An Uncalculated Life in the Present

It seems hard to find an acceptable answer to the question of how or why the world conceives a desire, and discovers an ability, to see itself, and appears to suffer in the process. That it does so is sometimes called the original mystery. Perhaps, in view of the form in which we presently take ourselves to exist, the mystery arises from our insistence on framing a question where there is, in reality, nothing in question.

George Spencer Brown wrote that in his book Laws of Form,which was published in 1969. The book has never been out of print. It seems our thoughts look to the past for substance, and look to the future for consequences. The present is where the spirit meets the flesh, but we rarely stay in that moment. We always want to ask a question and find an answer about a past event or a future probability. The present now is a question-less answer-less point of awareness where the all of everything is manifesting within us. Our unconstructed and uncalculated life in the present is exactly where we exist, but we create other moments to see this moment, and we lose the present in the process.

The now is where as D.T. Suzuki says:

That is to say, the question is answered only when it is no more asked. . . The real answer lies where the question has not yet been asked.

There is nothing else to do because there is no time to do it in the now. All manifests from the desire to get somewhere else from the present and we live a dualistic life of questions and answers in order to satisfy our own state of consciousness, and to expand in that quality or state. This mystical state is not received or given nor does it escape or elude us. We arre always in it and it exist in its oneness.

As Hui-neng put it:

In this moment there is nothing which comes to be. In this moment there is nothing which ceases to be. Thus there is no birth and death to be brought to an end. Wherefore there is absolute tranquility in this present moment. Though it is at this moment, there is no limit to this moment, and herein is eternal delight.