The Secret to Immortality

So, the religious Taoists often aspire to immortality while the philosophical Taoists, and indeed the great Taoist classics, never seem to address it. What gives?

You've been lied to your whole life. You have been given the impression that there is a future, that there is a past. There are not.

There is only now.

Now goes on forever.

You're alive now (or you have mastered literacy-after-death, in which case, please email me) Now is all there is. Tuh-dah! Immortality.

It sounds like a cop-out, I know. It's not. I experience memories of the past. I experience them and I develop the idea that the past exists. Patterns emerge and recur in my memories and I anticipate events to come.

When that future comes, though, it's not the future. It's the present. The heretofore present has since expired into nothing more than memories.

There is only now. Not only is that the way-things-are, but it's for the best: ever seen Groundhog Day? Have you ever considered what life would be like if you only ate your favorite food unceasingly forever and ever? Impermanence is natural and good.

Static existence is oxymoronic.

I'll write more soon about impermanence and about Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity.