Archive for May, 2004
19 May, 2004
The Ghost of Shoplifting Past
Still, I presisted in such escapades as stealing everyone a Christmas present, and I could put them under the tree with a real sense of giving. Buying a present, I told myself, meant budgeting your love with money. When you stole one, you were risking everything just to see new earrings on your sister’s ears.
– Barry Farrell, The Ghost of Shoplifting Past
9 May, 2004
Taking God for Granted
The majority of us believe in God, take it for granted that God exists. The rest, who do not believe, take it for granted that God does not exist. Either way, God is taken for granted.
– Erich Fromm, The Sane Society
6 May, 2004
Living in the Present
Was in the toilet enjoying a book on Buddhism, when I came across a few pages of “living in the present”. Suddenly I had a feeling of falling forward, as if one end of a string were attached to my head and the other to a slow moving truck.
Occasionally, I may lapse into reminisces; most of the time though, I think about what is going to be. The rest of the time I’m in limbo, neither here nor there, just floating around between past, present and future. The present hardly gets any attention in my life.
But what does it mean to live in the present? I remember a time when I explicitly told myself to be “fully aware”, to be “present”. But that awareness lasts but a moment. Almost immediately, that state of “present” is relagated to a state of “past”. How can one live in the present for any longer than one thinks about it?
Take for example the sucking up of a drink with a straw. the instant I start sucking on the straw, the liquid flows up towards my mouth. After a while, I have to pause to take a breather, causing the liquid to fall back down. That intermission breaks the constant flow drink into my mouth. It isn’t continuous.
Likewise, “awareness” seems like that. Moments of awareness, with many intermissions in between. I wonder if that’s how it’s supposed to be, the way may Buddhists texts put it, it seems like we should be sucking on the straw without drawing a breath.