A Quote by Rohinton Mistry
I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. And there is not much percentage in the future.
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We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
To dwell in the here and now does not mean you never think about the past or responsibly plan for the future. The idea is simply not to allow yourself to get lost in regrets about the past or worries about the future. If you are firmly grounded in the present moment, the past can be an object of inquiry, the object of your mindfulness and concentration. You can attain many insights by looking into the past. But you are still grounded in the present moment.
What you think of as they past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace -- and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind. When the future comes, it comes as the Now. When you think about the future, you do it now. Past and future obviously have no reality of their own. Just as the moon has no light of its own, but can only reflect the light of the sun, so are past and future only pale reflections of the light, power, and reality of the eternal present. Their reality is "borrowed" from the Now.
Marriage is an effort to legalize love. It is out of fear. It is thinking about the future, about the tomorrows. Man always thinks of the past and the future, and because of this constant thinking about past and future, he destroys the present. And the present is the only reality there is. One has to live in the present. The past has to die and has to be allowed to die.
In the spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense. The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on.
How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.
The future is foretold from the past and the future is only possible because of the past. Without past and future, the present is partial. All time is eternally present and so all time is ours. There is no sense in forgetting and every sense in dreaming. Thus the present is made rich.
We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that's of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It's always new.
Carrying the past in to the present, we program the future to continue the past. Letting go the past in the present, we free the future to be something else.
What we are left with then is the present, the only time where miracles happen. We place the past and the future as well into the hands of God. The biblical statement that “time shall be no more” means that we will one day live fully in the present, without obsessing about past or future.
I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present.
But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past - or more accurately, pastness - is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past
Where you come from now is much less important than where you're going. More and more of us are rooted in the future or the present tense as much as in the past. And home, we know, is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself.
You have to keep being curious. The notion that the present is different than the past, and the future will be different than the present, and the present is past, as we say it. I think I, by nature, am an optimist. Maybe I was driven to escape from my childhood and to be something, create my own world or career the way I wanted it to be. And I keep doing that in very interesting ways.
My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.
I'd rather do something than read about it." "That's fine, but if you do it, and then can't think what it means, it's never much of a memory. Life has more to so with memories of the past and longings for the future than it ever does with *right now*." -pg 138-9
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