So, what is the point of life? Is anything sacred? Does such a question even make sense?
This is what religious people are worried about. And I think that these questions do
make sense and there are answers to them. But the answers are not the matter of getting
more information. The answer is a change in attitude. There are ways of experiencing life
as sacred without believing anything, and certainly without believing anything on insufficient
evidence. There are ways to really live in the present moment. What’s the alternative?
It is always now. How ever much you feel you need to plan for the future, to anticipate
it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now.
This may sound trite, but it’s the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of physics,
in fact, there is no ”now” that encompasses the entire universe. You can’t talk about
an event being simultaneously occurring here and one, at the same moment, occurring in Andromeda.
The truth is ”now” is not even well-defined as a matter or neurology.
Because we know that the inputs to the brain come at different moments, that consciousness
is built upon layers of inputs whose timings have to be different. Јust consider the sensation
of touching your finger to your nose. It seems simultaneous, as a matter of conscious experience,
but we know that the input from the finger to sensory cortex must take longer than the
input from your nose. And this is true, no matter how short your arms, or long your nose.
Тhe brain buffers these inputs some way in memory and then promotes the seeming simultaneity
to consciousness. So, our conscious awareness of the present moment is, in some relevant
sense, already a memory.
But, as a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now.
And I think that this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. In fact, I think,
there’s probably nothing more important to understand about your mind, than that,
if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory; it’s a thought arising
in the present. The future is merely anticipated; it is another thought arising now. What we
truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth,
refuting it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to
never really connect with the present moment and find fulfilment there, because we are
continually hopping to become happy in the future. And the future never arrives. Even
when we think we’re in the present moment, we’re, in very subtle ways, always looking
over its shoulder, anticipating what’s coming next. We’re always solving a problem. And
it’s possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment. And enjoy whatever is
true of your life in the present.
Whatever you can possibly notice in your body, in your mind, in the world, has only one place
to appear – in your conscious experience. Now, I’m not saying this is all just a dream,
but, as a neurological matter it is very much like a dream. It is a dream that is constrained
by inputs from the external world. And the dreams we call dreams at night are dreams
that are not constrained by the external world. And that’s why you seem to get away with
everything. But, you see, your mind is all you have. Okay? It’s all you’ve ever had.
It’s all you have to offer other people. And this might sound strange to say, when
there are maybe many other aspects of your life that seem in need of being addressed
– when you’re trying… struggling to find a career, or you’re sick – but it’s
still true. If you’re perpetually angry, and depressed, and confused, and unloving
it doesn’t matter how much success you have, or who is in your life – you’re not going
to enjoy any of it. I suspect you can all make a list of things you want to accomplish,
of things that really need to be changed about your life. What is the significance of everything
on that list? Each thing on the list seems to promise that if you could only do it, you
would have reason to just be happy in the present moment. We are all trying to find
a path back to the present moment, and good enough reason to just be happy here.
And, again, I’m not saying that everything on your list is absurd, or not worth accomplishing.
But how dissatisfied with the present do you have to be in order to prepare a satisfying
future? How neurotic do you have to be? How unhappy do you have to be? How much stress
do you have to feel? How unpleasant do you have to be for other people to be around?
If you’re constantly ruminating about what you just did, or what you should have done,
or what you would have done if you only had the chance, you will miss your life. You’ll
fail to connect with it. You’ll fail to connect with other people. When other people
talk, you’ll be waiting for them to shut up, so that you can say what’s on your mind
to say. Even when you don’t have an opportunity to talk, in a moment like this, when you just
need to listen, the conversation, as an automaticity, continues. You have a voice in your head that
keeps saying things. Haven’t you noticed? The conversation we have with ourselves every
minute of the day comes at a cost. I’m not saying that discursive thought is not necessary,
or useful, but it is a mechanism by which most of our suffering is inflicted. The sorrow,
and the self-doubt, and the anxiety, and the fear, and, yes, the fear of death. Thinking
is useful. But being perpetually lost in thought – isn’t. Being the mere hostage of the
next thought that comes craining into consciousness isn’t useful. So if there is an antidote
to the fear of death and the experience of loss that’s compatible with reason, I think
it’s to be found here.