Thursday, December 24, 2020

My Neighbor Totoro

Now

At one time I convinced myself that now did not exist. Thinking of a time line, now is a point on the timeline. It is a point, not a line segment. A point has no length; ergo, it doesn’t exist.

So I imagined one’s spiritual path as footsteps in the snow. It is morning and the rising sun glistens the new blanket of snow. You walk out into the virgin snow and when you turn around you see the path that you took. You look ahead and you see your destination. There are no footprints in front of you, but you can imagine your path forward toward your destination.

You look over at the cat. You stop in your tracks. You look down at where you are standing. That is now. It is not the trail you have created. It is not your anticipated journey. It is that track that you are creating, right here and right now. It is under your foot, that one footstep in the snow. By the time it sees the sun, by the time it can be seen, it is the past. It is not now.

I’ve been told that each moment recreates itself. It is not a little shift, a little alteration. Each footsteps in a new footstep. One has infinite choices of where they might place their left foot after stepping into the snow with their right. It is a new day, over and over again, with each step. That is now, and it does exist. But you can’t see it because it is “underfoot.”

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Who's in the world?

Xiushan said, "What can you do about the world?" Dizang said, "What do you call the world?"