Khuddaka Nikaya - Niddesa

Khuddaka Nikaya - Niddesa

The Niddesa (abbrev., "Nidd") is a Buddhist scripture, part of the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. It is included there in the Sutta Pitaka's Khuddaka Nikaya. It is in the form of a commentary on parts of the Suttanipata. The tradition ascribes it to the Buddha's disciple Sariputta. It is divided into two parts:

Maha Niddesa (mahā-) (abbrev., "Nidd I" or "Nd1"), commenting on the Atthaka Vagga ("Octet Chapter," Sn 4);
Culla or Cula Niddesa (cūḷa-) (abbrev., "Nidd II" or "Nd2"), commenting on the Parayana Vagga ("Way to the Far Shore Chapter,"Sn 5) and Khaggavisana Sutta ("Rhinoceros Horn Discourse," Sn 1.3).

This text is believed to have been most likely composed no later than the 1st c. BC.

A commentarial work included in the Canon as part of the Khuddaka Nikāya. It is generally divided into two books: the Culla-Niddesa and the Mahā Niddesa.

The Culla Niddesa contains comments on the Khaggavisāna Sutta and the sixteen suttas of the Parāyana Vagga of the Sutta Nipāta, while the Mahā Niddesa deals with the sixteen suttas of the Atthaka Vagga.

It is significant that the Culla Niddesa contains no comments on the fifty six (Vatthugāthā) introductory stanzas, which preface the Parāyana Vagga as at present found in the Sutta Nipāta. This lends support to the suggestion that at the time the Culla Niddesa was written the Parāyana Vagga, was a separate anthology, and that the Khaggavisāna Sutta did not belong to any particular group. Similarly with the Mahā Niddesa and the Atthaka Vagga.

The comments in the Niddesa seem to have been modelled on exegetical explanations such as are attributed here and there in the Pitakas to Mahā Kaccāna (E.g., Madhupindika Sutta (M.i.110f); also S.iii.9) and to Sāriputta (E.g., Sangitī Sutta, D.iii.207f).

There is a tradition (NidA. p.1), which ascribes the authorship of the Niddesa to Sāriputta. There exists a Commentary on it, called the Saddhammapajjotikā, by Upasena. It was written in Ceylon at the request of a monk called Deva Thera.

Nm 2.4
Guhatthaka-suttaniddeso
Upon the Tip of a Needle
(excerpt)
Translated from the Pali by
Andrew OlendzkiPTS: Nd1 42



Source: Transcribed from a file provided by the translator.



Copyright © 2005 Andrew Olendzki.
Access to Insight edition © 2005
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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.



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 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.