Good morning. Can you hear me? This morning I want to speak about time and being time. So I talked about this last Sunday in connection with the new book by and about Joanna Macy, Wild Love for the World, Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time. And I talked about it a little bit last evening in the online birthday party for Joanna Macy. But I want to talk more fully this morning about time. You can hear last Sunday's talk, by the way, on our Ancient Dragon website. But there is a lot to say about time. So this is partly from the writing, Being Time, by Ehe Dogen, founder of the Soto Zen tradition.

[01:06]

So one of the important things that Dogen says about time, and this isn't just from Dogen, but this is not that I'm a physicist, but this is congruent with modern physics. Can you all hear me okay? So time is not some objective external container. We think of time that way. But time is actually much more complex than that. Time is actually about our being, our presence. We are responsible for time. Time does not exist apart from all of us and each of us.

[02:16]

So, you know, we talk in Zen practice about being present, or the way Dogen says it might be best translated as presencing. How do we present the presence of time? And I want to talk about that today in terms of Buddhist teachings of time and our responsibility to time. So, again, time is our being, our experience, our existence. How we be is time. Time is not just – time has many aspects. So, you know, one aspect of time is that there is this, you know, our clock time. That is one aspect of time. But it's – and we respect that, and so we want to begin and end on time, we say.

[03:27]

And we have to be certain places at certain times, we say. But actually time, again, is much more complex than that. Being present and the present, sometimes we think of as be here now. And sometimes we want to escape into the present and ignore the fullness of time. So, I want to talk today about the fullness of time and our different approaches to time. But there's some idea of being present as an escape, an escape from our regrets about the past. You know, all the things we should have done and said or whatever. And then there's also escaping into the present as a – in terms of our fear of the future, our anxieties.

[04:30]

What's going to happen? Oh, no, this is very alive in this time today. But actually all of these times are present in being time. All of these times are present in our present presencing. This time includes all of the past and all of the future. And all of the various pasts and all of the various futures are present right now. So to really be presencing our time and our life and our responsibility includes acknowledging the inclusivity of time. Time flows, Dogen says, in many directions. Not just from yesterday to today to tomorrow, past, present, future. Often in Buddhist texts they talk about the past, future and the present in that order. But time is moving from yesterday to today and from today to yesterday and from tomorrow to yesterday.

[05:36]

And so time is moving in many different directions. One teaching about the complexity of time is from the Huayen School on East Asian Buddhism, developed from the Flower Ornament Sutra. And it talks about ten times. So there's the past, the present and future of the past. There's the past, the present and future of the present. There's the past and present of the future of the future. And then there's the tenth time is all those nine times together. So the Flower Ornament Sutra likes the number ten. But anyway, that's one way of seeing the complexity of time in terms of those ten times. And again, as Dogen says, time is about flowing or passage. Time is about the movement.

[06:38]

Time is moving in all these directions right now at once. So the issue, the question is, and I'll come back to this. Well, re-inhabiting time, our responsibility to time. How do we be present in time without trying to run away from time, trying to run away from the present, trying to run away from our fears about the future or our anxieties about the future or our regrets about the past? Time is moving in many directions. And what I really want to talk about today is the complexity of time and times and temporality.

[07:40]

So, you know, the precepts are about our responsibility to honor all times. How do we be present in this time? That includes the past, includes the future. Everything in the past helped contribute to whatever we see as the present. Everything in the present will produce futures. And so this is a basic teaching of karma, of cause and effect, that there is an effect for each cause. Everything we do has some effect. And we think of that as, you know, the cause now has some effect in the future and the cause in the past has some effect now. And that's true, but also that moves in different directions, too.

[08:43]

We can change time. We can change in the present and in the future because cause and effect moves through time and through the fullness of time in various different ways. So it's not that we can change, you know, things that so-called happened in the past, but history is our present story about what happened in the past. And how we see things in the past changes their meaning, changes their consequence, changes how they affect the future. So it's up to us to see in the present what the past is and also to see in the present what the future is. So we change the meaning of the future and we change the meaning of the past in the present. And we change the meaning of the present in the future. And we change the meaning of the present in the past.

[09:46]

And then there's the past and present and future of the future and so forth. So how do we take responsibility and re-inhabit time, see all of time, fully in our present, see the complexity of time? So just various Buddhist teachings about time. Some yogi or a group of yogis back in ancient India realized a kshana, I think it's pronounced, which is a moment of time. And somehow they figured out or deduced or whatever, experienced that there are 62 kshanas in each second, we call a second. And I guess there are variations on this, I've seen it reported as 75 kshanas in each second.

[10:48]

But, you know, and we talk now in our current technology about nanoseconds, so maybe that's related. Anyway, kshanas, each or each finger snap has 62 moments in it. So that's another way of seeing time, that a lot is happening right now in time. There's also a great Chinese teacher, Zhu Yi, who founded the Tiantai school. In some ways, he was the founder of East Asian Buddhism. He put together all of the different aspects of Buddhism coming from India to China, and in some ways saw different aspects of the teaching fitting together and how they fit together. So this is still an important teaching for us as we try and deal with how we practice the Buddha way, given all the range of teachings.

[12:00]

But Zhu Yi also said that there are 3,000 worlds in each moment of thought. So this is another way of seeing the complexity of time. 3,000 worlds in each moment of thought. And considering our Zazen practice, we might feel that. That each moment of thought in Zazen, you know, thoughts come and thoughts go, and our instruction is to just let them go and they come again in the next moment. But in each of those moments of thought, as we sit upright facing ourselves and facing the wall, it is said that there are 3,000 worlds. And if we think about Ksandhas and we think about the ten times, yeah, time is complex in that way, so that there are all of those different aspects or worlds in each moment of thought.

[13:13]

That doesn't mean that we can or should try and track them down and figure them out. That's the part of the point is this, that time is, we cannot control time or figure out time. But we are time. Time only exists in our being, in our existence, in our activity, in our body, speech, and mind. Time, again, for Dogen, time is being, our being. So there are many aspects of time. You know, clock time is one of them. And Dogen says we should study all of them. But it's not a matter of, you know, we can know all the aspects of time. But time depends on us. Again, as I said, we have a responsibility to the present and to presencing and to all times in the present and to all beings in the present and to ourselves through all of these times.

[14:16]

So many aspects of time. Time is related to space also. And time is related to the earth. We are grounded. We sit on the ground. We are grounded on, you know, on our seat, on our awareness of and our experience of all the times right now in this present. Again, without trying to run away from the past or try and avoid the future, of course, we have anxieties and fears. But the future is not set and the past isn't set either. Again, we can change the meaning of the past in terms of how we see it now. So earth time, earth times include, you know, geological time. All the different ages from man to bassoon on back.

[15:17]

Earth time includes the seasons. So we measure time in terms of winter, spring, autumn, summer is in there too. And yet that time is flexible. So for us, spring is happening all around us in Chicago. But I was here from Argentina where it's autumn, right? So, yeah, complexity of time, time, time of the seasons. Then there's the time of insects, very short lifespan. There's the time of our lifespan. There's time of trees and there are trees that are a thousand years old. Then there's the time of mountains. Mountains have time too.

[16:22]

Mountains in the east and the Appalachias are older and more worn down than the Rockies, for example, or the Himalayas. Mountains have time too, but it's beyond. We think of mountains as set and settled and permanent, but actually time moves for mountains as well as for insects and trees and people. Then there's the idea in Buddhism of kalpas. So a kalpa is a very long age. And there's a whole pattern of kalpas. There are four kalpas in each cycle. So there's the kalpa of arising, the kalpa of abiding, the kalpa of disintegrating. Maybe we're in that. Then there's the empty kalpa in between. And then there's another big bang. And it all starts again. But a kalpa is described in various colorful ways in Buddhist literature. One of my favorites is imagining a bird with a piece of silk in her talons who flies over the top of Mount Everest once every hundred years.

[17:29]

The time it would take for that bird to wear down Mount Everest. So it's flat. That's one kalpa. So, again, time has many dimensions. And yet the point is that we are being time right now in our presence and presencing. So other times we have ancestral time. So particularly in our Zen tradition, we could call it Confucian Buddhist, but we venerate the ancestors. So we chant a list of names of ancestors going back to Shakyamuni Buddha and even to seven Buddhas before Buddha in ancient, ancient past, maybe in previous big banks. I don't know. And then we chant that list of names from Buddha to Suzuki Roshi, who founded our tradition here when he came from Japan to California. So. In our practice tradition and in our teaching tradition, we honor these ancestors.

[18:38]

This is another way to see time. So I've tried to track the names of those people whose names we chant. We know that the names in India that we chant aren't necessarily historical. They were put together later in China because in China they were much more interested in this kind of time than they were in India. But, you know, we have various ancestors who provide the richness of our presence and our present. They kept alive this practice tradition through generation after generation. And, of course, it wasn't just the ancestors whose names we chant, but all the people and all the sanghas that supported them. So we are keeping alive for the future a practice and teaching tradition that goes way back. So just through our Zen tradition, we have this sense of a wider dimension of time, not just quarterly profit margins, but time in which each generation keeps alive something important to us.

[19:52]

And it's not just in terms of spiritual traditions, all of our cultural traditions. Ancestors in our tradition of multiple traditions of music. Ancestors in our tradition of literature from various cultures. Ancestors in terms of art. So we can look back at our cultural traditions that we value and see ancestors who we can venerate, who built on previous ancestors and sometimes jumped and did something, you know, seemingly brand new. I don't know, Picasso maybe created something different. But he was also building on his knowledge of previous paintings and painters and artists. So we have various traditions of ancestral time, very important to us.

[20:54]

But we also have our ancestors in the future. So whoever they are, and in Joanna Macy's work, she has us imagine ancestors in the future and have them speak to us. But beings in the future are looking back at us, encouraging us to take care of this presence and this present for their sake. And maybe they're appreciating some of the things that some of us in the present are doing to keep alive this being time, this being of time. And, of course, the future in so many ways, in terms of spiritual traditions, in terms of culture, in terms of just the survival of civilization, or what passes for that, and humanity depends on our presence.

[22:08]

We're in a very dynamic time, a very difficult time, a sad time, but also a time of opportunity. So going back to our responsibility, how do we take care of this present, this challenging present now? And, of course, as we've been saying, the present is not just one thing. There are all 10 times in this present time. And yet time is not some objective entity outside us. Time is our biological life. Time is our awareness. Time is our activity and thought and speech. And then there's the complexity of that, the 3,000 worlds in each thought.

[23:09]

But our responsibility is how do we take care of the present? This is what all the precepts are about in some way. To benefit all beings, to not kill, to not lie but speak truth, even when it's difficult, to not slander or speak of faults of others, and so forth. We have many precepts in Soto tradition, 16 precepts, but we can see the complexity in the 3,000 worlds in each one of them. How do we take care of our responsibility to this time and to all times? So we can feel overwhelmed by all this, but that's a kind of laziness, I think. And not to diminish the reality of our fears and anxieties and grief right now, all the difficulties and the distress for many beings right now.

[24:25]

But how do we see this, accept the sadness, feel the sadness, feel the anxiety? So it's not that we should get rid of our regrets for the past or our fears for the future. To be present with them, to see that they are part of our present, to allow them to be part of this present is the work of the precepts and the work of our responsibility to being time. So just a little bit about this particular strange time we're in, where we're seeing each other through this Zoom page, and we're all in little boxes in different places and sheltering in place, or for some of us going out and working for the sake of others, people going to, working in hospitals or delivering food and so forth. How do we see the complexity of this being of time?

[25:27]

How do we take care of this right now? Without just hiding our head in some imagined presence, like we cannot face the fear. So fearlessness, courage is not a matter of no fear. It's about being present in the middle of fear, in the middle of anxiety. Of course, we don't know the future, or we may know some aspects of it. And we don't really know the past. We know our stories about the past. But I've been involved in, oh, a few, quote unquote, historical events. And my experience of them is different from, you know, how they're written up in the books. So the past, the present, and the future, and past, present, and future of the past, for example, are all much more complex than our stories or ideas about them.

[26:29]

And that's okay, but we should just admit that. And then how do we take care of this presence? So this pandemic, this virus, connects us in so many ways. We see in this vital biological way how we are interconnected by this virus that does not know about state borders, or national borders, or border walls, or whatever. We're all connected all around the world in this situation now in a really dramatic way. It's really taking on interconnectedness. And so it's an opportunity to see this. And then our responsibility to time is to take care of this presence. So we honor all the caregivers, the people who are taking care of our world now in so many ways, courageous people in hospitals and delivery people.

[27:33]

And then how can we encourage and support them to be taken care of, the caregivers to be taken care of in a better way with all the medical resources and safety resources that they deserve? All of this is about this presence, and how do we support that? And our bodhisattva idea is that we care about and take care of ourselves and all beings right now, but also in the future. So, you know, this is an opportunity because we know there will be a future. There will be another Dharma Talk next Sunday here, for example. Or we hope so, if there is a next Sunday. And of course, something will happen in each next moment of time. Many things will happen, 62 things in each moment, anything, anyway.

[28:35]

How do we take care of the future now? So we see, so this is an opportunity. We see how complex this time is and this presence and this present. So how do we act for and support a future or some group of futures that honor interconnectedness, that come from caring and compassion and kindness and cooperation, rather than from aggression and competition, and all of the things that have helped to create this complex present pandemic situation. So that's our responsibility. We each, in our own way, in our own context, can support a present in the future

[29:38]

that will be kinder and more caring and support true national and global security, to put it that way, or well-being. So one of our chants just says, may all beings be happy, may they be joyous and live in safety. This is what our practice is about. So we take care of ourselves. And now, sheltering in place, we're each taking care of ourselves for the sake of everybody else. And social distancing is about taking care of ourselves so that we do not help spread the virus. So this is a wonderful, this current situation is a great teaching and a wonderful opportunity to see the reality of our world and how, and all the things that in the past that may have contributed to the failings of the present,

[30:44]

the limitations of our failures, if you want to put it that way, of our current healthcare system, and how do we help to support something that works better, not perfect, but takes care of more people than the current situation. So I've spent this time talking about time and all the complexity of time and the 10 times and our responsibility to re-inhabit time, to actually honor the present, the complexity of the present, and its possibilities and our practice and responsibility and the precepts in time and the different ranges of time from campus to the lives of insects. So I will thank you all for being here. It's one of the accidents or situations of our time now

[31:48]

is that we can have present on our Sunday events people from Massachusetts and Indiana and Argentina, and I know others of you are from other strange places outside Chicago, but here we are together, someone from New York I see. Okay, thank you all very much. If anyone has responses, comments, questions, please feel free. May I jump in as the host and just remind people it will help the conversation if you can keep yourself muted unless you would like to ask a question. If you would like to ask a question, find a way to raise your hand, or if you don't have video capabilities, you're welcome to type your question into the chat box

[32:49]

so that Taigan can see you and call on you. And if you would like to unmute yourself when you're speaking, you can hold down your space bar while you're talking. And also, if you go on the bottom to participants and see all the participants, there's a way there on the bottom to the right where you can click on raise hand. So you can raise your hand visually right now if I can see you, and you can also raise your hand on the participant box. And I'm interested in any questions, comments, or this presencing time. So something from Dylan. I think it's on the chat box. So Dylan wrote, is time the phenomenal aspect of reality? Is the conventional world just a state of mind?

[33:49]

Well, the phenomenal world is reality. And so I've been talking about all this in terms of time and different aspects of time, but also reality is just our being time now. And also, you know, as in the 10th time in YN, all those times together. So time is reality. Time is our being. Time doesn't exist apart from our being in this reality. And Dylan also asks, is the conventional world just a state of mind? No, the conventional world, well, maybe it is, but I wouldn't say just. The conventional world is time. The conventional world is all the different times. The conventional world is the unfolding of the presencing of the 10 times and beyond. So the conventional world is not separate from what we sometimes call the ultimate universal world of phenomena,

[34:58]

and beyond phenomena, and of unconditioned phenomena. So thank you, Dylan. Xinyu has a question. Xinyu asks, how do we take care and take control? So one of the great realizations in Zen is that reality is beyond our control. Of course, as human beings, we naturally, you know, want to control, you know, many things. And, you know, our governments make a mess by trying to control things sometimes. And, of course, there are things we can control. So you all managed to get onto the Zoom so we can be here together. So, you know, there are everyday things that we can control. But ultimately, reality, the fullness of time, is beyond our control.

[36:03]

And it's not that it controls us either, but to let go of our desire to manipulate and manage reality is part of our responsibility in being time. So thank you, Xinyu. Other comments, responses? I see some, maybe some hands up. If you want to raise your hand, if you're visually on the screen, that works. Or you can raise your hand in the participant box. Yes, Juan Pablo. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, thank you very much. And I have two things that I'm thinking now. One is, how do we relate to the idea of the Lotus Sutra, this being time, and the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha?

[37:10]

Is this related? How do you see it? And the second one is, I was thinking, like, you were mentioning this multiplicity of time, no? Like, these various ways time manifests for us of how we are time. And at the same time, you can hear in the Zen tradition, just this, as if there was no plurality of time, but just a limited thing. So I just wanted to throw that out, and I don't know what you think. So two wonderful questions. I'll speak to the second one first. So we talk about just this, or suchness. And so, from the point of view of time, all time is suchness. And the point is, suchness is to, again, to re-inhabit our time.

[38:12]

But that doesn't mean that we have to, in seeing just this, in looking at, you know, facing the wall, facing ourselves, being just present, maybe, in this suchness. There is all of this complexity of time. But it's not that we have to think about that, or remember. How could we possibly remember all of the different aspects of the 10 times, or the 3,000 worlds in each moment? It's not that we have to, you know, figure out, or have some understanding of all of these times in suchness. But our being fully present in suchness, in just this, we acknowledge that we don't try and run away from the complexity of suchness. And there's also the immediacy of suchness, and the spontaneity of suchness. So, that's a little bit in response to your second question.

[39:16]

Suchness is all of time. So Duggan says being is time. And we could also say suchness is time. About the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha and the Lotus Sutra, I'll say a little bit. I wrote a whole book about that, called Visions of Awakening Space and Time, Duggan and the Lotus Sutra, about Duggan's teaching in the Lotus Sutra. That the Buddha, according to our story, historically, this is a good example of changing the past. The Lotus Sutra changed the past, in a way. Or the Lotus Sutra was the past changing the past. But one version of the story of the Buddha is he was born, left the palace when he was 28, and awakened under the Bodhi tree, and taught for 45 years, and then passed away into nirvana. That's one story. But in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha says that actually, although he appears to do that, that he's been alive for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, and so forth, long time.

[40:29]

It's an inconceivably long lifespan. And will continue twice that long into the future. So, it's not timeless, but Buddha is present in lots of ways. And the way Duggan spins that, or works with that, is to talk about how Buddha is present now in our practice. And in our commitment to practice. And in our experience of awakening. So that's a short response, but you can read the book and hear more about that. But yes, that's part of the complexity of looking at allowing ourselves to study, as Duggan says, time. And when he says to study time, it doesn't mean to think about it or figure it out. That might be included, but how do we be present in all of time?

[41:30]

In each breath, in each inhale and exhale, as we sit in Zazen, facing the wall. So, for Duggan, he often says, please study this thoroughly. And what he means is, to be in time, to be present, and presencing with whatever teaching he's talking about. So, thank you for the question. Other questions, other raised hands, or comments, or just responses to all of this stuff. Yes, Ed, hi. I'm trying to spacebar. Does it work? Yes, I can hear you. I've always considered the word time as a word about measurement, and the word being as a word about purpose. And that the two combined have some idea or nexus relating purpose as a series of actions across, that build upon one another, or relate to one another, within a longer span of purpose, which is a form of time.

[42:40]

So, being in time is very precise in terms of what it attempts to identify as a human experience. Yes, good, yes. So, intention is part of this. This is central to the precepts and to our practice. Part of what we study in studying being time is our responsibility, our responses to the present, but also, what do we care about? What's important to us? So, the precepts is one way to talk about that. But yes, it's our responsibility and our intention, our purpose, good word, or what is meaningful to us over time. And over time is not just this linear time, although it includes that. So, to see how our intention and our inhale and exhale and our caring extends.

[43:41]

So, again, Dogen talks about time having a function of passage or flowing, but it flows in multiple directions. So, our intention to care for all beings may change, you know, stories we have about our past, for example, things we regret, mistakes we have made. And Dogen also talks about making good mistakes, making the right mistake. But maybe we've made, maybe all of us have at some point made wrong mistakes or harmful mistakes. But how can we see that, for example, as part of the story of our overcoming that and changing the meaning of those past events? So, this includes our world, but it also includes each of us personally. Our seeing of our past and our future in the present changes our past, changes our future. And our seeing of our intention and purpose in the future will change the meaning of this present as well.

[44:49]

So, thank you, Ed. Other comments, responses? I'm looking for raised hands in the participant box and visually. Comments? Yes, Randy. You need to unmute yourself, Randy. Got it. Okay. Thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes, I can. Oh, thank you for your talk. The line from the Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage came to mind, and it's, could you comment? It's the line, let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. And how that relates to what you've been saying, because it seems to me, when I think of that line, it's easy to kind of think of it in terms of memory and let go of our memories, that kind of thing.

[46:00]

But maybe there's another way we can think of that and sit with it. Good. Thank you. Yes, one of my favorite lines in all of our chants. And it seems like not all Zen practitioners think that the point of our practice is to relax completely. But that's what our ancestor Shito or Sekito says. So our sitting upright, inhaling and exhaling is about relaxing completely. But that means letting go of hundreds of years. That means letting go of the karma. It doesn't mean expunging all our memories. I guess they now have brain surgeons can go in and remove the memory part of our brain or something. That's not what that means. It means actually honoring the hundreds of years. So it has to do with karma. We have, we say, all our ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion born through body, speech and mind are now fully avowed.

[47:07]

To let go of that, to let go of all of the different influences on our present from the past and from the future is to relax completely. Let go of hundreds of years doesn't mean ignore or get rid of all of that, all of that time. But how can we see that time, be that time freshly without being caught by it? Let go. So I don't have our chant book in front of me, but there's a line before. Maybe you know it about following the following the ancestors or taking taking hold of taking hold to in order to let go. So following the ancient tracks, please observe the stages of the past.

[48:09]

Are you mean from from the song of the grass? Meet the ancestral teachers. Be familiar with their teachings, buying grasses to build a hut and don't give up. Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Yeah. So letting go of hundreds of years means meeting all the ancestral teachings and contributions to our presence and not giving up. Not not being overwhelmed by all of the causes and conditions that contribute to this strange presence. Don't give up. See how we can take responsibility for this presence. And that means relaxing completely, not being stuck or caught by any aspect of this. Ishan, did you have? So, yeah, thank you for that question. Yes, Ed. Ed, did you have your hand up?

[49:10]

I can't hear you. You have to unmute yourself on the lower left. Yes, I can hear you now. No. Just in response to that, the idea of this evolution, this association with ancestral history or these facts is an evolution of individual purpose and a learning of that ancestry. And that evolution is a very primary measurement of time within one's own life. And I have sensed a reconciliation between memory and anxiety and present within the idea of purpose as it evolves within one's own lifetime. And the benefits of that purposefulness, not to just oneself, but to community, so to speak.

[50:12]

Yes, good. So the whole idea of the ancestors is a way of acknowledging that this present is not separate and independent from all the other times. This time is brought to us by all the ancestors, spiritually, culturally, historically, all the ancestors of the present. And I would say the ancestors of the future are contributing to this time as well in how the future affects past and present. So again, this idea of be here now, the old book by Ram Dass, doesn't mean be present in some narrow, restricted way where we get rid of all the past and get rid of all the future. We are here in the flow of all being time. And we can appreciate that and be grateful for beings in the past and beings in the future and beings in the present as well.

[51:21]

So thank you, Ed. Other comments, questions, responses? Yes, David, Ray. Thank you, Taigen. I'm thinking about time and timelessness and how to think about timelessness and eternity, like whether timelessness, like whether every moment is also eternal or also timeless. If time being that complex, the present being part of all those ten times, does that mean that I'm always in temporality? Everyone is always in temporality? Or is there also a no time? Is there also a timelessness? Thank you.

[52:24]

Very good question. My response to that question is tentative because I don't know. But just my feeling about this is that, yeah, we can talk about timelessness, that which is beyond time. But that which is beyond time and timelessness also appears phenomenally in time, like spring arising and everything now. That's timeless. That crosses all time. So maybe time, we can also talk about timefulness. And when we talk about being time and all of the different aspects of time I've talked about, which we can't possibly recognize or observe phenomenally through our limited human faculties of perception and awareness, timelessness maybe includes all times.

[53:32]

The word eternity, sometimes that's used in some Japanese traditions for the inconceivable lifespan of the Buddha, that he's eternal. I have some queasiness with that word, eternity, maybe just because of its associations with Western religious thinking, that there's some eternity we try and reach somewhere out there. And I think timelessness does not exist outside of our being time in our experience. But eternity kind of sounds like some, it has some philosophical edges if it's something separate from us. So I have some discomfort with that word. But that's just my response. I don't know if anybody else has some comments on timelessness and eternity and timefulness.

[54:33]

Anyone? Or anything else? And, you know, maybe, maybe just to say the point of talking about all of this is not to have some understanding or present awareness of all of these times and the complexity of time, but just not to be caught in some idea of clock time, of time as such. Time is something that has some limited external reality that controls us. So we can't control time, but time doesn't have to control us either. In time, of course, many things happen. But how do we express our being of time? David had a comment or a question. Okay, David? I don't see him. Oh, there he is.

[55:34]

Yes, David. Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for a very wonderful talk. Really appreciate it. Brought a lot to mind. I appreciate it. Thank you. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, part of a key aspect of Zen practice is, well, there's the just sitting. There's the simplicity of Zen practice, but there's also that simplicity recognizing, not turning away from the complexity and multitudinal aspect, is that the word? All of the fullness of reality. And that we can't control it, and we don't know the future, even though we are together creating the future, all of us, human and non-human beings.

[56:38]

But to have some sense of our human limitations. Dogen speaks of this often when we're out in the middle of Lake Michigan, for example. We cannot see the shoreline and all the details of the shoreline. So there's a limitation to what we can be aware of and know. And this is true in time, too. So we have this responsibility to fully presence our being of time and take care as best we can. The precepts are about taking care of this time and all times. Dogen, can I offer a comment or question? Sure. Because I was just thinking more about timelessness. And although, you know, on one level, everything is changing, on another level, every single action that we take and that happens is indelible.

[57:48]

It's forever there. So, you know, somebody flew a plane into the World Trade Center, and the world is forever changed on a big scale. Or we have a pandemic, and the world is forever changed. But on a small scale, also, everything that we do, you know, we decide to, I don't know, steal something from a store. We will always be that person. That moment will always be there. But we can change, you know, we can decide not to do that in the future. But every action that we take is always a part of us. Yes. So all of the actions throughout all of the ten times and beyond have consequence. That's the law of karma. But how we understand them, again, changes their meaning. So, it was talking about intention and meaning and purpose.

[58:50]

How so we can, so it's not that we should get rid of our regrets. But how can we change the meaning of stealing something from a store by seeing our commitment to be generous instead of taking, for example. And to see that in a particular context. So each event has its own integrity and reality. It's not, again, it's not about ignoring past or ignoring future or getting rid of past or getting rid of future. But how, but it's about transformation. Time is about flowing. Time is about transformation. So we can transform past, present and future in the present and in the future and in the past. And that has to do with what Ed was talking about, about seeing purpose and intention and the precepts. Trying to act helpfully for ourselves and others and all others in the context of a particular situation that is indelibly present and past and future.

[60:01]

So thank you. So any other responses or comments? Looking back and forth from the pictures of faces to the participant log. I might see a raised hand. Brian has his hand raised. Oh, good. Brian. Hi, I don't see you. Are you hearing me now? Oh, yes. And I see you too. This business of past still being present through events that Haitian was just talking about. You know, people often talk about letting go. And one of the things I was reading recently that was very helpful to me was the phrase of digesting and letting go. That somehow if we let go without digesting, for me at least, it doesn't seem to let go.

[61:05]

I mean, I can't let go unless there's some digesting going on. And that's not just a once and for all thing. It's past experience being present experience and causing some disease in some way or another in the present. And that there's some element of digesting that is related to the letting go. And I wonder if you could say a word about digesting. Yeah, thank you so much. Yes, digestion is very important to being time. So thank you for adding that. Digestion happens in time. So I mentioned this last week, but last night at the birthday party for Joanna Macy, my old friend Wendy Johnson from Green Gulch, the garden goddess of Green Gulch. Her contribution to the Joanna Macy book is about compost and decomposing the, well, just in terms of vegetable matter, but also decomposing the ego is what she talked about.

[62:19]

So in order to do that, there's a process of digestion that produces organic compost, that produces our transformation of self-centered ego. So yeah, that happens in time. And in the present, we can digest things that are happening in the present. How do we, how? So for all of us now, how are we digesting this pandemic? How are we transforming it in our gut to be aware of the possibilities for taking responsibility? For example, how do we digest past experiences? How do we digest future experiences and future possibilities in the present and in the past and in the future? So again, the complexity of time, but all of that, but time is about digestion. Dogen says it's about flowing or passage, but that's from our, I was going to say mental, but of course, you know, we mentally digest, but we also physically digest, of course, we're physical beings.

[63:29]

So how do we digest the past and turn it into the future? And this is part of this process of being time. So thank you, Brian, for adding that key element to this. I don't know if you have any follow-ups, Brian. Just to be kind of, what's the word for it? I don't want to say gross, but when you think of the physical digestion of food, you know, we can't let go of what we've just eaten until we digest it. You know, and there's a, there's a, that's a mysterious process. I mean, I don't know, I don't, I don't know what my body does when it digests something. But, and I don't really know what it means to digest an event that is either happening now or has happened in the past that I'm currently experiencing somewhere or another. But it does, it does digest if we kind of stay with it, I think, somehow.

[64:30]

And then it passes, as it were, at least temporarily. It passes through, but then, you know, how do we appreciate that? And there's, so this is, there are endless cycles of digestion, as are the cycles of the ten times. And yes, that's, and we don't necessarily know how it works, but that's what being time is about. Thank you. So, I'm not sure if that's enough being time for the time being. But does anyone else have something to add to this digestive process of fully re-inhabiting time? Yes, Jason. Hi. Yeah. So this conversation is, and this is sort of a tangential thing. But this conversation has me thinking about a philosophy professor that I had once who said something to the extent we were talking about free will versus determinism.

[65:40]

And that's a beer at the end of the day tastes so much better in a world of free will rather than determinism. And it always somewhat struck me that he missed the point that regardless, a beer tastes good at the end of a long, hard day. And I don't know, something about being time and beer is sticking with me right now. So that's my only observation, I guess. Well, maybe you should go have a beer after this. Well, it may be a little bit early for that, but maybe. It depends on what time zone you're in. But anyway, so, yeah, free will and determinism. Yeah, no, I think part of the point of being time is that time, the future is not set. So predetermination, you know, people, some teachings about karma imply that because of things in the past or in some past or in whatever, that there are certain definite consequences.

[66:51]

Well, there are consequences, but it's not predetermined. I don't believe that the whole of reality is so complex that we can't say that, you know, it's predetermined that you're going to have a beer tonight. You might have a beer. I encourage you to have a beer if you'd like, but because you've mentioned this doesn't mean that necessarily there will be Jason with a beer sometime later on in the being time that we call today. That might happen. So, yeah, it's an age old question. But we have, I wouldn't say total free will because we are, we have a parameter of what's possible given all the limitations of our human perception and reality and so forth.

[67:51]

And of all the things that have happened, going back to ancient Babylonia or whatever, we have some prescribed limited possibility. So it's not total free will in that sense, but within the limitations of what we can see and know from our particular perspective. Yeah, it's up to us to exercise our intention and decide do we want a beer or do we want a glass of wine? It's up to you. So that's my response to that. I don't know if anybody else has something to add about free will or procrastination or whatever. Jason, do you have something else? Okay. In my limited visual possibilities, I don't see any hands raised.

[69:01]

I'll look over here at the participant box. So maybe we're finished. Okay.

[69:08]

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