Tuesday, July 28, 2015

What is this now?

From the vantage point of experience, the present alone is real.  The past has happened and is just a memory, the future is yet to happen and can only be imagined.  However, if this now is the boundary between the past and future, is it a boundary with width, or is it an indivisible, infinitely thin line?  If it has width, then there must be a past and future within it and another now in this now and so on ad infinitum (the now getting ever smaller).  It is very elusive for sure, constantly shifting as it does.  Can we only "grasp" it as a fleeting memory and pretend that a "now" that constantly eludes us is "present" when it is actually gone?  How can we be "in" the present when it never is "there" long enough?  Yet, it is inescapable:  we are always in the present moment for, after all, that is all there is.