Just a Minute
Time seems so abundant that we take it for granted. After all, we've had four and a half billion years of it since the Big Bang. It is like the air we breathe and the ground we stand on. We can't imagine being without it. Time has been with us since we were born, which makes it virtually eternal. No matter how much we squander it, there is always more at hand.
Time seems vast yet, in a personal sense, it is also small and fragile. Each of us can only be certain of this tiny enclave of time and space that we call "the present". Practically speaking, we always function in the here and now, however much we mentally rely on the past and future to make sense of it all.
Time glows with the aura of eternity, but to be alive is dangerous. None of us can be sure of having another day, let alone another hour. We are fascinated by the stories that newspapers tell us of lives "tragically" cut short, often in an instant. We know that those people could have been us, and that we have no guarantee of a future.
When people realise that the future is as dependable as a two dollar watch, they respond in different ways. Some become more anxious and look for religious or philosophic consolations. Others give up their plans for the future, and attempt to live in the moment, thinking "If not now, when?" Others try harder to achieve their goals. They "seize the day", realising that all their hopes for the future depend on what they do now.
Others more deeply appreciate what they've got. It is quite possible that the next strawberry could be the last one I ever eat. I often wake up in the morning slightly bemused but grateful that I'm here at all. How did it happen? As my girlfriend often says when I phone her. "We're still alive." The fact that we both made it through last night can't be taken for granted. Thousands of people did not.
As usual, the Bible gives some great advice. The author of Ecclesiastes (reputed to be God himself!), said "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit", because time consumes it all. His conclusion was that you should "Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest". He also said that "A man hath no better thing than to eat, drink and be merry" and enjoy the fruit of his labour.
The present moment is often touted as the panacea for all ills, the source of wealth and happiness, and indeed the way to enlightenment itself. Yet when we actually examine the moment, it is just a cluster of thoughts, sensations and feelings much like any other. It is quite trivial and ordinary in fact. So why focus on the present at all?
Focusing on the present can break our addiction to words and all the gloomy, bewitching and fanciful stories they carry. Many of us are totally dominated by our ongoing inner dialogues about the past and future. These can easily take up 90% of our thoughts, day after day, and make us barely conscious of the sensory world around us.
Whenever we are fully present, we escape the past and future and all their unresolvable worries. We can only find peace in the present. We also become more democratic. Our thinking doesn't stop completely when we are in the present, but we give far more airplay to sensation and feeling than we usually do.
Furthermore, to consciously focus on the present, or on anything at all, strengthens our will. With training, we become able to choose which thoughts to pay attention to, which to postpone and and which to ignore. This makes us more tranquil, clear-minded and able to make good decisions.
People choose to "be present" for many reasons. Some do it to increase sensual pleasure; others to develop a dispassionate, watching mind; and others to fully engage with life. These are quite different goals, although the techniques used to pursue them are fairly similar.
"Being present" is often simplistically described as the act of focusing on sensation rather than thought. In the popular press, I often see recommendations such as "Breathe, savour each bite of the apple, take time to smell the roses." (Whenever I hear this last cliché, I think of the horse in the Japanese haiku poem, who ate the roses instead.) The general assumption is that the person is alone and in nature, and has plenty of time to sniff roses and taste apples, which is rarely the case.
Nonetheless, to focus more on sensation is a good place to start. Done well, pleasure can easily be magnified 100-fold. Because you can feel the messages from your body more consciously and clearly, your health is likely to improve. Furthermore, time seems to slows down and your days feel spacious and leisurely.
Enhancing sensuality is all very well but more spiritual approach is "mindfulness". This Burmese meditation practice is now very popular in psychological circles because of the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in Massachusetts.
Kabat-Zinn works with people in chronic pain. He asks them to very slowly scan their bodies, "just watching" and accepting their pains as pure sensations. This practice cultivates a sense of the "observer mind" as being somewhat separate from the sensations, thoughts and emotions that it sees.
This can be enormously liberating. The watcher doesn't have to do anything. He just watches. This inner stillness rapidly calms down the body and mind, and incidentally disarms the both physical and mental pain.
And yet mindfulness has nothing to do with enhancing sensuality — quite the opposite in fact. It is about detachment and withdrawal, and a spiritual transcendence from life. In traditional Buddhism, Yoga, Vedanta and Christian practices, the practitioner constantly watches his mind in order to resist temptation, to disengage from the world, and to cultivate virtuous states of consciousness. This ascetic disposition is never completely absent even when mindfulness is used in secular contexts.
With mindfulness, you become conscious of being conscious. You realise that the act of seeing is separate from that which you see. Religious groups often crystallise this insight into the mantra: "I am not my body, my thoughts or my emotions. I am the pure watching mind." (Of course, this is not true. The watching mind can be separate from your thoughts, but the thoughts are you as well.)
Many religious groups, however, argue that the watching mind is none other than God, or enlightenment. They say it is your essential nature, independent of the body, free of ego or the influences of the past. It is eternal and infinite, and identical with the cosmic consciousness that pervades all creation.
Of course, this is just mystical hyperbole. We can't have a mind without a body. Our consciousness will always be personal and determined by our life history and culture. It is also specifically human (we can't even begin to think like a dog or a bacterium). Our minds aren't boundless. We are limited to just those mental processes that our human brains are capable of. We are not eternal. Our consciousness and memories are always fluid, like everything else in the universe, and our minds undoubtedly die when our bodies do. Despite the spiritual claims that we can transcend all of that, even a cursory amount of self-examination will tell us that.
Appealing as it is, the religious ideal of detachment and purity can also be dangerous. I recently saw a man who, under the daily direction of a guru, has virtually achieved his ideal of "present moment awareness" and the destruction of the ego. He was sane and clear-minded. He was also heavily medicated and under suicide watch in a mental ward.
Fortunately, there is yet another way of being in the present. We can call it "engagement", or the art of wholeheartedly "doing what you are doing". The God of Ecclesiastes exhorts us "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might, for there is no work nor wisdom in the grave, wither thou goest." While we are alive, we still have hope, He said, because "a living dog is better than a dead lion."
In the novel "Zorba the Greek", the author Kazantzakis describes a man passionately in love with life, with all its joys and sorrows. When a villager says to Zorba, "I live peacefully as if I will live for ever", Zorba replies "I live as if I'm going to die tomorrow!"
Even if I admire these sentiments, I still can't be Zorba or the author of Ecclesiastes. I can only be myself in my own particular here and now, a short, portly, middle-aged man with glasses, in boomtown Perth, on a Sunday night. Today was maybe no better or worse than any other day, but it was certainly unique and will never be repeated. Of course, I still plan for the future, but in my heart I know, "This day is all I've got. Use it well. This is it!"