Outside Lookin' Inside Dept.

One of the things that bugged me about Buddhism (Zen and otherwise) when I first ran into it was something that is typically encapsulated with the following formulation: The past, the present, and the future are all unknowable. You only know about the past through traces left behind, and those aren't really the past; they're traces left by the past. Likewise, you only know about the present by way of your tiny perceptions of your tiny slice of it. And the future — who knows about the future?

...