I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
: Alan Watts
Ever wondered why do clocks or watches are made to show the current time?
Why does it not say “it was 23:30 half an hour ago”?
Why does it not say “after two hours it will be 2:00”?
(Why am I asking these seemingly absurd questions? Bear with me; I will get to the point…..)
A properly functioning one always show you the current time. The NOW! The PRESENT time!
Clocks and watches have always fascinated me. Not in a hedonistic sense of wanting to own expensive watch or something of that sort.
But the essence of a watch or a clock, the idea of what a watch portrays. A human mind’s rendition of time. Human’s humble attempt to comprehend a formidable force of nature.
And one primitive mechanical device in particular has always beguiled me:
An hour glass.
I don’t know whether it was intended for it to be this way, but an hour glass is a depiction of life itself.
A symbolism of the past, present and the future. The sands of time, trickling down incessantly. The grains of sand on top is basically your future. The remaining moments of your life.
The pile of sand down beneath are the moments that are now behind you, lost is the past.
Now, neither can you make the sand fall faster nor can you retrieve what is lost beneath.
And the cruel reality is; that your hour glass of life is on an edge of a rock in a sandy beach. You never know when a strong gust of wind will topple it down. The sand no longer held inside the glass. The glass broken– spilled, are your moments, into vast and eternal nothingness.
But as the sand passes through a narrow neck (narrow is the keyword here); you get just a grain, a moment at a time. And that people is our present.
Now this is what all my rant is about. Not what’s above nor what’s beneath. The HERE and NOW.
“How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.”
: Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
Let me tell you a short story.
The two monks in a monastery were having a discussion about their masters.
One disciple was bragging about his master to the disciple of another master.
He claimed that his master was capable of all sorts of magical acts, like writing in the air with a brush, and having the characters appear on a piece of paper hundreds of feet away.
“And what can YOUR master do?” he asked the other disciple.
“My master is Enlightened. He can perform amazing feats too”, the student replied.
“Like what?”
The student replies smiling “When he sleeps, he sleeps. When he eats, he eats.”
What is the moral of the story? Well….
If I were to ask you what phase of your life would you say were the happiest? Childhood or Adulthood?
Most of us would answer, let me take a guess, childhood!
And probably, the reason we have such fond and happy memories of childhood is that; a child always lives in the moment.
Does a child worry about the future? Hell no!! And a child virtually has no sense of the past. Well the most immediate issues that would even remotely concern a child would be the exams or homework due for tomorrow.
Rest of the time as a child we used to enjoy the pleasure of now. Be it a sock ball cricket, plastic ball football, wrestling stickers, paper gun shootouts, origami frogs and boats, paper planes, 4 for 1 cent candies, 2 cent popsickles. Watching cartoons on TVs, playing Mario on Nintendo video games—you name it!
We ate when we ate, we played when we played, we cartooned when we cartooned, we video gamed when we video gamed. Plain and simple living in the moment right there!!! Absolutely no regard for the what is to come and what has been….
How often does this happen to us! We think about work when we eat. We plan for the next weekend when we work. We regret things in the past when we are in bed. Worry about the future when we see other people pretend on social media that they are living dope lives.
And I think we missed a trick as we grew up. Living our lives the way we do in today’s world, either we linger too much in the past or worry too much about the future.
I am not saying that we should not learn from the past, and not plan for the future! But as Woody Allen said:
“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
No matter how much you plan you never know how life is going to play out. And what decision you take in this moment at present is what sets the course for your next coming moments. So might as well enjoy the only moment that you have control over. The NOW.
How do I do that, figure out the NOW thing?
Nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the NOW. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the NOW……. Past and the Future obviously has no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is “borrowed” from the NOW.
– Eckhart Tolle
The key here is to understand that nothing ever has happened outside of NOW and nothing ever will. Past and future are not real. So why worry about it? End the delusion and entanglement of the un-real and learn to embrace the surreal, the moment you have HERE and NOW.
Do you remember why was Po, the Kung Fu Panda upset? Remember what Master Oogway said to him under “Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom”!!
Probably the best advice from wisest of Kung Fu Masters in all of China:
Let me repeat that…..
“Quit!…. Don’t Quit!….. Noodles!…. Don’t Noodles! You are too concerned with what was and what will be! There is a saying : Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery but Today is a gift, that is why it is called the PRESENT ”
Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.
Eckhart Tolle
