"In the moment"

I often attend an early morning meditation "sitting" at the local Buddhist center.  The meditation is usually followed by a half dozen of us having a chat over a cup of tea (or coffee). Yesterday an interesting topic came up during this "after meditation" group discussion.   

The question had to do with wondering how we can stay "in the moment" in our "off-cushion" practice.  My  first reaction was how can we do that when we are sitting in meditation.  Being in the moment isn't all that easy - or maybe even possible or desirable.

The first line of discussion concerned what does it mean to be "in the moment?"  As a first approximation, it is fairly obvious.  It has to do with paying attention to what is happening right now, rather than dwelling or concentrating on the past, or fantasizing about the future.  The problem comes when dissecting that down to another layer of abstraction.  For example, does it mean focusing on the present while using past experience to interpret what is being observed? Or, it is something more akin to observing but not interpreting at all? 

It is fairly obvious that we cannot make sense out of much of anything without applying our prior learning.  We depend upon prior learning to do something as simple as recognizing an automobile as an "automobile."  At some level to even sort things into categories requires past learning.  Does being "in the moment" allow for the use of  this type of past learning?  If so, how about the learned emotional responses that we experience?  When we experience something that evokes an emotional response, is that still being in the moment, or has something else happened which makes us dredge up the past and let it "color" our experience of "this" moment?

Sometimes we go a step further with this business of being in the moment, sometimes it is possible to see but not really interpret or categorize.  Sometimes it is possible to just experience.  For example, one day when I came to the end of a session of sitting in mediation I looked around the room and found it to be an interesting display of colors and shapes, but not of "things."  I "saw" the walls of the room as lines and shapes in space, rather than as planes forming a rectilinear object.  An easy way to understand what I mean is to sketch a room that you are sitting in.  In order to get the perspective correct and make it look like a "room" it is necessary to put the lines in some rather amusing orientations.  When I do this kind of sketching I am always amazed about how different the two dimensional orientation of the lines are compared with my view of the room as a three dimensional space.  Normally, I am totally unaware of the 2-D view, rather I perceive and understand the room as the inside of a 3-D object.  That day it became closer to the 2-D world view, but in three dimensions rather than as a flat plane.  Furniture and other objects took on the same oddly real, but not conceptualized, appearance.  They were just lines, colors, depth, space, but not "room," "chair" or "table."

I don't think I can ever expect to adequately describe what I am talking about, you had to be there...  Hopefully, I have conveyed a hint of what I am getting at, and hopefully it has reminded you of some instances of something similar that has happened to you.  I wonder if that kind of experience is close to what the Buddhists monks are talking about when they talk about "being in the moment."  Pure perception, without conceptualization.  If it is, it seems like that would make it difficult to navigate around in the world. 

However, it the point is to see and understand, but not add emotional baggage or interpretations, that might be a very good thing.  It might be very good to see and recognize an object as being an "automobile" without attaching emotional history to that object (desire, lust, greed, envy, etc).  Or, maybe it is not possible or practical to not have the emotional impact, but at least we might be able to see that for what it is - something from our past having little to do with the moment. 

Obviously, this kind of discussion really has no end.  It is the sort of philosophical discussion that can go on forever, and maybe doesn't even have any value.  I ponder them because I am trying to learn to be much better at experiencing the only part of my life that is "real" - which is right now, in the moment.  I think it all has to do with learning to observe the observer, who is me.