What is the present moment?
To understand why we can't live in the present moment, it is utmost important to understand what is meant by present moment. following is a paragraph taken from the book from the past to the future or What is time.
“Live for the moment”
When I was still a schoolboy, I heard the above phrase from one of my teachers. She was an English teacher. For some unknown mysterious reason, I remembered it. I cannot remember anything else that she taught me specifically. But it is amazing to see how the mind plays games on us. I have thought about that phrase many times in the past. Many times, in the future I will think about it too. At the time it seemed to be the best advice. It may be the best advice in terms of a rational mind, that would be the only wise thing to do. From time and time, I have come across different versions of the same advice from great philosophers of the time, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, Today is a gift, that's why it's called present “(Oogway- kung fu panda). It invites us to be mindful.
Yet we struggle to live in this moment. Our minds wander in the past and into the unknown future. There is more to the mystery than its thought. Can we really live in this moment? What about learning lessons from the past and planning the future? What does the moment mean?
Does the moment mean today?
If so, how can I live in a day?
Does the moment mean an hour?
If so, how can I live in an hour?
Does the moment mean a minute?
If so, how can I live in a minute?
Does the moment mean a second?
If so, how can I live in a second?
Does the moment mean a millisecond?
If so, how can I live in a millisecond?
It seems stupidity to ask such questions.
But , as one of my teachers said,
“He who asks may be a fool for one minute, but he isn't a fool forever.”
How can we live in now? is not the correct question.
Time seems so fast, if the advice is true, I should be feeling each and every moment continuously being mindful. Truth is, the mind is not capable of handling so much information. It simply cannot follow everything. It seems to be jumping from event to event or thought to thought from past to the future, trying to live in this second seems to be more of a supernatural dream than reality. Maybe a meditator can come closer to the feeling of a millisecond. But for an average human being, simply an impossible task. There seems to be the future, there seems to be the past, but the rate of the future becoming past is too rapid to grasp. It's after twenty years that I now feel, maybe it's all wrong. Maybe there is nobody in the seven billion human population that can grasp the reality of that fraction of a second. Or maybe I am asking the wrong questions. Maybe I should ask can anyone live in this moment? If we cannot live in that fraction of millisecond time which is ‘present’, where are we now? Am I in the past? Am I in the future? Am I in some kind of delusion of the mind? Is there anything which can be labeled as moment, or present?
Fig 9. Traditional vs rational timeline.
It is worth doing some analysis of the figure here. If we look at the traditional timeline, there is past present and future. However, if you look at time, it is a continuous function. When we model the world with a continuous function, we just live in a fraction of a second (even we cannot be exactly say as fraction of a second is even divisible to even smaller fragments.)
Following is a paragraph From how to model the world in a mathematical function.
Whatever the model scientist and mathematicians will come across in the distant future will be a continuous function. If you know some basic stuff, for a continuous function you can input any value and there will be an output. These values we input are discrete. However, the function describes a relationship of variables against each other or relative change of an input variable. So, what is constant (or common characteristic) in such a function is change.
Only thing that is common to continuous functions is that it is bound with change, you can only see this if you graph the function. This is the intuition we can get when we look at the world in a hypothetical continuous function. We can expand on this idea. If something is bound to change, moment by moment, there cannot be inherent value to it. The values we see are only artificial, cross sections of the function which lasts only fraction of a time, or not at all.
More importantly there is no, place for us to enjoy the present moment. As present moment is continuously changing.
This is the exact argument presented in the following poem. So, when Eckart Tolle wrote his book and everyone did hug it with enthusiasm, he made a mistake. And it is unfortunate not lot of them come across the explanation. So, live for the moment by my teacher is a mistake.
A walk on the beach A poem on power of now (or no power)
- Poem from the book from the past to the future?
One day I had a walk on the beach,
With my daughter on my shoulders.
My feet dug deep into the sand as I walked.
On halfway I looked back.
Most of my footsteps washed away,
No trace, fresh sand covered footsteps,
Waves crashed as ever.
Then I realized,
That I had no past, I had no future,
And I cannot harvest the power of now.
It is too fast!
Similarly following poem illustrates the same ideal.
To catch The Happiness before it hides
"Life is the journey not the destination."
An angel told me once the happiness is the movement, the journey, the in between.
Then I took a walk and thought to myself.
If life is a wave. Happiness is a movement of the buoy.
If life is a waterfall. Happiness is the flight of a droplet.
If life is wind. Happiness is a falling leaf.
If life is a river happiness is in the flow of waters not stagnated pools of calm.
If life is a lifetime, happiness is in years and decades.
If life is a year, happiness is in weeks and days.
If life is a day, happiness is in hours minutes and seconds
If life is a millisecond, happiness is an illusion in the mind.
Meaning: To catch the happiness before it hides
The poem was triggered by a tweet highlighting "life is a journey not the destination". Ha ha ha, however, I Lied. I really didn't take a walk, (Poets are allowed to lie in the context of poem) though it took me on a thought journey (Maybe I did not lie after all).
Now you know what I thought and it really is difficult to catch the happiness if the life is just in milliseconds. However, we have to go through milliseconds to go into seconds. So, what is happiness? Is it an illusion of mind?
So, where does this leave us with, why can't I live in the present moment??
I would say, we really have to think about this individually and seriously. Something really seems to be not in order. If you understand the concepts given in this, you will know that even a thought cannot be there.
To understand look at one of your thoughts. Think that you are thinking about 'Time' the word time echoed in your mind. How long did it take for it to be there? more than fraction of a second right. So, even to comprehend something we need at least fraction of a second, but this should include the past, as the present moment is continuous. So, when we think and when we understand something it is combination of past and fraction of now. So, what does it really mean to live in the present moment is really something we cannot do. Simply because it is too fast to comprehend.
So, are we living in an illusion of mind? These are exact question's philosophy would try to answer and after all the film Matrix seems no joke.
In summary: Why can't I live in the present moment?
Present moment is an outcome of a continuous function.
Hence present moment is changing moment to moment.
Our comprehension is too slow, and nothing will ever be able to comprehend present moment as a second is infinitely divisible by nature.
Maybe we are living in an illusion created by mind.
Thank you for reading: why can't I live in the present moment.
You may also like to read: Random walk for life.
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