Past. Future. Present.

Incident 1.
This past two days we took on a journey to the 3 holy mountains of Yamagata-ken, Japan: them conveniently symbolising the Past, Future and Present respectively. Along the way I got to catch-up with my college roommate and ceramic artist Shoshi. Amongst the many topics we casually discussed included consumerism, materialism, existential, spatial, and experiential arts.

Incident 2.
Few weeks ago I was at a meditation retreat out in Nagano, organised by Misha, whom I met through an improv class, and his college buddy. The various meditation practice offered in that 48 hours was like a taster, some of them reminded me of the time when I was more involved with the Boundless Zen meditation group back in Massachusetts, where the teachers came from a mix of Soto-Zen and Rinzai-Zen.

In that retreat a session involved listening to a collection of talks given by Alan Watts; It was refreshing and entertaining. The one revelation that I took away was the 'Eternal Now': Future and Past are useful concepts, but they are not the reality. To take the present moment as the only reality is also limiting, it rids us from any responsibility for our decisions and actions. The eternal-now, oxymoron may it be, was so useful in relieving the internal stress that I have created by wanting to both imagine a future to minute details (visioning) while being present.

We live, meet and act within this eternal now. The #past is but a #tag we put on to knowledge or events; Yes, for any events that has happened, they automatically receive this #tag. But all the experiences that we have in the "past", including our perception of events from the past (aka History), are still present with us, present with each choice we make, present in the repercussion of each of these decisions into the future. The past IS present. The future IS present. They are non-exclusive categories, but #tags. This concept has freed me from the self beating of being obsessed with past successes or failures and future hopes and visions; To think of this space-time continuum as an eternal-now is a concept simple enough that it has an empowering effect for our day to day.

This experience I wish to share with you.