By Harris Tobias
Be here now. That was what was written over the door of the Zen Center. Where or what exactly “here” was was never explained, but that was the whole point of Zen. To be so in the moment you were the now. Alexander Morris understood the now to mean paying attention to the world outside himself. But, as a scientist, he was sceptical that the Zen ideal of being in the “now” was even possible. What exactly was the damn now anyway? It bothered him. The more he thought about it, the less “now” he became. Wasn’t that ironic? Purposeful thinking about something, even the now, took you further from its essence. He wondered how physics would explain the now, or was it merely a mental state?
One day, when his questions and doubts overwhelmed him, Alexander approached Nom, the Zen Centre’s Zen Master. Alexander bowed low with the respect due an enlightened one, and in a humble voice asked, “Master, can you please tell me, what is the now?”
Nom smiled a secret Zen smile, and, striking a small gong he kept at his side, answered enigmatically. “The waterfall looks continuous but is made of countless drops.”
Alexander meditated on the Master’s statement for several weeks. At first he saw no connection between the now and a waterfall, but slowly it came to him that the now was like a single drop in a continuous rushing stream plunging headlong into the unknown.
He checked this realisation with Nom. The Master tinkled a small brass bell, smiled his enigmatic smile and said, “You are not the drop, you and everything are the drop.” The bell meant he was on the right track. The gong meant he was going wrong. He pondered the Master’s words some more.
After several more weeks of meditation, Alexander thought he’d figured out what the Master meant: the now was a single point on a line. A point containing no dimensions and no time. It contained the entire universe and all time. Alexander was sure he had made a great stride forward in his understanding of the ineffable now. Bursting with confidence, he ran his new interpretation past Nom.
The old monk banged his gong and told Alexander this story:
Once a Monk was walking along, his begging bowl in his hand, thinking about nothing when, in that very moment, he was eaten by a tiger.
Again, Alexander struggled to derive any relevant meaning from the story. Maybe being mindful was dangerous. How else to explain the tiger? How could the monk fail to see the tiger if he was being mindful? Wait, the Master never used the word mindful. What did he say? “The monk was thinking about nothing when the tiger attacked him.” What does thinking about nothing mean? Is the now nothing? Was that the danger to look out for? Is thinking of nothing the same as being mindful?
When he asked Nom for help, all he got was the dismissive gong. That meant more weeks of meditation. Then he thought, maybe the tiger represented enlightenment, that elusive “satori” moment everyone at the Zen Centre was striving for. Maybe the monk in the story found his satori moment as he walked along. Maybe the tiger was the totally aware now he had been seeking the whole time. That must be it. The realisation gave him an aha moment and it thrilled him.
When Alexander presented this new understanding to Nom, he was rewarded with the opaque smile and the brass bell which told him he was on the right track. Now he felt he was getting somewhere in his understanding of the elusive now. If he could only wrap his head around it, he could join the ranks of those enlightened individuals who knew the now intimately. Those fabled few who could ride the now like surfers ride waves.
On his way home from the Zen Centre Alexander tried to empty his mind and tried to be in the moment. He was so close, he could almost taste it. What would he do once he reached that exalted state? Would people call him Master? He saw himself advising those young seekers — striking the gong when they were going wrong and rewarding them with the bell when they grasped his subtle truths. Nom would be his equal. Alexander knew that he shouldn’t let his ego cloud his perception, but he couldn’t help it, he was proud of himself, damn proud. He felt he was only moments away from a life-changing breakthrough. He could practically hear the now rushing at him ready to sweep him along.
It was at this precise moment that Alexander stepped off the curb and was struck by a taxi. Before he lost consciousness he realised what the tiger in the story was — it wasn’t enlightenment, it was ego.
About the Author
Harris Tobias
Harris Tobias lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of two novels: The Greer Agency & A Felony of Birds. He has written dozens of short stories many of which are available on line at <quantummuse.com>. He is the author of many children’s books including At The Robot Zoo, MoonRivet Saves His Skin and An Alphabet Book of Bugs available in print from CreateSpace and as ebooks for Nook & Kindle. You can find links to his writings here: <harristobias-fiction.blogspot.com>
Ion Newcombe is the editor and publisher of AntipodeanSF, Australia’s longest running online speculative fiction magazine, regularly issued since January 1998, and conceived back around November 2007. He has been a zealous reader and occasional writer of SF since his childhood in the 1960s, and even sold a few stories here and there back in the '90s.
Mark Webb's midlife crisis came in the form of attempting to write speculative fiction at a very slow pace. His wife maintains this is a good outcome considering the more expensive and cliched alternatives. Evidence of Mark's attempts to procrastinate in his writing, including general musings and reviews of books he has been reading, can be found at www.markwebb.name.
Alistair Lloyd is a Melbourne based writer and narrator who has been consuming good quality science fiction and fantasy most of his life.
Ed lives with his wife plus a magical assortment of native animals in tropical North Queensland.
Garry Dean lives on the Mid Coast of New South Wales Australia, and has been a fan of SF for most of his natural life. Being vision impaired, he makes good use of voice recognition and text to speech in order to write. Many of his stories have appeared in AntipodeanSF over the years, and his love of all things audio led him to join the narration team in 2017.
Mark is an astrophysicist and space scientist who worked on the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn. Following this he worked in computer consultancy, engineering, and high energy research (with a stint at the JET Fusion Torus).
Tim Borella is an Australian author, mainly of short speculative fiction published in anthologies, online and in podcasts.
Sarah Pratt is an avid fiction writer and a Marketing Consultant.
Pixie is a voice actor, cabaret performer & slam poet From the Blue Mountains in NSW.
Laurie Bell lives in Melbourne, Australia. She was that girl you found with her nose always buried in a book. She has been writing ever since she was a little girl and first picked up a pen. From books to short stories, radio plays to snippets of ideas and reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
Timothy Gwyn is a professional pilot in Canada, where he flies to remote communities. During a lull in his flying career, he was a radio announcer for three years, and he is also an author.
Margaret lives the good life on a small piece of rural New South Wales Australia, with an amazing man, a couple of pets, and several rambunctious wombats.
Jolie Lindholm grew up in small towns on Long Island, NY, later moving to Florida for college.
You can follow her creative writing journey on Twitter: <
Chris Karageorge is a lover, brother, son, neighbour and a keen observer of all things in sight. 
Bethany Tatman is an aspiring writer who currently resides in one of the more hipster suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.
William Kerr is a self-professed science fiction enthusiast. He was born and raised in Tasmania but now calls Canberra home.
PS Cottier is a poet who lives in Canberra, with a particular interest in speculative poetry.
Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.