The Present Moment

[The Rev]

Everything occurs in the present. The past and future are just ideas we have, and they are experienced in the present. Everything that arises and falls away in mind does so right now.

The thing of it is, the present has no substance. Even a millisecond can straddle it, with half its duration in the future, and the other half already in the past. So there's really nothing there one can grasp as the present moment that is not immediately in the past before it is ever grasped.

Yet that same past exists only in the present, as an idea, as a memory.

In this way, all of existence fits into a space with no dimension. It exists, yet does not. This is the contradictory nature of existence.
:namaste

 

[Secret Chief]

Good post!

Why 'no dimension'?

 

[The Rev]

The present moment is like a point on a timeline. If you make a line from one hour ago to one hour from now, you cannot precisely locate the present moment on it. You could magnify it by many billions of times, and yet the point on the line would never be more than a point. In this way it has no dimensional qualities to it.
:namaste

 

[`mud]

hey Rev,
So........what's your point !
Except for "now", "now" doesn't really exist,
there's a little piece flying by right now !
Everything suddenly becomes memory,
and what's just coming is soon past,
There's really not any "now".
Now go on, finish you point.
Unless you are referring to completeness, as Awoon says.
I myself refer to it as gnosis, and knowledge, and some bit of wisdom.
But......it's not "now".
It occupies nothing
~
`mud

 

[no-body]

hey Rev,
So........what's your point !
Except for "now", "now" doesn't really exist,
there's a little piece flying by right now !
Everything suddenly becomes memory,
and what's just coming is soon past,
There's really not any "now".
Now go on, finish you point.
Unless you are referring to completeness, as Awoon says.
I myself refer to it as gnosis, and knowledge, and some bit of wisdom.
But......it's not "now".
It occupies nothing
~
`mud

Incorrect, it is always now, that is reality. We have become so saturated with identifying with our ego/mind in this society/culture that we can't even fathom not thinking on something in terms of past or present for even a second.

Unless you mean now is just a word that means nothing in and of itself, in which case I agree with you.

 

[`mud]

hey No body,
What does the word "now" mean ?
It doesn't mean a micromoment ago, and it doesn't mean memory.
It doesn't mean "a few moments from '''now'", into the future does it ?
I think it means the speeding transition from one oscillating slice of the "time" in life, to the next.
And it will be in that motion, from one inner working to the next, that we get a quick glimpse of "now".
And then it becomes memory, life in motion, thoughts awakening, gnosis arousing.
If you want to call it "now", OK.....but "now" doesn't ever exist, and then it's gone.
~
I don't really know how to say it, it's always gone.
~
`mud

 

[The Rev]

It's a contradiction. It's always now, yet now has no substance. That was the point I was trying to make.

Personally, I think that the contradiction must be resolved in order to see how things really are.

:namaste

 

[YmirGF]

It's a contradiction. It's always now, yet now has no substance. That was the point I was trying to make.

Personally, I think that the contradiction must be resolved in order to see how things really are.

:namaste

Really? I would not say that "now" has no substance, as it is a dimension that you occupy, unless of course, you feel you are lacking in any appreciable substance. That would then, necessarily, become a judgement call, but one I am not inclined to minimize.

Try thinking of the "now point" as being the crest of a wave YOU are propelling. The point is, "you" are energy that is self-aware, as energy, you are essentially "action personified". That "energy" is what creates the forward momentum due to the continuous nature of the expansion of being.

Just a thought.

To say the least, I am in complete disagreement with Mud on this topic.

 

[no-body]

hey No body,
What does the word "now" mean ?
It doesn't mean a micromoment ago, and it doesn't mean memory.
It doesn't mean "a few moments from '''now'", into the future does it ?
I think it means the speeding transition from one oscillating slice of the "time" in life, to the next.
And it will be in that motion, from one inner working to the next, that we get a quick glimpse of "now".
And then it becomes memory, life in motion, thoughts awakening, gnosis arousing.
If you want to call it "now", OK.....but "now" doesn't ever exist, and then it's gone.
~
I don't really know how to say it, it's always gone.
~
`mud

Now is now. You can view past and future nows but you are viewing them all in the now. You lose the point of view of now (in a sense) when you become too identified with ego.

If by "now" does not exist you mean that it can never be quantified or touched in anyway I agree, it can only ever be experienced.

 

[koan]

Time doesn't really exist. It is just a line that humans invented.

 

[Secret Chief]

The mountains and rivers are time. Time is mountains and rivers. How could they be separate? And reality is always now.

 

[koan]

Mountains and rivers come and go, how can they be time?

 

[The Rev]

In the same way that everything happens now, it also happens here. That is, there is no "there", except as it is experienced "here". In fact, now IS here, in a temporal sense. One way to think of is is, the future is ahead, the past is behind, and the present is right here.

And in the same way that the current moment is without dimension, so is right here. Here is only a point in space, a demarcation between ahead and behind, above and below, left and right. It's like the 0,0,0 point at the center of a Cartesian graph. It can't be measured. It's just a point in space.

The point at which we exist is here and now, a point in space from which we can never escape, yet cannot exist in itself, because it's merely theoretical in any terms by which we currently understand the physical universe. And everything we ever experience or know can only manifest in that theoretical point in space. Everything that ever occurs must occur here and now.

:namaste

 

[koan]

There is no past and future, unless one thinks of it. If one thinks of now, then that is also, just a thought.

 

[DreadFish]

In the words of Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche:

All phenomena are completely new and fresh and absolutely unique,
entirely free from all concepts of past, present, and future- as if
experienced in another dimension of time; this is absolute
spontaneity.

...

See the comical, amusing side of initiating situations. In meditation,
see through the illusion of past, present, and future. The past is but a
present memory or condition, the future but a present projection, and
the present itself vanishes before it can be grasped.

Sources: Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life

 

[The Rev]

In the words of Dilgo Khyenste Rinpoche:

Sources: Dzogchen Practice in Everyday Life

Cool!
:namaste

 

[Secret Chief]

Mountains and rivers come and go, how can they be time?

If one considers time to be seamless with existence. Time is but a psychological construct that mind overlays. Now is indeed here, and it is everywhere

 

[wmjbyatt]

You people think too much