The past is a ghost and the future is a phantom. All that is here and will ever be is the present. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow never knows, since the day never arrives. As soon as it is tomorrow it is today again. Even if one could somehow go back to yesterday—which is impossible, for the time being—it also would be today. These terms are abstractions, figments of the mind.
All we have, have had, and will ever have is the present moment, right now. Now. Now. Further, no matter where one is located, one is always here. Sure, one can “go over there,” but as soon as that happens there is no “there” there anymore. Saying to someone “see you there then” makes no sense. No matter what, one is always going to see someone here now.
Most people seem to think that time is linear, but according to quantum physicists, once we get down to the level of subatomic particles and elemental forces, there is no meaningful distinction between past, present, and future. Time is, perhaps, simply a measure of change, which is the only thing that never does. Indigenous conceptions of temporality likewise do not see time as an arrow moving from past to future, unlike the dominant Western construct.
This does not imply that one is wrong and the other right, but that there is no one way to perceive an eternal present usually divided into yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It is interesting that Wikipedia defines time as “the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, to the future.” Here we see a linear progression portrayed, with the qualifier “apparently irreversible” thrown in.
One may think it a shame that we can move through space and not through what is often called the fourth dimension, hence the continuing fascination with the idea of time travel. Traveling into the future is what we have always been doing, at the rate of one second per second, one minute per minute, one hour per hour, one day per day, etc. Of course, that implies a linear direction, but is it really possible to travel into the past? If so, what would that mean?
The past is a memory, an artifact, a photograph, a document, a recording. We cannot, apparently, return to it; all we can do is see the traces we have left now. It seems reasonable to assume that all we can do is move in one temporal direction, in the same sense that it seems reasonable to assume we can only move in three spatial directions. Imagine that everyone could only move in one spatial direction, or thought so. Space only going one way! It sounds absurd, but perhaps our experience of temporality seems as nonsensical to hypothetical higher-dimensional beings.
We live, then, in a “flatland” of time. The only reason we think of things such as days, months, or years at all is the planet spinning around, our satellite revolving around us, and our flying around the nearest star. The week, meanwhile, is wholly arbitrary, having no natural analog. “That was weeks ago”: what does that really mean? The cyclical nature of time is most noticeable around the change of the seasons, the solstices and equinoxes that mark out the regular intervals of endless solar revolutions.
A statement attributed to the Buddha went thus: “You shouldn’t chase after the past or place expectations on the future. What is past is left behind. The future is as yet unreached. Whatever quality is present you clearly see right there, right there.” Here and now, the only place and time anyone can be.