Can We Touch the Present Moment?

Nowadays a popular view circulates in Buddhist circles: one should live in the present moment and grasp the present moment. But can we truly come into contact with the present moment? The forms we see, the sounds we hear, the smells we smell, the taste-objects we taste, the touch-objects we feel, and the mental objects we cognize—none of them is a direct perception of the present moment; they are all shadows of what has already passed. It is like watching television: what we see is a series of dynamic images produced by rapidly playing frame after frame of film. These images arise and cease moment by moment, and each individual frame is itself static. Because the frames are played in such rapid succession, the resulting images appear continuous, and the people, things, and events within them seem to be moving continuously. On the surface, everything seems real, but in fact they are all shadows—and shadows of shadows at that.

What our six faculties confront and what the six consciousnesses perceive are all shadows of the past; there is no present moment, much less anything real. Although it is said that the five consciousnesses discern objects of direct perception, what the five consciousnesses discern is by no means a true object of direct perception; it too is a shadow of what has already arisen and ceased—illusory, neither real nor of the present moment.

It is the same with what the five sense faculties come into contact with—it is by no means a true object of direct perception. By the time the five kinds of information—form, sound, smell, taste, and touch—reach the five faculties, they are already particles of the four great elements that have arisen and ceased countless times; they are not at all the original appearance of those particles, not the originally arising and appearing form, sound, smell, taste, and touch, and these particles are still not the most real. For example, a sound starts from its point of origin and travels through a medium of transmission, its energy gradually diminishing. By the time it reaches the ear faculty, its amplitude and energy have already weakened. The greater the distance it travels, the weaker the energy when it arrives at the ear faculty. Then, after transmission through the auditory nerves to the supreme faculty at the back of the brain, the particles of the four great elements may have changed again, so the sound formed is no longer the original sound, nor is it the present moment of the sound. The other faculties are the same.

Therefore, the present moment we wish to grasp is always a present moment of the past tense; relative to the now, it has already occurred and passed. Moreover, the very moment we speak of "the present moment," it has already passed. Each present moment, each thought, never lingers, like flowing water—once gone, it never returns. What we do in each present moment can only influence the direction of the future; it cannot influence the present moment or the past. So-called reality and so-called the present moment are what the tathāgatagarbha comes into contact with, but the tathāgatagarbha does not discriminate and cannot describe them, so we can never know them. Since this is so, how should we correctly treat the present moment's forms, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and dharmas? We should no longer regard all these dharmas as real, nor should we give rise to strong attachment. Of course, it would be best if we could be completely and thoroughly without attachment, for then the mind would be totally liberated.