Good morning, everyone. This morning, I want to take a little time to talk again about time. Various perspectives on time. I want to say a little bit about being time, the teaching of the 13th century Japanese, such as M. Founder, Dogen. I want to talk a little bit about deep time and re-inhabiting time also. Even in our conventional sense of time, time changes. So we have 24 hours in our time. In the 13th century in China and Japan, they had 12 hours of the day rather than 24. And not all hours were the same length. So there were six hours from dawn to sunset, that there were six hours from sunset to dawn.

[01:05]

So each day, as the time of dawn and sunset changed, the hours, the length of the hours changed a little bit. There were various ways they told time, they kept time. So the person who hits the, traditionally in the monastery back then, hit the Han, usually that's outside, so in a larger monastery, the Han signal that Don hit this morning on the wooden sounding block is partly to announce to the whole area that Zazen is starting, that meditation is starting. So this was also for the people in the village, if the temple was in the village. When I practiced in Japan, the bell that was rung at the beginning of the day for meditation was partly how the village knew what time it was and when to wake up.

[02:12]

And so I practiced in a couple of temples that were in these little rice villages. So it's also a signal for, well, not just the people, but the birds and animals trees, that this is the time of day. And one of the ways that they would know when to start the Han was when the person hitting the Han could look down on the ground and see ants. When it was light enough so that you could see ants crawling on the ground, that was the time to hit the Han, to start the day. The kind of clocks they had, and Dogen talks about it in his guidelines for community practice in the monastery, they had water clocks. So this was the kind of clock they had, I guess, in China before the 13th, up to the 13th century. A little bit like sand, what do they call those sand? Hour clocks, I was gonna say sand dials, but that's something else.

[03:16]

So, the water would drip through the clock and there'd be a vertical stick with the time and that's how they would tell how much time had gone by. Anyway, so time, even our conventional sense of time changes. Time is fluid. So, in his teaching about time, Dogen talks about being time or existence time. So time is not, beyond our conventional sense of time, time is not some objective container that exists out there somewhere in time and space. Time is actually our experience, our presence, our awareness, our activity is time. Our being present, our presence in time is what time is. And time is different.

[04:19]

So some periods of meditation, even if by the clock they're the same length, seem shorter, some seem longer. Some days or weeks seem to go on forever. When will it be Friday? We don't even know. It just seems like a long, long time. Some weeks go by like that, or some days go by like that. So time is not some... Sotokin says we should investigate time, study time. Of course, there is conventional time. There are, and I will try and use my watch to... I guess people don't use watches anymore. They use their cell phones as watches. So even in our lifetime, time has... time has changed and what time is. But there is that kind of external sense of time, but also time is our presence and being present and being time.

[05:25]

We are time. Each one of us is our time. So time moves in different directions. Time flows. We know past, present, and future, and yet time doesn't move just from yesterday to today to tomorrow. I can talk about things that happened last week, or happened Wednesday evening when I saw a few of you down in Hyde Park, or I can talk about something in the past right now, and so is that now or is that past? And what is past anyway? Our idea of history is just the story we tell right now about something that happened. It's not the actual experience of that past. And also, the future, which is very important to us in the present, is not just, well, we may have some ideas of what will happen in the future.

[06:35]

and we may plan and schedule things, but what actually will happen is we have no idea. The actual experience of this Dharma talk is nothing like what I could have imagined. This event happens based on all of you who are here, each one of you, and it would be different if any one of you wasn't here or if someone else was here, actually. So the future is we can't get a hold of, because it's not here yet. The past is already gone. But also the present is by the time I get to the end of the sentence, the beginning of the sentence is already past, and the future, and the end of the sentence is not yet here until I say period. and then there's something else. So time is moving, time is flowing in many directions.

[07:38]

So in Chinese Huayen Buddhist school, they have 10 times, rather than past, present, and future. There's also the past, present, and future of the past, and the past, present, and future of this present, and the past, present, and future of the future. So this is a past of some future, and a future of some past, And while I'm talking, it's already the future of the present or the past of the present. It moves in all these different directions. And all nine of those together is the tenth time. So again, time is not what we think it is. This is not just theoretical. I want to try and talk about how this relates to Bodhisattva precepts, so we had a precept ceremony here last Sunday, some of you were at, and this is how we bring time to our time. So, Dogen talks in his essay about being time, about being fully present, about occupying our time, about seeing the time we're here, but then he says,

[08:50]

Well, one translation, just investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there's nothing left over. And yet because leftovers are leftovers, even the being-time of a half-exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of half-being-time. So part of our practice is to wholeheartedly give ourselves to this time. to being present, to experiencing our experience here, now, with all the things that arise, people coming and going and arriving late and so forth. How do we be present in the midst of this time? Well, we should fully occupy and inhabit our time, Tolkien says. But even if you only half-heartedly experience your time, that's completely a half-heartedly experience of time.

[09:59]

So there's a way in which this is very comforting. This is not about you should be time in some particular way. We are being time. Before you ever heard about this, we are being time. and time moves in all these different directions. So I want to talk a little bit about deep time also, since Joanna Macy's going to be here this week, and she's brought this sense of deep ecology to the study of time, deep time and re-inhabiting time, occupying time. How do we see the fullness of our time? How do we see, you know, culturally, in our world, societally, but also each of us individually. How do we inhabit this time? How do we see that this time, this morning, Sunday, includes times in the past?

[11:03]

So all of you can think of people you've known or things you've done or events in your past. Each of you can immediately think of many people who you've known. Well, everybody you've known is in the past. They're not here now, except for the people in this room. Well, maybe the people who've been in this room other times are also here in some way. Maybe the people who will be in this room tomorrow night or next month are also here in some way. Time is elastic and complex. Actually, the reality of time, the fuller reality of time, including what clock time, but also how do we occupy time? So I think in mindfulness practice, there's an emphasis on being present now and feeling this quality of our experience, this breath, this exhale.

[12:07]

And that's fine, that helps us to be present. But we can try and be here now in a way that is kind of trying to avoid time, too. So to be here now, to fully occupy this time, means to allow all times to be here. That includes the future. that what we do now affects the future. So the teaching of karma and Buddhism is that everything has a cause, and everything we do has an effect. That we are each here this morning because of innumerable causes and conditions. Many, many things that allowed us to be here this morning. People we've known, you know, the car or bike or elevator train that got you here or whatever, however you got here, the people you talked to yesterday, all of those are part of your being here today. So we, you know, sometimes want to be in the present as a way of running away from the past.

[13:16]

Plus, you know, most of us have things in the past we regret. Things in the past that were unpleasant or even really sad losses and wounds and so forth. But being fully present is not about escaping from those. It's about fully inhabiting those. And the same with the future. There are many things we can fear about the difficulties in our own life or in our world and our society. How do we include that in the present? So actually, Because we are deeply interconnected with everything and everybody and each other and the whole world, actually, everything in the world has allowed you to be here this morning, in the past and the future, as well as in the present. So we're deeply interconnected, and to really be time is to feel the depth of this time and to occupy our time, to re-inhabit time,

[14:27]

to recognize that everything we do will have some effect. Everything we say and think has some impact on our future and thereby on many beings in the future. So how do we be fully present in the complexity of all time? This is the question. And I want to talk about this again, as I said, and maybe I'm not going to say so much more. some discussion and hear how your time is. But to really fully occupy all time is a kind of gateway to precepts time. So we did this ceremony for a few people last Sunday. here, and actually everybody here was, in some ways, honoring the Bodhisattva precepts.

[15:32]

So these are guidelines, ethical guidelines, we could say, in this tradition for how enlightened beings function in the world, how they express, I would say, all time in the world. And the precepts, we have 16 precepts in our tradition, including just taking refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. in awakening and reality and in community, to return home to those. This is what we are doing by sitting during this Satsang practice, actually, to turn towards Buddha. I don't mean just that piece of wood on the altar. I mean to turn towards that awakeness and aliveness and caring and deepest love that each of you, in your own way, can express. And that can grow and develop and unfold as we practice. Which is why we have a couple of people who are here for meditation instruction, which is wonderful, and to do this regularly during the week, to take some time to just be present, allows us to

[16:48]

You find this background, which I want to come back to, but then the precepts are things like turning towards Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, embracing and sustaining right conduct, embracing and sustaining all good, embracing and sustaining all beings. It's very important that we don't practice just for ourselves. That's actually impossible. Everything we do affects other people. we can't be fully enlightened ourselves when there are people who are suffering down the street. So how do we see total and universal and interconnected liberation? We're deeply interconnected with all beings. And then there's ten grave precepts after that. The disciple of Buddha does not kill, does not take what is not given, does not lie, does not misuse sexuality, does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others, does not speak of the faults of others, does not praise self at the expense of others.

[17:54]

It's not possessive. A disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will. When anger arises, as is a natural part of our humanity, we don't hold on to that and turn it into ill will and grudge or hatred. And then a disciple of Buddha does not disparage the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So those are our 16 precepts. And I want to suggest that there's a kind of time that is precepts time. That, in some sense, talking about deep time is to see all time, to allow this present to include all the pasts and all the different ways of seeing all the past. and all the future, and how do we take care of beings of the future? So Joanna is going to be here this week, particularly is concerned with beings of the future.

[18:55]

How do we, in our time, become friends with beings of the future? And in some ways, take care of them as best we can here now. So this deep time is not a matter of timelessness or the eternal. It's not about escaping from time. It's to include all time. This is the background, and this is what we connect with. Gradually or sometimes, suddenly, as we're sitting in our meditation, we become aware. And again, sustaining some practice of being present like this, we start to Sometimes we don't realize we're becoming aware, but we start to have this visceral connection to this sense of what we can call deep time, of all beings, of all times.

[19:56]

This kind of ultimate background of reality. And we start to feel our connection to that. And again, this isn't something that happens just while we're meditating. sometimes have, you know, in the course of whatever activity we're doing during the day, sometimes people have some moment where, oh, all of time is here. So that's kind of the background to this other precepts time, I'll call it, with this sense of deep time. we can occupy or re-inhabit our time in the particular phenomenal world we're in. So, experiencing or studying or hearing about or even being aware of this deep time or this alternate time,

[21:01]

that includes all time, doesn't mean we should just kind of zone out into some blissful state of being present with everything. I mean, it's okay if you do that for a little while, and there are various ways of that happening, but we have a responsibility to precepts time, to taking care of our lives. So after we do this Dharma talk, we'll have we'll have a period of temple cleaning practice to take care of this space. And each of us, in our own way, takes care of our own body and mind and the space we inhabit. We get up in the morning and brush our teeth. Or maybe you don't brush your teeth in the morning. But anyway, brushing your teeth is like taking care of this body. and just like brushing teeth happens usually for most people daily, Zazen is something that is kind of like brushing time, taking care of time.

[22:07]

But also the particulars of our world, our particular relationships, family, friends, people we live with, co-workers, fellow students or whatever you do during the week. Precept time is about honoring that time and taking care of it. So these precepts are not, they sound a little bit like the Ten Commandments. So I believe Buddha does not kill also means we help others not to kill. It also means we support and honor life and take care of life. disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given also means we receive what is given. We explore generosity in how to give and how to receive. So this is all the realm of occupying time, of inhabiting time, with the background of deep time.

[23:10]

So really they're not separate, this deep time and this precepts time, but mostly we kind of sense that are separate. The sense that I'm trying to talk about of fully being present in our life, which is to say fully being past and future and present, past and present and future of future and so forth in our lives. to inhabit our life, to occupy your life, to actually take on responsibility for enjoying your life, but also using your life to be helpful to yourself and to others. So part of honoring past and future is also, you know, so imagine for a second the person that you were or that you think you were when you were 10 years old.

[24:20]

So some of you may have had a hard time when you were 10. Some of you may have had a good time, or both. Probably wasn't just one or the other. But think about yourself when you were 10. Or think about yourself, you know, when you were 20. Maybe some of you are still 20, I don't know. Or think about yourselves five years from now. This is 2012, so 2017. You don't know what the world will be like. There are many aspects of things in the world that are scary, that things may be even a bigger mess than they are in our world now, in five years. And yet, also there are many people working to help the world to be better. So anyway, we don't know. We may imagine what we might be doing in five years, but we never know when our future will end.

[25:32]

We never know. But something will be here in five years. How do we honor and care for all of those past and present and future aspects of the person sitting on your cushion or chair right now. How do we take care of all of the different sounds that arise? How do we take care of our feet as we arise? All of this is about fully inhabiting time and walking slowly when we need to. So there is this

[26:40]

way of seeing things that I'm calling deep time, that includes all times, that is present right now on your Krishna chair. And there's also the particular things that, you know, each of us will be doing later in the day. Or, you know, we may have plans for this evening, or we can remember what we were doing last evening. All of this is part of the fullness of time. And so what Dogen is suggesting, and what Joanna Macy, who's going to be here this week, is suggesting, is to really fully take that on. And then also, too, that we are not just doing this, we're also doing it for ourselves. So we need to, in our practice, find some calmness and settledness in our own body-mind. But also, we're connected. everything that we do affects others.

[27:43]

So when we see the difficulties in our world and our society now, each of us in our own way, has some responsibility to pay attention and to see how to make this a better space for the beings of the future who are connected to us. And each of us can, you know, one of our practices we, on a service Monday evening and whenever we do our service, we dedicate our efforts to all beings and also to great teachers from the past. So we all have this idea of ancestors, which is a very strong idea in East Asia. That's not as much in our culture, but still it's there, this sense of people in the past. It may be your genetic ancestors, your grandparents or parents. It may be, you know, whatever

[29:01]

area of interest you take on in your life? People in, you know, people in art or music or literature, people in whatever it is that you're interested in, there's a tradition, there are ancestors. How do we how do we appreciate the past? And how do we appreciate that we are ancestors of the future beings? Or maybe they're future ancestors of us? How do we recognize this complexity of time. It doesn't mean that we have to figure it all out. So Dogen says to study this thoroughly doesn't mean that you have to track it all and figure it all out and understand it even exactly. But how do you practice it? The point is how do we take on being present in this deep time of all time and in the particulars of the things we do in our own life and activity in our relationships. So maybe I've taken enough time this morning talking about this time.

[30:16]

I'm interested in having some time, though, for any of you who have questions or comments or responses or just to share perplexity or whatever it is that you have to offer for us all. I'm glad to hear this, so please feel free. Hi, Steve. A number of years ago, somebody had commented on the matter. You know how accurate it was. This was a British practitioner. But what we do now, in time, not only affects the future and the present, Can you comment on that? That's perplexing to me. Yeah, and I have talked about that, and I've even talked about how we can change the past now and in the future. Yeah, how we see the past actually changes its meaning.

[31:21]

So maybe particular data of what happened on a certain date in history, maybe, you know, The Battle of Gettysburg happened on certain dates in whatever year that was, for example. But how we understand things of the past in history, as well as in our own lives, changes it. So history is constantly being rewritten. And different interpretations given to it based on people's prejudices, you know, now. So we can change the meaning of history, but also in your own life. So things that happened when you were 10 or 14 or whatever, there may have been things that were pleasant or that you see now as great, wonderful blessings for your life. And in the present, we can appreciate those and give that kind of more

[32:22]

presence, in our presence. Or there may be things in the past, you know, most of us have things in the past that we regret. Friendships or lovers lost or whatever. Things that, or people who've passed or, you know, or just awkwardnesses. Things we can remember that we did that were just awkward and feel yucky now. Well, we can look back at those things and we can feel yucky, or we can feel embarrassed for ourselves, or we can feel ashamed, or we can look at those things and feel, oh, this is something that helped me grow out of something, or we can see that we've overcome problems that we've had, that we can see that we've overcome in some way. Well, he's changed. You can see that we've grown. So how we see those things in the past, we can feel regret or we can feel the possibilities and growth that maybe came out of that.

[33:29]

How we see things in the past really changes what happened. It doesn't necessarily change the data, but it changes the meaning, which is more important. Does that help? Yeah, it does, because I'm just looking at it more as like, somehow what we did, whatever we did, some of the nuance changes in the past, and the way it doesn't, it's more the effect of what happened in the past. Yeah, but what happened in the past, you know, I've been present in, I don't know, at least a couple significant, quote-unquote, historical events. more than a couple, that are written, that there are books about later. And I can read those books, and it has nothing to do with my experience of what was happening then. Very little to do with it. Our experience of some event is our experience, and it's different from whatever anybody's going to write about it later on.

[34:31]

And what's written about it later on may be what people think happened, but it's not. So we actually do change, and we can understand something different about something that's happening. Some interaction with somebody, and we might feel bad about it, but then we can think about that other person in different ways that maybe we couldn't at the time. And actually, it changes what actually happened. We can start to understand, and we can choose to feel better about it, or choose to feel like we learned something from it. So thank you for that question. Other comments, questions? Roy? Time has sort of been an interesting issue for me this weekend. Friday night I went to a concert of Cumbian music and it was mostly Latin American audience and so a friend was laughing at me because we were at dinner and the concert started at 7.

[35:34]

As it said on the ticket, we were sitting down to dinner around 7.15 at a restaurant. I'm like, well, we're going to be late. And they were laughing at me, because the music didn't really start till about 10. And then same thing last night. I went to a friend's birthday party who's Ghanaian and said cocktail hour starts at 7, which meant people showed up at around 9. Whereas in this morning, sitting starts at 9.30 means that you should be here at 9.20. Yes. And so, and you know, dealing with all these, I realized how uptight I am about time and how much time really control or my perception of time controls how I see things. And it's so easy to get me bothered by this concept. And so you know, so much of our training is around a particular way of looking at time. And yet at the same time, so I, you know, I can't hold it too tightly, and yet at the same time I know how valuable it's been, like in sittings and retreats, to just allow the clock to let the calendar kind of carry me forward.

[36:47]

So that I don't have to worry about, okay, where am I supposed to be now, what should I be doing? I just let the calendar do it and I don't, you know, worry so much about me. But finding that balance between that sort of rigid, okay, this is time, versus, you know, not having it determine who I am, or not bringing myself so much to the concept of time. I know that's all sort of jambled, but. Yeah, no, I think we are, we do get confused and suffer from time. And there's all kinds of different senses of time. So yeah, you know, a party's supposed to start at a certain time, and that means you get there an hour later or something. On the other hand, as you were talking about that, I remember a concert that I went to with my wife, and it was supposed to start at a certain time, and she said, oh, we don't have to get there then. There'll be an opening act, and we'll take some time. And we got there, and actually we were late for the, you know, that Morrison, anyway.

[37:49]

It was okay. We missed a couple songs and so on. But yeah, so time moves, as I was saying. It's not, In Zen, there's a kind of sense of punctuality of time. And part of monastic practice, actually in Buddhism, but also in Catholicism and other residential kinds of practice or meditative setups, is just following the schedule. So whatever's in the bell rings. according to the clock or according to the ants visible on the ground or whatever, and you just do the next thing. So that kind of very controlled schedule, we can feel like that might be some restriction and some might feel terrible. When I did my first practice period at Tassajara though, I thought it was more my time than I'd ever experienced because I just, I didn't have to think about you know, when I get where or what time is it now, but just the bell rings, you just do the next thing.

[38:56]

So it felt very opening in terms of time. And I would find the little periods where there were breaks in the time where I could just take care of whatever I needed to, aside from that. But anyway, we have different relationships to time. So what you said clarifies that. And anyway, so part of the studying of being time and the re-inhabiting time is to be aware of this and just to feel what it feels like if we're late or if we're early or to notice that time is actually our experience of time. So we can be on time at the same time that we can kind of be liberated from time, it's possible. Or be late. Yes, ma'am. Thank you for talking about your talk.

[39:58]

I wanted to apologize for my alarm going off during your talk. Oh, my God. She's not turning off her cell phone, oh my gosh. This morning when I woke up, I wasn't feeling well, so I... I'm sorry, I hope you're feeling better now. Well, that version of me sent you an email saying that I wasn't feeling well and I was going to come late because we have this meeting after work. I never got the email, so that didn't exist. Exactly, exactly. So that version of me set an alarm for 10.45 so that I would get up and come here. I see. So you were being conscientious. But then the other version of me realized after Oh, good. Well, I'm glad you're OK. But I was also thinking about, sometimes when I think about history, I think about the time before 1492, anything that happened before then as, oh, that was back when the world was flat.

[41:04]

And I think I said to you one time, when we were talking about Dogon in the 1200s, that, oh, that was back when the world was flat. And I think you said, no, actually, in China and Japan, the world was already round. Yes. Because that culture already had a sense that the world was round. Yeah, China and Japan was round, and Europe was flat. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it just sort of brings to mind all these sort of different possible realities that are existing. Even right now, the other version of me is getting ready and coming over here. Well, I hope she gets here soon. So do I. But anyway. Yeah, so part of Aisha's name is to call out, her name is to call out reality. So reality is a big part of this. What is reality? Studying that, that's the question.

[42:08]

Or what is Buddha? But Buddha is the one who's awakened to reality. So what's really going on? That's what this question is. And how do we take care of it? What's really going on in your life, in our lives together? How do we take care of that? How do we express that? How do we do that in a way that honors the fact that we are connected, rather than getting caught up in competition and doing it to others before they do unto you and all the terrible things that consumerist society has done to our culture. Anyway, how do we... So this practice, one way to say this practice is that it's about studying What is this reality? We sometimes call it suchness. And it's not about some definition of that in some dictionary. It's about what is your reality?

[43:09]

Suppose the person who is just getting up in your apartment after hearing the alarm, and the person who's sitting on your cushion, and all the others in between. What is this reality? So this is, you know, occupying our time is one way to I appreciate that. So time for one more comment or question, if anyone does. Donna, hi. Well, just sitting here, listening to the comments, made me think about the fluidity of time. Because growing up, I remember as a kid, we got penalized at school for not being on time. If we were late, we had to stay after something to that extent. And then as I got older and started working,

[44:11]

particularly on radio, everything had to start on time. There's no such thing as dead air, or dead air is pariah. Time stops. Time stops. Time should never stop. Everything has to start on time. So I've sort of grown into a punctuality nut of being on time. But then I started thinking about a class that and religions and philosophies. And in that part of the world, they have a different concept of time, particularly around celebrations, et cetera. And one of the things that I remembered from another lifetime ago when I was in undergraduate school is that the event, that you're never late because the event doesn't start for you until you get there. Right, right, right, good, good. In terms of time, I mean, it just made me think about just the different, I guess, what time means in different cultures and how it's affected me, what I've learned from various experiences and teachers about time.

[45:27]

How do I actually feel about time? Thank you. Yeah, time is different, understood differently in different cultures. Sometimes people are more uptight about time, and sometimes they're very loose. And you were reminding me, there was a time when I used to hang out with Native American people a little bit. They used to talk about Indian time, which meant that there was a certain time that something was supposed to happen, which meant that you would get there several hours or several days after. Or at least several hours after. So yeah, different cultures have different sense of that. Yes, Eric? Just on this note, I think it's probably, well, the Aymara people of northern Bolivia, southern Peru, Well, we tend to think of time in the future as in front of us, and the past as in back. But for the Aymara, as well as the Maori of New Zealand, the future is in back of you, because you can't see it.

[46:34]

And the past, which you metaphorically know, you can metaphorically see it, is in front. So the word for tomorrow is enfrente, and next year is My MR teacher used to say, oh, yeah, OK, hand in your homework tomorrow. So for me, that sounds like they would always be walking backwards. Into the future. But that's just, you know, my Western perspective. It's hard to get your head wrapped around if you don't have an R&D framework. This is also thinking of football games where there's two minutes left on the clock and you can count on taking another half hour. But because all of the thinking and strategizing is done not in the actual time. And then there's soccer, which I've become a fan of, where there are footballs, they call it, the rest of the world, where the clock never stops.

[47:37]

And if there's somebody injured, the time is still going. It's just, anyway, it's different ways of seeing time. So we'll stop for now at this time.

[47:50]

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