I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Evening. Evening. So, the first class a couple of weeks ago, we talked a lot about different kind of context and background of different ways to think about time, or to see time, or different contexts for thinking about time in Dogen's time. We did a little reviewing of that last week, darted it on the text, And what I'd like to do tonight is just together for us to really get into the text. And as things, you know, as we're going through it, if something comes up from some of the background ideas of time or, you know, we can discuss it as we go. But I want to try and kind of get grounded in the text itself. So also, Just kind of as a disclaimer, I am not going to attempt to explain this.

[01:09]

I'm studying it together with you, so we're reading it at, you know, something that I've read membership time, over time, and my faith, and also I could say my experience, is that reading Dogen is about our own lives. It's about our own experience. It's about how to see our own experience more fully and more freshly. So that's my faith and that's also my experience in working with Dogen. So I want to look at this text and read it together and work with it. in that way, and so anything that any of you have to say about, you know, your sense of what's going on here is relevant.

[02:12]

So, for those of you who don't know, Aki-san is a monk from AHE who's here visiting, and we're working with this text in English, and we have a number of translations, and I have the original. Right, yes. Well, this is difficult English, and I'm sure it's difficult Japanese. But anyway, please, if you have some ideas about the text as we go. In fact, if you want, I have the Japanese text if you want to look at it while we're reading. And I have, we're using several different English texts. I don't have so many extra copies anymore, but there are a number of. at least reasonable translations. One of the ones we're looking at is Thomas Cleary, Shobo Genzo's Zen Essays. But also, so I've been kind of reading through this next section. We started in on the text last time and I want to pick it up.

[03:16]

Let's see who has which text. In the Cleary version, I want to pick it up near the bottom of page 105. One should not understand time only as flying away. In Cos's Muna Nidudrop, it's number seven. And I'm also looking at Raman Wadol's translation for Eastern Buddhists. So as I've been kind of going through sentence by sentence in the different translations, it's pretty interesting, because certain passages will pop out in one translation and not another. And it's possible to see how they all came from the same original. But anyway, we're looking at three different translations. Actually, I have a fourth, too, that I look at sometimes. So the same text in English to try and figure out what it's saying. So are there any questions or comments or anything from

[04:23]

Then, before this class, if you have left over anything that last week or the week before that anyone wants to bring up. Is that Cleary's version? Yeah. The 16-foot golden body, so when you come back here and you take that... Yeah, the notes are... Actually, the one... I haven't been looking at the notes so much. I've looked at them before. Waddell's notes are much more thorough than the others, so I'll refer to those. But... It does help to look at different versions. So I want to just get into that now.

[05:25]

Is that a smoke alarm? Anyway, I did want to just refer back to one line before we plunge on. I just wanted to kind of mention a couple of lines that we talked about last week. This line, the second paragraph, So-called time of being means time is already being, all being is time. The way Waddell says it, the time being means time just as it is, is being, and being is all time.

[06:39]

So that's kind of the starting point. That's after the quote at the beginning. So time is already being, all beings are time, or all being is time. And then this other line we talked about a while. In the Cleary, it's near the end of the first top paragraph on page 105. For a while, try to visualize whether or not there is the whole being, the whole world, apart from the present time. So this is actually kind of a meditation instruction. The way Kāya says it in Muni and Dhūdra, each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. So, in a sense, this is all about what does it mean to be present?

[07:44]

What does it mean to be fully present? So, is there anything that's not present right now? Is there any time that's not present right now? What would that be? He doesn't say actually any time. Is there any being or any world left out of the present moment? So he doesn't say that there isn't any. He just says, look at that. Is there anything, any being, any experience, any world that is left out right now, that is apart from the present time? Do you have a commentary? Or a comment?

[08:47]

Well, I think we can imagine worlds or beings that are left out of the present moment. We can imagine some other time. We can imagine some other being. We all can. So he's talking about when you were in the mountains, and then you reach the Vermilion Tower, you think the mountains are gone. So this is in the passage, I guess we're following this. But could the mountains be separate from this time right now? So again, he's talking about time in a different way, or he's expanding our ideas of time, or he's including more ideas of time. It's not just the 24 hours. So, can any of you think of an experience that's not present right now? Can anybody say anything? Tell us about an experience that's not present right now. Well, I don't really know if it is, but I think when you sleep and when you dream, you're not in the present.

[09:51]

I don't know if you're in the past, I don't know if you're in the future, but you're somewhere else. That's interesting. It's dreaming a different time. But I think he's not talking about... But right now, is there some dreaming that's not included in the present moment? I think he's talking about right now. Well, there might be part in your subconscious that we don't have control over or knowledge of. Okay, but you're telling us about that now, aren't you? I'm telling you about it, but I'm trying to say It's dormant. OK. So that's one idea of time. One idea of time is that there are times that are dormant. My feeling is that it's not exactly that he's saying, well, later on it's almost like he's saying all time is present right now.

[10:52]

That's one way to look at what he's saying. But it's more like a question. So to question whether actually those times that we all, we can all think of times that aren't here right now. We can all think of the past experiences. We all have what is referred to as memory. So what does that mean? So the dreams that Jennifer was talking about, she was talking about right now. Say the question again, as you see it, hear it. Well, just look. The question, it's not as much a question as a kind of Meditation instruction. What is it? Reflect on whether or not there is any being or any world left out of the present moment. It's not like he's telling you some answer.

[11:53]

It's not like he's saying... One of the things I like about this text a lot is he's not saying, this is time and there's no other way to look at time. He's saying, look at all the different ways we look at time. And how are they all included? I have this very inclusive feeling about it. It's that all of the different times are included right now, but all the different ways of looking at time, including the ways of looking at time, which aren't included right now, are also just being time. I'm telling you, when I think of the six worlds, I think of them not being in the present, being in some other space. Or when I think of angels, or spirits, or other, like, we were learning in the other class about the dragons that gave Naga and Arjuna the prajna, like, where they dwell, I think those not being in the present. They can come into the present, but I think they're not being in the present.

[12:56]

OK. OK. They're not in the present. But still, they're time. They're times of being. They're being time. So it's not just being present. It's... You just brought up something interesting, like with the Nagas. It's like... There's a certain... Maybe you're talking about a certain form that's present or not present, right? Like, whatever that meant, the picture you had of the Naga, you know, turning over, the Prajnaparamita, their image of that time isn't conjured up, but some form or some trace or something of that time exists. But she's bringing it into our presence. So by telling us that story, that's part of our experience now. Now we all have different imaginations and perceptions and awarenesses of that story, of the dragon kings under the ocean, taking care of teachings for centuries.

[14:03]

But I'm not so sure, like you said. I'm not so sure that that's another time. Like, we label it, or that connotation. I think that they could just, that time doesn't exist there. OK, this is something we talked about last time. So there's this one kind of polarity we have about time. That there is time, and we think of time as kind of sequential time. past, present, future, eight o'clock, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock. And then there's this other time, which is no time, which is eternity. So I mentioned this last time. I think that this is, when we think about time at all, and we try and see different ways of looking at time, we see time as kind of no time and it's eternal now, or we see time as like history. And I really think what he's bringing in here is to, Not that those two ways aren't included, but to see many, many more ways of seeing time.

[15:06]

So, what I don't want to do is to say, this way of seeing time is right and this way is wrong. I want us to see all the ways that we see time and that we can separate our experience. So we know how we separate our experience in space. In this room we think we're all separate. We think we're all, I think that the picture is over there, and Sonia's over there, and the blackboard's over there. And in a sense, they are. But also, just by perceiving in my perceptual field, I've just brought them all in. And now we're talking about them, and they're all here. So the sense in which we're not separate exists in space, and it also exists in time. So to bring up Abraham Lincoln, or Nagarjuna, somebody who will be living a hundred years from now, then they're part of what exists in our fantasy, or whatever you want to call it, in our thinking perception right now.

[16:15]

I don't know, but this is just another idea I'm bringing up about it. So I don't want to... I'm interested in including all the different ideas. And I don't think he's saying that that there are right ideas of time and wrong ideas of time. We're just saying they're all being time. And what does that mean? Something I hit on here is just the brilliance of that question. For a while, try to be sure whether or not, you know, he's fairly convinced you're going to come to the conclusion that it's all one time, but he wants you to try it. Well, it sounds like it's a rhetorical question. You know, it sounds like he's saying, try to visualize whether or not there is the whole being, the whole world, apart from the present time. It sounds like he's saying, can you really see some other time apart from this present time? But I think part of it is that we should actually see that we do. We do think there are times separate from this time. That's the being time, that we actually do believe that yesterday is gone and separate from what we're doing right now, that tomorrow morning is somewhere else.

[17:27]

We see time in that way. I think we have to see that we do see time as separate and cut off, that we feel like there are gaps in time. And that's what he's getting to in the next section that I wanted to start with. So, yeah. It helps me and both helps me and confuses me to do kind of a reversal and think about, it's easy for me to see that no thing or nothing exists outside of the present. You know, Abraham Lincoln existed in the present. He existed in his present. He could exist nowhere else other than in the present. As you and I can exist nowhere else but in the present. So if I reverse it and say nothing exists anywhere but in the present, for me that's easy to grasp. But then if I reverse that and say that everything... I think that's an important step that you just did. Did everybody get that? But then if I try to reverse that back to everything exists in the present, then it's confusing.

[18:31]

Because if nothing exists outside of the present, that makes sense. But then to say everything exists in the present gets confusing. And in a way, it's kind of the same type of... It's a reversal, but it's also kind of the same. Well, are we talking about this present or are there many presents? Well, exactly. So we don't know what he's talking about. Yeah, I have this feeling that it's very easy to get kind of caught up in some head-tripping, very intellectual about this. It's almost impossible not to. And I really feel like what he's talking about is how do we live day to day. And he's talking about it in this way that seems abstract and mathematical almost. There's this dimension and that dimension. In a way, if we put it out there as some abstract question about time, that's just another world apart from the present time.

[19:39]

So I actually do want to jump ahead, because I think it responds to the stuff we're getting into now. Everybody has some version of this that they can look at? Dana, can maybe you share with Lorraine? Do you need a comment? Oh. Yeah. That's OK. OK. OK. Well, I'm going to be jumping back and forth between three different versions because it's just, I don't know how else to do it. Each of them add something. So I'm going to start with one and go back. So I'm starting with bottom of page 105 in Cleary. And for those of you who have Moon in a Dewdrop, it's number seven, and then I'll read it in Waddell's translation. One should not understand time only as flying away. One should not only get the idea that flying away is the function of time. If time only were to fly, then there would be gaps.

[20:43]

Not having heard of the path of being time, is because of learning only that it has passed. To tell the gist of it, all existences in the whole world, while being lined up, are individual times. Because it is being time, it is my being time. Okay, this is really dense stuff. The point he gets to there is, it is my being-time, or it is your being-time. It's a personal being-time. Not personal in terms of a self, but it's our own experience. It's our own being-time. Being-time is not something that exists on a clock over there. He's talking about what is your own living and experience of time. Let me try it with another one. I think it's more, it includes perception. I think it's more than just perception.

[21:48]

It's experience. What is our experience? So somewhere else he says, or somewhere in reading all about this, I came across time is how we experience. Time is the how of our experience. By the way, I have this book out here. This is totally a bracket here. But there's this wonderful little book which Kirk turned me on to called Einstein's Dreams. We have it in the bookstore. Anyway, it's fun because it's about, and it really is relevant to this, it's a novel by a guy who's a physicist. set in 1905 at the time that Einstein was coming up with his theory of time, which I don't know really anything about, and if any of you do, please tell us. But it's all a series of short little dreams about time, and different understandings and views of time appear in each of the dreams. So it's a way of kind of playing with time. So I think it's very helpful in reading this text to look at this little book, Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman.

[22:53]

which happens to be in the bookstore. It does happen to be in the bookstore, that's true. Okay, I want to stay with this passage and try it again in Kastanahashi's version in Muna Nidudra. So this is the same thing I just read. Do not think that time merely flies away. So here he said, one should not understand time only as flying away. Do not think that time merely flies away. do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. So both Cleary and Waddell, I think probably it's more literal, say, if time only were to fly, then there would be gaps. I think Cos's interpretation is very helpful. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time.

[23:56]

So there's gaps. If time is just flying along, then there are gaps between the time. There's the time of Nagarjuna. There's the time of Lincoln. There's yesterday morning. There's now. There's all these separate times, and they're separated. The way Cos says it, if time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. So if we see time as, flying away, it's gone, then it's somewhere apart from us. Could this be pointing at a frame of mind such as every time I think of the past or present, I am separating myself from the present? I mean, the past or the future? I mean, you could take that same formula and apply it to right now. If I'm thinking about something in the future, then I am separating myself from time. I'm separating myself from this time. It depends on how you think about the future. So, this is all about how we think. If we think that when we think about the future, that it's a separate time, that it's flying away from us, or that we're flying away, flying towards, either way, then it's somewhere else.

[25:08]

It's somewhere outside. It's not right here, right now. everything you said, including the words past and future, and your image of past and future, happen right now, as you were saying it, is another way to see it. But I don't know that it's just a matter of everything is right now. That's one way to talk about it, and that might be helpful, to look at the view of time that everything that happens is right now. The past is right now, the future is right now, the time that's flying by as I swing my arm is all right now in each... Anyway, we can see each of those as a now, but I think what he's saying is even subtler than that. He's talking about being time as our experience. That's what I want to say.

[26:10]

I got the sense when I read it that it's a subjective experience that you, yourself, or I, myself, am time. And if we think of time as little whiffs of energy flying back and forth, then we're not really, we're looking at it objectively, just like we look at the hands of the clock spinning around. But we are time, and we're in it. Then it's like the fish being in the current. You're in it. Right. That example you gave, tell us again. Last time you gave us a wonderful example of the fish in the water and us being times. Just say it again in another way. Well, I have to back up. I had an experience about three and a half years ago where I was sitting, and I said, oh, there's a sashimi or anything. Can we take that? was sitting perfectly straight, and I got into a full lotus posture for the first time.

[27:14]

And then suddenly everything kind of clicked. And I sensed that I was deeply connected with this working in my head of time. And I sensed that Time was very much like a substance, like water or like a web of substance that's not just like a spider web, but it has a dimension to it. And that I was very much in the present, but I was very much in part of this dimensional web And I could sense that I had tremendous understanding of who I am because of my parents and how they struggle to bring me up.

[28:23]

And I understand them much better because of their actions. And then I could also understand how my actions affect my kids. So it was much deeper than how my sentences are stringing everything out. And I just got a sense that it was a very subjective experience. It was as if I had swallowed time and time was the human. And it was very different from the clock sense of time. And that kind of perception kind of lasted with me all week. And every time I sat, Dazen, it was just kind of fortified, but it was very much of that sense of wholeness. And then after the week, that experience kind of faded away. I had the book in my bookshelf, and I tried to read. I was reading it that week, and I understood what he was saying.

[29:31]

And then afterwards, It was sort of like looking for a lost treasure, looking for a key and it's back to the lost. And then I tried to read it again and the memory is kind of dim. And so I tried to imagine myself as a fish in water because water has substance, it's transparent, you can't really see it, but in it you can feel it as a solid body and how If you make a ripple at one end of the swimming pool, you can feel at the other end, and there are different currents if you're in the ocean swimming, undercurrents and all that. Even though you're here, this part of the pool, and you're swimming over there, you may not be aware of what's over there, but it's really the same body of water, whether you're up or down. It's really kind of hard to put into words. It certainly is, but I think that image of time being like an ocean that we're swimming in, that we as fish are swimming in, and what you just said, kind of as background to it, gives us another perspective on it that I think is very helpful.

[30:45]

This thing about objective, subjective. I don't know that we want to stick on the subjective side either, but it's not... Time is not an object that exists somewhere else. There's this whole thing in Zen about self and other and this basic split. are seeing the world as separate from us. This basic split or separation is part of the problem and it's part of the way the human mind functions. It's unavoidable in terms of developing the discriminative faculties to just, you know, get to adulthood, you know. But still, there's a way in which it's an illusion and we're caught by it unless we're willing to see others as not separate or others as illuminating or expressing the self. And I think he's talking about that with time too.

[31:46]

That's one of the things I feel most clear about in this is that there's this basic sense of time is not something that exists separate, outside us, apart, as an object. So I think what you say is useful. Um, yeah, so to go back to Cause's version, do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. There'd be gaps between time and there'd be gaps between you and time. Time would be somewhere outside you and you would kind of be subject to time. Because if time is an object, then also you are an object.

[32:49]

The whole world becomes little balls of objects. The reason you do not clearly understand the time being is that you think of time only as passing. In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments, because all moments are the time being. They are your time being. So time in its beingness, time be... It's really hard to talk about this, but time as it exists is a quality that is how we live. And that's how all life is. It's energy? That's right. I see what he says about... being my, but then I disagree and see it as one. Like when I think of time, I think of it, how it relates with the earth and like the cycles of nature.

[33:56]

Like we're kind of on the equinox. You could say it's 12 hours of light, 12 hours of dark, there's that time, but it's more like a balance. It's more like time is interweave or connected with everything that, you know, so it's not, I don't see it as my, I just see it as cosmic or universal. OK, good, good, good. OK, that's the other side of it. So there's this thing. I think I maybe mentioned this last time, this bumper sticker that I saw recently again. We belong to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us. I think that's very relevant to this. So right, so OK, what do we do about this? There are these natural cycles. So I think he's talking about that, too. I think everything we bring into here is relevant when we're talking about time. the more, the wider we cast our net and bring in all the different ways of looking at time, the more dynamic is our being time. So it's not, so to say, because all moments are the time being, they are your time being.

[35:04]

It doesn't mean it's your time being, Jennifer's, as opposed to the rest of the people in the world, or the sun and the moon and the stars. It means that right now you are living the day or two before the equinox. The equinox is living you, so there's... The thing Dogen says in Genjo Koan, to bring yourself forward and experience the myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is enlightenment, is awakening. So it's not that time exists out there, it's also not that we come forward and impose ourselves on time. So each being, when we allow each being to arise and appear before us, It's like to study the ways, to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. Forget the self is to be awakened by all the things arising.

[36:08]

All the things that come up in our experience are us. It's not that we're them. It's not that we can impose our idea of what the world should be or who we are on the world. But whatever happens, that's who we are. And he's giving this dimension of time. I think he's saying the same thing about time. Each time that appears is us. It's not that it's outside us. It's not that it's separate from us. Does any of this make any sense, Dan? Slippery stuff. Let's look at... In essence, all things in the entire world are linked with one another as moments. It's not that one is subject and the other is subject. It's not that I run time, but it's also not that there's some time outside that runs me.

[37:12]

This is time being right now. This is our beingness of time. This is our being time right now. You know, the phrase, you know, we're all familiar with, if we're not in the forest, then do we hear the trees climb, or something like that? And yet you walk in the forest and there's already fallen trees, so they obviously fell. They just didn't wait until I got there to do that. In this sense, if we're the, I almost want to say we're almost the center of our own perception of time. Is that another way of saying it? How do we all get together if everybody's seeing time as being time? Each person and each point is the center. And I'm equating that with self-centeredness.

[38:16]

Well, if you see that everybody else is also the center. What do you think of, can you see the trees in the forest? It just seems like a similar statement to me, you know, in some sense. I'm not quite sure how yet. He said something. Right. The thing about it, I think he was talking about the thing if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it. Right. Does it make a sound? Does it make a sound? That's the question. I'm thinking and I'm perceiving time and I'm perceiving myself or I'm being time, then everything that's happened or is happening or about to happen is being time. How is the next person perceiving and being time? Is it like the tree in the forest? Or to put it in terms of time, yes, I think that's helpful.

[39:21]

Could there be a time that was not being? that was not experiencing? Could there be a time separate from any experience? What would that be? Is there any time that's not... We could say someone's being time, but... We could say that. There is a person. That's why Lee says, it's my being time. It's not that it's my separate from yours. But there is, it's a personal thing, it's not, what would there, what could, I can't imagine, what time could there be that would not be in time, that would not be experienced, that would not be experiencing time, that would not be a time of experience or a time of being. What about a time of no naming something?

[40:26]

But that's not being time. I mean, that's not all of being time. Languages kept coming into this every time we talked about it, because that's how we talk about it. But to see that our naming of time, which is, of course, a function of our perception of time, but it's also that it controls our perception of time, We label certain things, and then we don't bother to look past that. We don't reflect whether or not there is a time that's separate from this present being time. This next section, I think, did you want to say something? I was just thinking of Dogen writing this. What was his motivation? I could see him. And then I was thinking of that meeting he had with the cook. the Tenzo and the Mushrooms, and if I don't do it now, who's gonna do it?

[41:56]

I mean, as a... I mean, all this going around in your head, it's so intellectual, it's so fascinating, and then back to Earth with this wizard old man who maybe embodied being time for it. Maybe that was a real turning point for him to... That's good, yeah. Do you all know that story? It's in the instructions for the Tenzo, Tenzo Kyoko. Dogen, when he was studying in China, met This old guy who was, you know, like he describes him as having dragon eyebrows, you know, real shaggy, old, bent over guy. And he was in the courtyard putting out shiitake mushrooms and drying them. And the sun was very hot and his head was shaved, I guess, and bare. And he looked like he was, you know, going to pass out any moment. And Dogen said, why don't you take it easy? Why don't you do it some other time? And he said, What other time could there be or something like that? And there's no other me. There's no other time, and there's no other. And then he says, why don't you have somebody else do it? And he said, somebody else isn't me.

[42:57]

Identity and time and activity. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this is about activity. This is about how do we see and enliven and enrich our activity? How do we really? meet our experience and make our experience full. It's very abstract in a sense. Yeah, imagining Dogen sitting there writing this, I mean, like, was he on speed or what was he, you know, how was he doing this? But yeah, I think it's… This next passage is really great, and I really want to read it. So the way Waddell says the thing we've been talking about is, the essential point is, every entire being in the entire world is, each time, an independent time, even while making a continuous series.

[44:08]

Inasmuch as they are being time, they are my being time. Let me read that again, and then I want to keep going because the next part adds a lot to it. The essential point is, every entire being in the entire world is, each time, an independent time, even while making a continuous series. So each time is entire being, entire world, independently, also, continuous, making a continuous series. Inasmuch as they are being time, they are my being time. Then the next passage, I'll start with Waddell's version, because he uses this very weird word. Being time has the virtue of seriatim passage. I don't know where he got this word. S-E-R-I-A-T-I-M. What's that mean? Well, he's trying to... Let me read the rest of it, then I'll go back and read his footnotes, and then we'll read the other versions.

[45:13]

Being-time has the virtue of seriatim passage. It passes from today to tomorrow, passes from today to yesterday, passes from yesterday to today, passes from today to today, passes from tomorrow to tomorrow. This is because passing seriatim is a virtue of time. Past-time and present-time do not overlap one another. or pile up in a row, yet, then he mentions these different teachers. Sagan is time, Ongpo is time, Matsu and Shito are time too. As self and other are both times, practice and realization are times. Entering the mud, entering the water is equally time. So his footnote, the movement of time in its authentic sense as being time occurs without ever leaving the instant present. It is a continuous occurrence of nows, a continuous occurrence of nows, manifesting themselves discontinuously as independent stages.

[46:24]

This Syriatim passage, and he gives the Japanese word keireki or kyoriaku, two different ways of pronouncing it, also translates simply passage. So he adds this word syriatim to try and give it some juice or other overtones or something. Serial time, yeah. Yeah, I think that's where he gets it. This seriatim passage, also translated simply passage, taking place on the standpoint of being time, is thus a discontinuous continuity of such stages. Where you are. You know, our Dharma positions you know, in the world, you know, working where we work, taking the job we take, doing the life we're doing. But also in each moment, we're in a particular position in this room, spatially, but we're also in a particular position in our life, we're living a particular, you know, Lorraine is completely Lorraine living right now, Dana's completely Dana, being Dana right now, and so forth.

[47:32]

We're all taking our particular daughter position. So... to read again, this seriato passage taking place on the standpoint of being-time is thus a discontinuous continuity of such stages, of such dharma positions, each cut off from before and after, and each independent of other being-times, yet including them all in itself. The passage to that's the Then he says it passes from today to tomorrow, passes from today to yesterday, passes from yesterday to today. Usually we think of time passes from yesterday to today to tomorrow. Is that what we usually think? But he said time moves in many directions. So right now, any one of us could take something that happened in the past and turn it

[48:37]

and make it present right now and change it. See it in a different way. It might change our dharma position right now. Does anybody else have that experience of actually redefining or renaming or reclaiming something in your past? Going back and meeting somebody you haven't met or haven't seen in a long time, meeting an old friend, or talking to somebody about something that happened. Another example. Maybe you have a disagreement with somebody. or you have some falling out with somebody, and then you meet them sometime later, a week later, or a year later, or ten years later, and you talk about it, and you actually see each other's point of view, and it changes what happened. It changes what your past is. Has anybody had something like that? It doesn't really change your past. It might change your ideas about the past. OK, is that different? OK, to say that, that's very interesting. It doesn't really change your past. It changes your ideas of your past or your feelings of your past.

[49:41]

So to say that means that you have an idea of the past as existing objectively somewhere else, that really existed, whereas your idea of the past and your feelings about the past something different from some objective past that actually exists in some other being time? It seems to be what you're saying. Yes. Okay, good. Let's see that that's what we're saying. So looking at our assumptions about time. So look at that, just think about that. I don't want to say, you know, there's no right or wrong about this, but just take what you just said as a meditation and look at Is that time that you think really existed in the past, what's the relationship between that and the way you're feeling about it changed in some other time, two minutes ago, or right now? So these are all times.

[50:43]

All of those are being time. Even the past that you think existed separately, objectively, somewhere else, that's not part of your experience, is something that can't be changed. Right. Right. And yet we can see it in a new way, and it changes the karma, right? Right. Maybe it doesn't change, maybe it just affects. OK. Well, what is that? Well, I don't know why, but it keeps popping in my head. The film, It's a Wonderful Life, where he goes back in time to help him live in the present and not... That's a good idea. That's Frank Capra, right? Yeah. And shows him, if you hadn't been where you were at that present time, this would have happened, this would have been... See, you were needed to be where you were because you saved your brother's life, because you did this. So you're always where you...

[51:46]

Yeah, that's a good one. Does everybody know that film? It's on every Christmas. Jimmy Stewart, right? Jimmy Stewart, Donna Lee, or Marlon Collins. Do you remember the beginning of Slackers? Yeah. He's in a taxi cab, and he's talking to the cab driver. And he says, I mean the cab driver, but really, if I stayed back by the telephone, and the person answered the phone, my life would take an entirely different course at this point. Because if that person was home, I would be in this camp right now somewhere else. At some point in this class, we're going to talk about groundhog days, but maybe we're not ready for that yet. But also, there's the, what was the name of the movie, Going into the Future? Back to the Future. Back to the Future. It did the same thing, right? Back to the Future. So we're actually, I think, excuse me. I think all of these different, you know, we're used to time travel in science fiction movies.

[52:49]

So actually this gives us an access to Dogen's being time. I think we have some sense of play with time. And I think that's very relevant to like bringing in, enriching our experience of time by seeing, by looking at the ways we are stuck by our ideas of time. And by seeing other ideas of time. I think this is very relevant to this text. But all of those things that we just brought up suggest that time is linear, in a way, because any of those things have changed in time. Well, you can see them that way, yeah. So, okay, I wanted to continue with the text, but let me just read through. We have to talk about the second case of the Mumon-Khan before we go much further. But let me just read through this passage in the other versions, and even a little further in one version.

[53:56]

Okay, number eight in Khast-Taranashi's, I'll read from that, which is in theories Q. The time being has the quality of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow. Today flows into yesterday. Yesterday flows into today, and today flows into today. Tomorrow flows into tomorrow. Because flowing is a quality of time, moments of past and present do not overlap or line up side by side. Each one is time. So Chinyuan is time, Huangpu is time, Matsu is time, Shuzhou is time. Because self and other are already time. So he's talking about the self and other.

[55:04]

Self and other are already both time, together time. Practice enlightenment is time, being splattered with mud and getting wet with water is also time. Let me keep going to the next part. Although the views of an ordinary person and the causes and conditions of those views are what the ordinary person sees, they are not necessarily the ordinary person's truth. So we do have views, and they are causes and conditions, and that's what you see, but they're not necessarily the whole truth. The truth merely manifests itself for the time being as an ordinary person. Because you think your time or your being is not truth, you believe that the sixteen-foot golden body of Buddha is not you. Because you think your time or your being is not truth, because you don't really believe your time or your being, or because you don't see your time or your being as complete, you think that the Buddha is not you.

[56:08]

However, your attempts to escape from being the 16-foot golden body of Buddha are nothing but bits and pieces of the time being. Those who have not yet confirmed this should look into it deeply. So every way in which we think we're not Buddha, every view of time that separates us from our experience, is just another bit of being time. This is very far out what he's saying. I don't know what else to say about it. Those who have not yet confirmed this should look into it deeply. The different hours of the day which are arrayed in the world now are actualized by ascendings and descendings of the time being at each moment. The rat is time, the tiger is time, sentient beings are time, Buddhas are time. That was Murinadu Drapakastanahasi. I'll read theories just to... This is the same thing.

[57:10]

In being time there is the quality of passage, that is, it passes from today to tomorrow. So he doesn't say seriatim passages, he just says passage. It passes from today to yesterday, it passes from yesterday to today, it passes from today to today, it passes from tomorrow to tomorrow. Sounds like Shakespeare. Because passage is a quality of time, past and present time doesn't pile up, doesn't accumulate in a row. Nevertheless, Sagan is time, Obaku is time, Baso and Sekito also are time. So these are teachers who lived, actually, the first two lived at different times, the second two lived at the same time. Since self and other are time, cultivation and realization are times, going into the mud, going into the water is similarly time. So, though the present views and the conditions of views of ordinary people are what ordinary people see, they are not the norm of ordinary people.

[58:12]

It is merely that the norm temporarily conditions ordinary people. Because of learning that this time, this being, are not the norm, they take the sixteen-foot-tall golden body as not themselves. trying to escape by claiming that oneself is not the 16-foot-tall golden body of Buddha is also itself bits of being-time. So even the ways in which we separate ourselves from Buddha, even the ways in which we define the world and define ourself as confused, deluded, and so forth, all of that is just being-time. So the way he's talking about being time includes everything. It is the looking of those who have not yet verified it. And yet, Dogon is saying that some times are deluded time, being times. But they're completely that. This is the same thing from Abhay Waddell.

[59:22]

Although the view the ordinary unenlightened person now holds and the causes of that view are indeed what the unenlightened person sees, it is not the unenlightened person's dharma. So I guess Cleary is translating dharma as norm. It is only the dharma temporarily causing him to see that way. The fact that horses and sheep are arrayed as they are throughout the world now is also due to the dwelling of everything like this in its own dharma position, ascending and descending up and down. Rats are time, so are tigers. Such beings are time, and Buddhas are too. This time realizes the entire world by being a creature with three heads and eight arms and realizes the entire world by being a 16-foot golden body. thus entirely worlding the entire world with the whole world, is called penetrating exhaustively. I'm not sure where that is in the other ones. Yeah, that's getting a little far ahead.

[60:30]

Is penetrating exhaustively like dependent co-arising? No, I think he's talking about, in this case, he's talking about realization, about thoroughly being present with this koan. So even the ordinary person, what he's saying, and what he continues to say even more, and he makes it even more emphatic a couple paragraphs later, the ordinary person who is deluded, by any definition and sees himself as deluded and sees oneself as separate from one's own experience, all of that happens in being time. It can't be otherwise. So he's, you know, in a way it seems like he's inventing this category, being time, which just kind of includes, you know, encompasses everything and we can all kind of jump in there and it's nice and warm, or maybe it's not warm, maybe it's freezing,

[61:35]

We're all there together. I don't understand why he put ordinary people and not just people. And what is ordinary? This is a technical term. It means, I think in this case, Do you have that place in the Japanese text, ordinary people? I think it means sentient beings as opposed to Buddhas. Yeah. Yeah, it means the ordinary, unenlightened person. It means... Are we all enlightened? We just don't know either? No, we're all ordinary.

[62:36]

He's saying it doesn't matter, in a sense. I mean, I take that back. He's saying, I don't know, anyway, he's saying that even when we see ourselves as separate from Buddha, so this part he's talking about what it's like to be separate from Buddha. So I think it means, I think probably it's worldly people. Worldly people as opposed to Buddhas. What kind of people? Worldly. So he's talking about worldly people as opposed to Buddhas and ancestors or Bodhisattvas or practitioners. Just the ordinary, common, the man of the street. That's what he means there by that. But I want to, OK, having gone through all that, I want to come back and throw in something else.

[63:39]

Because it's actually, the more I read this, the more I see it's important as a context about not being separate from time and from the different experiences and views of time. Do you all know the story of Shaka Joseph Fox? I think we can't talk any further without going into that story. Um, and I'll do it kind of briefly, um, but, um, Hyakujo, or Bai Zhang in Chinese, was a great Zen master. And, um, anyway, this is a very important, uh, case in the Koan collections. It's the second case in the Gateless Gate, or Mumonkan. Um, and, uh, it's in all, I think it's in the Blue Cliff Records and Book of Serenity, too. Anyway, basically, the story is simple. Hyakujo Baijong was a great Zen master, was Rinzai's teacher's teacher. Anyway, he was giving a talk to the assembly, and there was an old man, and he used to come and listen to the lectures.

[64:43]

And one day, the old man, and the old man used to go out when the lecture was over, but one day he stayed behind, and he said that, Can I talk to you, he said to Yaka Joe, and said, I'm not a human being. In a previous calpa, in a previous age, in the universe before the Big Bang, or however you want to define what previous calpa means in terms of modern physics, I was the teacher on this mountain. A monk asked me, is an enlightened person subject to cause and effect? And I said, no. And because of that, I have been reborn as a fox for 500 lifetimes. So there are a lot of foxes around Green Gulch now.

[65:47]

It's very interesting. Yeah, you can see them very easily. So this old guy said to Hyakujo, Can you please say something? Can you give me a turning word to save me, to help me from this fate, save me from this fate? And then he asked Hyakujo, is an enlightened person subject to cause and effect or not? And Hyakujo said, they are not blind to cause and effect, or they do not ignore cause and effect. And the old man was enlightened. And he said, thank you very much. Could you please give me a monk's funeral? If you go around the back of the mountain, you'll see a fox's body in the cave there. And he left. And then Yakujo had them ring the bonsho to announce the funeral of a monk. And all the monks in the assembly in the community were a little startled because nobody had been sick.

[66:52]

Everybody seemed to be there. What was going on? So then he took all the monks in the community, and they marched around the back of the mountain. Maybe they'd be like walking up to Hope Cottage or something. They walked around the hill, and he found a little cave. And he pulled away a rock, and with his staff, pulled out the body of a dead fox. And he gave it a monk's funeral. There's a little more to this story, but that's enough for this. So the whole thing about are we subject to cause and effect or not, there is this side of, of being free from cause and effect, there is this side of the eternal now, there is this side of kind of being outside time, there's this side of feeling present and not, you know, I think we've all had a taste of that, either in Zazen or sometimes when we're just there and we feel very present. But what Dogen is strongly pointing to in this is the side that's not emptiness, the side that is taking care of the ordinary world, the phenomenal world.

[68:03]

So not being blind to cause and effect. And Dogen has a chapter of Shobo Genzo called Faith in Cause and Effect. Do you know the Japanese... Faith in Believing in Cause and Effect? There's a chapter in Shobo Genzo. I think so. Dongen Zenji wrote two parts, including Shobo Genzo, about, you say, Inna. Inna is Japanese. Yes. Dai-shu-yo and Jin-shin-in-na. It's important for us to understand the difference in meaning between Dai-shu-yo and Jin-shin-in-na. I could understand what you said, the story of Hyakujo and fox.

[69:23]

Yes, that's right. It's different, but maybe the same meaning. Different story, but the meaning is the same. That's why it's important for us to understand. difference, but the meaning is the same. But I don't know about it yet. And how do you say keireki? Before you say, keireki? Passage. Yeah, passage. That's why keireki and sanze, present, past, and future, it's different. Geki and Sanzen. Sanzen? Sanzen. Sanzen is, you said before, past and present and future.

[70:29]

Yes. Dogen Zenji wrote two titles, Uji and Sanzen. You know, twelve books of Shogo Genzo. Yes. That's why it's also important for us to understand the difference between the concept of keireki and the concept of sanze. Sanze is the three times, three worlds actually, sometimes the translator does. Yes. But same, time is time. Right, right, right, right. OK, yeah, I understand what you're saying. It's the difference how to accept for us. It's the difference keireki and sanzen. Yeah, so there's the view of time that is through the three worlds.

[71:31]

Yes, yes. And they're kind of separate. Yes. Actually, they don't say past, present, and future in Chinese and Japanese. They usually say past, future, and present. They put the present last, like past, future, present. But so that's one way of looking at time. And then the other way of looking at time, keireki, or passage, is like flowing of time. So there are two different views of time, and yet they're different, and yet they're the same. That's fine. Depends on accept the concept for us. Time is time, but the concept is different. Because keireki and sanze is time. It depends on how to accept or how to understand. Time is separate to keireki and sanze. It's difficult for me to explain in English. It's difficult for us to explain in English.

[72:37]

Thank you very much. Well, the story of the fox, though, I think is part of this because Dogen places a great emphasis on we have to acknowledge our karma, right? So we can't say, well, it's being time and, you know, I think looking at kind of the hippie view of this is useful in terms of seeing the distortion of it. There was this view, be here now, understood as just being in the present and whatever happens, man is cool and we don't have to worry about past and future. So that's one very common distortion of it historically. Dogen's students had the same problem, actually. So when Zen was introduced into Japan, there was the same kind of, just to understand that this mind is Buddha was enough, and not to take care of, we do have responsibilities.

[73:45]

So when I was talking about reclaiming the past, or if we see the past in a different way, we can change it. That's half of it. We still have to acknowledge the past. We have to actually really face the past and the future, which are passing right now on the level of passage. But this thing about not being blind to cause and effect, not ignoring cause and effect, we do live in that realm. We do live in the realm of ordinary time where there are causes and conditions. There is karma. So we have responsibility for what we're doing now. It does have an effect. What we did in the past has an effect. What everybody did in the past has an effect. And it's a very complex web of things. So it's not like something that you can kind of just, it's not as simple. It's not like, well, I can go back in the past and fix it. There are lots of movies like that, that I'll just go back into the past and change something, and then everything will be OK in the history and the future.

[74:51]

So the complexity of that is such that... Which actually we do do that. But we do do that. And in fact, the people who write the history books, you know, it's history. They do it the most. Yeah. But we do that with each other. We do that with each other too. We define who we are and, you know, and how we're related and all the interactions that we have and who said what to who and I saw it that way, you saw it, you know, we're always doing that. And we actually have to take, we actually, it's not, I mean, I don't mean to say it in this moral way, we have to take responsibilities, but in fact, there's an effect. And we can look at the future and see it in one way, or look at the past and see it in another way, or look at the present and see it in a way, and that will change the causes and conditions, because that's part of the causes and conditions. So to see time, to be able to see time in different ways gives us an access, I feel, to more fully practice, to use that word, with our being time.

[75:56]

So. I get, I begin to fall apart. I guess that's the being part of being time, because so much of this that you're going to go back to mess around with time for your own personal advantage so that you can maybe make things... Yeah, so I didn't mean that, but... No, no, I know that's not what you meant, but that's, I mean, that's how... That's how we can see it. Ordinary person's point of view or something like that. Right. Where in fact, I mean, it's beyond one's personal advantage. Right. It's very complicated. And it's very, and it has to do also with the person who's perceiving this

[77:04]

time passing by, no? Right. So it's not separate from the person perceiving it. Yeah, right. That's the main point, actually, that however we see it and however we accept or don't accept or influence or are influenced by the passing of time and the law of cause and effect, it's not separate from how we see it. It's not separate from our seeing it. It's not separate from our being there. And yet there are all these ways of thinking about it that we actually have that do separate, where we separate ourselves. That's the point that I'm kind of trying to express tonight. That there are ways, it's not separate from us. Our life is not separate from us. Our life is our life. And our life of being is in time. But there are all these ways of seeing our life, of seeing time,

[78:06]

of seeing our being, where we separate ourselves from our life, or where we kind of objectify ourselves, or objectify time. It's like in the Gangja colonies, where life must be the fish, and the fish must be life. Right. So our life includes all those ways of seeing it. Our life is all those ways of seeing it. And yet, if we don't look at He's encouraging us to look at how do we actually see our life? What do we think we're doing here? How do we see our time? I almost want to try and see if there's another word we can put in there for time that would kind of be the same or where the meaning would be the same. Experience. Anyway, we separate ourselves. It's possible for us to separate ourselves from our life based on the ways we think time and our being work.

[79:12]

And the more we are conscious of the assumptions we have about what the nature of our experience is in time, the more we can see ourselves doing that and actually really be in our life. So I think this is the functional, the use of this text and of this study. There is a way in which this is useful, not just an abstraction. This particular text is fairly abstract, but we have to see it in terms of our own experience. And the last third of this text is actually a story, or a set of related stories, about Jaksan Igen, who is the person in the very, who's quoted in the very beginning, who said that, for the time being, I stand on the highest mountain, and the time being, I move to the deepest, the bottom of the ocean. So the last third of this is this series of stories about what happened to Yaxuan and commentaries on it about raising eyebrows and blinking eyes and so forth.

[80:22]

And so what I'd like to do next week is to keep going. and keep going with the text and go over it and try and get to that story next week. We won't actually start to talk about it next week, but we'll get up to it so that in the following week we can. Because once we get into that story, then we can see his application of the stuff he's talking about. And I think it's hard not to get really kind of fuzzed out because it's so abstract if we're not seeing it in terms of a particular situation. We have to see it in a particular context, in a particular life. You know, I try to struggle with these things in a very practical way, like what does this have to do with getting up tomorrow morning, or something like that.

[81:25]

So I'm thinking, But you're saying that we can, or we do, or both, see ourselves as separate from our life. So I'm thinking, well, I don't see how you could actually do that, that I could see myself as separate from my life. And I think what would be the value in trying here, looking at this. So it seems like one thing that keeps coming through is that he keeps trying to make life, or our life, broader or wider or deeper than we might ordinarily see it, like this moment to moment linear thing, so that it might include some past, present and future, or past of the past.

[82:30]

And then, it seems like it, then it includes, and you brought up this koan, Yakujo's Fox, and cause and effect, that starts to include other beings, or other situations, or other times. So then the only way I could see myself as being separate from my life, is if I see myself separate from you. Because then it starts to include everything as my life. It seems as if this is just... Right. So when he keeps talking about my being time, or how I perceive time, or we perceive time, I can see in some way that in my mind I've been sort of maybe, let's say, just here, right? My perception, my life, my being, time. I think that's maybe a problem with translation. I don't think when he's saying, because it is being time, it is my being time. He's saying that. That's how I see myself, my own thinking, that I've limited it maybe to this sphere.

[83:35]

And more and more he's trying to make it so that it includes, and you were trying to talk about this, about these individual spheres that actually my life It is all life. OK. Another way of reading that, though, because it is being time, it is my being time. I think the point he's making is not my or your, but I mean, I think what you're saying is right, that it's inclusive. But you could read that because it is being time, it is intimate being time. It is personal being time. I think there's also that in there. It's not me or you, because it could be read either me or you. He's not talking in the first person. Right. So I think there's a problem of translation there. I think the my being time there just means it's actually personal being time, or intimate being time. It's one's own being time, not to say separate from others, but it's very intimate. So when he says my or your, it emphasizes that, I think, see that side of it.

[84:40]

But isn't that our tendency anyway? My tendency? I mean, when we? We could say it our. It is our being time. You could translate that our. It is our being time. The point is it's making it personal and direct and intimate. I want to just read this last paragraph on page 106 in the Cleary. I want to at least read that today. It's also a very important part of it, and I kind of hope to get to it today, and we'll start from there next time. Now, exhausting the limits of the whole world by means of the whole world is called investigating exhaustively. This is what Waddell was talking about, penetrating. investigating exhaustively, to actualize being the 16-foot golden body of Buddha by means of the 16-foot golden body as determination, cultivating practice, enlightenment, and nirvana is being is time. So those are just stages of, or four aspects of practice.

[85:45]

There's the determination means the decision to practice or to find a way, cultivating, then enlightenment, then nirvana. It's a standard kind of Buddhist cycle. Then he says, just investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there is nothing left over. Because leftovers are leftovers, even the being-time of half an exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of a half being-time. This is a very important sentence in this. Yeah, I'm going to repeat it a different way, though. In Ta-Nehisi's In Moon and a Dew Drop, it's the beginning of number 11, page 79.

[86:53]

And I'll just take out the first part of it, forget, just this one sentence. Just actualize all time as all being. There is nothing extra. So, instead of leftover, he says extra. A so-called extra being is thoroughly an extra being. Thus, the time being half-actualized is half of the time being completely actualized. And a moment that seems to be missed is also completely being. Yeah, that's important, too. Clearly, he says, even forms which seem to slip by are being. So again, I think Kaz's way of saying it is pretty good here. The time being half-actualized is half of the time being completely actualized. And a moment that seems to be missed is also completely being. In the same way, even the moment before or after the moment that appears to be missed is also complete in itself the time being. Vigorously abiding in each moment is the time being. Let me give you one more version of the same thing.

[88:05]

Thus entirely worlding the entire world with the whole world is called penetrating exhaustively. To immediately manifest the body, ah this is great, to immediately manifest the bodying of the tall golden Buddha with the body of the tall golden Buddha as the arising of the mind, as practice, as enlightenment, as nirvana, that is being, that is time. One does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being. One does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being. There is no remaining dharma left over. Because any dharma left over is as such a leftover dharma, even the being time of a partial Exhaustive penetration is an exhaustive penetration of a partial being-time. Even a form of understanding that appears to be blundering is being. On a still broader plane, the times before and after one immediately manifests the blunder are both, together with it, dwelling possessions of being-time.

[89:10]

He's just casting the net real wide. He's casting the net real wide. So he wants us to see how we are missing it by seeing time in a limited way. And then he's saying, even when you completely miss it, or even when you only see half of it, that's completely seeing half of it. So it's to see each thing as fully being time. This is where we're all enlightened. So this is the side of we're all enlightened, and yet we can't ignore cause and effect. Yeah. So there's a side of this that's really kind of wonderful and reassuring, and it's all right. I mean, there's this, in the middle of this wild, stern, you know, kind of stark, abstract being time stuff, there's this grandmother there, you know, kind of saying, hey, it's all okay. So this keeps turning.

[90:16]

Anyway, look at that part again. I think what I want to try and do for next time is make copies of this for everyone, because I think Waddell's translation really adds something. The footnotes are really good. He translates it literally. Anyway, I'm going to do that. What book is that from? This is from the Eastern Buddhist Compendium. It was published in Kyoto in Eastern Buddhists. This is one of the earlier translations of Dogen. It's still the best. There are a series of things they did, Masao Abe and Norman Waddell. This one's by Waddell. Do you know what I'd like to see by the time we finish? There's a bookly under here. Oh. And if we could also, I mean, I have two books at home. And I just wrote down a couple of passages from three movies I know. That's a good project. Don't forget about the four-line poem. Does everybody know about that?

[91:17]

So as you're reading, we're all going to try and write a four-line poem, either a reaction to some particular passage, or a reaction to the whole thing, or a response, or a summary. And we really do have to talk about Grant all day sometime in this class. And maybe Dana and I can... Maybe 50 cents or something? What do you think? 40 cents? 30 cents? Well... Just give it? I think we should just give it. Just give it. Okay. Anybody who wants to make a donation for Greenville for Copying and... May our intention...

[91:54]

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