how can the present exist?

[dannyday5821]

in terms of time - im sure everyones come across this question atleast once before...but anyway...

if time can be broken down to something as small as miliseconds and nanoseconds, surley you can just keep breaking it down and down into smaller and smaller measuments, perhaps into infinity - so therefore, by the time ive even "thought" anything, time has already passed....right? so the "present" cant be possible...right?

[taichiperson]

As far as meditation is concerned, there is nothing but the present......

[~max~]

You have waaaaaaaaaaaay too much time on your hands man!!! ;O)

[Emmeedask]

Then nothing would exist!

I wouldn't exist!

All these boxes would be blank (no not just mine thats just wishful thinking)!

[dannyday5821]

so nothing else exists accept the present...hmm...i suppose that makes sense...depending on what you think and what you believe in...im sure tarrot card readers wouldnt agree! lol!

[~max~]

The way I see it, only mass "exists", time doesn't. Time is only a clever invention to make language easier.

[kn0bbyn0nuts]

What came first the atom or the egg

[Emmeedask]

Oh thats it my heads truely a shed.

Its my day off from work and i've been veggin, didn't think I would be thinking in such complex terms today and its made my ears pop and my eyes bulge with the pressure in the brain.

It doesn't take much!

[~max~]

That's ok, you'll be better in a minute.

Oh. Wait....lol

[taichiperson]

Max - define 'exists'!!!!
(steps back and waits for head to explode)

[~max~]

Exist = IS, but only in the case of objects with a mass (ie: not ideas).

*reaches for 3rd valium*

[Emmeedask]

SPPLLLAAATTTT!!!!!!!!!!

he he :p x

[dustypuss]

the present exist

I know because i am going to unwrap it on my birth day

[ChuckFickens]

hey max I'll make you want your 4th Valium :)

imagine a person (or alien) with no concept at all of time and try and explain it without using the word time or any unit of time.

[~max~]

lol! I'm assuming that includes words such as : later, after, before, then, now...?

[BillySugger]

I think there's an argument along similar lines in Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance , sure I've heard it before somewhere

[Jugglering]

LOL Chuck... very good !

A bit like trying to explain the concept of *love* to a computer.... impossible or what !

Back to Danny's original Q - can time be split into smaller and smaller *finite* bits... well, how about imagining the longest period of time ever .... (ie the opposite of approaching the speed of time itself)... that has to be a skip, hop and a jump through time !

I frequently get my head in a right royal muck up by trying to (a) imagine the smallest particle there is... which must, per se, be made up of something else and therefore there are smaller bits than the smallest bits... and (b) if the universe is so large that there is nothing beyond it, then what is beyond the limits of the universe - and just a bit further out ?

[~max~]

How about..."Wait!".....

[Jugglering]

Or even, shhhhhh,,,,, deep breaths !

[ChuckFickens]

nope you can use those words, but I said they had no concept of time so they would have no idea if what later, before ETC means so you would also have to explain them.

[~max~]

lol! Yeah, the concept of infinity is just completely alien to us. We live in "finite" things, always. Space and time to us is finite, because, as thinking beings, the only spatial / time references we can grasp are our own body's.