There is a past and a present because you think there is.
You have divided it in this way.
The past is a memory which does not exist. Nor does the future exist.
Really? The future doesn’t exist? Then how the fuck do you keep on living for another second?!?!
The past doesn’t exist? Then how the fuck do trees and shit exist who’ve been here thousands of years before us??!!
Are you anti-logic / anti-science ?
No wonder you believe in god!
Whoa!
This is admittedly an insightful observation.
But: How is it relevant to this particular thread?
Buddhists, like all the rest of us, only embody a present because they once embodied a past. And to the extent they are still around as the clock keeps ticking, they continue to embody a future.
What I then focus on given this is the extent to which the past, the present and the future embodied in any particular “I” becomes intertwined in the behaviors that “I” choose here and now as that becomes intertwined further in what I would like the fate of “I” to be when the future unfolds beyond the grave.
Over and again: There is what “I” believe is true and there is what “I” can demonstrate to others is in fact true for them too.
After all, here there is so much at stake: enlightenment on this side of the grave reconfiguring into chosen behaviors reconfiguring into the future as karma reconfiguring into the future as…a soul?
Again, if you are a Buddhist, you tell me.
Religion without God? How?
I live now. Trees exist now.
Hardly.
Be here now.
So you’re a zero point solipsist! Good to know!
It’s actually impossible to prove that we weren’t born in the instant of any point with all our memories there. (All of them lies) - but I will guarantee that you trust most of them, like not jumping off cliffs!!! Thinking it’s an illusion that can harm you!!
Phyllo, I need to be honest with you. I’ve always found you an absurd poster. Sure you say interesting things sometimes… but you have an absurd big picture… as I just demonstrated.
You believe in zero point solipsism but never act like it… hmmmmmm…
No thanks. I’ll just go with the idea I’m more than a nanosecond old and behave accordingly!
Yes, it is nt anti-science to think the future and the past do not exist. Some scientists (physicists) think they do exist (for example those who believe in a Block Universe) but this is one theory amongst others. Further if the past exists, what is it made of?
And then, ironically. If the past exists, then there is no death.
I would agree with this–the existence of the past or future is more of a philosophical question than a scientific one (or worse, a question of language)–but I would expect the vast majority of scientists to believe in the existence of past and future given current theories of spacetime relativity (i.e. Minkowski spacetime has time as just another dimension akin to space and therefore is just as real as space). But strictly speaking, it isn’t unscientific to not believe in the existence of past and future.
The same stuff as now?
Because we’re always alive at some point in the past? But then we’re also always dead at some point in the past (or we will be).
Biggy, I will reply to your last post later.
Okay, let’s sustain a discussion that revolves around whether Communism or Capitalism best reflects human nature. And attempt to pin progress down.
My facts. Your facts. Their facts. What can in fact be established historically? How did these facts come about instead of other facts? How far is the gap between the historical facts and the writings of Karl Marx and Adam Smith?
And how might a Buddhist react to this discussion insofar as it involves his or her understanding of enlightenment, karma, reincarnation and Nirvana.
For instance, has Marx come back back as the coronavirus? Or is that more likely to be Smith? 
You can hold on to your football, Lucy.
Maybe.
But, please, both of you, cite what you construe to be the best example of this. The discussion between us on this thread revolves around Buddhism. I note that which is of particular interest to me – morality here and now, immortality there and then. I wonder how this is understood by Buddhists in the absence of God.
You then move the discussion outside that domain but I can’t/don’t/won’t go there. You note a particular context involving human interactions precipitating reactions that revolve around something other than God, but I yank it back to God.
What particular contexts?
As for the meaning of “progress”, the distinction I make is between the either/or world and the is/ought world. I often cite as an example an issue that provoked any number of arguments between folks some years ago. The space program. Going to the Moon.
In regard to the task itself measuring progress was easy. We either make it to the Moon or we don’t. Well, assuming the whole thing wasn’t filmed on a back lot in Hollywood.
But what of the arguments that revolved around whether we ought to be doing it? Whether, instead, those billions of dollars should be used to solve problems right here on Earth. Like ending poverty or making sure literally thousands of children didn’t starve to death each and every day.
Is there an argument here that would enable us to progress to a final solution?
Sure, we could set the task to be both. But should the space program be scrapped until the other thing is accomplished first? Is that the more enlightened choice?
Let’s discuss that here and note where progress is made.
Yo, Gib!
About you becoming the 4th “stooge”…
That’s when I reduce you down to responding retorting like Curly above.
You’ve been warned! 
She wrote how morality and immortality work for Buddhists right here:
Which got dismissed as a “world of words”.
FFS
Actually, my reaction was a bit more substantive:
Given my points here, how is her assessment not basically encompassed in a general description intellectual contraption “world of words”?
No it wasn’t. You asked a bunch of questions which effectively dumps the burden of demonstration/proof on to the other person and lets you to sit there and pass judgment on their responses.
You do this often.
Yo, Lucy! 
Yup.
You can’t accept feedback.
healthline.com/nutrition/12 … n#section1
The profit of meditations is a real thing.
Most people don’t do it because they don’t do it.
There is no experience to encourage activity.
I know meditation has changed my life.
And I do not do it a lot either.
I want to do more.
Oh! that’s good… which perimeters were they, exactly? for referential purposes, you understand.
…in relation to… what?
You seem to have described an environment of conflicting goods occurring, and to reconcile the disparities between self and environment… so-as to achieve a dharmic point in time and continuum, would mean to appease those conflicts through gaining much more mindful thoughts on the impact those conflicts are causing… so some hindsight and forward-thinking would be helpful at this point, in achieving that state, and thus the required reconciliation.
“The possibility of death is something that is my own, and at any time before the power of today, I can reveal that the possibility of “I” is of death, particularly “I”.” -Heidegger.
What do you see your fate as? what would you wish it to be beyond the grave? isn’t that nothing but a legacy?
…a case of ontic versus ontological, in finding the mean that suits you?
Heidegger would say -“the notion of existential identity and that of world are completely wedded.“
So you see, living morally, as a ‘presumed religious narrative’ that brings ‘comfort and consolation’ no matter what the situation? Angst and despair know not of conceptualised boundaries of comfort and joy… if that’s what you’re getting at, and wondering about.
I have always been well aware of my true self and nature, in relation to the artificial instilled-values of my politico/religious upbringing… it wasn’t as harsh a process as to diminish or eradicate one’s inner ‘I’ as you think… it wasn’t Christianity. And so… the politico-religious aspect, ran parallel to the innate ‘I’, so making for an intertwined socio/moral experienentiality of an existence… as I was growing up.
…good post, btw.