What do sneezing and unexpectedly slipping while walking on ice have in common? We’re in the NOW. No discursive thought whatsoever. No concepts. Just the NOW.
Friends who’ve been in bad car accidents tell me that “everything stopped” while the car rolled over and over. They experienced NOW, a kind of stunned constancy (term from the Ocean of Definitive Meaning).
Another term for NOW is “the fourth moment,” the other three being past, present and future. When we experience the fourth moment, the concept of time is not operating.
The past is all of the things that have already happened and no longer exist. The future is all of the things that have not yet happened and don’t yet exist. The NOW is like the edge of a razor blade: so short and so sharp that there is no time for anything to exist in a substantial way. We see that there is no time, and no substance, only clarity-emptiness, the nature of mind. <source: e-mail from Shambhala Buddhist student sent March 18, 2008>
My New Year’s Resolution is to be in the NOW as much as possible. My question is: how can I do that without nearly being killed?
Here’s what happened exactly three years ago today.
On Feb 05’08 I finished ten days of reciting a chant called Pacifying the Turmoil of the Mamos designed to clear up any negativity that accumulates at year’s end before heading into the Tibetan New Year that would be celebrated on Feb 07’08.
On Feb 06, 2008, 14h00 — exactly three years ago today — I was at the corner of The Esplanade and Jarvis streets near the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto……and narrowly escaped being killed. What a “wake-up” call!
Around 14h10 this afternoon, had been to the library + borrowed the Life section of the Toronto Star newspaper re The Year of the Rat….. Then shop a bit at St. Lawrence Market. Walk to the NW corner of Jarvis + The Esplanade. Then cross to the SW corner.
Press the button to signal that I want to cross over to the SE corner.
Before the light turns green, I notice that a huge truck traveling south towards the lake was making a lot of noise. Much more noise than usual. And the quality of the noise was different.
Then the traffic light turned green and I began to cross Jarvis Street.
I then experience another kind of state of consciousness. In a flash, I see a multitude of yellow metal objects on the street + think, “maybe that’s what is making the noise; maybe the truck was dragging those objects behind it intentionally.”
In the next instant, I am hit on the lower legs and right eye by some of these metal objects + try to keep my balance as I began to fall . I end up a couple yards north of where I had been initially standing.
The driver of the truck apologizes to me very sincerely. But I am more concerned about him because he has to pick up all the metal on the street that had fallen off his truck!
A woman approaches me and says that I was almost killed.
I am surprised. I hadn’t realized that.
“Oh yes,” she says. ”If you had been a few inches further on the road, the metal objects would have fallen on you.”
Hmmmmm.
MY NOTES ON CONTEMPLATING THE NEAR-FATAL ACCIDENT:
- For a nano-second I was completely in the NOW. The closest I can come to describing something that cannot be described is that there is no thought. Just pure awareness. Not awareness of anything. Just awareness. Another way to describe the indescribable is to say that it is “beyond mind.” Gate gate paragate parasum gate… (Gone, gone, gone completely beyond…)
- It makes you realize how close death is to us. I recalled Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s statement that dying was easier than changing your clothes.
- my thought just preceding the glimpse of NOW — during the incident described above — that “maybe the truck is dragging those objects behind it intentionally” = of course, there’s no way a truck could do that in a city. They should have been tied down on the flatbed truck. It just didn’t occur to me that the objects had fallen off the truck.
- Ironically, Dön Season had ended yesterday, February 05’08, at 23h59. Today there has been a beautiful snow storm. (“Döns refer to sudden attacks of depression, resentment, anger, or other negative emotions — like an unpredictable flu that takes us over. In the last 10 days before the Tibetan Buddhist New Year, it is said that one can be more susceptible to dons….” source: Shambhala Online)
- In the early morning of Feb 06’08 I dreamt that I was looking in a telephone book to try to find out where my son was living. I looked in the white pages and on the extreme right of the left hand page I saw “429.” I don’t remember if there was a street name.
“429” = 15/6. So I looked up the reading in my book that describes the inner meaning of numbers taught by the great mathematician Pythagoras to some of his students. The reading for 15/6 is mainly about changing some of my views. This is timely as it is the Tibetan New Year tomorrow.
- This incident demonstrates how timing and choices — and the volitional action that arises from these choices and produces karma — is vitally important, e.g.
- if I had been any closer to the curb on the southwest corner I probably would have been killed or at least severely injured because I would have been hit much harder by the fast-moving metal objects.
- If I hadn’t crossed from the NW to the SW corner — but taken my usual route of crossing from the NW corner to the NE corner — I wouldn’t have been in the way of the metal sheets that fell off the truck.
- I usually like to be home by 14h00 to watch the two-hour programme re babies, but I wasn’t home today. If I had kept to my usual schedule, I would have missed being nearly killed by the metal sheets of the truck.
In contrast to this process around timing and choices, being in the NOW prevents the accumulation of karmic effects. How? There are two components in the creation of a karmic effect: the emotion (klesha) and the action (karma). Being in the NOW prevents us from grasping or fixating onto emotion. Emotions can lead to action which creates karma.
But more than this, the NOW is all we have.
The cells of our body are dying, the neurons in our brain are decaying, even the expressions on our face are always changing, depending on our mood. What we call our basic character is only a “mindstream,” nothing more. Today we feel good because things are going well; tomorrow we feel the opposite. Where did that good feeling go?
What could be more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions: Do you have any idea what you are going to think or feel next? The mind, in fact, is as empty, as impermanent, and as transient as a dream. Look at a thought: It comes, it stays, and it goes. The past is past, the future not yet risen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, becomes the past.
The only thing we really have is nowness, is now.
<source: Rigpa Glimpse of the Day, February 06, 2011>
Update: Tuesday – April 14’09
At one point just after I had been hit by the truck, a kaleidoscope flashed in my mind – the colours were orange, yellow and white. Today I read the following:
The self is not made of any substance at all: it is just a kaleidoscopic display of empty imagery, intangible, like a dream <source: Karr, Andy: Contemplating Reality: A Practitioner’s Guide to the View in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (p. 38) 2007 ed.>
It is now Saturday, January 01’11, New Year’s Day. My New Year’s resolution is this: being in the NOW as often as possible without nearly having to be killed!
Two Sources:
Beyond Present, Past, and Future is The Fourth Moment – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Eckart Tolle: The Power of Now
If you found this post helpful, please share it with a friend. Then consider subscribing to the weblog by clicking on the Subscribe button in the navigation bar and following one of three sets of simple instructions. Thank you.
