The Present Moment — The Only Place Life Actually Occurs
The present moment is universally identified as the only locus of genuine experience, choice, and transformation — the past is memory, the future is imagination, but life itself is always and only now.
Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now' articulated for a contemporary audience what every contemplative tradition has always known: the present moment is the only moment in which anything real ever happens. Memory is a present-moment activity — recalling the past now. Anticipation is a present-moment activity — imagining the future now. All experience, all perception, all choice, all love — everything occurs in the present moment. The Buddha's teaching of mindfulness (Sati — remembering to be present) is the systematic training of attention to return continuously to the present moment rather than being carried away by the mind's habitual time-travel into past regret and future anxiety. Meister Eckhart said: 'The present moment always will have been' — meaning that what occurs now is eternally real in a way that neither past plans nor future hopes can be. The practice of present-moment awareness is simultaneously the most simple and the most radical of all spiritual practices.
The present moment is the only moment available to us, and it is the door to all moments.
Psychologist Matthew Killingsworth's experience-sampling study (2010, Science) documented that the human mind wanders 46.9% of waking hours and that people are significantly less happy during mind-wandering than during present-focused attention — regardless of what they are doing or what they are thinking about — confirming that present-moment awareness is a primary determinant of wellbeing.
Universal Wisdom