavagga of the Sutta Nipāta attributed to Sāriputta), speaks to the dual themes of impermanence and selflessness. In the later systematic psy­chology called Abhidhamma, these themes are developed into the doctrine of momen­tariness and the thorough enumeration of impersonal phenomena.

All human experience is ever-chang­ing, but is known in fleeting moments of perceptive and affected conscious­ness. Close awareness of these mo­ments, using heightened attention which can be developed through con­centration and insight meditation, re­veal a plethora of non-personal men­tal factors (dharmas) arising and pass­ing away in innumerable unique com­binations.

The poem captures something of this dance of dharmas, yet steers us away from identifying it as “ours.” The ele­ments out of which the mind so quickly constructs these glimpses of experience are universal—pleasure and pain, for example, are felt equally by all.

Every mental state is certainly unique, partly because each moment’s sense data changes and partly because the causal matrix from which they arise, the personality, is so different for each person. But the characteristics of the basic aggregates that comprise all human experience—materiality, feel­ing, perception, formations and con­sciousness—have remained similar from time immemorial.

Our subjective world is created by these states emerging in a moment of mind’s awareness, and when no longer aware—in deep sleep or death, for ex­ample—our world dies with us. (There is little place in the more profound lev­els of Buddhist thought for the notion of an “objectively real” world indepen­dent of experience.)

The image of a tiny seed balancing on the point of a needle is striking—it so poignantly describes the exquisite precision of the human condition. With the past long gone and the future unmanifest, all we have access to is the present moment, and this is only as ac­cessible as we are attentive to it. How much of our legacy we neglect when we fail to attend!

Meditation can train the mind to be as sharp as a needle point, to notice phenomena as fleeting as a flash of lightning. So whether we live 84,000 years or only a few dozen, each life can be as infinitely deep as our mindfulness can penetrate.

 

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Insight Journal

Fall 1998

Download PDF

In This Issue:

To the Forest for Refuge

By Joseph Goldstein

Interview

Practicing for Awakening

By Jack Engler

Article

Mindfulness: Gateway into Experience

By Carol Wilson

Article

One Tool Among Many: The Place of Vipassana in Buddhist Practice

By Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Article

Upon the Tip of a Needle (Mahā Niddesa 1.42)

By Andrew Olendzki

Sutta Study

Sitting Just to Sit

By Larry Rosenberg

Article

Let the Wilderness Serve! (Saṃyutta Nikāya 6.2.3)

By Andrew Olendzki

Poem

 

All Issues:

See all Insight Journal Issues

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