#15.Past-Present-Future: a Zen view. Revised 24Jan15.
The past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in your memories and to live in your expectations and dreams is to live in a non-existential virtual reality, like watching a movie in a theater. Past and future are virtual reality and are used as a powerful tools by our deceptive mind to control us.
When you are living in this fictional past and future world you are missing your true life. You will become nostalgic, anxious, worried or too wishful, because you will miss what you can enjoy now.
Practicing mindfulness meditation is a very effective exercise to live “now” since our focusing point (breathing) and/or incoming thoughts are by definition in the moment during our meditation time and not yesterday or tomorrow.
However this “now” during meditation lasts only during the time of meditation. Learning to extend this “now” during the all day is our goal but how to do it? Simply by being mindful to the current moment. To be mindful to the “now” will become your magnet to stick with real time and not the virtual ones. Now is in fact the only time when you really exist in 3D and not in virtual “thought form”.
I am asking you can try the following wonderful exercise.
Several times during the day challenge your mind and ask yourself “Where am I?” If your mind is in the past or the future reset it to the present time!. It is fun . At the end of the day you will see that being mindful to now is a very difficult skill to master.
We are traveling on an express line from the past to future and back to the past all the time without stopping at the “NOW STATION”. “Being in now” will give you a wonderful feeling of security,comfort and security: no illusion, no expectations, no delusions, just the reality: This is a Zen mind.
Thanks.
Ven. Ji Gong Sunim.