Always leaning forward

You will never experience the future.

You are always and only in the present moment

If you’re waiting on the future to feel joy, you will never feel joy

Katherine Morgan Schlafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to Losing control

abstractions

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

Silence

Silence does not mean to push away or avoid all noise;

doing this is resisting the present moment and the joy and liberation it holds.

Silence means to refrain from succumbing to our habitual reactivity that gets in the way of fully experiencing the present moment as it is.

Rebecca Li, Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method

I can be happy

I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude, and not on external circumstances.

and that I can live happily in the present moment

simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy

Thich Nhat Hanh

Unseen

There is always something coming to birth

Even when we don’t desire it,
God is ripening.

Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 16

Difficulties

You have heard that every buried treasure

has a snake guarding it

Kiss the snake to discover the treasure

Rumi, Harsh Evidence [extract]