I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Evening. So, last week we started to talk about time and being and what this text was about and did a lot of background actually. So I was hoping to get into the text more directly tonight, but I want to do some reviewing. And there's some people who weren't here last week. Are you intending to take the course, Gina? OK. I'll let you sign up. I know everyone else. I haven't paid yet, so I don't know. OK. Maybe you could pay during the week or after class, Jimmy. OK. So, okay, just to review, we're studying the text, Being Time, by Dogen, Shobokenzo Uji in Japanese, and there are a number of different good translations of it, so for those of you who are taking the class, one of the translations, which I'm using as a starting point anyway, is by Thomas Cleary and Shobokenzo's essays,

[01:27]

And I have a few extra copies of that. Harry, do you have a copy of that in there? You do. Marion? OK, yeah, that's another good one. So Kastanahashi's Moon in a Dew Drop also has a good translation. The other translation, I don't know if we have copies now in the library, Sonia, of the Waddell translation from the Eastern Buddhist. So all of these are available in the library. Can you describe where to find those things? It's in the reserved section, and it's those paper folders that's this size, and it says library copy reading time. So that's in the glass book case? Yeah. Okay. So they're available there in the reading room to look at. So the three main translations we're going to be looking at, as I mentioned last week, there are a number of good translations. None of them is perfect. This is a very dense work. Yeah, here is a copy of the, I passed out copies of this one.

[02:31]

Mary, why don't you take a copy of this? And Sylvia, if you want to borrow this to look at during the class, you're welcome to. So actually, the more different versions that we're looking at together, probably the better, in the sense that anyone version or rendition into English is going to miss some of the nuances. And if you see two or three of them together, you have more of a sense of the original. So we're going to go through the text, looking, starting with the Cleary version called Being Time. There's also Kastanagi's Moon that do draw up the time being. And this one from Eastern Buddhist by Waddell has some good footnotes, and I'm going to be referring to this more tonight. But follow along in the text that you have. Do you want a copy of the query version? Actually, I have one at home. Okay. So if you want to borrow it for the class. Yeah. Okay. So as I said, I'd like to start tackling the text tonight.

[03:33]

We started to get into it last time, but I'd like to, in this class, actually get into this text in detail and look at it. But I did a lot of presentation last week, kind of background of this. So I want to do some review of that, and we can go over it also for the new people. So Edward? Yeah. Are you familiar with, basically familiar with who Dogen is? Should I do some review on that? You don't have to do it if everybody else has heard about it. Well, probably everybody hasn't. OK. So Dogen is the Japanese monk who went to China and brought back the practice of Soto Zen in the 13th century. He lived 1,200 to 1,253. He went to China in 1223 and returned in 1227. And he's the founder of the branch of Zen that we do here, that Suzuki Roshi brought from Japan to America in the 60s. And his writings are well-known just because he wrote more than most Zen teachers.

[04:36]

And he really was careful about using language and talking about how to use language. And he wrote a tremendous amount. It's really just been rediscovered for a wider audience in this century. He was basically, nobody had heard of him until this century, except for a few, such as monks and scholars. But he's generally considered one of the great, these days, one of the great world religious figures and thinkers. So some of his writings are more, his writings are all both philosophical and poetic and also, work with the language to show the inner meaning of what Zen teaching is about. So this is one of his more famous texts. The phrase being time, which I talked about in some detail last time, could just mean sometimes, a common translation of this sometimes. But he takes that first character, which means there is or to be, is actually the opposite in some cases of mu, of not.

[05:41]

means there is, and also it means being. So, he talks about, he takes this very common word, really, and takes it apart and shows, and talks about being as time and time as being. So, to review, I talked last week about different ideas of time in Buddhism, and in our own sense of what time is, in terms of history, in terms of development, in terms of what our relationship is to time. And I introduced as a way of getting into this text to look at how do we re-inhabit time? How do we develop a deeper relationship to time? We're aware of, he talks about the 12 hours or the 24 hours, but actually time is much more complex than that. So, And somebody, a couple of people pointed out to me during the week that it's time and it's also being, so this is also about how is our being, or how do we be, or how is it to live here, you know, in this body and mind and this place and time.

[06:52]

So that's also what this is about, how do we unfold our being. And we're used to seeing ourselves as being separate from time. Time is something that we kind of, we fight the clock, or we try and make more time, or try and figure out how we're going to do all the things that we think we have to do in this so-called amount of time done in that time. So this is a real koan, this is a real question of how do we be in time, how do we use our time, how do we see our time as being and our being as time. One of the things he talks about very early in the text, the part we read last time about doubting the common view of time of the 24 hours, is that we have a lot of assumptions about time, and I talked about some of the other Buddhist kind of teachings about time, and I won't go over all of that in detail, but one of the most basic ones I didn't talk about last time is just that we're aware that time is, our experience of time changes.

[07:59]

We've all had the experience of sitting 40 minutes. I think most of us have had the experience of sitting zazen for 40 minutes and knowing that some 40-minute periods are much shorter than others. So what's that about? You know, sometimes you're sure that the dawan fell asleep. It's not going to ring the dawan. And sometimes it just goes like that. So obviously, what's going on on the clock out there is not all there is to time. So just to review some of the senses of time that are part of what Dogen brings to this, there's the idea of impermanence that's a basic principle in Japanese aesthetics and Japanese sensibility and sensitivity. The volumes of poems written in Japanese about the beauty and poignancy of the cherry blossoms as they fall or as they're just about to fall, the things that are are slightly faded are more valued because they show this kind of quality of our life fading away.

[09:04]

So that kind of aesthetic sensibility is not explicit in this, but it's in Dogen's poetry, and it's part of the background for him that he brings to this. And I think we have to remember that. There's also in Buddhism various ideas about time We're used to thinking of evolution. Things are getting better. So Michael was talking about this Sunday. We're used to thinking of progress and evolution. And everything is kind of building. And we're getting more and better machines. And we're conquering the world. And we're all getting smarter. And there's that idea about things that we kind of have. In Dogen's time and in Buddhism, there was this other way of looking at it, that things are falling apart. That the teaching is getting worse. You know, we have to look back, if we look back at the old masters, they were, they practiced so hard and, you know, who are we next to them? And the teaching is degenerating and we have that idea too, I think. And that's part of our sense of things too.

[10:07]

We have both a little bit. But that was very strong in Dogen's time and it was a time when there were a lot of new developments in Japanese Buddhism, new schools and new practices and new ways of trying to approach spiritual practice that were more accessible in this time of decadence. And Dogen himself refuted that theory, that this was the dark ages, the final ages. He said that at any time, anybody can wake up. But he also uses the theory sometimes to exhort his monks to, you know, you've got to practice hard because this is the age of the degeneracy of the Dharma. Anyway, that's kind of a background context for looking at time. There's also the idea of the future Buddha. So there's the Maitreya, the future Buddha, who will arrive sometime. And part of that in East Asian Buddhism was that we have to get ready for him or her to come, that we have to, if we make the world ready, then Maitreya will be able to appear.

[11:10]

A future guru will be able to appear. And there's another story I didn't mention last week that Mahakashapa, who was the first ancestor after Shakyamuni, is kind of sitting up in the Himalayas in a mountain cave with Shakyamuni's robe, waiting for Maitreya to come. And he will give Shakyamuni's robe to Maitreya when we're ready for Maitreya to appear. So this is a kind of early hint at cryogenics This aspect of time, of freezing away time, is kind of implied in that story. So there are many stories actually in Buddhism that talk about how do we see this progression of time. Another one that I mentioned, which is, I think, very important, the 10 times. Does anybody remember what the 10 times are? Kirk, can you talk about that? past-time, present-time, and future-time, and there's past, present, and future of past, present, and future.

[12:16]

Right. So this is from the Flower Ornament Sutra, the Atatamsaka Sutra. And then there's all, the tenth time is all those times. All those together. So the past of the past, and the present of the past, and the future of the past. The future of the past is sometimes like the past of the present, and sometimes it might be the future of the present, or the present of the present. past, present, and future of the future. So this is a more complex way of seeing time. So part of what this teaching is about is to have a multidimensional approach to our time, to our experience of time, to how our being is. So this is referred to almost...not directly, but it's real close to some of the things Dogen talks about in this. to look at those different times. So, the last one I'll mention before we go into the text, there's a way of looking at time that I think we all have a sense of also, that there's the ordinary time, you know, just clock time or past, present, future.

[13:30]

Then there's outside of time, eternity. So we're used to thinking of time and eternity. And eternity, sometimes we think of as the absence of time, or the present, or the eternal present, where everything is right now. But I think we should look at this idea of eternity. Does eternity mean there's no time? Is it the timeless? Or is eternity all time? Or how do we see that? So I think Dogen is talking about being in time, not being outside of time. So how do we see eternity? How do we see... Then I talked last week also about being in the present. Being present is something that all of our teachers have advocated, to be present in our life in this moment. So is that the present of the present? How much of all those other nine times are included? What does it mean to be present?

[14:33]

To really be present in our life. I was just thinking that Shikarta tales are sort of a study in time. That before the Buddha became Buddha, he spent all his lifetimes either as a human being helping animals or as an animal helping animals. Right, good. So one of the ways that Buddhism talks about time is in terms of rebirth. And that's something that happens and we can see that in each moment. There's a new situation arising. And we imagine continuity based on, I don't mean imagine in the sense that it's total illusion, there is some continuity which we can attribute to each thing being reborn in each moment based on the causes. We walked into this room and we saw the flowers there, so when we go look back again, we think it's the same flowers. In each moment, we again take on the identity.

[15:40]

So Mary is Mary again, and Harry is Harry again. And we take on how we see that identity. And the same thing is true lifetime to lifetime. So the Jataka tales are tales of how the Buddha conducted herself before becoming this present Buddha. So all those different animals that are said to be the Buddha in previous lives, well, how do we see that? So we can see that as a kind of development and evolution of the character of the Buddha, but also there's a relationship between one life and another based on a kind of generosity and caring for others. So we can see some development over time in that sense. We imagine some development over time. Yeah. I'm trying to think if this is totally dumb or simplistic, but you can turn it into something, or it's in that reading.

[16:41]

I was just looking at my notes, and I thought, well, did I put ideas of time and language, since writing down these different ways it was stated, and I wondered if there really is time outside of language. Or did time exist? does time exist if you're not talking about it? Which is, in a way, is kind of like talk, even right through the internal talk, and thinking about it. I don't know if this is ridiculous. I think it's a really interesting question. I think that's what we'll do. It's just something... Let's try and remember... Maybe you can do this for us, and let's all try and remember that. Because a lot of what's going on in this writing is that Dogen is turning language around to show us how we usually think about things and how to see it deeper and how to see through our usual ways of thinking about things.

[17:43]

So is the time he's talking about here, what does it mean that time is being? Is our being our language? Anyway, I think language is an issue here. I'm not sure that I would say that time is just language. In fact, he says time is actually our whole being. But what is the relationship to language in that? So that's another aspect of this to look at. So other questions from last week, those of you who were here, or questions about this, those of you who weren't, other thoughts about it? Boston. OK. Well, basically, this is a koan about being in time. And basically, what I'm trying to do is put out some ideas of time that we usually have, or that some of them are ideas that are part of the Buddhist context that Dogen is writing in. And then there are also ideas we have about time.

[18:46]

There are assumptions that we make that time is something that exists out there as some container separate from us. And it has actual identity as 8 o'clock or 8.15. But that has some absolute inherent reality. I think we tend to function based on such an idea in the conventional realm. And it works to some extent for us to do that. And yet, what is our real experience? So this is the question that this is addressing. What is our real experience of time? I don't know. If you can point, if you can give me a more specific direction to where you're lost, maybe we can. No, no, I guess I'm trying to get the ultimate thing. Yeah, well. I'll try to get there real quick. Right, Mary? I just want to say, maybe time. The way we look at it as a ruler isn't really a ruler, but maybe it's a sense of space that one's experience depends on how one, how I right now feel relative to this room.

[19:58]

So I'm sure sometimes this room might seem very big, and at other times it might seem possible. So it's my own sense of relating to that sense of space, which is what time is. It's hard to put in words. I think that's very good. I think our relationship to space is very much analogous here to our relationship to time. And I think it's actually easier, in a sense, if we think about it in terms of space. I think we're used to thinking of interconnectedness in space much more easily than we can think about interconnectedness in time. So the other aspect of time that I talked about more last week, just to mention is Joanna Macy's idea of deep time, that we actually, not just to be here now in the sense of cutting off past and future, but to be aware of what she calls the deep time of the past and deep time of the future, to be fully aware of

[21:04]

far in the past and far in the future enriches this present time. And she comes to that from consideration of the problems of taking care of nuclear waste, which will be dangerous for tens of thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years. And how do we actually start to grok that or consider that as human beings used to functioning with this economy based on quarterly profit margins and things? How do we start to think in that range of time? And what does that have to do with being present in the moment as Zen students? So I'm throwing out questions, not answers. Stuart, could you do me a favor and open one of those top windows? I don't want it to get too hot in here. OK. So yeah. Are we going to get into it? While I was thinking about this class, what you said came up to me is, I thought of doing something that I enjoy and time goes so much faster, something I don't enjoy, time goes so much slower.

[22:14]

So is time going faster or is time going slower? Is that the type of thing that we're going to be getting into? Well, we can get into. I want to stay focused on the text. But I'm introducing all of these ways of looking at it as things that we can bring into our reading of the text. So I encourage you to do that. And a number of people have shown me other writings about time. And anything that you have to contribute that enriches our relationship to time is definitely relevant. Sylvia? I feel that time is something that was developed as a way of Calculating events in limited time, and really it's something that doesn't exist, like space to time exists, but it's something that's within the material world. It controls us, but really it's not... It controls us as we live today, but... We're always right here.

[23:32]

It's always right now. Well, that's okay. That's one view of time then. Good. You've put out two or three ideas of time. One is that time exists as a useful but arbitrary fiction. Certainly, he says that the clock time is that. But in this past, we talked about this last time. Let me start from the Cleary version. This is the first full paragraph after the quote. Because sentient beings' doubting of things which they don't know is not fixed, the future course of their doubtings does not necessarily accord with their doubts of the present. He's talking about our doubts about what time is, and that we're not clear about what those are, and that we don't really thoroughly investigate those.

[24:39]

So my first reaction to what you're saying is, I'm not sure he would agree that there is no time. There's just an arbitrary measurement of events. That's one kind of time. But what you were talking about, about timing, time as a verb, I think that's very interesting. So he's talking about being in time, or being time, to be time, and to time, or timing our being. I think that that's relevant. So a lot of times in translating this material, a lot of times it's the same word can be a noun or a verb So he often plays with that to turn being from something static into something dynamic. And the same with time. So this is very dense stuff. This is not easy stuff. So this is going to be challenging to all of us.

[25:44]

I've been studying this text for 25 years, and it's still very difficult. So I'm What I'm hoping is that together we'll start to look at it and then we'll start to have a wider sense of what the possibilities of our relationship to time are by going through it. Did you write in your article that he sometimes defines time as activity? I don't remember where I... Well, time is... We could see time as activity, I think. to talk about, well, being is activity. I mean, it may be just to be present. Presencing, some writers on Dogon have talked about presence as a verb, to be present. So Masao Abe talks about presencing, to bring our presence to the present.

[26:46]

So time, so this sense of, in re-inhabiting time, And the relationship to space is very important, that we have a sense of our being interconnected to all things in space. As we practice more and sit more, we have the sense that all things are interconnected. The Brazilian rainforest produces oxygen. But also, in time, we're connected. somewhere I was reading recently that in the course of this class we're going to be breathing atoms of oxygen, some of which were breathed by Galileo or Socrates or Benjamin Franklin or whoever, you know, that the atoms of oxygen that function in this planet continue. So We are connected, not just in space, but in time.

[27:51]

Right. Yeah. So we're all connected to each other in just innumerable ways. And also we're connected beings in the future and we're connected to beings in the past. So I think he's trying to get us out of seeing things in, um, in this limited 24 hours kind of way. 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, just before the part I was reading before. So we don't really, we assume that we know what we're talking about when we talk about time. And I'm interested in approaching this. I'm bringing in all these other ways of looking at time because I want to approach this not just as a kind of intellectual exercise, but what does this really mean about how we live our lives?

[29:01]

This is what we need to look at in this. So let's try looking at the text. I want to go back to one sentence that we talked about last time, the first sentence in the second paragraph. And again, oh, the one thing I didn't mention for the new people, to give us another way of our interacting with the text, I mentioned this traditional practice of writing a little poem on different writings of Dogon. So a four-line poem, or you can write a couple four-line poems, or a five-line poem. Just your reaction to any part of this, or a comment on any part of it, or if you want to try and sum up the whole of it, So just to write a short poem, a four-line poem. On the whole text, yeah. But you can take it from any part that strikes you. It's very important when you're reading this kind of text to allow yourself to be stopped by things. As I mentioned last time, to read it through once completely without trying to understand it is good because you have a sense of the whole, but then to go back and let yourself be stopped and really

[30:11]

So what I want to try and do tonight is to start to chew this text together and to really look at what is being said and how is that food for us. Are you assuming that we all have read this? Well, I asked for everyone to start to read it, but I'm not assuming that everybody's read it all. I know that there are people who are new in the class. But I am going to continue from We read the first couple of paragraphs somewhat closely last time, and the third paragraph a little less. So, I want to get a little further into it, and we can keep coming back to different parts of the text. And please, if something comes up for you, bring it to all of us, or if you have questions. So, at this point, So the second paragraph, so-called time of being means time is already being.

[31:19]

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. So the first paragraph, he's just giving different examples of things that happen in time. And they're kind of contrasting things. Standing on the mountain peaks, standing on the bottom of the ocean. Being a Buddha, being an angry, God. That's the same as what we were just saying about activity as time. Yeah. So I think in a sense being an activity you could see as synonyms at this point of view. So all of these things are times and time just as it is, is being. Being is all time. So each being is in time, is a time. Each time is a being, is an activity. And it is a staff or whisk, a pillar or a lamp, a typical person, the earth and sky, all those things are time being, or existences in time.

[32:25]

So this third paragraph we started to look at last time. So I want to just read it through in the Cleary version and then read it through in the Waddell version. And those of you following in the Muna Nidudra version, if you see things that add to it, please bring them to us. And let's just see how we can start to chew this. 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 the mutual non-interference of times. For this reason, there is arousal of minds at the same time. There is arousal of times in the same mind. Cultivating practice and achieving enlightenment are also like this. Arraying self, self sees this.

[33:30]

Such is the principle of self being time. So this is very dense. Let me read another version of it. And then let's try and pick it apart so we're working with it. We set the self out in a ray and make that the whole world. You must see all the various things of the whole world as so many times. These things do not get in each other's way any more than various times get in the way of each other. So I want to stop there. This is Waddell's way of saying the thing that Cleary said, the mutual non-interference of things is like the mutual non-interference of times. So just like the many things of the world exist simultaneously, independently, There are flowers, teacups, books, papers, rugs, chairs.

[34:34]

Each of these things are just here. And they have their own separate existence. They exist in relationship to the sameness of everything in this room. And they also exist just as themselves. So this is a principle of the Huayen or flower ornament philosophy that each thing has its relationship to the absolute. And the absolute has its expression in each thing. Each of us is totally distinct and yet we all, there's a sense in which we're all the same. But also we just exist as Stuart, as Sonia, so forth. I was just thinking, the concept of meaning, which means difference. Necessarily, you have to have a time frame. Time is necessarily important. It's a necessary condition.

[35:35]

Well, then is space the same? Yeah. Okay, so the meaning of Stuart and Sonia is that they're in different spaces. And times. And then how much of both things are important? Right, OK. So I think this sentence is maybe an entry here. These things do not get in each other's way any more than the various times get in the way of each other. Unless he wants it. Right. But actually, there is this time, this time, this time. Well? that experience requires time. Right. Well, experience adds to that dimension. Right. I think we could maybe try plugging in experience for being. So experience time.

[36:38]

Let's see if that works in this sentence. Well, actually, the word being isn't in that sentence. But I think that to talk about experience that we have is about what this being is about. It's also what the time is about. We experience things in time. We experience things as being. Or being is time. I don't know. But yeah, this is trying to look at what is the nature of our experience. I'm not sure, maybe I didn't get what you were getting at. What I'm saying is that this time and space thing are so low, so basic to us that we're very unaware of them. We don't usually question it, is what he's saying. It's this thing that before you hear something and you don't know what it is. you don't even know to ask what it is.

[37:41]

And then there's this, to make it into something, there has to be a time and space element to have it. All our sensory apparatus requires this imposition of time and space to organize it. Right. And to remember it. Okay. Yeah, there are different times. And our functioning is I'm saying it's very innate. I mean, it's sort of like it's right above form. Yeah, it's very basic and fundamental. He is operating at that level. Yeah. These things do not get in each other's way any more than various times get in the way of each other. So one time does not obstruct another time from being itself. The time when you were having dinner earlier this evening does not obstruct the time of your sitting here in this room now, does not obstruct the time of your walking out of the room later, does not obstruct the time of your getting up tomorrow morning.

[38:58]

All those times exist in their full beingness, separately, and they don't interfere with each other. just as this flower being here in this present moment doesn't obstruct that coffee cup being here in this present moment, in the same present moment, if we can see them both at the same time. So, let's push on and see. Because of this, there is an arising of mind at the same time. And it is the arising of time of the same mind. So the mind that can think of the time tomorrow morning, the time yesterday, the time two years ago, the time just before we entered this room, the time half an hour from now, that's the same mind. It could be the same mind. Or the times in this same time.

[40:03]

there is an arising of all the different possible minds, too. We can see that as just the people in this room, but also in each one of us, there are a great many possibilities of thought, awareness, sensation, feeling, emotion, questioning, confusion, imagining some clarity. All of that can exist in one mind at the same time. This is talking about looking very deeply into the interfolding of our experience. Is this making any sense to you? Let's plug along and bring your questions up. Why does this have tremendous resistance to it? It's really hard for me to think of time as anything other than this linear thing. It started at the Big Bang and just goes on, and then I think, well, wait a minute, it started at the Big Bang, so that's arbitrary right there.

[41:08]

Sure. But that is how I think of it. Yeah, so this is what he's asking us to do, is to look at how we usually think of time. Although you have never measured the length of brevity of the twenty-four hours, their swiftness or slowness, you still call them the twenty-four hours. But see, I think of them as the fact that they're long or short is just my emotional response to this objective thing that's just going along in itself. You think of time as sitting... Hopefully the outside of me. Yes. Okay. Well, I think that's the way most of us have been conditioned to think of time. And he's not saying that that's not true. He's saying that that's only one limited aspect of time. Well, it feels like he's trying to get in there and stir it up and open it up and get us to have enough distance to be able to look at it, because like Stuart was saying, you're so close to it that you can't see it. Right. It's like trying to look at our own eyeballs.

[42:09]

But not quite. There are different ways of looking at what our experience is. This is looking at our own experience in this moment, actually. This is looking very close. So I think this is the kind of text that actually our experience of zazen is very relevant to, our experience of being. I don't mean by Zazen only just sitting in the meditation hall. I mean our experience of being there and really feeling what it's like, sensating what it's like to be present. And that experience can begin, as we apply that to what he's talking about here, we can begin to open up our way of looking at what our experience is in a time sense. Is he saying that there is no time without being? Yeah, I think he's saying that. I think he's saying there's no time without being and there's no being without time, I think. That's where my resistance comes in, because somewhere I've got this idea that time is without... and necessarily tied to being.

[43:14]

There's time without being. Right. If there was nothingness, there'd still be time? Yeah, for some reason I got that. Yeah, I think you're saying the same thing. And I think this is good. OK, this is exactly the common view of time. This is the same thing he's talking about in his time. I was talking last time, last week, a lot about the problems of our culture and our particular historical time in terms of our alienation from natural rhythms. This is another aspect of it, which I talked about last week and haven't talked about this time. that in Dogen's time they were more attuned to the rhythms of the season and less, you know, because of computers and watches and, you know, all of the mechanisms we have to dissect our time more finely, we're even more locked into this time. But even in his time, the same time that you two are talking about is the time that is assumed by common people, by everybody, even in his time.

[44:15]

So this is a basic function of our experience as human beings, that we somehow assume this kind of... And I think it may have something to do with language. We process things A, B, C, D, and then we set up this line and we experience our experience as existing like that. And he's not saying that's not true. He's just saying that that's just a small part of our experience. A thought also occurred to me a while ago when I first read this. How would an animal feel, a dog, who doesn't have language in terms of relating to the experience, but who maybe lacks the wisdom of a human brain? How does a dog relate? I think that's a very good question. But more than that, a lot of what we do is is steered by conditioning.

[45:19]

And you can train a dog, just like you can condition his behavior. So how does a dog relate to moving about in his next predictable pattern as to something from his past, his conditioned past, and projecting onto that present moment? And how does that differ from our human brains dissecting the presence of a moment into words and into language. Is language different from conditioning? They're related. I mean, that language is one of the methods of conditioning. Conditioning is one of the aspects of language, I think. A better example than a dog might be like a deer, or maybe raccoon is halfway in between around here. But dogs are used to you know, functioning on our time. They're trained by us to, even if they don't have the same discriminating language consciousness, they have a consciousness which is, because they're so empathetic with us, they're attuned to our kind of reactions to our own experience.

[46:28]

So I think probably dogs have much more of a relationship to time, like the one we have then, raccoons, and raccoons, particularly around here, maybe more than I don't know, the bobcat, I don't know. I think it's a relevant question. It's one of the contexts for the question, does a dog have a Buddha nature? Which was asked Zhao Zhou, and of course he said, moo, no. But then another time he was asked and he said, ooh. No, there is. So all of these are times. Did you get a chance to read the New York? I looked at a little bit of that, about bears, yeah. It's basically saying that their sense of time is infinite, because they're always in the presence of bears. John Hewitt wrote a thing about finding a dead bear in the Sierras. And he wrote just this little few paragraphs about it.

[47:33]

And he's basically saying that for them, time is infinite, because they're just always But I wonder about that. I wonder if that's, I don't know, I wonder if that's the eternity of no time, or if that's the eternity of all time. And I feel like there's a difference. But then, you know, as a person, I can't, I don't know if that's fair for me to lay that on bare. Well, I don't think they worry about it very much. No, I'm sure they don't. You know, I have this problem when we as human beings discuss animals like always putting our things on them by saying that they don't have our reasoning power. Well, I don't know what kind of reasoning power they have. Maybe they're so, you know, I just have a problem hearing them every time I hear it because I really don't know what's going on with them. By saying that we have superior reasoning power, I don't know.

[48:34]

Well, we discriminate. But I think there's the same problem when we impose our view of things on time as when we impose our view of things on animals. It's very analogous. Let's keep going with the text a little and see if it helps. There's some stuff coming up here that I think will actually start to clarify some of this. I'm going through this paragraph very closely, and the next part of it, because of this, there is an arising of mind, I read this, there is an arising of mind at the same time, it is the rising of time of the same mind, so it is a practice and attainment of the way to, we set ourself out in a ray and we see that, such as the fundamental reason of the way that our self is time. You're reading Waddell, right?

[49:37]

I'm reading Waddell. OK. So this is the same. This is the third paragraph. It's the same paragraph. So I really think it helps to see the same sentence in two different English versions. And you can see, if you look at it, you can see it's the same. based text, right? Is that working for you to look at it? Can you read it to us? This is another version of the same thing. In this one it says, the way seeking mind arises in this moment. A way seeking moment arises in this mind. So it makes it more clear that this awareness of time can set up a gate that you can get through. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

[50:39]

Yeah. So instead of still, when he's here, he's using lacy, not, is that the substitution? Oh, let me find that. This is, in some ways, a tedious way of looking at these texts because it's looking at it very closely. But I think we have to do this to some extent. We're not going to do this on every part of this text. But I want us to do this in some of the paragraphs to get a feeling of the texture of how he's using language. He talks about the arousal of minds in one version and the way-seeking mind as the sentiment in the other. Yeah, the arousal of minds, that's right. So arousal of minds causes way-seeking mind. So arousal of minds here is kind of shorthand for the arousal of the mind that seeks the way.

[51:42]

The bringing forth of our mind that actually brings ourselves to this question. So we really have to take apart this language to get at this. I know it's not, it's, So what else would be there is an arising of mind at the same time. So there is just the arising of awareness, we could understand it as it causes kind of interpreting it, but I think it's a valid interpretation. Part of this arising of mind that happens in the same time is the arising of our mind that is engaged in the way that is looking at how are we living. It is looking at what is our life and how do we do that. So I think that does help. It gives it a kind of context. Let's go a little bit further. I want to skip the next paragraph, not because it's not good, but because the one after that is

[52:49]

Well, maybe I should read through the next paragraph, but let's not get caught in it. But the one after that, I think, is maybe more helpful. So this is the paragraph in the query, because it is the principle of being such. And I'm going to read a different version, and you can kind of follow along. We must study and learn that because of this intrinsic reason, there are myriad phenomena, endless grasses, and numberless things appearing over the entire earth. And each of the grasses and each of the forms is existing on the entire earth by itself. So there are many phenomena existing independently. These comings and goings are the commencement of Buddhist practice. Arrived within this field of suchness, Then it is a single grasp in a single form. Understood and not understood.

[53:55]

The grasps are grasped and not grasped. And then there's their sentence. Just reflect right now. Is there an entire being or sentences? Each moment is all being. is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. Q. So you have a translation for this? A. Yes, I'm just going over the different translations. And I actually have the Japanese text and I can look at it, but I think that would just complicate it. Let's look at what the translations we have. Because it is only right at such a time, therefore, being time is all the whole time. Being grass and being form are both time. In the time of time's time, there is the whole of being, the whole world. So then there's this question, he asks us to do something.

[54:57]

For a while, stop, try to visualize whether or not there is the whole being, the whole world, apart from the present time. Right now, just reflect, is there an entire being or an entire world? missing from your present time or not. Paz says, reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. So is there any being or any time that's not right in this present? In my present? Your present, this present. You can call it mine or yours. Right here, right now, in this present, is there any time that's not here? It's not just any time. Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Is there any being or any world that's left out?

[55:58]

So it sounds like it's a leading question and he wants us to say, yeah, everything is included right now. But he's asking us to really look at that. Each paragraph of this is a koan, you know. It seems like in Buddhism they stress the present so much because time develops, events develop from the present moment, all the time. And so everything right now, from this moment forward, if we concentrate on the present, then we can affect times, other times. And in that way, if you look at time as energy, then... I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say, but if you look at time as energy, it makes more sense as to why the present moment... Nothing is left out of the present moment, because everything develops from this moment. Well, certainly anything we can think of as the past or future

[57:07]

is just something we are thinking about right now, right? And if we treat the present moment in the right way, then the future moments will progress in the right way. Right. Well, I think that's what Joanna Macy's talking about with deep time, that how we think of the past and how we think of the future in the present affects them. But I don't know that we really, you know, I don't think we should so readily say that, yes, that's right, everything's right now. Earlier in this meditation, a paragraph before that in this translation, it says, when you are at this place, there is just one grass, there is just one form. There is understanding of form and no understanding of form. There is understanding of grass and no understanding of grass. Since there is nothing but just this moment, The time being is all the time there is. Grasp being, form being, are both time.

[58:10]

But in the middle it sets up this, there is understanding, but there's also no understanding. Which gives me a feeling of not wanting to say this moment is all there is, right? Because there's a flip side of this moment being all there is also. We understand this and we don't understand this. He's saying there is both understanding and not understanding. So he doesn't want us... He's not saying you should take on this idea of time automatically either. Just like he's saying the time that we think of as linear, 24 hours, 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 8, 25, 8, 38, 35. That's not all there is to time. I think he's giving us another way of looking at time. He's not saying, okay, now take on this one, believe this one. This is another view of time. It's not that any of these views of time are wrong. Or even right. Well, they're all ways of looking at time.

[59:17]

They're not exclusive of each other. So I think it might be helpful to push on, even though each of these paragraphs is a meditation instruction. Each of these sentences is a meditation instruction. How do we, as we're being here, is this right now? Is there any time that's not right now? And it's not just any time. I'm trying to find it again. One of these translations talked about wholeness of being. Questioner 2 It's in the time of time's time there is the whole of being, the whole world? Answering machine Uh-huh. Yeah. So he's talking about wholeness of time and the whole world, the quality of wholeness, the quality of completeness.

[60:24]

What is time like when we are really experiencing our life completely? I think that's a question here that he's bringing up. One of the ways he said is, entire being, the entire world exists in the time of each and every now. So just reflect, right now, is there an entire being or an entire world missing from your present time or not? So another way of reading this is just, is our whole being present now? Is our whole time present now or not? Are we actually engaged in our whole life right now or not? That's another way of reading what he's saying here. Not about some abstract idea of what is time and what is the truth of time, but just are we fully here or not? Is our time fully here or not? Is our being fully being present in this present here and now or not? So it's kind of that kind of question. Like looking, turning, taking the backward step to look within.

[61:27]

Are we really being here now or not? So this is the kind of, so it's also, it also is that kind of question. Look within and see, are you really here? Is your whole time here right now? Is there a part of you that's somewhere else? Is there some other time somewhere else? Maybe there is, how is that, is that, how do you include that? So there's a way to see this language as kind of not a description of some object of reality, but as kind of instrumental, as something that's functioning to help you expand your sense of being and your sense of time and your presence in this present moment. Does that make any sense? Is that getting it? Is that registered at all? Did you follow that? What I get is that what seems to me is that you could never be but fully present, ever.

[62:31]

So then to think that or to have some idea that you're not is just a concept or an idea, language, right? Good. So then what is that? I mean, then sort of this is a long way to begin. But then I think, well, Let's say that you really could. What does that mean to not be fully present and be somewhere else? So if we think that, actually, we're sort of, whatever that means, standing on the shoulders of everything that came before, and we're also part of the future, then actually, you could maybe not be fully present. I mean, you could also be somewhere else, or have been. But that seems really, to me, that seems kind of, I think that's what he wants you to do.

[63:32]

He wants you to do the meditation you just did aloud for all of us. So, let me see if I can reconstruct how you did it, because I think you just did the meditation instruction, which is to look and see, is it possible to be here and not be fully present? Well, our first reaction, no, how can we be here? This is who we are, right? This is completely Kirk just being Kirk. And Mary's just here as Mary, and Lorraine is being Lorraine. And we're just here, being everything we are. So that's one way to answer it. But we couldn't say that until we actually asked the question. If you don't ask the question, you don't then say, yes, I'm here, completely present. So that's the first thing you did, that's the first turn you did, and then you did this other turn, which is, I forget exactly how you said it, but, well, what would it mean to not be fully present? How could Marian be sitting there and not completely be Marian?

[64:33]

What would that be like? Is it possible? So asking this kind of question is actually bringing our whole life up in front of us not in some abstract way, but in, you know, am I here, you know, in this way of questioning, in this way of being present with question. And he actually, so that thing that you just did, turning that for us, is a lot of what happens in the rest of this text. This is like a main theme in this text. How do we fully experience our life in this kind of way, where we actually are present to question, are we here or not? And to say, yes, I'm here. and then just say, well, wait a second. What would it be like if I wasn't here? Or is there something that's not here? Is there? I mean, to really look, well, what would it be? So somebody last week asked the question towards the end, which this is getting at a response to, about Dogen's question.

[65:37]

If everything is perfect just the way it is, if we're already completely awake. If we're enlightened from the beginning, if we all have Buddha nature, why bother practicing? I don't remember who brought it up last week, or maybe a few people did, or it was in the air. So if this is just saying, well, all being is all time, well then so what? There's nothing to do. I think what he's pointing at for us is the exercise you just showed us of actually going in and looking. saying yes, or saying, well, I don't know, or saying no, and coming back again. It's not that you answer that question and do that exercise, and then you never have to do it again. It's like, am I here? You know, there's that story about the Zen master who wakes up and calls his own name. Yeah. Yeah. Taigen, hello? Are you there? Yes. Are you really there? Yes. Don't be fooled by anything.

[66:39]

OK. So there's a famous story about the Zen master waking up, asking himself, are you there? Am I really here? Check it out, don't be fooled. So that's what's going on in here. What is our time? And really, he's turning it over and over and over again, and really looking at, are we being here in our time, in this moment? I had an interesting, excuse me, I'm sorry. No, it's good. Go ahead. I just had this interesting exchange with Mel, where I sat a three-day session in Berkeley And I am sort of preoccupied and anxious these days. And I was at Tokyo, and I kept forgetting to do the chant when the water is collected and other things. And then we were talking about what does it mean to be present. And I would have said, before that, that being present, that I wasn't present.

[67:42]

And so I forgot things because I wasn't paying attention. And there's a way in which that's true, but there's also a way in which it's not true, and that I was present completely as this furnished person. And the only way I could have been not present was to get caught by it and obsess about it experience shame or humiliation or, you know, just continue carrying it on into the next thing so as to not be available for whatever the next thing was. And it was just an interesting view of what it means to be present. Well, Togan says almost the same thing later on, and I don't want to jump too far ahead, Maybe I should, maybe I won't. I'm jumping ahead in the text, and maybe I'm jumping ahead in time.

[68:46]

And maybe it's time to do that. Does the text turn into other things? Well, he goes through a lot of stuff before he gets to this, but he gets to this place at the bottom of page 106 in the query version. And I'm just going to read this to you. I actually would like you to all read through this text once, so you've kind of been different places a little bit, and we're going to go over it in more detail. But there's this paragraph, Just investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there is nothing left over. Because leftovers are leftovers, even the being-time of half-exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of half-being-time.

[69:52]

When we're fully... So, okay, let me just... That last line. Because what we think we're not doing fully, you know, this is this leftover business, the stuff, the way that you said you weren't being present, because that is completely itself, even the being to be in time or to be time of a half-exhaustive investigation is the exhaustive investigation of a half of being time. Yes, so there's that side. Now, he's also making...he's also making us question that, but it's not that it's perfect, it's half a being-time, but it's completely half a being-time. Q. Which reminds me of Suzuki Roshi saying, you're perfect just the way you are but there's always room for improvement. K. Exactly, yes. Q. So it feels like there's...we're always present but there's a quality of presence that can be worked on and a quality of... life is working on the quality of presence. Yes. So this text is a way of kind of forcing us to kind of go back and look at are we, yes, am I here or not?

[71:02]

Are we being, are we fully, is it perfect or not? Yes, it's perfect. No, it's not perfect. Turn it around and look again. So yeah, I mentioned that this afternoon, I was talking to the elder hostel people, and I mentioned that this woman at dinner came up and wanted to know about this. How can we be... What does it mean that it's perfect? It's not perfect. It's not. It's not perfect. I told them I didn't understand that. Right. Me either. And yet, there's this quality of everything is just what it is. So this is being time. How can there be something other than this activity that we are timing right now? Say that everything is perfect or isn't perfect, or having a reaction sounds like it's getting caught in the word perfect. Right. Yeah. So it's not good or bad perfect. It's just like, are we completely here or aren't we? Well, if we're not completely here, we're completely not completely here.

[72:05]

We're completely not complete. Well, I don't know. He says it better than me. I'm not going to try and paraphrase that. Anyway, there are several places in this text which I feel like are nodes where something pops out, and we can see what he's getting at, and that's one of them. I jumped way ahead, so I want to go back. We have another 10 minutes. Go a little further in the text. Yes. Yes. So right. So as ordinary folks, we, we study this in spite of this, when people are ordinary folk who have not studied the Buddhist teaching, the views they have are such that when they hear the expression of a time of being, they think at some time one had become three headed and eight armed. So that's an image for people who weren't here last week. That's an image of an angry God and that another non human kind of ambitious titan-type being. That's one of the six realms.

[73:07]

So he contrasts that to being a Buddha. So that's what three-headed, eight-armed means. It's kind of an image, or an illusion. So when ordinary people hear the expression, a time of being, they think at some time one had become three-headed and eight-armed, at some time, or at a being time, one had become 16 feet tall, eight feet seated, which is like a Buddha. Like having crossed rivers and crossed mountains, They think, even though those mountains and rivers may exist still, I have passed them and am now in the Vermilion Tower of the Jewel Palace. The mountains and rivers and I are as far apart as sky and earth. So of course, we all can remember some time of crossing mountains or crossing rivers. Take it metaphorically or take it literally. Remember crossing a river. All of us can remember having crossed a river. And that was somewhere else, right? That was something we did before. However, the truth is not just this one line of reasoning alone.

[74:11]

In the time one climbed the mountains and crossed the rivers, there was oneself. We were there, right? There must be time in oneself. This is slippery. Since oneself exists, time cannot leave. How could we have been there without there being a time there? There was timing as we crossed the river, as we climbed that mountain, as we got to the foot of the stairs, whatever it was, there was timing there. How could there not have been timing there? If time is not the appearances, so there must be time in oneself. Since oneself exists, since there is being of oneself, time cannot leave. How could we be without time? Is there such a thing as to be here without time? If time is not the appearances of going and coming, the time of climbing a mountain is the immediate present of being time. If time preserves the appearances of going and coming, there is in oneself the immediate present of being time.

[75:22]

This is being time. Does not that time of climbing mountains and crossing rivers swallow up this time of the Vermilion Tower of the Jewel Palace? Does it not spit it forth? He's so great. So another way to talk about this is that we say form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Nirvana is samsara, samsara is nirvana. The ultimate experience is not somewhere else than right here. this very life, this very realm, this very world, this very activity is where awakening is. It's not in some place up in the sky. So that same kind of way of looking at things, we can take it in terms of time as well as in space. Could there be any time outside of this time?

[76:24]

Is there some perfect time that exists apart from this time right now? We're always dreaming of some time in the future. Is there some time in the future we're dreaming of that's separate from this time right now? So we all have had the experience of living a number of years and going through many things, and we will continue to live, hopefully all of us, many more years. And yet, also, all of that time is right now. Is there some other time that's not this time? I don't know. Anyway, this way of looking at it, the same as seeing that emptiness is in form, seeing that all our time is in this time. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah, it makes me think of, at a time that I crossed the river, time has continued exactly, precisely, time continued, and now I'm sitting here. Right. Time has gone from then to now, endlessly, and has gotten to here, and so have I. But time was also before I was born.

[77:34]

Okay. So I feel like... What was that time before you were born? That was... It still feels all interconnected, as in all the same time, as in crossing the river. One paragraph in this translation says, at the time the mountains were climbed and the rivers crossed, you were present. Time is not separate from you. And as you are present, time does not go away. In that little phrase there, time is in you? At the time the mountains were climbed and the rivers crossed, you were present. Time is not separate from you. And as you are present, time does not go away.

[78:37]

It makes me... we can choose to perceive breathing and being right here, or we can choose to perceive being a go on a bridge, or we can choose to perceive being in the future. So there's this, there's my body here, but there's this mind, or this perceptual gas, or whatever it is, that can just weep around, and all of its times are present. Present to go, present future, present here, Space is at times. OK, and when is that timing happening? It can all happen right now. So there's ticking time. As I sit here and perceive of time ago, my body's still aging. Right. So any idea that we have about time, he's not negating.

[79:38]

He's not saying that the time at the clock is not valid. But the way you said it, yeah. So time, there's our... So you're talking about perception, so we could say perceiving time. So in a sense, our being is intimately connected with our perceiving, right? We be in the world, we are in the world, we act, we are activity. So we could say activity and perception are functions of being. Our being is that we are perceiving constantly, and we are activity-ing, and we are presence-ing, and we are being, and... I teach art, and it's really interesting to me how a whole classroom of people can perceive or look at something to draw something and actually perceive entirely different things. So if 30 people can look at something differently or read something differently, they can perceive the present differently or time differently.

[80:44]

So I guess my question here is how I'm curious about perception. I think it's relevant to us. What that thing is in the mind that lies around us. Well, I think what he's doing is forcing us to look at what is perception, what is being, what is time, what is perception, what is our life. So yeah, I think, good, perception is right in there. Because all of this, we can see all of these things as so many perceptions, he says so many beings. Yeah, that's another way of saying being. So, okay, we perceived the time of crossing the mountain. At that time, we were perceiving crossing the mountain or the river or whatever. And now we have a perception of, and what is memory and all this, but that's kind of a subset. I think more basic is what is our presence and our being and our activity and our mind right now

[81:51]

And is that separate from these other times, which also function kind of in passing. So the next section, he starts to talk about flowing or passaging. So he brings us further and further into looking at what is our experience of time. And it means what is our experience of ourselves. So all of this is looking at how is it to be this person. Kurt was actually pointing to flowing time. Right. Right. Well, so yeah, there's a passage in here coming up fairly soon after this, which you probably won't get to now. I could go read ahead just to read it over and emphasize it to you. And maybe I should do that. Some of it, but just another translation of that same passage that Kirk read. But the true way of things is not found in this one direction alone. At the time the mountain was being climbed and the river being crossed, I was there in time.

[82:53]

The time has to be in me. Inasmuch as I am there, it cannot be that time passes away. That's yet another way of saying that same thing. It's a little difficult to synchronize all these different texts, but I think it's helpful because we can see it from different angles. The one that starts on the query translation that most of you have towards the bottom of 105, one should not understand time only as flying away. So I don't mean that the part before that that we haven't gone over isn't an important part of this, but let's For those of you who have the Moon in a Dew Drop, it's number seven. Okay, I'll read the Cleary version first.

[83:59]

One should not understand time only as flying away. It doesn't mean that's not part of it, but 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. 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 – that's like what you were doing before, Kurt – all existences in the whole world, while being lined up, are individual times. Because it is being time, it is my being time. 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.

[85:02]

It passes from tomorrow to tomorrow. So that starts to open up different aspects of this. And there's no time right now to talk about this, at least for those of you who need to go at 9 because it is late. Let me just read one other version of that. You should not come to understand that time is only flying past. You should not only learn that flying past is the property inherent in time. If time were to give itself to merely flying past, it would have to have gaps. You fail to experience the passage of being time and hear the utterance of its truth because you are learning only that time is something that goes past. The essential point is every entire being in the entire world is each time an independent time, even while making a continuous series.

[86:05]

Inasmuch as they are being time, they are my being time. So let's come back to that next time. Is it my being time? Is it like my being time as opposed to your being time? I don't think it's mine as opposed to yours. It is this person's being time. It's personal being time. That's my sense of it. I can look at the Chinese character and see if it's me. But I think it makes it personal and intimate. It is intimate being. I just want to comment. I mentioned earlier that I used to relate to when I read this passage. I couldn't imagine what time was, so I substituted space. And there was a time when I couldn't imagine what space was, so I imagined water. I imagined myself eating fish and water. because it's something more tangible. I swim every day. And I imagine a fish swimming from here to there, but they're still in that big body of water.

[87:13]

And there would be little currents, undercurrents. And I could understand it a little bit better by imagining myself as a fish, and all this stuff is not space or time, but it's water. That's great. Yeah. There's the thing we chant sometimes. If a bird leaves its element, it will die. How does it go? If a fish leaves its element, it will die at once. If a bird leaves its element, it will die at once. Yeah. If a fish goes to the limit of its element, as does a bird. There's no end to the expanse of sky. Right. There's no end to the air. There's no end to the water. Something like that. It's also like mountains and rivers. Yeah. Dragons live in water. Life must be a fish. So yeah, I think that's very helpful, Marianne. So we're swimming in time. We're swimming in space. We're also swimming in time.

[88:15]

So is there an end to time, like is there an end to the water? So yeah, let's look at that. If you haven't read it yet, go through the whole text. And the first time you go through it, don't worry about understanding it. Just to read it. Read the words. Read it aloud. Just experience it. But then come back and let's kind of work to it. Maybe we'll go do some background, work back to this paragraph. But let's look at this. I think it's one of the key points. Paragraphs in this text are more to come. Okay, thank you.

[88:48]

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