A Presence in the Present
On the fleeting bliss of full presence — when the past and future fall away, and there's only now.
Almost every meditation teacher will tell you the same thing in slightly different language: presence is the whole game. The hard part isn’t understanding it. The hard part is staying there.
This came from one of those rare moments when the staying happened on its own — and the recognition of how rare it was.
And in that fleeting moment
There was bliss
A presence in the present
Nothing to reminisce
My fears and doubts
My past, my future; my pain within
Washed away in a warm embrace
I was merely there, taking it in
Finally then, I understood
The love of now; invisible and precious
I thought, how could I repeat this?
And then the feeling was gone
The cruel joke of presence is that the moment you notice you’re in it, you’ve left. You can’t hold it the way you hold a memory. You can only become the kind of person who keeps coming back.
That’s the practice, I think. Not arriving. Returning.
— JTC