Being in the moment

Mental preparation before picking up your camera is just as important as preparing your equipment, perhaps more so. Clearing the mind and placing it in the present before looking sharpens your sensitivity. The present moment is all we truly have. Make the most of it before it dies and the next unique unfolding fragment of existence is born.

Being the moment - a meditation

Corfe, Somerset, May 11

Nikon, 32mm, f 8

Here is an important fragment of a Buddhist meditation that I wish I used more often before shooting. (Make a note, Jim!).

Start by setting up your posture and breathing

Sit in a way that allows you to be comfortable - to relax, to let go, and also to be alert. Sit with a sense of dignity, poise and ease.

Become aware of the breathing, particularly the out breadth. Each time you exhale, imagine a wave of relaxation flowing downwards through the body. Every time you breathe out, notice a sense of letting go.

Meditation

Your mind is like a pool of water. Maybe the water is stirred up, maybe there are moments of calmness. All you have to do is to be sensitive to any of the ripples that come from the thoughts as they fall like pebbles into water.

In reality there is no past and no future. The past and the future are just ideas. Ideas that take place in the present moment.

All that exists is this eternally unfolding present moment. This is all we truly have.

When thoughts arise they are usually about the past or the future. As you notice thoughts arising, realise that those thoughts are happening here and now, in this present moment. Realise that these are thoughts and not reality.

Many of our thoughts are about how we could be happy in the future. Or fears of unhappiness that may, but probably will not happen, in the future. Other thoughts reinvent the past.

This present moment is all we have. You can experience contentment right here right now. If you are prepared simply to be with you present moment experience, fully experiencing what is happening right here right now.

This eternal moment in which we are living is constantly unfolding, forever new. We never repeat any experience. The breath you are taking right now has never been taken before, and will never be taken again. The breath you are taking now is utterly unique.

Knowing this you can savour and appreciate each breath. Savour and appreciate each new experience that you have as it unfolds into this eternal present moment.

Because each experience happens only once and is unique, you can value and appreciate its uniqueness. Each breath is precious, each moment is precious.

So you might want to continue sitting and experience the uniqueness and magic of this eternally unfolding moment. Until you feel ready to move, to open your eyes, and to take your awareness more fully into the outside world.

'We tend to forget that life can only be defined in the present moment' 

Flower, Waitrose Supermarket, Hersham, Aug 11

Canon IXUS, f 4.9mm, f 6.3

We're the one animal that knows that we're going to die, and yet we carry on paying our mortgages, doing our jobs, moving about, behaving as though there's eternity in a sense.

And we forget, or tend to forget, that life can only be defined in the present tense. It is 'is', and it is 'now' only.

I mean, as much as we would like to call back yesterday and indeed yearn to, and ache to sometimes, we can't. It's in us, but we can't actually. It's not there in front of us.

However predictable tomorrow is, and unfortunately for most people, most of the time, it's too predictable, they're locked into whatever situation they're locked into ... Even so, no matter how predictable it is, there's the element of the unpredictable, of the you don't know.

The only thing you know for sure is the present tense, and that nowness becomes so vivid that, almost in a perverse sort of way, I'm almost serene. You know, I can celebrate life.

Below my window in Ross, when I'm working in Ross, for example, there at this season, the blossom is out in full now, there in the west early. It's a plum tree, it looks like apple blossom but it's white, and looking at it, instead of saying "Oh that's nice blossom" ... last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing.

I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it.

Things are both more trivial than they ever were, and more important than they ever were, and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn't seem to matter. But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know.

There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance ... not that I'm interested in reassuring people - bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.

Greatest Interviews of 20th Century, Guardian, Melvyn Bragg with Dennis Potter shortly before his death in 1994