Contemplating Time

I'm trying to dismantle how I think about time, especially the tendency to think that time is linear. Past - present - future. Tick tock, tick tock.

I’ve been struggling in particular with the notion of "the future” and so my way in has been to contemplate "the past" because somehow that feels more graspable as a concept. And I've had a moment of insight. Today. Well, that's the thing about contemplating: it disrupts things, it can unsettle assumptions and help crack through long-held views and beliefs. In any case, I think that was what I was hoping would happen.

Part of this reflection has been a realisation, or a reminder, that we don't actually remember everything about the past. There are things I can't recall or wasn’t even aware of at the time, that “happened” in the past. So the idea that the past is "a given" has shifted for me, a little. It all feels less certain now.

So, back to the future ... and the assumption that it's completely unpredictable, completely uncertain. Well, if the past is uncertain - and so long as I'm ok with that (& I think I am?!) - then why would I feel anxious about the uncertainty of the future? Somehow, loosening my grip on the past is making the future feel slightly less daunting now.

It seems how I think about the past is not as certain as I thought it was earlier on today. Any certainty - if there is such a thing at all - is in the present moment only, of course. Perhaps I'm using the wrong word; perhaps it's reality rather than certainty… but I’ll contemplate that further while washing up later.

These contemplations have been stimulated by a collective reading - with friends in a Buddhist book group - of Dōgen's Being-Time. It's mind-blowing stuff, we sometimes get a brief glimpse of understanding then it falls away like sand falling though our fingers.