Here and Now

upekka

what exactly is 'here and now'?

can there be 'here and now' without Right Understanding/Right View/Samma Ditti?

genkaku

I have a hunch that the present moment could hardly be burdened by anything whatsoever.

To suggest that 'here and now' could be 'with' something is ... well, strange, to say the least.

Perhaps we can talk about it, but talking doesn't make something true.

taiyaki

We could say its when the contact of the sense meet the object and you have the knowingness of what arises. So this shape of black and the whole aspect of hearing it somewhere assumed to be in the head as you read this.

That would be the present moment. Instantly gone as soon as you read it, moments of contact and arisings of consciousness.

Theswingisyellow

There is no here and now, it is only our perspective of self that creates this concept. There are only temporary arisings.

Dakini

I'm not sure "here and now" has anything to do with Buddhism. The Buddha taught observation of arising and ceasing, i.e. impermanence. I think this "be in the moment" stuff came along a lot later. We're not supposed to waste our time daydreaming about the future, or reminiscing about the past, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to ignore future planning, or learning from past mistakes, and put blinders on our awareness, so we can only see the present.

Florian

Philosophically speaking 'here and now' is a very troublesome idea. Obviously 'now' cannot have a duration and in this case there can be no such thing. On analysis time and space as real phenomena do not make sense. As Parmenides and his pupil Zeno of Alea tried to tell us, there has to be something changeless that is ontologically prior to time and space or time and space would not be possible.

In Christian mysticism the Holy Cross may be interpreted as representing the intersection of the world of space-time (the horizontal) with the changeless world of the eternal present orthogonal to it (the vertical), thus the meeting of two worlds, where we would all have a foot in both worlds did we but know it.

Cinorjer

"Here and Now" and the companion "Just like this" are catchphrases designed to help you bring the focus of your attention to the present moment. It's part of Mindfulness training. Before you can look at a situation with a clear mind, you must be paying attention to what's happening around you. Instead, we spend a lot of the time focusing on our inner dialog or going over what happened in the past or what we imagine will be happening in the future.

So "Here and Now" is what's happening around you. Pay attention to it once in a while.

Hope this helps.

Jeffrey

Here is dependently arisen with the notion of there. Now is dependently arisen with the notion of past and future. The now is panoramic and it can be many things and is thus dependent on the interpretations of the next moment, the future. It is also conditioned by past moments.

taiyaki

Jeffrey said:

Here is dependently arisen with the notion of there. Now is dependently arisen with the notion of past and future. The now is panoramic and it can be many things and is thus dependent on the interpretations of the next moment, the future. It is also conditioned by past moments.

In the direct experience of the now does it reference anything other than itself?

And if that's the case then where is the link between one arising another?

Jeffrey

Any point is relative to all unmanifest points also. Once you pick a single point the entire sankhara/prapancha also immediately becomes apparent. In meditation just a small wiff of something and you conjure up a whole thought world.

The link between the first and subsequent point is sankhara/prapancha. It is connected by the mind.

How do we drive a car? There is not just one arising each instant. There is a panorama and how do you drive? How can I type this? How can I understand what a sentence is saying and then come up with the next.

riverflow

I think the real problem arises not simply in terms of 'the past,' 'the present,' and 'the future' but that we tend to think of time in a linear fashion. The whole timeline model is simply too crude. We think of time in terms of a 'timeline' in which one end represents the ever-receding past, the other end being the ever-approaching future, and the Euclidean point in the middle being this tiny notch which we call 'the present.' So you have entities which travel along this timeline, as if time and space were entirely independent of one another.

So along with that model of linear time is a limited understanding of causality, which is also linear. But in actuality, we are all (unknowing and ignorant) participants in the midst of a complex web of causality of mutual interdependence. At best, we may highlight particular causes to understand particular things. In basic science, this model of time may function quite well--it gets results because its goals are clearly defined. But in our day-to-day living with one another, this linear time model causes all sorts of problems in our lives (in other words: karma).

Understood as a web of causality rather than as a chain is another way of understanding emptiness. From my own limited understanding, 'just this' may be understood as 'the present moment' but it is not in terms of that Euclidean point, but rather it is the intersection of the totality of everything which makes everything possible, out of which the whole arises--and this intersection of all is emptiness. Dogen expresses it this way in 'Being-Time':

Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.

So awakening is awakening to... just this--the 'gateless gate' as it is said in Chan/Zen. But we're too busy chasing our delusions, here, there, and everywhere, and causing endless suffering for ourselves and others in the process.

pegembara

Dakini said:

I'm not sure "here and now" has anything to do with Buddhism. The Buddha taught observation of arising and ceasing, i.e. impermanence. I think this "be in the moment" stuff came along a lot later. We're not supposed to waste our time daydreaming about the future, or reminiscing about the past, but that doesn't mean we're supposed to ignore future planning, or learning from past mistakes, and put blinders on our awareness, so we can only see the present.

‘So there you have it, bhikkhus. Whatever form may have existed in the past; whatever form may come to exist in the future; whatever form exists right now, whether internal or external, obvious or subtle, gross or spiritual, immediate or dispersed – if you regard that form with proper understanding, face up to the reality of the situation, you must see ‘This is not mine; this is not what I am; this is not my self.’
‘In the same way, bhikkhus, you must regard feeling, perception, mental formations, consciousness. Whatever of this nature existed in the past, whatever will exist in the future, whatever exists right now, whether internal or external, whether obvious or subtle, whether gross or spiritual, whether immediate or diffuse, all that must be regarded thus: ‘This is all not mine; this is none of what I am; nothing of this is my self.’

Anattalakkhana Sutta

However the arising and ceasing dhamma is entered only through being mindful of the experiences arising in the moment. After all the Dhamma is -
sanditthiko [sandi.t.thiko]: Self-evident; immediately apparent; visible here and now.

footiam

upekka said:

what exactly is 'here and now'?

can there be 'here and now' without Right Understanding/Right View/Samma Ditti?

That's a tough nut. I only know that now I am here surfing the Net. That's despite me not understanding.

DairyLama

upekka said:

what exactly is 'here and now'?

can there be 'here and now' without Right Understanding/Right View/Samma Ditti?

Being more fully in the present is a means for developing mindfulness.

Jason

upekka said:

what exactly is 'here and now'?

can there be 'here and now' without Right Understanding/Right View/Samma Ditti?

It's an interesting question. Personally, I'd say that as far as we can empirically discern, the closest we can consciously come to 'here and now' is the point of contact (phassa) prior to the arising of feeling, perception, thinking, and the perceptions and categories of objectification that assail a person (MN 18), which I think requires a certain level of mindfulness (sati) in conjunction with right understanding (e.g., see The Way of Mindfulness: The Satipatthana Sutta and Its Commentary).

But I don't think this point of sensory contact is a concrete thing or static moment in time so much as one arbitrary point or level of phenomenology in the causally-determined process of arising and ceasing that constitutes our sentient existence.

In other words, it's not so much the 'here and now' as it is the closest we can come to the point where conscious experience consciously begins in this cycle, which I think is somewhat akin to @Jeffrey's statement that, "Here is dependently arisen with the notion of there. Now is dependently arisen with the notion of past and future. The now is panoramic and it can be many things and is thus dependent on the interpretations of the next moment, the future. It is also conditioned by past moments," since our experience of the 'present' is actually composed of innumerable such moments.