Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
The "Moment" of truth !
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
This came to me just a moment ago.......
How long is a moment ?
And where can I buy a watch that has moments on its face instead of minutes ?
There's not a moment to waste...
0
Comments
Perhaps looking at a moment watch is a moment lost.
I'll be with you in a moment @how I'm just looking for the moment I lost...
Moment watches are in the catalog next to the moment beads .
Are they "on special" at the moment ?
My teacher describes the length of a "moment" as a finger snap.
Wikipedia pegs it at 1.5 minutes.
It's all the same moment just broken down.
I don't think there's a smallest increment and it's all so fluid that I have a hard time seeing the border between one segment and the next except when I remember from how the moment used to be.
Maybe I'm just a weirdo.
Whenever I am not sure about something, I always say it depends at work.
I guess it also works for this question as well.
It depends!
Are you guys high? :-)
@Bunks....? Always.
'Instant' - defined in the Dictionary as: "An almost imperceptible period of time"
or as some others would put it,
"The time between the light turning green, and the guy behind you standing on his horn."
oh you forgot to dowload the 'moment app'? Seriously the abhidharmas view on emptiness says there is a smallest size moment. It's like 10000 times faster than a finger snap.
But my guru talks about lines and points. Points have no dimensions. So how are they anything at all? Lines are made up of points connected. But each point has no dimensions so how do they fill space? Now take that view to awareness. What connects the thoughts this five minutes to tomorrow? Or where are the moments during your thought stream?
Being "in the moment" ....Can we ever really be "out of the moment" ?
I found this quite interesting (possibly from a book on Zen)
"Every moment is a moment of events and no moment passes by without an event...One can not notice a moment without noticing events taking place in that moment. Therefore, the moment one tries to pay bare attention to is the present moment!"
That was probably a lightbulb moment for some....
Watt ? .
..
There is a very good book written by Tarthang Tulku and it is called "Knowledge of Time and Space".
Why have I suggested this to you as a book to read in a thread called the moment of truth?
Simply it challenges your notions of time and space, and particularly your knowledge of what you understand as yourself in a dimension you reside in and take for granted. For instance, is there any other time that you exist in other than the moment you constantly take for granted as NOW. What is the space that you occupy in the universe, and where exactly is it to be found other than HERE. Is there anything in your life that does not rely on a reference to something else?
Your whole idea of substance and matter is completely shattered, to the point that you what you define as you is not really anything at all, and it is liberating - what is there to hold on to, to cling to as your self! Well - its what is really you!
So want to find that moment of truth - just let it all go!
You are alway outnof the moment and never in it. Because of the time it takes for light to hit your eyes, your eyes convert it to thought and your brain to organize that thought, you are actually experiencing the past.
How could there be a smallest increment in time?
If we take whatever length of time, it can always be broken smaller. Say we decided a moment was a second. Then what is half a second?
1, 2, 3, 4... into infinity right?
Now, no matter what we define as a moment - if it is in relation to "other" moments - we can break it down further because each whole can be divided infinitely.
1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4... Into infinity.
The smallest of the small will never be found without also finding the biggest of the big.
There is just this one ever-changing moment right here.
Yeah ourself. Your thinking was a refinement of the Abhidharma.
I used to think "I" knew who "I" was until that fateful day
when a Lama kindly pointed out the error of my way
He made me stop and think about my body thoughts and mind
"I" realised then that this concept of "I" was really hard to find.
"I" could not find "I" in anything that "I" once thought was me-
This entity "I" often labeled "I" (or my 'self') was elusive as can be.
But "I" guess "I" should give up the ghost and just say to the Lama
"I" can't seem to pin down who "I" am, perhaps "I"m just a by-product of past karma ?
Seems about right. Perhaps also we gain control and can input and impact on that past. Wait I think that is the Buddhist path in a nutshell . . .
:clap: .
A simple truth perhaps, but to become a kar[ma] mechanic @lobster is no mean feat but it is doable with the 'right' set of tools... . :thumbsup: ..
Of course, all this discussion hinges on the premise that time exists, which of course, it does.
And doesn't.
We experience change. That's the important thing.
"Times they are a changing"
Seems like no time at all between closing eyes in deep sleep and opening them on waking up. People who recover from coma often feel as if no time has passed.
So what is a moment really?
Maybe it's just the shortest period of time that we notice.
Wait just a moment here
A fortnight waiting to go on holiday, lasts far too long.
The fortnight's holiday that follows, is far too short.
Quite often our mind is anywhere but in the present. We occupy oursleves with thinking about either past or future. Seldom in the present. We can see this in practice; being mindful of of mind's play we can see, clearly that our minds invariably drift away from the present into past or future. And another thing we can find that in the present, there is really not much going on. Just space. Kinda boring, actually.
Time is a human invention, now is not.
Here is a little now.
Marcel Proust said that the notion of time "is elastic; the passions we feel dilate it, those that inspire us shrink it, and habit fills it."
A moment is a convention, and as such, as long or as short as our mindfulness or boredom make it.