The Garden of Present Moment

When John woke the next morning, History was gone. In her place sat a note written in her careful script: “Follow the path that leads neither East nor West, but deeper into the Now. You will find me where all journeys end and begin.”

John puzzled over this riddle as he left the cave. The morning was unusually still—not the heavy stillness before a storm, but the light stillness of perfect balance. Even his footsteps seemed muffled, as if the very air around him had learned to listen.

The path History mentioned revealed itself as he walked: not a road cut through the landscape, but rather a way that seemed to open moment by moment beneath his feet. It led neither toward the mountains of his youth nor toward the distant sea, but seemed to spiral gently inward, like a seashell viewed from within.

After what felt like hours but might have been minutes—time itself seemed different here—John came upon the strangest sight of all his journeys. It was a garden, yet not a garden. A city, yet not a city. At first glance it appeared to be seven separate places, but as he looked longer, he realized they were all the same place seen from different angles, like facets of a single jewel.

At the garden’s heart stood a great tree whose branches reached impossibly high and whose roots, John somehow sensed, went down to the very center of the world. Beneath its shade sat seven figures, each distinct yet somehow sharing the same quality of profound stillness.

The first figure John noticed was a man of middle years whose very presence seemed to dissolve the urgency that had driven John’s steps. When this man spoke, it was as if time itself slowed to listen.

“You are looking for something,” the man said, though it was not quite a question. “But what you seek is what is looking. What you call ‘John’ is a story being told by That which has no story. The seeker is the sought.”

John felt a peculiar sensation, as if someone had gently suggested he stop carrying a heavy pack he had forgotten he was wearing. “I don’t understand,” he said.

A second figure—an elderly man whose smile seemed to hold all the world’s sorrows and joys at once—leaned forward. “Understanding is overrated, my friend. Be here now. This moment is the only moment there ever is. Your past is a memory occurring now. Your future is a thought happening now. Life is now—always now.”

“But I have a journey to complete,” John protested. “I am seeking the Island—”

“Ah,” said a third voice, and John turned to see a small man in simple robes whose eyes twinkled with gentle mischief. “Island is here! You are looking for your true nature, yes? But you are your true nature. The wave does not need to find the ocean—the wave IS ocean, expressing as wave.”

John felt dizzy. “Are you saying my journey is meaningless?”

The fourth figure, a tall man whose stillness seemed to contain vast depths, spoke with quiet authority: “All journeys are meaningful, and all journeys are dreams. You walk in your sleep, seeking to wake up. But you can wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here.”

“The seeking itself is the prison,” added a fifth voice—a man whose presence reminded John somehow of wind moving through empty space. “You have been told you are a separate self who must find God, find truth, find happiness. But separation is the fundamental illusion. What you truly are was never born and will never die, never left home and needs not return.”

John sat down heavily beneath the tree, his head spinning. “Then what am I? Who am I?”

The sixth figure—an Asian man whose compassion seemed to radiate like warmth from a fire—smiled gently. “You are asking the wrong question, dear one. ‘Who am I?’ implies someone asking about someone else. Better to ask: ‘What is this awareness that knows thoughts, feelings, sensations, but is not itself a thought, feeling, or sensation?’”

“Even better,” suggested the seventh, whose voice carried traces of many accents, “don’t ask at all. Just be. When you stop trying to be someone, you discover what you actually are. When you stop trying to get somewhere, you find you’re already there.”

John looked from face to face, seeing in each the same impossible combination of infinite depth and childlike simplicity. “You all seem to be saying the same thing in different words.”

“Because there is only one thing to say,” the first man replied. “The separate self you take yourself to be is a mirage. What you truly are is the aware presence in which all experience appears and disappears—including the experience of being ‘John’ on a ‘journey.’”

“But if that’s true,” John said, feeling something like panic, “then what about suffering? What about the people I’ve met who are in pain, who need help?”

The compassionate one leaned closer. “Suffering comes from the belief in separation—from thinking ‘I am here’ and ‘happiness is there,’ ‘I am incomplete’ and ‘completion is elsewhere.’ When this illusion dissolves, what remains is not indifference but boundless love—for you see that there are not many beings suffering, but one Being appearing as many, playing at forgetting itself.”

“The mind creates problems so it can solve them,” added the playful one. “It creates time so it can imagine progress. It creates space so it can imagine journeys. But in reality, all problems exist only in thought, all time exists only now, all space exists only here.”

John felt a strange loosening, as if threads that had been holding him together were gently coming undone. “I feel like I’m disappearing.”

“Good!” laughed the wind-like man. “Let ‘John’ disappear. What disappears was never real anyway. What’s left when ‘John’ goes? Are you not still here? Are you not still aware? What you truly are cannot disappear—it is the very space in which appearing and disappearing happen.”

The still, deep one nodded. “You have been seeking extraordinary experiences, special states, cosmic consciousness. But what you are is so ordinary, so simple, so ever-present that the mind overlooks it completely. You are the awareness that is aware of these words right now. Nothing more mysterious than that. Nothing less miraculous than that.”

As the seven spoke, John noticed something remarkable happening. The urgency that had driven him from country to country, the longing that had pulled him toward distant Islands, the fear that had chased him from false paradises—all of it was simply… settling. Like sediment in a clear pool, falling to the bottom and leaving the water transparent.

“Is this enlightenment then?” he asked.

All seven laughed—not mockingly, but with the delighted recognition of shared understanding.

“Enlightenment is the discovery that there never was anyone to become enlightened,” said one.

“It’s the end of the search because you realize what you were seeking was doing the seeking,” said another.

“It’s extraordinarily ordinary,” said a third.

“It’s what you are, not what you get,” said a fourth.

“It’s always already the case,” said a fifth.

“It’s this, right here, right now,” said a sixth.

“It’s nothing special—and therefore utterly sacred,” said the seventh.

John sat in the growing twilight beneath the great tree, feeling more at peace than he had since… well, than he ever remembered feeling. The Island he had sought seemed less important now—not because he had given up the search, but because he was beginning to suspect that what he had hoped to find on the Island was what was looking through his eyes right now.

“Will I stay here then?” he asked.

The first man smiled. “Where could you go? This garden exists wherever you truly are. These teaching exist whenever you truly listen. This peace exists whenever you stop running toward or away from this moment.”

“But,” added the compassionate one gently, “perhaps your journey will continue. Perhaps there are others who need to hear what you have heard, see what you have seen. The wave continues to wave, even knowing it is ocean.”

As if summoned by these words, History appeared at the edge of the clearing, her face radiant with quiet joy.

“I see you have met the Awakeners,” she said as she approached. “They appear whenever someone becomes truly tired of seeking and ready for finding.”

“Are they real?” John asked.

History’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Are you real? Is awareness real? Is this moment real? They are as real as anything gets—which is to say, they are expressions of the one Reality that alone is real.”

John looked back at the seven figures, but they seemed fainter now, as if they had been made of twilight and were fading with the coming of night. Only their words remained, echoing in a part of him deeper than memory:

“What you seek is what is seeking… Be here now… You are what you’re looking for… Wake up where you are… Stop trying to be someone… Rest in your true nature… This is it…”

As the stars began to appear overhead, John felt a deep gratitude wash through him—not gratitude for something received, but gratitude as the very nature of what he was. For the first time in his long journey, he was not trying to get anywhere or become anyone.

He was simply being what he had always already been.

“What happens now?” he asked History.

“Now,” she said, settling beside him under the great tree, “the real journey begins. For it’s one thing to glimpse your true nature in a garden of wise teachers, and quite another to remember it in the marketplace, to embody it in relationship, to live it in a world that has forgotten what it is.”

“The Awakeners have shown you the sun behind the clouds. But clouds still come. Weather still changes. The art is learning to be the sun, whether shining brightly or hidden from view.”

John nodded, understanding. The great peace was not something he had gained that could be lost. It was what he was, whether he remembered it or forgot it. And perhaps—perhaps the Island he had sought so long was not a place to reach, but a way of being to remember.

A way of being that was, he realized with a start of recognition, exactly what he was being right now.

In the present moment, under the ancient tree, in the garden that was everywhere and nowhere, being what he had always been, seeking what was always already found.