Tao Te Ching
Here and Now
Though almost everyone seems to recognize that only the here and now is real, that the past is gone and the future not here yet; almost everyone also seems to disregard the here and now and give all their allegiance, attention, and energy to the past and the future. Since the past created the here and now and because the here and now creates the future, how could our priorities become so confused?
Quotes (84)
“The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart – that is, a man’s thoughts – should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore”
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
“The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There's only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment.”
“Reality is now, all at once, one and continuous, not divisible, never any more or less of it and nothing that could stop it holding together but always alike and full of what is.”
“Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.”
“Happy the man, and happy he alone, he who can call today his own: he who, secure within, can say, tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.”
“carpe diem (seize the day)… As we speak, cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”
“Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’… do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
“‘What did your rabbi consider the most essential thing?’ Whatever he happened to be engaged in at that particular moment he considered the most essential thing.”
“When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one's mind on the act and the doing of it understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquility of mind, realization, insight, and wisdom.”
“Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it. Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see.”
“People hear the Buddha's doctrine of immediacy and if they accept it, the demons will be crushed as easily as a roofing tile. But if they cannot accept, what a pity!”
“The past is already past—don’t try to regain it. The present does not stay, don’t try to touch it from moment to moment. The future is not come, don’t think about it beforehand.”
“Birth and death apply to everybody constantly, at this very moment.”
“The experience right before your eyes is no different from the Buddhas of all times but you do not believe it and continue looking somewhere else outside.”
“The ignorant avoid experience but not thought; the wise avoid thought but not experience.”
“When your home is nowhere, the mind is centered.
There is nothing to be gained by seeking elsewhere.”
“the Path is right where you stand... why would you need to search the pages for someone else's dead words?”
“Sounds and colors crowd in together, carefree and transcendent, directly leaping into each other.”
“Sounds and colors crowd in together, carefree and transcendent, directly leaping into each other.”
“If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?”
“Creative imagination resolves duality into unity and spontaneity, illuminates the ultimate meaning of life, and establishes meaningful being in the now.”
“Look straight ahead. What's there? If you see it as it is, you will never err.”
“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...”
“Only the present has a right to exist because the past is only a memory and the future has no existence. ”
“The propensity of mankind is to exalt the past, and to depreciate the present.”
“There is no past we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternal now that builds and creates out of the past something new and better.”
“Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value... the most insignificant present has over the most significant past the advantage of actuality... the former bears to the latter the relation of something to nothing.”
“Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly until he knows that every day is Doomsday.”
“He who strives with the present strives with a single thing against which he can use his entire strength. He who fights with the future has more dangerous enemy. He can never remain ignorant about himself; he fights with himself.”
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”
“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”
“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day.”
“A life uncommanded now is uncommanded; a life unenjoyed now is unenjoyed... for the past is gone an no one knows the future.”
“What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”
“Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute!... Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”
“A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”
“Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.”
“What more terrifying revelation can there be than that it is the present moment? That we survive the shock at all is only possible because the past shelters us on one side, the future on another.”
“man's lofty toil transgresses the inhuman laws of eternity. Thus our life and our endeavors acquire a tragic, heroic intensity. We have but a single moment at our disposal. Let us transform that moment into eternity. No other form of immortality exists.”
“I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.”
“We are choked with news, and starved of history... we give too much time to news about the transient present too little to the living past.”
“If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.”
“If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.”
“You forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.”
“Society tries to focus us on distant goals making it easy for us to forget that our only goal is to live, to live each and every day” 
“Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.”
“Limit your activity to what you can do just now.. when you sit, just sit; when you eat, just eat.”
“You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do… The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment… just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment.”
“I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.”
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”
“The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now.”
“People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.”
“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.”
“The cutting edge of this instant right here and now is always nothing less than the totality of everything there is.”
“The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.”
“one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.”
“When one of the emperors of China asked Bodhidharma what enlightenment was, his answer was, ‘Lots of space, nothing holy’… It’s all good juicy stuff … the art of living in the present moment.”
“This life, this experience of the universe is the only thing; there is nothing beyond this at all... it would be much easier to make up a mysterious myth or a mystical experience out of it, rather than seeing things as they are.”
“When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic.”
“You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.”
“We are lured by the expectation that… one day we will reach ‘happily ever after’ … We believe our grand performance is yet to come, so we do not live for today.”
“The present is a curtain and most of us can't see behind it. Those who do see—via luck or prescience—change what is there by seeing. That's why it's unknowable.”
“All that we are looking for in life—all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind—is right here in the present moment.”
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