The Now

Winter  Waning Wolf Moon

“Forever is composed of nows.” – Emily Dickinson

Now is all we ever have.  The Buddha lived this truth into a faith.  We forget it often, living instead in a land filled with regrets and shame, or in a world flooded with anxieties.  Too little do we consider the lilies.  The rose beside us goes unnoticed in our rush to get to the next spot on our calendar, any spot but the one in which we find ourselves at the moment, the now.

This notion seems magical the more you dwell on it.  A focus on the moment, a determined grasp of the gestalt of now has the effect of letting regrets fall away, for they are in the past and calming anxieties, for they are in the future and the now is neither past nor future. It is now.

We can deal with this moment, this particular segment of our existence, the only part of our existence in which we are, ever.  It is those past moments which somehow found us lacking or those future moments in which our fears inhere that drag us away from serenity.  It does not need to be so.

Meditation can train us to focus on our breathing, our physical presence.  It can help us deal with the monkey mind that scrambles this way and that, shaking a stick of worry or throwing a rock of shame.  Even meditation, though, only trains us.  It trains us for life in the moment.

If you can, stop a moment.  Right now. Notice your feet, your hands.  Breathe in and breathe out.  Take a few deep breaths, use the diaphragm.  Notice the thoughts that come to you.  Notice them and let them go, let them pass on through.  They, too, have a journey.

This is all you know and all you need to know.  Right now.  Pregnant moment.  Your eternity.