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.