“There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. There will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”
-Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
The Doctrine of Momentariness is an understanding of the potency of the present moment. The Buddhists practice this doctrine for their path of enlightenment, the Samurai warriors practice this doctrine for their path of Bushido.
Both the sage and the warrior are guided by the celestial light, the internal Being. To “be present” is something we work to cultivate, but it is fundamentally an act of surrender, of devotion to our internal Being who guides us.
With alertness and receptivity we discover compassion, happiness, patience and love in the sacred moment that is now, and not in our memories of the past or fantasies of the future.
Being in the present moment is not a static state, it is an action, like the Samurai warrior who with patience and alertness knows exactly when to act, wasting no time or energy. To be functioning in real time means to be actively engaged with the rush of time as it passes, and in that state, paradoxically, time seems to slows down or even stop. Surrender means giving up trying to make our circumstances conform to our fantasies.
If the present moment is a flowing river, then attachment to memory is getting stuck in a whirlpool. This creates a latency- emotionally, energetically and physically. A repeating pattern that is outside of the flow of real time.
The present moment exists in the fourth dimension, the constant movement of time. Eternity, that which is beyond time, exists in the fifth dimension. This is something that is not abstract because we can accesss momentariness at any time, right now, regardless of circumstances. It is just habitual to be stuck in our whirlpools, the static and three-dimensional states.
Psychologically the whirlpools are the ego, water that is no longer flowing except in a very fixed pattern and not able to submit to the cosmic purpose. By discovering the whirlpools, and feeling the contrast of those static states from the liberation of the present moment, we create a psychological transformation.
Seoto by Michio Miyagi