PRESENT TIME
The Sense of time changes in various situations.
Boredom time drags, but when we are interested time passes more quickly,
In childhood one remembers those long languid days when nothing is happening
but not bored.
Time up the mountain
Imagine Sitting high up on a mountain and looking down on a moving train.
We can see where the train has been and where it is going. It has been
past the lake and through the woods and soon it will pass over a bridge
and pass another train going in the opposite direction. We can see past
,present and future in one glance. Therefore the sages say climb up the
mountain to reach the divine or prophesy. Moses is our ultimate paradigm
of going up the mountain for enlightenment and being with the divine.
(Mozart in his “letters”, also spoke about seeing the whole
symphony, all at once)
Contrast your view from the
top of the mountain, of the two trains passing each other, with the feeling
of travelling in one of the trains as the other thunders past.
Which state do you prefer to be in? Can you be a dispassionate observer in one of the trains as if you were meditating? Can you be calm in the midst of chaos?…
Emergencies alter one’s perception of time.
One often hears stories about the details people manage to absorb in the few seconds in an emergency sItuation like just before a car crash and how they positioned themselves to minimise the damage of the impact.
One such story was about a person who slipped down a mountain side and how he managed to position his body to minimise the damage as he was slithering down. Another was about a mother and child stuck in an air raid and the mother remembered the colour of the sky and the texture of the child’s skin as they waited for the bomb.
What time tense is meditation??
Like so many young people today, Sidartha, In Herman Hesse’s book, is sitting by the river Ganges seeking the meaning of life. He sees the Flotsam and Jetsom approaching him and compares that to the future whilst all the rubbish passing him he feels resembles the past.
But how much of the river passing is passing NOW?
This opens the question of the duration of a moment of present time. Is it just a few seconds?…
As soon as the question is asked, the moment NOW has already passed. Just like the river, as soon as you consider how much of the river has flowed past in a moment of present time, it has already passed.
The Ancient Greek sages looked at two aspects of time
Chronos ..Clock time which we are all familiar with
But Also KAIROS. which means a moment of timewhich has no duaration but it is eternally Now
The poignant point of the paradox is that at any moment (of no duration) there is ALWAYS some river or time passing.
The moment NOW is eternal.
It is worth spending a while chewing on this magical paradox until it sinks home.
The moment now is the interface between past and present and has no duration It is AYIN nothingness
But it is always NOW
the moment Now is eternal EIN SOF
Meditation takes into the present time (of no duaration - AYIN) into
that preverbal state where one tries to free one self, for a short time,
of words and talk in the head, free of the endless chatter, by going into
the world of sensations, free of words, the infantile preverbal state
where there are sensations, but no words. It is essential to have language
to communicate but it is equally important TO BE free of the limitations
of words and gestures.
In the book” chicken soup for the soul” the writer tells of
a little girl who used to have secret conversations with her baby brother,
which stopped as soon as the parents came near. One day the parents hid
to hear what she was saying “Baby, baby!” ,she cried, “Remind
me what God Sounds like .I am beginning to forget”
Remind or remember.
During meditation, one is reminded to let go of the thinking and return
to the instructions for meditating. A moment arises and one realises that
one has been thinking instead of meditating.
Where does this moment come from? What is the mechanism of the reminder.
Do we remember suddenly what we are supposed to be doing
or are we reminded. Is the reminder from within or from
without. (See 3 forces)? Suffice to say for
now, that remembering means putting the members together again.
Meaning that during meditation the different parts of the being coming
together.