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If weird means unusual, then it’s quite a weird thing to say that the present is weird. I mean, how can the one and only thing we can experience be unusual? I don’t know. But when you really think about it, it is just so weird. Start a pot of coffee, grab your devil’s lettuce, Google Zeno’s Paradoxes, and spend some time with me here waxing on this, if just for a moment or two.
To start, the present seems to be the only thing that ‘is’ in our ostensible realm of space-time. But, it also has no ‘thickness’; it’s an infinitely thin moment that is RIGHT NOW. The past and future do not exist here (on second thought, I suppose they don’t really exist at all) but they still seemingly bookend the present from both ends. But, following that bookshelf metaphor, the present wouldn’t be a book anyway because it has no thickness. So what is this non-existent past and future bookending if not no thing at all?
The word ‘flowing’ in the form of rivers and water and so forth is often used to describe the passage of time. I really don’t like that metaphor. The future is not flowing into the present and then into the past. Flow implies substance. If time and space are the water that’s flowing, then the water is appearing from nowhere (the future which doesn’t exist) and then disappearing as soon as it passes ‘through’ the present and into the past. But the present has no thickness, so on what did the future land when it passed through the present and into the past?
Words like flow just don’t capture it. And speaking of capturing it, you can’t capture it. As soon as you think about it or try to grab it, POOF, it’s gone. And no, taking a photo of it does not capture it. It just creates an image, a story really, that can be perceived in some future moment.
I wonder if a better metaphor is that of an infinitely wide movie screen playing all of reality on it all at once. Nothing behind it or in front of it. Somehow reducing it to two spatial dimensions makes it feel more compliant with my meager mental faculties. Who works the projector? That I truly don’t know.
Here’s the weirdest thing to me: everything, and I mean everything, arises or ceases in the present moment:
- Memories are only thoughts that arise in the present moment: the stories of past events arising here, now. Much like the photograph above.
- Anticipation of the future arises here, now. We plan our next day or year, even our next movement of our left pinky finger, in subsequent steps made entirely of present moments arising here, now.
- Our entire conception of our Self isn’t some grand thing we can polish up and put on a podium. The idea of a continuous self is just an assemblage of memories, ideas, thoughts, stories, phenomena, myths, that arise here, now.
- Our sight, hearing, taste, and touch all arise in the present as a complex amalgamation of perceptions on the dashboard of our mind. We moderns commonly reify this dashboard world, treating it as the real one, a world that’s materially external to us, to boot. But that world actually appears entirely as contents of the mind arising here, now.
- And let’s not forget ceasing. Nothing abides forever, and the impermanence of all things becomes manifest in the present moment. So, whatever arises ceases, here, now.
In other words, the entirety of our perception arises here, NOW. And this precious now cannot be located anywhere. As soon as you try, it’s gone and you’ve come up with an interval of time trying to think of it as a duration, which is composed of earlier and later, which don’t exist now… well, the idea of them exists now, but the past and future sure don’t.
And as you make it infinitely thin, it becomes incapable of holding anything at all. But it does. It holds … ALL … of it.
The real truth is I don’t think you can put into words what this present moment is. That would be trying to capture something that can’t be captured. We can appreciate it, feel it, take in the warmth… bask in the seeming weirdness of the Here Now. It’s really quite beautiful. The most beautiful thing you’ll ever find, in fact.
So, let us bask in it, take it in. Here, now. The Stoics might call it ‘living in accordance with Nature’. Taoists may call it ‘the way of the Tao’. And if you stroll into a Zen temple, they would probably just say “Mu” and hit you with a stick to bring you back to being in the present moment. THWACK!