Looking for a quote by the Buddha

score:2

Accepted answer

"Don't let the moment pass you by" found in four or more suttas with this google search.

Put differently as, "Death, monks, is but a gap of a thought away," here.

Upvote:0

It doesn't sound like the sort of prose you'd find in the pali canon. The general theme for some of the 'serious monks' went like this: After the Dhammacakkappavattana teaching, the Buddha gathered those same monks, and said to them (I'm paraphrasing) "Right guys, from here on, remain with the six sense experience".

This was delivered using a granular description of awareness through something called the five aggregate model. This involves watching experience at one or all of the six sense doors. The idea is to watch with such diligence that the phenomenal world of the six sense organs is seen to pass by without achieving anything.

As you can probably see, this is the opposite of not letting the moment pass you by. In Theravada, watching the six sense experience waxing and waning is seen as a developmental forte that can mean the difference between becoming something weird called an arahant, or just remaining in either in the stream or even a run-of-the-mill person (Puthujjana).

By the way, this kind of practice leads to a lot of emotionally cold and despondent practitioners, which is why I always had my other five fingers firmly stuck inside the Mahayana pie!

Upvote:3

I looked up the one in Dhammapada 315:

don’t let the moment pass you by.
khaṇo vo mā upaccagā;

The PTS dictionary entries for khaṇa suggests a dual meaning -- i.e. of "moment" and of "opportunity" -- and translates the phrase as, "let not the slightest time be wasted".

I like that phrasing better, incidentally, because it's more impersonal i.e. without the "you" that's present in the phrase "pass you by".

Also perhaps, does that the fact that "upaccagā" is "aorist" mean that the point of the statement is NOT to detail the process of the moment's passing by -- and is instead a statement that focuses on the whole or result, something like, "don't let it be in a has-passed-by state".

More post

Search Posts

Related post