You are fooled by your mind
into believing that there is tomorrow,
so you may waste today
Ishin Yoshimoto, 1916 – 1988) Japanese Buddhist priest, founder of the Naikan meditation method
I don’t know who God is exactly. But I’ll tell you this. I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stone and all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say, and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water. And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying. Said the river I am part of holiness. And I too, said the stone. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water.
Mary Oliver
Anicca [impermanence] is very good for helping us break out of our sense of time. Time is an abstraction. We create it as a linear fund, something that moves forward.
But contemplate that. How long has this week been? Ten days? Some said that yesterday felt like 48 hours. And yet, whats ten seconds of pain? How long is a shower? How long is a cold shower?
Time then is a measure of desire – desire for continuity, desire for a certain outcome. It paralyzes us into expectation and anticipation or dread and worry. We skip over the present moment and get lost in something we imagine as out there in the virtual reality we call the future. But in the purest sense there isn’t any future. We are only ever here
Ajahn Sucitto, What you Take Home with You