Good evening. I want to continue talking, as I was last weekend, about Zen as shifting perspective, and continue using some writing from Dogen, the 13th century Japanese founder of this branch of Zen we follow, to talk about this, how basically our practice is about opening up our way of seeing and being and expressing ourselves in this world, and opening up our... well, Charlie McCorney, our guest teacher yesterday, was talking about how we see and express buddhan nature in ourselves and others. That's another way of talking about it. And the point of shifting our perspective is not just some mind game,

[01:05]

but actually to open up the possibility of awakening, of deepening our awareness, and not just as, again, as some mental game, but as a way of supporting and sponsoring awakening, of helping our world and others awaken. As the chant tonight, that we just chanted about Buddha and Buddha's lifespan and what Buddha means, even being something that has many different aspects. What is Buddha's life? How do we see Buddha's life? How does Buddha's life support our own lives? So I want to talk about this tonight in terms of time, temporality. Dogen has

[02:08]

this essay about being time, and seeing time, and more than seeing time, or understanding time, although that's part of it, expressing time. That time is not some external objective container. Our usual way of seeing time is clock time. We have a certain amount of time, and we know what the time is by, you know, looking at our computer screen, or looking at our watch, or whatever. But actually, what Dogen says is that time is being. Time is our being. So time is shifting and malleable. Time is not fixed and set. One aspect of time may be clock time, but he talks about studying time, studying the different aspects and

[03:09]

perspectives of time, and that we need to see time in a more fluid way. The time is actually relative to us. The time is us. The time is how we is. Time is... So this essay, he talks about time other places too, but this famous essay about time being time, literally uji, which can also be just translated as sometimes, a very common phrase sometimes. But he takes it apart, and the first character means existence, or having. Existence time. So he talks about being time, and time is our being. And he talks about time being multi-directional, and moving in various directions. And the time is... Well, time is... The essence of time is that it's

[04:14]

flowing, it's passaging, it's presencing. Different translators say it different ways. So this is not about timelessness. Sometimes spiritual teachers talk about timelessness or eternity. This is about actually inhabiting time, really abiding in time. How do we really fully engage this time, and the various aspects of this time? So I'm going to just read some sections of this and comment on it, and maybe we'll have a little bit of time in which to explore time together. So he talks about the length and brevity of the 24 hours, though not as yet measured, is called 24 hours. Because the direction and course of their going and coming are obvious, people don't doubt them. Yet though they don't doubt them, this is not to say that they know them. Because sentient beings' doubting of things which

[05:17]

they don't know is not fixed, the future course of their doubting does not necessarily accord with their doubts of the present. It's just that doubting is for the moment time. So doubting here also could just be questioning. We don't question time. I can tell you what time it is on my watch. I'm not going to, because time is actually moving around. And we know this experientially. Some days pass by very quickly. Some days go on so slowly. In the last period of Zazen that we just sat, how long was it, Dave? 35 minutes. And yet other 35-minute periods of Zazen that we've all experienced may have been much slower, much quicker. So our experience of time, this is what he's talking about. And he's talking about actually what is our experience, not our experience, but also what is our activity of time? What is our awareness of time? And how do we

[06:20]

study this? How do we question this? This is being time. Time is us. How do we be time? So he says, self is arrayed as the whole world. You should perceive that each point, each thing of this whole world, is an individual time. The mutual non-interference of things is like mutual non-interference of times. So we can say things, and we can also say events. Each thing is an event. Each thing is a passaging in time. And we think of things as dead objects, but each so-called thing or object is also an event that has its movement in time. This thing about mutual non-interference of things goes back to this Chinese

[07:29]

Buddhist Huayen philosophy of mutual non-interference. This is sort of the basis of the five regs which some of us were studying during our spring practice period, in part, in Sumer Samadhi, but that there is the ultimate reality, or the universal reality, and there's the particular reality, each particular thing. And there's this way in which the universal reality and the particular reality don't interfere with each other. Each form is empty. And emptiness exists in forms. Each particular is an expression of the whole universal reality. And universal reality expresses itself in each of us and in each event, in each thing. And here he's talking about how then each thing is mutually interacting

[08:34]

with each other thing. So this happens in time, in being time, not in minutes, but in our actual inter-eventing with each other and everything with everything else. And he's saying that we don't usually question how time works, how time moves. Because it is the principle of being such, there are myriad forms. A hundred grasses on the whole earth, or you could say a hundred thousand grasses, or what have you. You should learn that each single blade of grass, each single form, is on the whole earth. Such growing and coming is the starting point of cultivation of practice. So how do we respect and see, you know, Charlotte was talking about the

[09:35]

Buddha nature of all things. How do we see this possibility of awakening in each event? Each situation is an opportunity. And maybe especially the situations that are difficult for us. How do we see the possibility of awakening there? So later we'll chant about Dharma gates being boundless and bound to enter them. How do we see each time as a time of being? So there's a lot in this essay. I'm just going to read some more. So, mountains and rivers may exist still. I have passed them and am now in the vermilion towers of the jewel palaces. The mountains and rivers and I are as far apart

[10:36]

as sky and earth. People may think that. However, the truth is not just this one line of reasoning alone. In the time one climbed the mountain and crossed the rivers, there was oneself. So this is not some description of some reality of time separate from us. This is about our time. This is about our acting in as time. There must be time in oneself. Since oneself exists, time cannot leave. Because we exist, there is time. If time is not the appearance of going and coming, the time of climbing a mountain is the immediate presence of being time. He also says 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.

[11:36]

Not having heard of the path of being time is because of learning only that it is past. To tell the gist of it all, all existences in the whole world, all events in the whole world, while being lined up, are individual times. Because it is being time, it is my being time. So again, there's no time outside separate from you. We think that way. I mean, we do think that way. We think that time exists outside us. But anything you can think of is related to you. This may sound like some ancient Eastern mystical whatever, but this is actually modern time. This is actually modern time. And anything we can think of or observe is changed by that. This is modern physics.

[12:40]

The world does not exist as some objective reality separate from our awareness, our awareness individually and collectively. So our individual and collective awareness are not separate, actually. Our awareness is interdependent with each other. It's not that we have one collective awareness. I can't exactly know all of Will's thoughts right now, but our thoughts are connected in some way and vice versa. So he says, in being time there is the quality of passage. That is, it passes from today to tomorrow. It passes from today to yesterday. It passes from yesterday to today. It passes from today to today. It passes from tomorrow to tomorrow. We tend to think of time in a very linear way. And yet time is moving in many directions.

[13:48]

So if I asked you what you had for lunch yesterday, and you may not remember, or you may have some recollection of some part of it. So Caitlin, what did you have for lunch yesterday? I actually had guacamole with chips and I had a chicken sandwich with bacon on top. Great. So now suddenly our time has moved to yesterday's guacamole with chips. Caitlin was eating at lunch. So our time has moved to yesterday, but then yesterday has moved to the day, but then the guacamole and chips moved to a little while ago when Caitlin was talking about it. Time moves around. And then later on during tea, if you remember Caitlin's guacamole and chips, well, what time is that? Time is moving in different directions.

[14:53]

So time is passing, time is flowing, time is passaging or presencing. We can't say that time is past. The way we think, we think in terms of past, present, and future. Of course, past is gone. It's just something we remember about the guacamole and chips of yesterday. The future is, well, we're going to have, I could ask Caitlin what kind of tea and cookies we're going to have, but that's just something that he's predicting right now. And who knows what it would actually be in the future. And then what is right now anyway? Well, it's already gone by the time I say it. But it's moving. There is this time in the present. But is it past or is it present or is it future? Well, in Wayan, I was talking about before, there's ten times, I talked about this here before, there's the past and present and

[16:01]

future of the past. There's the past and present and future of the present. There's the past and future of the present of the future. So the guacamole and chips of Caitlin's lunch yesterday is the past of the future of tea after this talk. Or anyway, we could go into the various interrelationships of those nine times. All of us together are ten times. And so time moves around in lots of different ways. We can change the past. We can tell stories about that chicken sandwich. And what was it? Caitlin has one memory of it, but then what was it really? So we can make up stories about the bacon and the chicken sandwich. Just one example. Of course, history is... So I like reading about history, but that's just

[17:05]

some story in the present about something that supposedly happened in the past. And people are changing the past all the time by writing different versions of it. So anyway, that's just a way of talking about how all of time is changing all the time. Okay, so how do we be time? What do we do with this? How do we use this flow and passaging and presencing to help awaken ourselves and all beings? How do we open up our perspective on reality through this being time? He says, passage is a quality of time. Past and present time doesn't pile up, doesn't accumulate in a row. Self and others are time. Cultivation and realization are times. Going into the mud and water is similarly time. Each situation is time. It's our being time. And he recommends studying this. And Doug et al. is

[18:13]

always talking about studying this thoroughly. Because he says, just invest... Well, let's see. He says, now exhausting the limits of the whole world by means of the whole world are called investigating exhaustively. So he says, please study this. Please look at how you see time. Please question what you think of as time. But then he says, just investigating exhaustively all time as all beings, there's nothing left over. Can you fully give yourself to this study of how is it that we are in time? In this situation of events, how are we giving ourselves? Again, it's not this theoretical thing. How do we actually express ourselves wholeheartedly in time? How do we give ourselves to this time of supporting each other to study how it is that we are in this time? Just investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there's nothing left over.

[19:16]

So wholeheartedly give ourselves to just being upright. Just wholeheartedly giving ourselves to being ourselves, to allow the way to be the way. Then he says, because leftovers are leftovers, even the being time of a half-exhaustive, half-hearted investigation is the exhaustive investigation of half being time. So this is one of those statements by Dogen that I find very comforting. Even if you're just halfway studying your being of time, that's completely a half-being time. Here we are. This is time. It's not about grading yourself or judging how full is this time of being.

[20:17]

This is it. Here we are. We are being time. He goes on to talk about not trying to get caught up in whether it exists or doesn't exist. The whole world is not inactive. It is not, it is not neither progressing or regressing. It is passage. You should examine thoroughly in whatever you are doing. So, you know, we sit, we do this practice of wholeheartedly just sitting and being present and taking another breath, and of course thoughts and feelings and so forth come up. Yet we give ourselves to being present and upright, to being time. To just giving ourselves to paying attention to what is it like to be this body-mind,

[21:25]

this being time, on a Kushner chair, here tonight. What's going on? How are we expressing our Buddha nature here tonight? Without, you know, and we don't have to give ourselves grades or anything like that, but just, you know, how is it? What's it like? How does it feel? How is it to be time here now? Well, just now, in the next minute. But if you think that the objective realm is outside and the phenomenon which is, which passes through, passes a million worlds to the east through a billion eons, thinking thus, you are not concentrating wholly on the study of the Buddha way. So, again, it's your being time. It's not out there somewhere. So, how do we take on expressing this possibility of being time that we have here, now?

[22:30]

So, this isn't about being passive, you know. Being time includes our response to what we see being time. It includes doing the Buddha work, responding to what's going on in this body-mind, in the body-mind of our friends and family in the world around us, how do we respond wholeheartedly to the being time of our life in this time? By being willing to pay attention, but by being willing to open up our perspective on the reality of time and many other dimensions, we have a chance to open up our response to see things a little differently, to, you know, to be in the middle of the lake and

[23:49]

the center of the circle and allow the experience of the other circles around us to feed us and to learn from and to not know who we are and what the world is. And yet, to be open to see freshly what is possible, all of this in the context of the Bodhisattva vow, of the Buddha work, of caring about beings and caring about awakening and caring about kindness and trying to help where we see suffering. So, in ourselves and others, we're connected. This opening up of perspectives allows some other possibility. Reality is not what you see on the headlines in the newspaper.

[24:58]

Reality is not what you think it is. It's okay to think what you think. And we have many very intelligent people in the room who have very highly honed and developed ways of thinking, and that's great, but reality is deeper than that. So, to be open to changing our perspective is a great tool, a great blessing for our Buddha work. So, comments, questions, responses, other perspectives, please. Questioner Why did you have to change the Buddha's sutra? Well, you know, because we don't know what Buddha is. Buddha says Buddha was born 2,500 years ago and lived and died. And Buddha said also that, according to the Lotus Sutra, that he's still alive or that,

[26:03]

you know, that from some perspective he died and passed into nirvana. From another perspective, he's still alive. So, the Lotus Sutra is one of the main scriptures in the Bodhisattva way, and Dogen liked it very much. And my friend Jean Reeves, who's been here before, will be here in a couple of weeks to talk more about how the Lotus Sutra is about you, opening up your Buddha nature. So, our Zen is based on, Dogen and all of the Zen koans and stories, is based on this Bodhisattva idea, which is about how to free all living beings. Now, that's just a wild... Free all living beings? What does that mean? Well, we're going to all chant that at the end of this talk. What does that mean? Well, we don't know. And yet, we are going to stand out and do that.

[27:06]

We don't... We can't... Our limited human perspective can't understand how deep this practice is. And yet, we can do this practice. We can sit here, and we can take our sitting and our awareness out into our lives, and all the people we are involved with, and share that. So, you know, Lotus Sutra or Dogen or whatever other teachings that we talk about are just ways of encouragement to encourage you all to explore how to express yourselves, how to allow the Dharma to flower in your body and mind and life. That's what this is about. Yes, hi. I just wanted to say thank you. You're welcome.

[28:09]

I don't know if you've been here before. I'm Taigen, what's your name? Shana. Shana, hi, welcome. Thank you. Other comments, responses, questions, bafflements? Yes, Daniel. Good to see you again. It's an incredible talk. And I just think it's so fascinating that, you know, seven centuries later, Martin Heidegger would be in time, came to the same conclusion. Yeah. And then I'm sort of curious about the idea of how, like, the relationship between time. So we're saying here that time is like relative to consciousness? Time is consciousness. Or consciousness is a function of time.

[29:13]

Without time, there's no consciousness. Consciousness is one aspect of being. And from perspective of being time, consciousness is, you know, in our limited perspective on time, we think of consciousness as, you know, something that humans have. But in terms of Buddha nature, which Charlie was talking about yesterday, in East Asian Buddhism anyway, consciousness is something that, well, certainly animals, but also plants. And even Dogen says when one person sits, in one of his earliest writings, and I'm going to be talking about Wednesday night again in Hyde Park, when one person sits, as we all did just for a little while, all of space, all of reality and self-awakens, what does that mean? That consciousness is a function of reality.

[30:15]

And that doesn't make sense in terms of our perspective of consciousness. But again, this is about opening up our way of thinking, seeing, being, and, you know, blowing our minds, you know, allowing something, allowing ourselves to not know who we are or what we're doing, except that we can stay and abide in this flowing of reality. And rooted in what it's about, that we care about what's going on. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. Time for one more comment, if anyone. Yes, hi, Jessica.

[31:21]

This whole discussion reminds me of the book Slaughterhouse Guide by Kurt Vonnegut. Oh, good book. There's a race of aliens in this book who are able to perceive time all at once, rather than merely. Oh, good for them. He describes it in the book as looking out at a mountain range and being able to see the individual peaks, but also the entire range at once. And he also says that because they're able to perceive time this way, when they see somebody who's dead, they don't look at the person like, that person's gone forever, we'll never see them again. They look at it as that person's in a bad situation in this particular moment. Yes. And they say, so it goes. It's just a great idea. I thought it was a great idea when I read it that I got it. Great. Thank you for that. Yeah, I think I've started rereading science fiction more. And I think it's a good thing for, you know, opening up Buddha Dharma.

[32:24]

So for those of you who are so inclined. Well, thank you all very much for just submitting to such weirdness. And we'll close with the Four Bodhisattva Vows. Even more weirdness on the next to the last page of your chapter.

[32:53]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.46