In listening to a collection of lectures by Thich Nhat Hanh called, The Art of Mindful Living, I came across this quote:

The present moment is made of the past.
The past is still alive in the present moment.

The first sentence is quite obvious, for wherever we are, it is because of a successive series of past events and choices. It is also the same with our perspective and mental outlook— I think the way I do because of my personal collection of experiences.

Is this concept as obvious? To a newborn infant, the rattle shaken in front of its eyes is not a rattle. In fact, the blue color is disconnected from the sound in his mind. It is the organizing principles in his own mind that makes “sense” of this “rhapsody of sensation.” It was Kant who made us realize that all knowledge is subjective— defined completely on our experiences and our conclusions drawn from those experiences, i.e. the past.

As a boy, I was cleaning out my goldfish bowl, when I slipped on the water I had carelessly left on the tiled floor. I fell into the tub holding the bowl. The bowl shattered, and cut my hand quite severely. I still have a scar on my thumb from the experience, and I also have a mental scar that registers as nervousness whenever I am holding glass in a bathroom.

And so the past lives in the present moment— not just by its creation of the present— as the past stored in our memory, is constantly creating our thinking.

The Buddhist concept of “being in the moment” is often illustrated with the phrase, “There is no past, there is no future, only now.”

But this doesn’t mean the past is ignored. It can’t be. One should be reflective and learn from the past, but there is a difference between learning from and clinging to the past. Scoring a winning goal is good, constantly reliving it as an old man, is sad.

Stand on the past, but don’t let the past distract you from the present experience… or it may not become part of your past.