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Nm 2.4 PTS: Nd i 42
Andrew Olendzki
2005
Translator's note
This remarkable and powerful poem, found buried amid the rather dry
linguistic commentary of the Niddesa (a canonical commentary on the
Atthakavagga of the Sutta Nipata attributed to Sariputta), 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
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2005 Andrew Olendzki. You may copy, reformat, reprint, republish, and redistribute this
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Transcribed from a file provided by the translator. Last revised for Access to Insight on 2
November 2013.
How to cite this document (a suggested style): "Guhatthaka-suttaniddeso: Upon the
Tip of a Needle" (Nm 2.4), translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki. Access to Insight
(Legacy Edition), 2 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/nm
/nm.2.04.olen.html .
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