Now never comes

[Taomeow]

I've first come across this idea in the writings of a taoist philosopher whose name eludes me at the moment, unfortunately, and found it pretty striking. His main argument:

 

"the present" doesn't exist, "now" doesn't exist, it's the ultimate man-made illusion of them all. His reasoning: you can never have a "now" because it immediately turns into "back then," it always reverts to what's behind you, split it into milliseconds and still not one of these milliseconds can last enough to become a "now," it is a "back then" before you have a chance to grasp it... split the millisecond a million times and each part is still the same, not a "now" but a "back then." The static man-made idea of "now" has no counterpart in reality, it only exists in our imagination. The "present," unlike the past and the future, i.e. unlike where things have been and where they are headed, constitutes something that doesn't occur in reality -- a stop, a pause, an interruption in the flow. In reality, there's no such stops, no place in the flow of reality is a frozen "right now" place, they are all behind us or in front of us, but the very spot we occupy is taken -- not by a "now" but by a past-to-future transformation that never, ever pauses to create any stops in between. This is a dynamic picture of Hou Tian, tao-in-motion. The static picture, Xian Tian, tao-in-stillness, is devoid not only of the "now" but also of the "past" and "future," it exists outside time and any developments that are time-sensitive (like a cause-effect relationship, e.g.) are impossible in it, since nothing is its cause and everything, its effect, but they are freely interchangeable -- e.g., everything combined would yield tao-in-stillness and nothing at all, its ultimate manifestation.

[Mal]

Thanks for posting that, interesting and enjoyable to ponder.

 

To be a bit of a devils advocate, can you say that ""the present" doesn't exist"?

 

I would argue that "the present" is the only thing that "exists." While the past and future are only concepts that result from having language, which lets us think and talk about them.

 

But I think my idea of "now" or "the present" may be a bit different. I think of "now" as the changes in our sensory input. An experience rather than a static snapshot of "reality" As soon as you try to say "this is now" you run into that split the millisecond problem which makes your "now" into "the past" and then it's not really "reality" anymore, because "reality" is constantly changing.

Edited January 19, 2007 by Mal

[sean]

Nice post.

 

IMO - Now, like Here and Tao are just common ways realized teachers point to what is. Stillness and Motion, Emptiness and Form, yin and yang -- all imagined separation is in a dynamic relationship that can be recognized and felt and yet the mind can never grasp and make sense of. In order to communicate the recognition of Tao, which itself is a questionable idea, teachers look for deep and subtle words to point to That which is beyond duality (and also is duality). Stillness, Oneness, Emptiness - these are more masculine ways of pointing so they are more common since there have been more men AFAIK who have produced overt teachings of a spiritual path. It's not really the words though. The mind can warp any description. Hou Tian can just as easily be held statically in the mind as Xian Tian. Recognition may come easier to some via pointers such as God, Love, Infinite Flow ... even Chaos (Hun-Tun) ... even no words, a physical gesture, a single flower held up.

 

 

Sean

[Cameron]

I hesitate to even discuss this topic because I feel my understanding is very, very shallow. But, something that has been an underlying sense for me for the past decade or so is the truth of oneness also existing in the realm of time and space. So, from one persective. Object A, lets say a tennis raquet, hits object B, a ball, then goes across the court and object C(other raquet) hits object B. This sort of linear A hits B then C hits B back and forth is occuring in a sort of linear time. The different objects have a cause and effect realationship with eachother.

 

From another persective, and I hesitate to talk about it because of my shallow understanding, object A hitting object B hitting object C hitting object A is one shared process. And, I have liked to refer to this in my own understanding as One Time.

 

In this one time the illusion of seperation disssolves as past present and future are seen as one connected and whole process. Also, and again I hesitate, but from the enlightened persective of no self it would seem that there is no seperation of time, no seperation of self and other, cause and effect and all the other million dualities. Thus, life is lived as one time and all time is one shared process.

 

I havent 'figured it out' myself, just something that has been creeping in for the last decade or so. And I could be completely off track on the enlightend perspective stuff. As I said in another thread I would be interested in studying more what enlighted teachers like Dogen wrote about the topic. As well as Taoists of course.

 

And, I also feel even a concept like one time or applying oneness to time are still just so many concepts to be dropped. I don't know that any of these concepts are even slightly usefull when talking about spiritual cultivation or self realization. But the concepts and opinions roll on...

 

edit- If there is really no self where do ideas of a self moving through time, past, present, future, really stand? I ask 'myself' as much as anyone else. The seeking mind seeks something

[Wayfarer64]

To see all things as if always in the light of eternity, is to leave the grandeur only to the whole, each part is then so small and transitory that it holds no inspiration or nobility. Sometimes one must not look so intently to find the gifts which the present offers to each of us moment by moment.

 

If we had all knowledge perhaps we would then have no desire to go further and our happiness would be an empty thing indeed.

 

Where is the enthusiasm of youth that age cannot dispell? Happiness may be in the moments that seem very long and momentous ...where is the perfection of a simple moment as it holds eternity. That is a bliss to culture!

 

Life seems to me - happiest when it is lived in health and a trusting vigor that accepts the risks and shuns vapid reward. It is the victorious moments that make up our lives that we learn to treasure as we age, and hope to have and share more of. The angushed moments we hope to learn from and leave behind.

 

Moments are the crux of this life and as real as it gets! Change, constant and indeed quite rapid and too transitory for easy grasping is a vihicle for the now to expand the cosmos. Growth and life is all we got.

 

If we are to count angels dancing on pin-heads we are only counting on ourselves to waste our prescious moments.

[Cameron]

Can't we also see eternity in a flower? Or in the smile of a beautiful woman? If it's all one then it's all one. The beautiful flower or drinking a cup of hot tea while talking to a friend or the news of another soldier dying also contains eternity.

 

It is so simple it seems ridiculous to talk about. What is in front of us right now must be the truth. How can there be another truth besides what is in front of us right now? Then again, to seek for some truth outside or somewhere is itself grasping at something.

 

Better for me to allow everything to be as it is for awhile and stop giving silly opinions

[Taomeow]

I think the idea of "no now" points to the process... and in the process, rather than in "what we think about the process," the past is real... you were indeed born of your mother, whether you think anything about it or not, and you are likely to die one day, or alternatively become an immortal, so some kind of future is also "guaranteed." "Now" doesn't take the process into account. At its worst, it can become an amnesiac's way of justifying the gap where memory should have been, and an irresponsible freewilly's lack of interest in whether his kids will have a reason to cry at his funeral or, alternatively, to dance on his grave.

 

Oddly enough, I have worked, more than on anything else in my life, on unifying it in time, on grasping it as a process, as an unfolding, integrating it into a continuity, and experiencing/feeling it this way. This gives me conscious, and rather comprehensive, access to most moments of any length whose combined continuity I call my life. So any "now" I live right now is not necessarily a chronological January 19th, 2007, 1:03 a.m, because I can as easily as most people can flip to a different TV channel flip myself to the "now" of April 30, 1976, 11:17 p.m., and be/live/unfold as everything that is me right there right then and experience it as now any number of times I choose to, complete with skin sensations, sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, thoughts, and even my very own precise blood pressure and heart rate and respiration rate and hormonal output of that particular "now," or if I choose to, the "now" of another time with the same all-inclusive precision. I have, or else know exactly how to gain if I need it, an almost infinite conscious access to any and all such moments throughout my this-here life (and a tiny bit from other ones too, but this is a separate subject). So there's no convincing me that "now" is only now, because experientially, emotionally and spiritually and physically, it is "whenever I choose it to be." "Now" can be a choice, a decision, not just a passive acceptance of what the illusory "timeline" has to offer... I believe an ability to consciously choose a "now" is neither a mystic ability nor a preprogrammed inability, it is simply a skill, just one of the skills most people today aren't taught, like modern dentists aren't taught the ancient Egyptian dentists' skill of implanting gold-laced animal teeth into their patients' jaws, and modern firefighters, their shamanic brothers' skill of summoning the rain...

[Cameron]

So basically your eagerly waiting for the time machine to be created so you can move backwards and forwards through time and space, yes?

 

*isn't serious*

[freeform]

What an interesting idea... there is no now, but there is past and there is future.

 

I've been experimenting living with all three major parts of myself fully present (belly, heart and head)... This has had an interesting effect on me - I now know very little... In the past knowing things was important, now and in the future knowing things is just for entertainment...

 

Another thing I discovered is that past and future are exclusively in the head... from the heart we experience now... it's a sensory experience - like a rock in a stream that can feel the movement in the water, but always in the moment... The belly is a whole different game - it's now, and past and future and everything all at once and also nothing (but nothing specific or separate from 'everything')...

 

The more centered and grounded and connected with all three parts I feel, the less I know and the more I feel in the now... When the head is connected to the other parts, the experience is similar to meditation...

 

So it's interesting that a taoist is writing that there is no now... It's only in the last few hundred years that our heads have been developing at such a huge pace, in the past, cultures lived much more from the belly and heart area, so perhaps it was an investigation of the head at a time that it was not yet developed... now our heads are over-developed and think they run the whole show, so for most people it's far healthier to dig down deeper into the parts of us that we've been ignoring our entire lives.

[Spectrum]

Bow wow to the no now pow wow.

[Taomeow]

Another thing I discovered is that past and future are exclusively in the head... from the heart we experience now... it's a sensory experience - like a rock in a stream that can feel the movement in the water, but always in the moment...

 

"Like a rock in a stream" you feel? I feel like the stream. Where's the "now" of the stream?.. If it's in the rock, if the rock is the "now," then to a stream, the rock feels as an interruption, a distortion, an obstacle between where it's coming from and where it's headed. The stream doesn't merely feel the rock, it responds to it with everything it is -- explodes over it in a cascade of splashes and droplets, twirls, makes a noise... jumps, rolls, slides, hits, reacts, lives the encounter!.. but doesn't stop for it!!. I do feel like a stream with rocks in it. Incidentally, that's how my taiji teacher describes the flow of Chen style: like a river with rocks in it. (Yang is like a river flowing over a smooth sandy bed...)

 

 

 

 

 

So basically your eagerly waiting for the time machine to be created so you can move backwards and forwards through time and space, yes?

 

*isn't serious*

Nope, I'm cultivating myself to BE the time machine...

 

*is serious*

[Spectrum]

I always bring a compass in case I get lost while time traveling... errr (;o) I figure if I dont know what time it is, at least I'll know what direction I'm going.... less the compass spins because I'm in the perfect place at the perfect time... being rather paradoxial in the realm of time dialation, distance and direction always seem more important then how much time has passed, which remarkably enough, always seems longer or shorter then it was.

 

Spectrum

Edited January 19, 2007 by Spectrum

[Cameron]

 

Nope, I'm cultivating myself to BE the time machine...

 

*is serious*

 

 

Sounds fun. Good luck with that.

[thelerner]

Now never comes. To me that passes the litmus test of a great truth. That the opposite of a great truth is another great truth. It is now, right now

 

Michael

[Todd]

Taomeow,

 

What you are basically saying is that the now cannot be grasped. I agree with you. However, not being able to grasp the now does not change the fact that it exists. It just doesn't exist in the way that you want it to, in the way that gives you ownership of it.

 

It is true, the past and the future can be grasped. This is what provides the illusion that we are not now, not here. There are infinite objects to be grasped in either the past or the future. As Cameron says, good luck with that. It'll probably be a fun ride, but where to?

 

Its really not far to go from using the now to grasp onto the past and future, and seeing that without grasping, the past and the future are but aspects of a question that can never be answered. That seeing might change nothing about what you choose to do, and it might be the greatest relief that you ever felt.

 

Todd

Edited January 19, 2007 by Todd

[林愛偉]

PAst, present, future.. neither real, or not real. Perception makes it present, wether it be memory or wasteful wandering thoughts of the future.

 

Now,...Because of the attachment to seeing, it is perceived of as passing, and not real. The same with Past and Future. Though the future effects of past causes have not been experienced in its "formal" manner, they have already been experienced by the one creating future causes. To create the cause is to know the effect. If one does not know their causes, one will not know their efects. They are just like sheep following the herder. One who knows causes, will know their effects(future), and thus is the sheep out of the flock.

One who knows causes, yet is not greedy for delightful effects and utilizes the awakening of cause and effect to awaken others is not an ordinary sheep.

 

I stick to the sheep analogy because it diverts one from feeling attacked in ego, being, personality, and life.

 

 

Peace,

[Ian]

If there is no now, when does everything happen? The past? The future?

 

Seems to me like the daftest thing I've heard in a while.

 

Admittedly a lot of people talk new age rubbish about living in the present and avoid doing any practice which might enable them to do so. And yes, living in the present has nothing to do with irresponsibly going with every impulse.

 

And people who've learned a lot of quality, complex, esoteric stuff over a period of years can easily get irritated when (for example, and not trying to drag you guys into anything) me and Sean and Cameron talk about how simple it all is.

 

But the one does not invalidate the other. Lots of complex knowledge and techniques can be necessary, because people have lots of individual and complex ways of keeping themselves out of the flow.

 

It's all so simple, man.

[Taomeow]

If there is no now, when does everything happen? The past? The future?

 

Lemme try an example.

 

I can ride a bicycle. I learned how to when I was five years old. Any subsequent "now" of mine contains this skill simply because I "contain" it, and I contain it "now" only because I acquired it in the "past."

I "always" can ride a bicycle "now" because I have a skill installed, and I installed it myself, let's say as part of my "software," and it is good for any "now" to come. Give me a bicycle and a-riding I go.

 

I can see. I learned how to when I was a fetus. Any subsequent "now" of mine contains this skill. I "always" can see "now" because I have a perception installed, and I didn't install it myself, I got it pre-installed as part of my "hardware," and it is good for any "now" to come. Give me something to look at and I see it.

 

I can read. I learned how to when I was three and a half years old. Part of software I installed myself in the past. Good for any "now" because it's part of me present in any "now,' for the only reason that it got shaped into part of "me" in the "past."

 

I can breathe the Earth's mix of atmospheric gases and extract oxygen from it and use it to get my metabolism going and be what they call "alive." This ability to breathe oxygen successfully is part of hardware installed in the past, I didn't have to install it myself. Good for any "now."

 

To summarize, I can see how what was done in the past, by tao, evolution, and me personally, continuously come together to make me what I am, although "am" can never stay put, I never "am," I'm a process, I'm a flow, I ain't, unlike John Lennon, no walrus, you can't pin me down with an "is," I "was" and "will be" but "is" just won't stay put, it flows and changes! I can also see how what I do with all of it every moment of my life and what tao and the tianzun (all taoist deities) and all human and non-human interactions and interventions combined are continuously shaping this past me into the future me, shaping the past-future me --

 

-- and all of it is one hundred percent real, and all of it is happening outside any and all "now" simply because "now" that has no past and no future is "never." I "never" breathe methane because the past hasn't equipped me to, I "never" speak Sumerian because the past hasn't equipped me to, I will "never" have a blood-related nephew in the future because my past has made me an only child, I will "never" be African-American in the future because my past has made me Russian, and so on. All the "nows" in the world that do not flow continuously and inevitably from all the real, developmentally accounted for "back thens" do not exist, aren't real, can't be, are a bunch of "nevers" and "make-believes." The only "now" that is possible is an illusory "snapshot" of what IS real, the "past," and the only future that is possible is the mirror into which this past is looking from a distance before getting right there and right through it like Alice in Wonderland, and neither the past nor the future need any "now" in order to exist and be real. Whereas a "now" is like a mirror looking into itself, a total impossibility...

 

And...

 

...if, as so many say so often, it's all so simple, why did taoism produce the single largest body of written knowledge on the planet (hundreds of thousands of non-repetitive documents!) in order to elaborate on this simplicity, and countless hands-on (life-on) practices to master it?

Edited January 20, 2007 by Taomeow

[Spectrum]

You know... now and then... i forget who I was... tire of who I'll be... and remember who I am.

Edited January 20, 2007 by Spectrum

[Cameron]

Maybe this isn't taking into accound the profoundess of the question. But wouldn't the past be what has happened, the future be what hasn't happened yet. And the present what is actually happening?

 

I mean, of course the past has informed the present but it's past. It's what has already happeend. Right now is what is happening. Like when you follow the breath, you connect to what is happening now and just follow the breath(of course you might be also thinking about the past or the future and not really following the breath).. It can get very deep. You might go beyond clinging to the past(You still speak english and know how to ride a bicycle of course).

 

Just more nonsense added to the pot of not knowing.

[Taomeow]

Maybe this isn't taking into accound the profoundess of the question. But wouldn't the past be what has happened, the future be what hasn't happened yet. And the present what is actually happening?

 

I mean, of course the past has informed the present but it's past. It's what has already happeend. Right now is what is happening. Like when you follow the breath, you connect to what is happening now and just follow the breath(of course you might be also thinking about the past or the future and not really following the breath).. It can get very deep. You might go beyond clinging to the past(You still speak english and know how to ride a bicycle of course).

 

Just more nonsense added to the pot of not knowing.

 

Don't be hard on yourself, Nobody knows!

 

Meditation-wise, I'm perhaps a bit different from most people I know in that I've been doing it for thirty years, and the nature and quality of the meditation experience "now" is radically different from what it was when I started. And it is different "now" because the past thirty years of doing it is what shapes what it's like in any which "now." If I just started today for the first time, my "now" would have been quite a bit deficient compared to the "now" informed by "all this time." The current me, the "now" person following her breath, can "rest her breath on her mind and rest her mind on her breath" simultaneously, as the immortal Sun Bu-er has instructed. Meaning, she can remember she's riding a bicycle and has bills to pay and still not lose track of her breath and her intent, not lose track of being present and aware. Moreover, she can remember she's eating an apple, breathing, clearly seeing an apple tree in full bloom in her lower dantien, tasting the apple of a private garden in a Ukrainian village of long ago that tastes vastly superior to the supermarket one she's eating right now, breathing, never losing track, tasting all the apples she's ever eaten, all at once, breathing in the smell of the apple tree in full bloom into her blood... and expanding it all any which way she likes into anything she feels like creating or receiving at the moment. Meditations and "awareness" of a person who doesn't lose track of the past become quite holographic with time. There's room for everything in there... you can strip it down to the bare bones, breathe in breathe out, but only through duration and continuity (tao's virtues, according to the Ta Chuan) the bare bone starts sprouting reality... Every breath I take every twenty-four hours has some molecules in it breathed in and out by Laozi once, it's about as long as it takes every molecule of air around Earth to travel across the globe and come back, and it never dissipated and never disappeared, it's never "in the present" without simultaneously being "in the past," which means you can call it anything time-wise but it "keeps happening" only because it "was" and "will be," over and over. "The pattern of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return," as the classics put it.

[mYTHmAKER]

neither the past nor the future need any "now" in order to exist and be real. Whereas a "now" is like a mirror looking into itself, a total impossibility...

 

 

We are always moving toward the future.

When we reach the future it is the now.

When I ride my bicycle I ride with what I've learned in the past but I'd better be riding in the now or I might crash.

When I was learning to ride my bicycle I was learning in the now.

In order to learn and be one with my bicycle I had to be spontaneous - in the moment.

This is what balance is about.

I do take the past with me into the present and future.

The past helps form the present and the future.

We can't see or predict the future only the possibilities of the future. ( Of course I can predict with certainty that I will never be a parakeet in this life span but this is something else)

This is because we have free will in the present - when we are in perfect alignment,

in sync with the river and the ability to be spontaneous. We are able to flow around the rocks. We switch to the past or future we drown.

So the one constant in the universe is change.

While my body, circumstances, ideas have changed if I look inside I feel the same age as when I first became aware of myself.

I am moving along the river in the same body vehicle - it's getting older, a bit worn here and there, but where ever I am is now regardless of whether I'm aware of it or not. The more aware I am, the more in the moment I, am the freer I am.

Only in the now can you have spontaneity and free will

[Wayfarer64]

Intellectualizing is a wonderful experience, so is dreaming and astral projection and ESP or any mental function of brain-power. But there is still a functioning form of existance we call reality that exists in a state of being that we can measure and label and catagorize through scientific means.

 

Sure, molecules exist a very long time in many different places and in many different beings. This does not mean that they do not have time as a part of their being. Any given thing, be it a molecule a tree a man or a star has a life span. Even the universe itself seems to be finite in its potential as we are able to surmise at this time in our history.

 

Any life span is made up of moments, and each have an instance of being a part of the space-time continuum which is known as the present moment. We are able to intellectualize those moments into smaller parts of nano-seconds or conceave of a molecule existing through mellenia. But existance on the physical plane of being has as a part of it the aspect of time. That does not preclude the mind's ability to put itself elsewhere as a result of imagination or meditation.

 

When I read a book and at some point no longer am aware of reading and just end up turning pages for a span of time without being conscious of the process; just absorbed in the book's words and having my mind fill with pictures and the illusion of spoken voices, where am I in time? My body is reading, my consciousness is where the book has taken me.

 

Our consciousness can detatch from our bodies through many different functions, encluding death. But there remains a part of our experience that is alive. If being alive were ONLY an example of being present in this dimentional catagory of potentials we call reality's now, then we would not be having this discussion. But that does not mean there is no actual now to be part of.

Edited January 21, 2007 by Wayfarer64

[Taomeow]

Well, I specifically avoid any and all practices that disconnect the mind from the body. I don't astral-project and don't sleep-walk and don't meditate without setting up a "be aware or bust" conditions for the body too (full lotus, e.g., not a comfy chair), and don't let my mind be in the book without knowing at all times where my body is and how it feels. That's why I'm not afraid to "intellectualize" -- unlike the in-the-head intellectuals who get permanently confined to a lifetime imprisonment in the left brain hemisphere, I have invested a bunch of time, effort, and systemic body-inclusive learning into connecting my body-mind-spirit into a unified whole. So when I "intellectualize," I do it with my whole body, and when I'm being physical to the max, I do it with my mind on what I'm doing. I was discussing something "intellectual" the other day and a friend told me, "If I was deaf I'd think you're Italian." Meaning I use my hands (and body language in general) when I talk, all the time. I can't intellectualize without my body participating... physically unable to disconnect my head from my hands and my belly from my neocortex...

[Wayfarer64]

TaoMeow- that is a very intense way to be as a constant. I for one like to let go and experience the inter-connectedness i get from out of body experiences. I believe it will also help me let go of this physical state of being when it is time for my consciousness to release from the body in death.

 

I am not sure what sleep-walking represents in this. I have known only one sleep-walker who was staying at my apartment, late one night he came into my office space and pissed on a cabinette & then tried to go back to bed but he tripped and woke himself up, which I heard was dangerous for sleepwalkers to do... I was also awakened by his tumble and as gently as possible got him back to the guest room. He remembered nothing the next day of these things. So I think this is an entirely different sort of mental state than the rest we are delving into...

 

I am saddened reading that you are/will not be transformed and liberated by reading as I tried to discribe. This has been a great joy in my life, particularly when I was young and reading the classic adventure books. But I still get it now. I was just reading Will Durant's Mansions of Philosophy and was transported for a few dozen pages of philisophical speculation.

I'm half Italian so - si si si express away!

I enjoy this thread very much, it reminds me of my " University daze"...