Meditation 88: Making Time for the Present

In discussions of what makes for a good or happy life, we are often advised to "Live in the present." It is hard to know what to make of this advice. At what other time might we live our lives but in the present? What kind of advice is it to ask us to do something we are incapable of failing to do? And yet, we hear of the power of the now and how meditation practice can provide us with the key to living in the present. We are told that countless people are more miserable than they might otherwise be because they do not or can not live more fully in the present.

So we have to figure out what 'not living the present' might be like, given that we are always already living in the present. I got a clue lying in bed the other night, unable to fall asleep. Observing what was going through my mind at the time, I noticed that it was very active. I was thinking about things. What sort of things was I so busy thinking about that I could not sleep? Most of them were about the past, and almost all the rest were about the future. For example, I might start thinking of my parents and how they died, and ask if there was anything more I could have done for them. There are many occasions in the past that call forth sadness, regret, guilt, anger or hate, when we think of them. There are many more that call up joy, mirth and gladness. 

Looking toward the future I found myself thinking about how to design an introductory philosophy course syllabus that conforms to the complex conditions attaching to General Education courses in my University, complete with detailed outlines, and explicit connections to the 'Learning Outcomes' mandated by bureaucratic committees and external authorities. I may not have to complete the syllabus for a month or so, but still it preys on my mind. So my thinking takes on the aspect of practical reason in which I work back from the desired end to what I can do now. Of course, in the middle of the night, there is nothing I can do, yet I gnaw away at it, and this robs me of a peaceful sleep.

Is thinking about the past and future compatible with ‘living in the present?’ Perhaps not, since ‘living in the present’ indicates a presence of mind to the passing moment, and a mindfulness of what is around and within us. If one tries to think about the present, then one has already distanced oneself from it. It becomes the abstraction of the so-called 'specious present.' To be called back to the now, I realized, is really to come back to your body without distracting thoughts about the past and future. Now I understand why the elemental training in meditation is simply to breathe in and out, aware of the process, not in the sense of thinking about it, but in the sense of just breathing. This is hard to do. Thoughts intrude, and most, if not all of them, are of the past or future. So when that happens, we are to return our awareness gently to our breathing, breathing naturally the whole time. It is when you return to your breathing that you begin to see how the past and future haunt the present in the form of thoughts that take us away from the moment we are living. Hence, we can make sense of the idea that we must make time for the present in our lives. Anchoring ourselves to our living bodies is one way to live in the moment.

We can cultivate this awareness of the present by setting aside some minutes to inhabit our own bodies in a conscious way, for our bodies are always in the present and have no other time in which to be.