Publisher's Synopsis
The One Moment Viewpoint is an analysis of suffering caused by our efforts to create the permanent. At the heart of all suffering is attachment to the impermanent but we humans manage the impossible by chopping up the continuum into moments like a rolodex of still moments and call it memory. Although everything changes all the time we convince ourselves that we have what it takes to stop the universe long enough to say we own it. Well, what we have are some pretty wild delusions no different than the child for whom the world revolves. Put in another way, we are in a contest with our intelligence to try to build a city of permanent buildings before the Godzilla of change destroys our city. If we win this contest, we will go totally and certifiably nuts. If we lose gracefully we have the opportunity to realize that our intellect is capable of comprehending the wonder of undefinable truths about consciousness and can perceive the nonconceptual in a nonconceptual way. Unfortunately, the conceptual games we play are endless because we think we can get happy by doing the very thing that makes us unhappy. We may have a vague awareness of our clinging to the unsubstantial but rather than fix the problem by decreasing our clinging we close one eye and increase the clinging. Everything we cling to changes (without our permission) so we are continuously doing three things: preparing to suffer, suffering, and recovering from suffering. Did someone say ignorance? Ignorance is not the same as stupid. Ignorance is the purposeful willingness not to know something. It is an active avoidance of the opportunity to break through the delusions. Time is one of our first delusions. Time is the measurement of change in the physical. Change means alteration in positon (movement), alteration in quality (transformation), or alteration in quantity (size), etc. Since we live in the physical the concept of time has many uses but by itself has no properties or features, fits no categories or generic labels. In fact, time has no more substance than the I-self and of course is empty of inherent existence. Without measuring something that physically changes time simply does not exist but as long as we value the physical we will employ time. This is the reason I have chosen the the "one moment view" rather than the "no moment view."
