Recent events have been making me think about the concept of TIME – the things that you, as students, have so much of now that ‘school is out’!.

In 1967 (see Journal of Protective Technique and Personality Assessments, No. 31) Tom Cottle used a “Circles Test” to measure how different cultures assign different meanings to past, present and future in order to investigate the perception of temporal relatedness and dominance amongst various ethnic groupings around the world.   In essence, it demonstrated how Eastern cultures perceive that there is no connection between past, present or future, whereas we in the West more or less see the present as being subsumed almost entirely by considerations of the past and future.

One of the reasons why Daoism and Buddhism flourish so well in the East, and less so here, is because of this ability to disassociate the past and the future from our consideration of the present.  Concepts such as ‘mindfulness’ and ‘awareness’ and ‘living in the now’ become important if the current moment is also important.

“So what’s this got to do with me as a student of Acupuncture?”

Much of what you learn on the course is based on a fundamental difference in philosophy to the one to which you are familiar (take Yin and Yang as a starter); how well you learn it may depend upon how well you embrace this new way of thinking.  Your understanding of the nature of TIME, is no different;  “For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? … each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle” (Marcus Aurelius).  Likewise, T S Eliot opined:

What  we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from ...

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

But it is also a useful skill to have if you are studying.  To have the discipline not to be distracted – wouldn’t that be nice?  I understand that Wii now has a meditation game for practicing precisely this; somehow I instinctively feel that there is a discontinuity in the thinking here, but I just can’t put my finger on it!.

Thich Nhat Hanh, in his ‘ Miracle of Mindfulness’, refers to keeping one’s consciousness alive as ‘mindfulness’.  So how is this mindfulness achieved?

Develop a focus from within – don’t be distracted by peripheral thoughts or inputs.  Learn to meditate and to understand that life is a cyclical and iterative journey, each moment to be enjoyed as all experiences are positive.

I guess that’s a lot to ask when you have several assignments to hand in, a test coming up and life, generally, to be lived.  But wouldn’t it be good if you could ….?

…………..

One final thought on TIME, and apropos nothing to the above, the quickest ever sending-off in a soccer match is reputedly 2 seconds.  Apparently, the referee blew his whistle to start the game when a nearby player exclaimed “F*** me, that was loud”, and was promptly sent off for swearing.