On Time
Staying present – Investigating the not so obvious obvious
My last yoga term ( summer 2021) was exclusively themed around ‘Being in the now’. It is a theme which I believe lies at the core of yoga practice. That’s why you will find a quotation from the Vietnamese monk Thich Nath Hanh to this topic on the welcome page of my website. In the following I will use this quotation to take a closer look at the notion of staying present and investigate why the obvious may not be so obvious at all.
‘The secret of the finding is to go back to the now.’
(Hanh, T.N. (2015) Inside the Now – Meditations on Time)
This statement has a deeply arresting quality to me. Why? To begin with, it implies that many of us are searching for something. What we are searching for is not further defined here but it makes me thinking of finding not necessarily a thing or another person or a particular experience, but a more permanent answer to that in ourselves which can become confused and sometimes frustrated by the sheer complexity of life. It would be good to have an idea, a path, a tool, a guide, an anchor which aides us to navigate the challenges we encounter.
Thich Nath Hanh’s word ‘secret’ points to the fact that the answer to this conundrum is a ‘secret’, something not easily to get hold of, something not everybody has access to, something precious. It seems to be something you either luckily stumble upon yourself or someone in the possession of it might convey it to you. In any case it is not something obvious. But still we find ourselves in the position that Thich Nath Hanh wants to tell us about it and all we seemingly need to do is to listen.
The secret answer to our in this sentence not further defined search is the surprisingly simple sounding advice ‘to go back to the now’. Moreover, as the character of the search is not further elaborated on, the answer wondrously must have some universal validity too. ‘To go back to the now’ is an instruction to do something, not with our bodies but with our minds, no immediate physical action seems to be required. The word ‘now’ also indicates a return to the specific, it narrows the focus from a circle, or maybe an infinite field, to a point. It suggests that we are looking at something time-specific. And finally, it is always there, obviously.
It appears to me that in ordinary life we do things, think a bit about them and if resources can be spared we also think of something else. When we encounter more difficult and engaging situations we cast our net of thought a bit more to the problem at hand but still relatively widely, maybe by comparing memories and experiences spinning in our minds with possible future outcomes, jumping forward and backwards timewise. But Thich Nath Hanh proposes to refrain from all these efforts and instead restore and focus our attention to something more straightforward, to what is ‘now’: what exactly is happening, what is it that I am doing here, what am I thinking about, what do I feel right now, not in the past or in the future, but now.
If total awareness of what is right now is the answer, it presupposes that we don’t need anything else, the solution is already at our fingertips, we are equipped with what we need, we just need to actually commit to ‘what is’. This seems to be on the one hand a very optimistic, reassuring thought. Somehow just by really paying attention, by really being in the present, things will fall into place. – However, on the other hand, it is at this point of the argument where one sees an obstacle emerging. An understanding dawns why this simple instruction is a ‘secret’ and not so obvious at all, because we actually struggle to just ‘be’, to observe, to listen, to fully turn our attention to what it means to be right here, to be fully present.
This struggle to bring our minds to the present seems to be wide-spread and maybe is an inherent default setting of our human existence. Some people actually argue that we can’t be in the present. So for example Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher (1889 – 1976), seems to have described humans as ‘beings towards the future’ because of the way we always link ourselves towards a future, with our desires, goals and projects (M. Rowland, 2008). However, a mind unchecked can appear to run everywhere, jumping from one sensory impression, from one association, from one memory to the next and rather than evoking calm and peace and a feeling of ‘being in the now’ it is ending up posing an obstacle. It seems that the wandering human mind in fact must be bridled to stay on course and from what Thich Nath Hanh suggests it is worth the effort.
Ancient Indian texts reveal that this problem was recognised thousands of years ago. So the Katha Upanishad (dated between 5th and 1st century BCE) likens a person to a chariot. The spirit or the Self is the passenger of the chariot, the body is the chariot, the senses are the horses in front of the chariot, which want to run hither and thither, the mind, however, exemplifies the reins which are held by the intellect, the charioteer:
‘Know the Self as lord of the chariot,
The body as the chariot itself,
The discriminating intellect as the charioteer,
and the mind as reins.
The senses, say the wise, are the horses;’
(Translated by Eknath Easwaran, 2007, Part 1, Ch. 3, vs. 3)
This image evokes that it is through constant awareness that we keep the horses on track and the chariot travelling into the right direction. Another analogy in this image might be that similar to learning to steer a chariot it is through training that we will become better in handling the reins. Through repetition and effort we will become more able to keep our focus. With training eventually we might manage to stay fully present for longer stretches.
The Yoga Sutras from Patanjali, a seminal text of yoga philosophy, assembled in the early centuries CE, possibly developed out of an intellectual ferment in which ideas as presented above in the Katha Upanishad were prevalent. The Yoga Sutras emphasise something similar by saying that through constant practice we achieve a quietening of the mind which is shown as a necessity to being able to observe the world and ourselves more clearly. In the opening lines to his text Patanjali calls this ability to sustain attention ‘yoga’.
YS 1.2. Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distractions.
YS 1.3. Then the ability to understand the object fully and correctly is apparent.
YS 1.12 The mind can reach the state of Yoga through practice and detachment.
(translation: T.K.V. Desikachar, The Heart of Yoga, 1995)
Staying present and sustaining this awareness, is offered as having the potential to be a fundamental tool to understand the object of attention better, even fully and correctly. Patanjali, however, adds to the necessity of practice one other: detachment (Sanskrit: vairāgya). With this might be meant the strength to not expect anything, to not stay attached to a certain outcome. It seems to me that we should turn to the moment with openness, like venturing into a clearing in which the trees of our preconceptions make space for a closer look on what we are encountering.
From The Yoga Sutras we can defer that yoga in its beginnings was a method with a huge emphasis on training the mind rather than the body, the latter system developing later in the history of yoga. However, even modern yoga practice, with its emphasis on body work or asanas, contributes to training the mind. With its close observation of the body, tuning in to the positioning of limbs, to the relationships between for example feet and hips or shoulders and breathing, to how breathing aides movement, we have an opportunity to cultivate awareness. Controlled movement in combination with attention to the breath becomes a means for holding concentration.
So, to come back to Thich Nath Hanh’s statement, the search can possibly be seen as the wish to understand better, to bring light into which I described above as the occasional confusion and frustration about the sheer complexity of life. And the simple answer, ‘to come back to the now’, promises that clarity will be achieved if we commit – and practice – to be fully present. But does it work? It certainly gives us a means which is always at hand, even if we need some training to apply it. I also believe that this exercising of our minds has the potential to translate further, that it allows us, in other situations too, to first of all observe whole-heartedly and with openness, and then to act and communicate from there. Just the action of stepping back from thoughts and instead trying to just be with what is, can create a sense of relief, a pause which allows fresh perspectives, a return to more calm and also a sense of more aliveness, of really being engaged with what life brings to the doorstep – and because of this one might find oneself doing things a little bit differently.
In his book The Miracle of Mindfulness Thich Nath Hanh refers to a very fitting short narrative from Leo Tolstoi who more than 100 years ago equally arrived at the answer of the importance to be in the moment. Here is the link if you like some further reading and delving into a fascinating short story (2 pages):
L Tolstoi – ‘The three questions’https://www.fa.org/uploaded/US_Attachments/SR9Questions.pdf
Bibliography
- Desikachar, T. K. V. (1995) The Heart of Yoga, Inner Traditions International, Vermont
- Easwaran, E. (2007) The Upanishads – Introduced and translated by Eknath Easwaran, The Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, California
- Hanh, T. N. (2008) The Miracle of Mindfulness – A Manual on Meditation, Rider, Random House Group Company
- Hanh, T.N. (2015) Inside the Now – Meditations on Time, Parallax press, Unified Buddhist Church, Canada,
- Rowland, M. (2008) The Philosopher and the Wolf, Granta Publications, London
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