Present Perceptions

In a delightful book titled The Dharma of Dogs, Andrew Holocek writes about his relationship with his dog—giving several examples of how his dog, in sort of a human-dog turnabout, is often his teacher. Many people have described the special relationship they have with their dogs over the years. I have done so several times on this blog. Dogs have a unique way of seemingly mind-melding with humans. We two different mammalian species have been bosom buddies for tens of thousands of years.

Holocek describes how a dog's world is a “highly sensual one, and our senses only operate in the present. I can't smell the future or see the past. I can't taste the future or hear the past. My senses are forever nailed to the present moment.” I had never thought about my senses in this way—that they operate completely in the present moment. When I see something, it's caused by photons of light impinging upon my eyes... right now. Yesterday's photons are long gone. When I touch a fine piece of wood, the sensation it causes is right now. My sense of touch cannot lean into the future.

Given that a dog relies heavily on its senses—especially its sense of smell—it very much lives in the present. It is responding right now to the sounds and smells of its world. When we humans are in the company of our canine friend—say when our minds are lost in the past or are thrusting into the future—responding to our dog can bring us back to the present. I can't remember how many times I've been strolling through the woods with my dog—my mind fussing over yesterday's events—when his sudden dash into the underbrush yanks me back into the now. Am I out here in nature to fret over yesterday's lost opportunities, or to find rejuvenation in its beauty? Thanks, my puppy friend.

Buddhist teachings add a sixth sense to our commonly accepted five (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste): the mind. I've always liked this concept. All five “normal” senses send electrical signals to the brain, which then does a lot of processing on them, so as to interpret what those signals mean. The workings of the brain are what constitutes the mind. We need the mind to tell us what's going on around us; to interpret, process, and correlate those signals. An important part of that interpretation is also to bring memory (the past) into the process; as well as to ponder where all this may be heading (in the future).

The human mind is far more sophisticated than a dog's mind. That's what makes us so powerful. But there's a disadvantage to all this mental capability: we tend to spend an inordinate amount of time pondering the past and fretting over the future. It causes us to lose a lot of what's happening right now.

So a dog—whose mind is less developed or dominant—lives in a “highly sensual” world. It is far more likely to respond to the immediate sights, smells, and sounds of its environment than we are. And if we are in the company of our dog, it might just pull us back into the present moment—into a world that is, in many ways, more real than either yesterday or tomorrow. Thanks, my puppy friend.

Three-Second Present

I began meditating many years ago. I am fortunate to have a Buddhist monastery/retreat center nearby, where I have been able to acquire a solid training in meditation techniques. It has brought a major and positive change to my life. At the core of Buddhist meditation is the concept of mindfulness: living fully in the present moment.

The present moment is all that we have that is real. The past is gone and the future has yet to be realized. Just because we humans, with our higher cognitive abilities, know that there is a past and a future, doesn’t mean that we can reach out and touch them. Animals, in contrast, are always able to live in the present moment, because they don’t have the higher mental powers to conceive of either a past or future. 

It is through our ability to place full attention to the moment-to-moment passing of life that we can live it to the fullest (as animals do). We so easily miss much of life by going into our heads and either dwelling on what once happened or anticipating what may be. We become embroiled in emotions of regret about having missed certain opportunities or try to relive past times of victory. We worry about coming events—investing psychic energy into playing out threatening or exciting scenarios that may never happen. In the meantime, we’re losing out on what’s happening right now—the only reality that we have access to.

When we are able to avoid being sucked off into the inaccessible past or future, we can fully participate in the now. We become mindful of what’s happening in the present moment and find ourselves not missing opportunities that manifest themselves and thus making wiser choices on how to live. The present moment is also very personal—it’s our own experience.

Many meditators view the present moment as an instantaneous window in time, during which one attempts to be aware of every split second that exists—fully engaging with it. That work is extremely hard to do. No matter how diligently you try to be fully aware of each moment in time, your mind will repeatedly follow some event into the past, or be dragged into the future, or take off on flight around the world. I spend most of my meditation time being reminded that I’ve once again drifted off from the now and patiently returning my mind to the present moment. A second or so later, my mind is once again off to distant temporal realms.

It can become rather frustrating. I believe that the practice is valuable, however, if only to demonstrate to us how uncontrollable the mind is, and to periodically experience the exhilaration of “now,” or occasionally remaining mindful for a few minutes. It is very liberating. An additional reward comes when you arise from your meditation pillow and resume your normal activities: you’re just a little more aware of the value of paying attention to what is going on and engaging life as it unfolds.

I recently read about some current neurological research on how our brain perceives time. Our personal apprehension of time is referred to as “biological” or “psychological” time. It’s different from physical time, which is an objective entity, something that can be measured by instruments. Our brain continually receives signals from our various senses, and then it constructs our view of reality from those inputs. Neurologists have wondered: How does the brain distinguish between past and future stimuli? Where does the mind draw the line between past, present, and future? 

This research suggests that our temporal reality is not based on the instantaneous now, but interprets events as being on the order of three seconds long; in other words, reality comes in three-second chunks. It seems that our gray matter integrates over a three-second period and creates a subjective response for that interval of time. In other words, the subjective “present” for us is not an instant, but a three-second-long temporal window. Our mind will see “one thing” for three seconds and then shift to another equal span of time. 

These findings have cast a little different light on meditation for me. I’m now not trying to adhere to that elusive instantaneous moment, attempting to surf the crest of a temporal wave and repeatedly “wiping out.” It’s  not so precise as that. Maybe I can cut myself a little slack, knowing that, at best my attention is smeared out over a three-second interval. Maybe I can be more successful in staying within that interval, than trying to be ever present with each passing instant. Maybe I can ride the wave all the way through to the beach.

What's Now?

In a recent blog on NPR (“Where is Now? The Paradox of the Present”) astronomer Adam Frank tossed out a fascinating idea: there is a lot of ambiguity in the definition of the so-called “now.” Many people have spoken of the now, in contexts from religion to philosophy to science to New Age notions—as though it is a well-defined and precise thing. It is often defined as “the present moment,” referring to the instant between the past and the future.

Frank points out, however, that the present moment is really a rather fuzzy and enigmatic concept. He gives the simple example of what we're seeing when we gaze at the night sky and observe the stars. We can't perceive them in their present moment at all, but how they existed in the past. The light I'm now seeing from that star that's 100 light years away (about 600 trillion miles!) departed 100 years ago. What I'm seeing at my present moment is the star's present moment as it appeared 100 years in the past. It's history. It's antiquity... not the now. The star could have blown up five minutes ago and I won't know it for another 100 years. (Actually, I will never know it, since I'll also be history by then.)

In fact, at the present moment that I'm watching all those stars at various distances, I'm seeing them at various times in the past! So my starry “now” is really composed of countless overlapping starry pasts. I am unable to observe any one of those stars in its present moment, but only as it existed long before now (my now, that is). Some being living on a planet several light years away experiences a completely different set of starry nows. As Frank writes, “Where is now?” Whew!

He goes on to describe how this situation of overlapping pasts is true for any sensation logged by our brain. Each sensation begins with an organ of one or another of our senses—sight, touch, sound, smell, taste—and then travels via nerve pathways to the brain. Depending on the type of signal, its speed is somewhere between one and 200 miles per hour. That's pretty fast, but it's not instantly.

So our present moment is, just like starlight, an aggregation of multiple past events. Our “now” is a collection of old “nows.” We live in the past. Furthermore, the time differences for different observers of everyday events may be on the order of microseconds—rather than years—but it still is true that your present-moment perceptions are not the same as mine. Your now is not my now—you have your own collection of outdated nows.

That fact is a wee bit mind blowing, it seems to me. It causes me to ponder the various ways I have heard people refer to the present moment—particularly when it's implied that there is one unique now that we all share; as if it's the same now everywhere; as if the dividing line between the past and the future is something we all simultaneously experience; as if we all cross the demarcation line that marks the present moment in unison, collectively stepping from the past into the future. But no, your past could be my future, or vice versa. If that doesn't blow my mind, then it surely overwhelms it with paradoxical and perplexing images. As Frank asks, “Where is now?” I don't know, it's already gone.

But there's another, maybe more serious, message that this conundrum brought to me, after I mused over it for awhile—a message that's not nearly so enigmatic to me. If my now is really an overlay of multiple pasts, then my present moment is already over and done with. I can't change it; it's a done deal. I might as well not fight it, but accept it. It is what it is. Why get upset and get into a fuss over my lack of approval of it?

Now, that message may seem like a fatalistic one to some folks, as if I'm saying,
“It's too late. I can't do anything about it. It's fate.” With this interpretation one can become passive and powerless. The message I take, however, is that the only now I can perceive is my own now, and although it may already be locked into the past, my response to it is the crucial thing. How I respond to my now has a major influence on my future, since what I do now directly impacts my future.

And that response is directly determined primarily by how well I'm paying attention... right “now.” If I allow myself to be drawn into the past, or find myself leaning into the future, or have my attention diverted by distractions, I don't even get a clear picture of my now. It's muddied by diversions, or the fixed past or possible future events. My daydreaming can cause me to miss the reality of my now, and my subsequent actions may therefore be foolish. They'd more likely to be influenced by my inattentiveness, rather than reality.

So, pay attention. Act wisely. Enjoy the moment, because, in fact, it's already past. Soon you will be yesterday. Now... you got that?