Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [34]
The mind of the future is unknowable. As a guy who collects a lot of weird stuff, I run up against this one a lot. I’ll sometimes see a certain old monster book or something at a price that’s just a little bit too steep. So I’ll sit there and wonder, “Will I regret it later if I don’t buy this now?” Of course, you can’t answer that question. People stress themselves out all the time over variations of the same question. If I sign this contract, will it make my company big money? If I ask her out for a date, will she say yes? And if she says yes, will I end up enjoying the date or regretting it? You don’t know what the future will be. You might take on an awful job in order to make a lot of money “for the future” but what if you drop dead before then? You never know. Of course, you need to think about the future to some extent. I wouldn’t write a book without imagining a future time when it might be read. But don’t get too hung up on the future. The future’s out of your control. Enjoy what’s happening right now. Do what is appropriate, what is right, in the present moment and let the future be the future.
So what about that present moment? The Diamond Sutra tells us that the mind of the present is unknowable. What’s that mean? We think we know the mind of the present—after all, here it is! But we don’t really know it. We can’t really see it.
Wholly in the midst of something, you can’t possibly see it. As I write this my eyes look at the keyboard (if I’d learned to type correctly, they’d be watching the screen) but I can’t see my own eyes anymore than I can bite my teeth. I can only see their reflection and experience their effects. Trying to see one’s present mind is just like that. I can only see the reflection of my mind in the universe or in my own past.
The present moment is the razor’s edge of time, slicing through both future and past like a red-hot machete through a stick of I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Butter.™ Buddhist writings sometimes refer to mind-moments, the conceptually shortest possible division of time. It’s said that there are sixty-four mind-moments in a finger snap. I couldn’t care less whether this has any scientific value in modern terms—it’s just a poetic attempt to illustrate the fleetingness of the present moment. In the present moment there isn’t even time to complete a single thought, no matter how simple. In the present moment not even perception has time to occur. Action alone exists.
And yet this fleeting teeny-weeny present moment is the only time in which you are free to act. The reality of the unknowable past is set. Done and gone. Our ability to mentally manipulate it is an illusion. Yet in this moment, our past actions affect our life here and now. Within the confines in which our past action has placed us, we are absolutely free right now. That’s an important point—make sure you see it.
The future is not here. Completely unattainable. Yet in this moment, the action we take affects our and the universe’s future circumstances infinitely and unknowably. Here and now we can do something real.
Everything exists in this moment. This moment is the basis of all creation. The universe wasn’t created the Biblical six thousand years ago or even the scientific fifteen billion. The universe is created right now and right now it disappears. Before you even have time to recognize its existence, it’s gone forever. Yet the present moment penetrates all of time and space. In Dogen’s words, “What is happening here and now is obstructed by happening itself; it has sprung free from the brains of happening.”
In other words, we can’t know the present in the usual sense because the present is obscured by the present itself and by the act of perceiving it and conceiving of it. Form meets emptiness here and now and all of creation blossoms into being.
Nirvana
Betcha