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Religion and Gods

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Buddha, Desire, and Dharma

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21-04-2025T08:00:48Z

Many people now believe that there is a benefit either spiritual or psychological to living in the present. This is a surprising phenomenon because nothing seems more mundane than the here and now. You wouldnt expect anything special to emerge from the constant flow of seconds minutes and hours that fill everyones life from the moment of birth. There must be a deeper reason for giving the present moment a special value. Now is a concept that runs deeper than you might suppose. First of all it cannot be measured by the clock. Before the tick of the clock is over it has vanished into the past. Likewise the experience of now as a subjective event is ungraspable by the mind. A thought is gone the instant you think it and theres an argument from neuroscience that says the words you perceive as a thought are after-effects of the brain activity that created them since the electrical impulses and chemical reactions inside neurons take fractions of a second while the words in your head take much longer. In fact because the now cant be measured or seized upon it doesnt actually exist in the scheme of time. The present moment is like the mathematical definition of a point which has no length--it is merely a marker dividing one measurement from another as in the number 1/3 expressed as .3333 on to infinity. But the same convention misrepresents time as it really is. Time is relative as Einstein showed but you dont have to delve into advanced physics or the mystery of time pondered by philosophersto realize something important. Time in the human world is a malleable elusive experience which is why we feel that there arent enough hours in the day but also that time hangs heavy on our hands. The difference between not enough time and too much time is completely personal. The timeless is just another word for the now. Being outside clock time the now is unique. For each of us if we stop buying into the convention of clock time the now is the meeting point between the known and the unknown. The known is the past the unknown is the future. What makes the now so intensely real is that life consists of nothing else but the flow of the known into the unknown. You know your last thought but your next thought is unknown. So the real issue is how best to live at this ever-flowing omnipresent reality? Most people conditioned to be afraid of the unknown try to ignore it or at the very least blur its impact. They think say and do the same thing today that they thought said and did yesterday. No one is immune from this habit. We need a buffer from reality so that it cant hurt us so much--or so we suppose. In any encounter we bring a set of expectations that buffers direct contact whether it is contact with another person or a new situation. These expectations tell us where we are in relation to the person or situation. From one perspective this setup is all well and good. You dont want to meet your family at the breakfast table and ask them who they are and you dont want to go to work and learn your job over every day from scratch. The continuation of memory keeps things moving along. But the thread that memory provides is in time. It has nothing to do with the now which is timeless. Memory habit social conditioning and everything else that makes life continue day by day has one fatal flaw: nothing new could ever happen. Without the eternal now which constantly renews our experience life would be a ceaseless repetition of the old. This gives us a clue how to live in the now. Be open. Let the new emerge. Be alert to unknown possibilities. Dont get stuck in your old habits and expectations. This sounds all very well but what in practical terms do you need to do? In terms of physical and mental activity there is nothing to do. Doing happens by the clock as so does thinking. You can only live in the now if you go beyond time. This journey occurs in consciousness. One striking feature of Buddhism is known as the teaching of non-doing. It gives instructions for how to be timeless or to put it another way how to live in the now. Non-doing has two parts. The first is to get unstuck from outworn beliefs memories and conditioning. The second is to be mindful of the here and now. Again this sounds all well and good but theres seemingly a flaw. to get unstuck and to be mindful are things were asked to do. so how can you do and not do at the same time? You cant. Non-doing isnt something you can practice. One might go so far as to say that theres nothing you can actually do that will get you unstuck or make you mindful. They are both the outcome of a shift in consciousness not a recipe for creating the shift. The only agent that can create a shift in consciousness is consciousness itself. This isnt a riddle or a paradox. If you think about it at every moment when the known flows into the unknown your awareness shifts. The shift can be tiny like becoming aware that you are hungry or sleepy or suddenly realizing that you have a dental appointment. The shift can also be momentous as in a sudden insight of aha experience. Since you never known what the next experience will be consciousness cant be managed or controlled. It has been shifting all your life outside your control. So the basic truth is that consciousness has always been the creator of experience and therefore the creator of reality. Your personal reality has been nothing else but the unfolding of experience. Why does this truth matter? It matters in lots of ways. Once you see that consciousness is doing everything you can stop hindering it. People have devised countless ways to remain unconscious. They go into denial. They go into unrealistic daydreams rationalizations and fears. They fixate on the past and anticipate the future. They obsess over obtaining something that will bring lasting happiness only to discover frustration and disappointment when this cherished thing doesnt appear and almost equal frustration and disappointment if it does appear and they wind up no happier than before. Between fantasy and distraction fixation and habit denial and repression our mental life unfolds almost entirely outside the now. The most important thing you can actually do therefore is to want to be here now because in reality you arent. You are somewhere else and in that somewhere else the unconscious has stifled the most precious aspect of being human: our infinite potential. Just as the now is timeless it is also infinite. It has no boundaries except those we impose which the poet William Blake called mind-forgd manacles. Once you want to live in the here and now you send this message throughout the field of consciousness. What happens next no one can predict. The only common element is that you start to wake up. The transformation from unconscious to conscious happens in steps of waking up. You can wake up a little many times a day simply by pausing taking a few deep breaths and reconnecting with your sense of self. In effect you open a line of communication to yourself instead of being distracted from yourself. In this simple act if repeated often enough you expand your awareness--or rather it expands by itself. The process that transforms a human being into a conscious creator of reality is the ultimate fruit of non-doing where being here is enough and you are the essence of the eternal now. DEEPAK CHOPRA MD FACP FRCP is a Consciousness Explorer and a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation. Chopra is co-founder of DeepakChopra.ai his AI twin and well-being advisor. He also co-founded Cyberhuman a transformative suite of personalized health and well-being solutions. Chopra is a Clinical Professor of Family Medicine and Public Health at the University of California San Diego and serves as a senior scientist with Gallup Organization. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow. He is the author of over 95 books translated into over forty-three languages including numerous New York Times bestsellers. For the last thirty years Chopra has been at the forefront of the meditation revolution. His mission is to create a more balanced peaceful joyful and healthier world. Through his teachings he guides individuals to embrace their inherent strength wisdom and potential for personal and societal transformation. In his latest book Digital Dharma (Harmony/Rodale) Chopra navigates the balance between technology and expanded awareness explaining that while AI cannot duplicate human intelligence it can vastly enhance personal and spiritual growth. TIME magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of their top 100 most influential people. www.deepakchopra.com.