Fake Buddha Quote of the Day
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
—Buddha.
It’s no doubt surprising to many people, since the terminology is a standard part of modern discussion about Buddhism, but the Buddha didn’t often talk in terms of “the present moment.” The closest I know to the quote above is a single reference in the Majjhima Nikaya (131), which says:
“You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.”
There is also however a passage where a disciple of the Buddha, Samiddhi, says the following:
“I, friend, do not reject the present moment to pursue what time will bring. I reject what time will bring to pursue the present moment.”
But of course that wasn’t the Buddha. I’d welcome references to any place the Buddha referred to “the present moment.”
10 Responses to “Fake Buddha Quote of the Day”
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Published: Dec 18 2009
That’s interesting to hear – I sat with a Zen group for a year and the idea of ‘being in the present moment’ seemed so integral to the whole endeavour that I assumed that The Buddha must have spoken about it a lot!
I’m quite sure the Buddha taught about being in the present moment, even if he isn’t recorded as using those words, and quite possibly never did use them.
Great to see this site!
Taken literally, of course, it is impossible to not live in the present moment because it always already is the present moment. You don’t have to try to live in this moment. Even when you think about the future, those thoughts are happening right now. Likewise with thoughts of the past – when you think of the past, you have no choice, those thoughts necessarily occur in the present moment. Buddha taught mindfulness.(Amoung other things.) Let’s not confuse the teaching of ‘living in the now’ with the teaching of being mindful.
Nice post! Tallis
Well, yes, in an obvious sense we can’t be anywhen but the present moment. But to talk about being in the present moment isn’t usually taken to mean that we can’t think about the past or future, it’s talking about, as you say, being mindful of our experience whether we’re attending to thoughts of the past or future, or to what’s happening right now. Most of the time when people are thinking about the past or future they’re not in fact mindful, and so they’re not reflexively aware of their thinking or the effect it’s having on them. It’s just a figure of speech, and it can be misinterpreted.
Here’s more or less a great fake Buddha quote.
In the Coen Brother’s movie “Ladykillers”, a gang who committed a heist was caught by an old woman is pondering what to do with her since she threatens that she will call the police if they don’t return the money and attend church with her. Struggling with the the possibility of killing her, the leader of the gang, the professor turns to the tunneler who was apparently one of the Vietcong says “General, you are a Buddhist. Is there not a middle way?”
He replied “Must float down the river of life like a leaf… and kill old lady.”
Hi Bud,
Your mention of ‘now’/time harkens to an UN-fake quote by the Buddha….
“THis you must come to know oh Bahiya, you are neither in the future, nor in the past, nor betwixt the two….”
(something to that effect)
I haven’t been able to find the exact reference, it’s either in B.Bodhi’s trans of the SN , pp1175, or in the MN 35:95….
At the end of the day, we are who we are and our thoughts take us to the past and to the future in terms of,perhaps, regretting our behavior and aspiring to be better individuals
Just found your blog – could give you a big heap of fake Buddha quotes from postcards!
Re the present moment, nearest I can think of is saying almost the opposite, or at least not privileging the present moment. Dhammapada v 348:
“Let go of the present, let go of the future, let go of the present and cross over to the farther shore.”
I agree with the person who said that while not being specifically mentioned in the suttas, that the present moment is implicit already in the central teaching on mindfulness (sati) – which IS mentioned, maybe hundreds of times throughout the Buddha’s teachings. Mindfulness means ‘recollection’, ie knowing, being aware. If someone is off in daydream land (as I all too often can be sometimes), they are not being mindful, and thus not in the present. As soon as someone then KNOWS that there is dreaming going on, in that instant mindfulness is there again (ie: knowing where the mind is). If you know where your mind is, what it is up to, you are ‘in the present’.
Yes, focusing on the present moment is implicit in the traditional teachings, but it’s rarely explicitly stated that this is what we should do. I did find one Pali canon quote that’s close enough to what’s above to make me say that my Twitter quote isn’t so much fake as heavily paraphrased. So I think now I was being rather hasty in declaring this to be a Fake Buddha Quote. The original is in the Bhaddekaratta Sutta: