Jump!

We cannot experience the past or future directly.

The past is stories and memories. And the future never comes.

I can predict the path of a moving car based on its speed and direction of travel, for example, but the car arrives in the present, not the future.

And if it unexpectedly swerves, and I jump to the curb, that also happens in the present.

The thinking, the labeling (close call!), happens in the next moment, as the car drives by.

All phenomena are like this: hearing a honk, seeing movement, tensing muscles, blinking, inhaling, exhaling.

On the meditation cushion, when I think I am breathing now, I am labeling the part of breathing that just happened, instead of just breathing.

Jump!