Death is not in a decade, not in a year. It is always on a today, in a minute, in a moment.¹ A human life usually lasts about 80 years. In this exercise, I assume that life lasts a single minute. If life consists of a single minute, what is important then? What must be contained within that one minute? And for what is there precisely no place? After every minute, a small death follows, and there is a new minute again. The way in which one minute is shaped determines how the next minute arises. In this way, the temporal dimension of dependent origination is practiced.

If life lasts a minute, can I react to sounds outside with anger? Or do I want to be able to fully hear the depth of sound for one last time? That is to say: experiencing the sound as sound. Without anything added to it. And if life lasts a minute, what do I want to have with me? What must memory be able to provide? The love of loved ones, friends—that must be present. Painful events, visions of the future, the past, can try to proliferate in the minute. But whoever wishes to do justice to what is beautiful and good must remember to let these things go. That which was unjust is granted the grace to disappear from the stage of a minute. There is no place to assign it in that one minute.

A minute can seem terribly short. At the same time, this practice is a prelude to what is reality, namely that life always takes place in a single moment. Whoever practices the minute subsequently finds themselves in the practice of the moment. The moment constantly falls victim to distractions, is subjected to violence, often under the guise that it is a preparation for a future. But the moment was the only thing that existed. The future was in that moment, was communicated in that moment. The past was in that one moment. The whole of life up until that point, everything in the body, all mental representations, experiences, intentions, and awarenesses—they were all carried in that moment. The temporal capability of dependent theory of origin thus departs from the insight that a preparation for a future moment depends on the practice of the present moment.

1. Ayya Khema referenced a phrase like this in one of her talks and this practice is inspired by that. ↩︎