Dear stefan_karpik,
One word for now/present in Pali is
"paccuppanna", which can be literally translated as "just occurred".
kb
wrote thus at 06:37 PM 20-08-13:
>Dear PG,
>I wonder if 4 years is a record delay on this group!
>
>As I have found the attempt to focus on the present moment unhelpful in
>my own meditation practice, I've had my doubts that the Buddha ever
>referred to living in the moment or awareness of the present moment or
>present moment awareness. My problems are: sometimes the mind works so
>fast that the experience I am being aware of has gone by the time I am
>aware of it; also, if the past or future is in awareness now, I don't
>see that present moment awareness adds anything to my practice. I was
>tying myself in knots trying to achieve present-moment awareness that
>made any difference.
>
>I think Dhammapada Verse 348. Reaching The Further Shore, advises
>against present moment awareness:
>Let go before, let go the after,
>let go the middle, beyond the becoming.
>With mind released in every way
>you'll come no more to birth, decay.
>348. muñca pure muñca pacchato, majjhe muñca bhavassa
>pÄragÅ«.
> sabbattha vimuttamÄnaso, na punaá¹ jÄtijaraá¹
>upehisi.
>Here I am taking 'majjhe' as meaning what is between the present and
>past, i.e. the present moment, which Joseph Goldstein does.
>
>Joseph Goldstein in the first 10 minutes of his Talk 21 of the
>Satipatthana series examines the advantages and disadvantages of present
>moment awareness and concludes that he does not want a construct like
>'present moment', he wants reality.
>http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/300/
><http://dharmaseed.org/teacher/96/talk/300/> This where I got the
>Dhammapada quote from.
>
>Christopher Titmuss critiques present moment awareness in Dharma Enews
>12 August 2007 in "Is the Now a lot of hype?"
>http://www.insightmeditation.org/index.php/welcome/eng/dharmanews
><http://www.insightmeditation.org/index.php/welcome/eng/dharmanews>
>So does Georges Dreyfus in "Is mindfulness present-centred and
>non-judgemental?"
>http://www.scribd.com/doc/145945785/Contemporary-Buddhism-Special-Issue-\
>on-Mindfulness
><http://www.scribd.com/doc/145945785/Contemporary-Buddhism-Special-Issue\
>-on-Mindfulness>
>
>There seems to be a view around of the Buddha as a kind of ancient
>Eckhart Tolle and some translations seem to support this. Bhikkhu Bodhi
>regularly translates 'dhammo.....sandit.t.hiko' as 'the dhamma visible
>here and now' eg MLDB page 358 MN 38.25. However, 'sandit.t.hiko' is
>literally 'completely visiible', which I interpret as 'obvious',
>'transparent', 'open'; there is certainly no 'here' or 'now in the Pali.
>
>Now I have used Dhp 348 to say the Buddha did not advocate present
>moment awareness, but others in this group have used MN 131
>Bhaddekaratta Sutta to claim the opposite. !f you look closely, there is
>an ambiguity; the translation of 'paccuppannam' as 'presently-arisen'
>(MLDB page 1039) can mean (1) 'present in awareness' or (2) ' in
>present-moment awareness', as the English 'present' can refer to
>existence or to time; meaning (1) supports my stance against present
>moment awareness and meaning (2) supports the opposite! To be honest,
>given Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation of 'sandit.t.hiko', I think he
>intended meaning (2), but did the Buddha? The PED gives for
>'paccuppanna' 'what has arisen (just now), existing, present (as opposed
>to .. past and... future)', but still I doubt: PED gives the derivation
>of 'paccuppanna' as 'pat.i + uppajjati' and the article on 'pat.i' does
>not offer the meaning 'now' and only offers 'again' in a temporal sense;
>so I wonder if the PED inadvertently slipped from meaning (1),
>'existent', to meaning (2), 'present-moment', never imagining that a
>whole philosophy of the now and present-moment awareness would be
>hooked onto this anomalous interpretation of 'pat.i' as 'now' !
>
>To sum up: either the Buddha contradicts himself between Dhp 348 and
>MN131 on present-moment awareness or the PED contradicts itself in its
>understanding of 'pat.i' and 'paccuppanna'. At the moment, PG, I can't
>see MN 131 as supporting the modern idea of present moment awareness,
>but that puts me in the difficult position of agreeing with the PED on
>'pat.i', but disagreeing with the PED on 'paccuppanna', which I take to
>mean 'come to mind, the contents of mind' without any temporal
>reference; if temporal reference to 'now' were seriously meant, the Pali
>would surely use 'vuttamaana'. I would really appreciate some feedback
>on this point.
>
>I'm sorry if I have muddied the waters for you and, if you find
>'present-moment awareness' a useful concept, please keep it. But it is
>not useful for me or some others and I genuinely doubt that the Buddha
>taught it. I wonder if those who do see this concept in the Buddha's
>teachings are projecting a modern zeitgeist onto the Buddha.
>
>Better late than never,
>With metta
>Stefan Karpik