Tao Of Now

All we have is what we have now.

Say hello to the day and the day will say hello and then goodbye to you.

Yun-men said, ‘Every day is a good day,’ yet I say today is the best day of all because it is the only day happening now.

Yun-men, the Zen master, liked every day, yet I like only today, happening now. I know of no other day for the rest of my life, because all I have is now.

The Zen say, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ yet I say, what is the sound of the moment lived now?

What only a simple person can understand is of course one hand does not clap. What only a complicated person can realize is that the sound of the moment is the sound of eternity happening now.
Listen, and you will hear, not the past or the future, but only the heartbeat of your own present moment alive now.
Nothing fades. Nothing lasts. Everything is present, and present only now.
It is said if you know the Tao you do not know it. In the same way this is the ultimate book, the only book there is. In the same way the only way to know the Tao is to be in the Tao now.
Tao is an ancient Chinese concept passed down to us through their writings, such as their great oracle, The I Ching, Book of Changes. Yet we do not study the past. Just because something was discovered way back then we only can know it as real now. Not later, not then, not back then, or some vast time in the future.
The way to be in the Tao is to be in the Now.

Be in the Now.
The Tao is the Now being Tao.
Do not ask what this means. Simply absorb what you can and let the rest go. Knowledge is accumulative, not logical.
You do not have to know what you know to know what you know.
Do not ask what this means.
Do not ask questions. Learn! Do not ask what this means.

The Tao is the Now.
If you are suffering now, then you are indeed suffering, yet do not exaggerate! Only the present moment suffers with you. Each moment is adaptable. Each moment is real as it comes.
If you are in joy now you cannot hold the joy from one moment to the next because each moment as it comes is its own being and not possessed by anybody. This is also the Tao.

The Tao is nameless
Yet to name it
Is to bring it into being
Yet once it has arrived
Through a name
It is no longer the Tao
Yet the moment supreme

The Tao of Now cannot be described, yet as you participate in the reading process involved with this book you become the Tao of Now.
You become one-centered with a single focus thoroughly grounded in what is happening now, and only what is happening now.
You are more than your usual half-present self to the moment, or am I not accurate here?
You ‘get it,’ whatever there is to get. You know what you know as you know it. You choose not to be dragged off the present moment into fantasies about the future or memories about the past. You ‘Tao the Now.’ The Now ‘Taos’ you. You stop absolutely yet keep moving. You rest easy in what is only happening now, and that is what you deal with.

You Tao the Now.
Nothing else is easy. All else but the Now is hard.
You practice instant insight through right action.
What is the right action?
The one that happens now, the intended action that brings the forces and directions of the moment together into a single, centered now.
You are not present, yet you are everything. You Tao the moment. You find your one-point. You answer every question with yourself, yet you are not yourself but yourself being yourself because you are being the moment and do not have to waste time and energy being yourself.
This is a course in consciousness. This is a course, the first course ever, in not being yourself because you are asked to be, not other than yourself, yet to be the moment, supreme, absolute, now, present. You do not have time to be yourself when you are being the moment. Be the moment and be surprised at every self you become.
Stop! Name it now! Name the present you, and you will find it impossible.
Name it now. Name yourself as the ‘I.’ and what about everything else happening now? Name yourself as a name, and what about all the rest that is nameless happening now? We attach names to almost everything, as a child trying to catch the ball being flung through the air. When does a ball become a name? When does a ball become a ball? When does the ball arrive in the child’s hands?
Now, now, only now and forever now.
The child is forever catching the Now.
What are you doing?
Better to be simpler than this, to get past the naming into the now.

Throw the ball,
Catch the ball,
Throw the Tao,
Catch the Tao.
This is the . . .
Happening . . .

from Strephon Kaplan-Williams, Tao of Now