Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear (James Joyce, from "Finnigans Wake")

 Not much to say on this subject. Obviously. Very difficult to live in the "here's hear" rather than theoretical explanations of life and the living of it. 

Tried Google Images for "living in the now" and I think they might have thought I meant "snow".

Anyway, much to do with reaching conclusions. A living death. Difficult to be or say anything relevant when we live entirely from the self's past and its round of justifications.

Another direction suggested by James Joyce's words is towards "living in the now", a way of being often beloved of New Agers. "Live in the Now man!" So, possibly, forget the past, sod the future, let it all hang out. Mind the gap!

Nevertheless, the words can take on what could be seen and known as a deeper meaning, this especially in the writings of the 13th century Japanese monk Dogen. Dogen today is a hot property of the zen book industry and apparently is now more well known in the west than in his homeland. Much loved these days because of his advocacy of Zazen, a meditation technique, even of "zazen only", which among westerners often begins a competition of just how many hours can be spent on the zafu (meditation cushion) each day. A pursuit of the carrot of "enlightenment" and as typical westerners, "I want it Now". Bringing us back to the moment in which we all must live.

Dogen ("Better to see the face than to hear the name" - zen saying)

For Dogen I have found, Zazen is not just "practice" but is also metaphor. A metaphor that can point towards each and every moment, not simply moments of meditation on the zafu. Zazen only. Dogen (pronounced Dough-gan as I found out recently after a few weeks of Dog-n) was a master of the Japanese language, a poet, who saw through the "zen beyond word and scripture", recognising such was pure duality. 

" Don't mistake the finger that points for the moon itself", a ubiquitous phrase in many Dharma books, but Dogen saw the necessary inter-being of finger and moon and thus the realisation of non-duality within duality.

Don't forget the finger, it's important

Anyway, enough of that nit-picking. Here is a short poem by Dogen...

Just when my longing to see

The moon over Kyoto

One last time grows deepest,

The image I behold this autumn night

Leaves me sleepless for its beauty.

Here Dogen catches himself. Just when he is about to leave the moment he finds the Now, and its beauty. 

A later poet, Basho, captures the loss of  "the moment" in his:-

Even in Kyoto —
hearing the cuckoo’s cry —
I long for Kyoto.

But for Dogen there is no expectation or regret, only simple thankfulness. Gratitude. "Sleepless for its Beauty."

All of which brings in the nature of time. Which many, including myself, can't crack. Yet we live in time. T.S.Eliot's "Four Quartets" can be seen and read as a contemplation on, and exploration of, time. And ends with the rose and the flame becoming "one". But really, I'm not one for endings or conclusions.

Need this be a conclusion?

The road goes on forever, and the journey itself is home.

I enjoy waffling. I find it therapeutic. Others may not find the reading of my waffle so therapeutic. All things considered (perhaps not "all") I'm simply a Pure Land bombu, a foolish being, incapable of engineering my own enlightenment. So I just say "thank you" for everything, for every moment, not distinguishing between what could be considered "good" or what could be considered "bad". Living in time, how would I know which is which?

Why? I like it.

Related quotes:-

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

(Line from the "Hsin Hsin Ming" by Sengstan)

What is the teaching of a whole lifetime? "An appropriate statement" (Yun-men)

An appropriate tune

The vision of ‘things as they are’ is never of a fixed reality/truth; the power for self-subversion and self-renewal is inherent in the vision itself. Thus ‘things’ seen as they are are transformable. Every practitioner’s task is to change them by seeing through them. From Dogen’s perspective, this is the fundamental difference between contemplation (dhyana) and zazen-only. To him, seeing was changing and making. 

(Hee-Jin Kim)

........the leaves fall because the budding from underneath is too powerful to resist........ 

(Unknown)

The crucially important point to note is that in Dōgen, opposites or dualities were not obliterated or even blurred; they were not so much transcended as they were realized. The total freedom in question here was that freedom which realized itself in duality, not apart from it.

(Hee-Jin Kim)

.....many Zen patriarchs used language to defeat language, or as a “poison to counteract poison,” resulting in a realization beyond thought and scripture. Dogen, on the other hand, employs a variety of verbal devices such as philosophical wordplay, paradox, and irony in order to stress that there is a fundamental identity of language and enlightenment, or a oneness of the sutras and personal attainment. Rather than emphasizing silence or the transcendence of speech, Dogen proves himself in his main work, the Shobogenzo, to be a master of language. He exhibits remarkable skill in revealing how ordinary words harbor a deeper though generally hidden metaphysical meaning.

(Stephen Heine, from "The Poetry of Dogen")

The ‘clear seeing’ of Zen practice-enlightenment is a process not a product, an activity not a resolution.......liberation is not a fixed form or static state, but a flowing-form of continuous activity, study, practice and verification.

(Ted Beringer, from "Zen Cosmology")

"To teach students the power of the present moment as the only moment is a skillful teaching of buddha ancestors. But this doesn’t mean that there is no future result from practice". 

(Dogen's teacher in China to Dogen)