Katha Upanishad 2-2-13
"The timeless midst the transient, the awareness amidst the flux"
***
Join back the little slivers of time that you have unwittingly split up with your own hands. Regain a continuing sense of the present. The so called 'present moment' isn't here now and gone the next instant. Flow with nature and discover for yourself if your 'present moment' can continue longer, through the hour, through the day. Allow that little fleeting instant to stretch out. Rejoin the fragments of your life that have been broken into little manageable bits of '10 AM, meeting with boss', '10.15 AM, meeting with client'.
***
Have a 'whole day meeting with self" - no boss, no client, no computer, nothing to tell what time it is. Remove the scheduler, the task manager, the wrist watch, the little digital dial with its virtual ticks marking out an irreversible, irredeemable slice of your life that was here now this instant and gone forever the next. Reset your life, gain freedom from gadgets that have cut up your conception of time into little pieces. Let man made, machine made time fly out finally and completely, never to return again, at least not with the same manic force and strength.
***
Ancient man measured time by the moon and seasons. For him time was something completely different from what it is now. You can call him primitive, call him out dated, but remember this - his present moment lasted much longer, he was more at peace, more in sync with the universe than we can ever be. Try and flow with rhythms of nature that our ancestors understood so well, and which no longer make sense to our chopped up world. There is time marked by day and night, a full twelve hours each - something you will understand only if you find yourself in a silent remote place with nothing to do except watch the sun rise and set, watch the stars wheel around and fade, and watch the sun rise again.
***
There is time marked by phases of the moon, lasting twenty eight days froma full moon to a full moon. There is time marked by rhythms of seasons, and if you can ever learn to mark your time by this you will be a completely different person for the rest of your days. There are also rhythms beyond the solstice, almost beyond the ken of human grasp. There are visitations of comets, like Halley, which returns every 72 years. The human life span isn't long enought to mark time by this. Then there are longer rhythms way beyond human reference. There is the coming and going of the ice age, for instance, and even longer rhythms beyond the grasp of science.
***
All time is, in a sense, mind. Understand this and change forever. The 'present moment' is the mind playing its little management game on you. Because the so called 'present' needn't be a moment at all, it could be an hour, a day or the rest of forever. The faster time flows, the more restles your mind is, and the smaller your 'moment' is. Soon a point is reached where the mind is so frayed by whirling events that the present 'moment' has gone completely.
***
Life is then a daze where events are happening in a blur and there is no grasp of the now. Conversely, when you flow in deep meditation, time seems to stop completely. When you contemplate a verse from the Vedanta, the everyday mind fades away and deeper mind surfaces, bringing with it a different fare slower sense of time.
***
If we choose to, all can always become now. If you can slip out of the clutches of man made time, and slip into the rhythms of time as nature made it out to be, you sense a deep expansion of the present moment. Understanding time completely means reaching a point of stillness where time disappears. At that point, the mind also disappears. Suddenly the Vedantic truth hits home. There is a part of us which is timeless. A part of us which caqn never be ravaged by time. Seek that timelessness amidst the transience. Feel that stillness in the storm....
***
Have a 'whole day meeting with self" - no boss, no client, no computer, nothing to tell what time it is. Remove the scheduler, the task manager, the wrist watch, the little digital dial with its virtual ticks marking out an irreversible, irredeemable slice of your life that was here now this instant and gone forever the next. Reset your life, gain freedom from gadgets that have cut up your conception of time into little pieces. Let man made, machine made time fly out finally and completely, never to return again, at least not with the same manic force and strength.
***
Ancient man measured time by the moon and seasons. For him time was something completely different from what it is now. You can call him primitive, call him out dated, but remember this - his present moment lasted much longer, he was more at peace, more in sync with the universe than we can ever be. Try and flow with rhythms of nature that our ancestors understood so well, and which no longer make sense to our chopped up world. There is time marked by day and night, a full twelve hours each - something you will understand only if you find yourself in a silent remote place with nothing to do except watch the sun rise and set, watch the stars wheel around and fade, and watch the sun rise again.
***
There is time marked by phases of the moon, lasting twenty eight days froma full moon to a full moon. There is time marked by rhythms of seasons, and if you can ever learn to mark your time by this you will be a completely different person for the rest of your days. There are also rhythms beyond the solstice, almost beyond the ken of human grasp. There are visitations of comets, like Halley, which returns every 72 years. The human life span isn't long enought to mark time by this. Then there are longer rhythms way beyond human reference. There is the coming and going of the ice age, for instance, and even longer rhythms beyond the grasp of science.
***
All time is, in a sense, mind. Understand this and change forever. The 'present moment' is the mind playing its little management game on you. Because the so called 'present' needn't be a moment at all, it could be an hour, a day or the rest of forever. The faster time flows, the more restles your mind is, and the smaller your 'moment' is. Soon a point is reached where the mind is so frayed by whirling events that the present 'moment' has gone completely.
***
Life is then a daze where events are happening in a blur and there is no grasp of the now. Conversely, when you flow in deep meditation, time seems to stop completely. When you contemplate a verse from the Vedanta, the everyday mind fades away and deeper mind surfaces, bringing with it a different fare slower sense of time.
***
If we choose to, all can always become now. If you can slip out of the clutches of man made time, and slip into the rhythms of time as nature made it out to be, you sense a deep expansion of the present moment. Understanding time completely means reaching a point of stillness where time disappears. At that point, the mind also disappears. Suddenly the Vedantic truth hits home. There is a part of us which is timeless. A part of us which caqn never be ravaged by time. Seek that timelessness amidst the transience. Feel that stillness in the storm....
