The Container

These questions may be a bit maddening for some, because they challenge the very foundations of what’s commonly presumed about time, particularly this moment. We imagine now as an aspect of time, an aspect of the world we live in, and in fact, an unimportant one. For most people, with their grand and opulent life stories, right here and now is about the LEAST important moment in their lives.

But what if we flip that model on its head?

What if we saw time, space, the world and all the apparent objects within it as appearances or aspects of the Now?

What if the present moment was the only moment?

Is it more accurate to say that you experience a succession of separate moments, each with slightly different quality, or one stationary moment with ever changing scenery?

How difficult is it to conceive of now as an unconditioned medium or space through which the world passes, rather than as a fleeting, razor thin illusion? If we’re honest, probably not very.

If that were the case, how far would everything be from now? Could there be any distance to it? Or is the present intimately one with whatever arises in it?

Browse your experience, and see if you can find anything that isn’t here now. Really consider this closely.

That rules out our immediate perception, and all of what we call the material world. Trees, rocks, lava, rivers, stars, they’re all immovably stuck in this moment.

What about next week’s meeting? That’s not here yet, is it? It is, just as a concept in the present. When it comes, it’ll still be the present, and when it’s over guess when it’ll be?

Last night’s argument with your spouse? A memory in this moment, and when it happened, it was now.

If we’re honest, we may realize we don’t really have to worry about learning to live in this moment, because we actually can’t get away from this moment.

Even our grandest delusions of worlds past and worlds to come are simply appearances within this now. However, at this point, it’s difficult to even call this the present moment, because that implies that there may be others to come!

The present moment is actually something of a proxy. A tool we nondual (un)teachers may use to trick seekers into noticing where they already are.

What we’re really speaking of isn’t quite the present moment. The present moment can be regarded as something of an approximate to what we’re speaking of, but only with regards to time. What’s being pointed to however, is beyond space and time. It’s too simple to grasp, and to intimate to lose.

Any further description at this point would be misleading, but the last thing we’ll say about it is that it isn’t other than where you are.