so whatchya gonna do?
Work: Now is the only now

Question: The way you've been speaking of work... your work seems to depend on things you've done in the past...My understanding of Buddhism would be that each moment there are a number of possibilities... I'm a busboy. Okay. But when I wake up in the morning, I'm not a busboy in my very real self-nature. I wake up in the morning and I say, "Well, what am I going to do today? I can decide to make coats or I can decide to be a busboy."

Chogyam Trungpa: Did you say there are all kinds of possibilities in the present moment? Quite unlikely. Now is the ONLY now. You can't find different kinds of nows. Maybe you could find a now which is related with the past, now which is related with the future — but they are not NOW. They belong to the past or the future. Now is only one thing, so in nowness there are no alternatives. It's just now. And you have to use as your stepping stone whatever comes up. You could mold different situations by gradually readapting to nowness as it becomes different times. But you can't just stop one thing and start a new one, because now is always one thing. If you are a busboy now, you are a busboy — you can't pretend to be a policeman because you simply are not.