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About the book
This book is a spiritual guide to cultivating present-moment awareness. It explains why that is important, in which ways people stray away from the present, how one can reclaim the present, and what that will yield.
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Quotes
Suffering needs time; it cannot exist in the Now.
To be free of time is to be free of the psychological need of the past for identity and the future for fulfilment
Forgiveness is to relinquish your grievance and so your grief
Concepts that I liked from the book
- Knowing happiness conceptually is different from realising it, feeling it, and internalising it. Words don’t convey the truth in its entirety; they can only point to it. Experiential happiness will feel different for everyone. Through practice, we need to develop a new, honest sense that is not limited to our minds’ abilities to fully experience stuff. Although it is quite helpful in day-to-day life situations, our minds’ tendency to label, box and draw boundaries around concepts could limit us from experiencing happiness.
- The author defines clock time to be associated with worldly events that follow a calendar. Without denying clock time, he emphasises more on psychological time that is perceived by us. He says we seek the past for identity and the future for fulfilment. However, both are a mirage.
- Life situations need to be dealt with. That’s easy. Problems, which are merely life situations that are given a negative meaning by us, need to be overcome. Much harder to do that. “Problems” also present a convenient excuse for us to not deal with life situations.
- Our past cannot be denied. However, one need not let it weigh too heavily on the present. The sum total of our pasts manifests in the present moment. You don't need to describe it to overcome it. You just need to be present, you will automatically overcome it.
- Mindfulness positively relates to agency
Criticisms
- It felt a bit preachy at the start. However, I plan to reread it once. The messages in the book are very powerful!