So the very first sentence after the first paragraph, time of being means time is already being, all being is time. So this is this basic principle that time is already being. Already means that we don't have to get anything more. Already means like understood or achieved or attained also. First sentence of the second paragraph, Waddell's version, the time being means time just as it is, is being, and being is all time. So that's kind of a place to come back to. These are kind of like places that seem to me to be reference points in the whole thing. Then this one, so I'm just mentioning a very few of these. There are more of them. This thing about self is arrayed as the whole world. You should perceive that each point, each thing of this whole world is an individual time. Each thing is a time. So that's the first sentence of the next paragraph in query.

[01:03]

Wandel says, we set the self out in array and make that the whole world. You must see all the various things of the whole world as so many times. So each thing is its own time. Another one in query. This is, I feel, I keep coming back to a lot to it. The end of the first paragraph in 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 kind of the basic meditation instruction in this whole thing. Try to... Where is that? That's the end of the paragraph that goes over to 105 in query. In Waddell, it's at page 118, before the last paragraph, just reflect right now, is there an entire being or an entire world missing from your present time or not?

[02:08]

So to really look, is there some time that's not here? And what is that? And what is the time that we think is not here? And when would that be? And how can we see it now? So to see our relationship between this time we're in now, that we're inhabiting now, and any other time that you might imagine, and what is that difference? And how do we separate ourselves? And to actually look at how we do that in time, over time, to see what we do with time right now. So, just to watch that. It's not asking you, it's not saying it's this way or that way. It's just saying, look at it. Look at the time. And if you're not sure what it is, look at that. Look at that feeling of being dizzy. Look at that place where you can't hold on to this time. Look at that place where you're kind of being drawn to some other time. The time later tonight when I'll be sleeping in bed, the time yesterday when I was doing, you know, whatever it is.

[03:21]

Look at the times that are in this time right now and what do they have to do with this time and how are we being time right now? So that's kind of this basic meditation instruction for the whole thing. Tell again? Yeah. Because actually I didn't pay much attention to that, that silence. When he talks earlier about the mutual non-interference of things like mutual non-interference of times It's sort of like they're not opposites, but they're Reflections of each other But I can't quite relate them because one is sort of like, okay now Tyga is a separate time and this flower is a separate time and past is a separate time, but they're all also all the same time?

[04:22]

Well, okay, we see them as separate. We see them as the same. So where is the we, where is the seer, where is the one who's defining it as separate? When is that? So yeah, this sentence you just mentioned is also very important. So I'm just, these aren't all the important sentences, these are just a few to get us rolling, okay? Oh, no, no, no, I didn't mean to repeat it. That one just sort of made me realize that my understanding of the other one is not right. Well, I don't know that it wasn't, I think all understandings are being timed. So that's part of what he's doing. Any way of seeing this is included. He's kind of gathering it all in. There's a kind of acceptance, very open-heartedness feeling in this, that whatever is happening is time. And there's something about that that is essentially not even right as opposed to right or wrong, it's just this.

[05:30]

There's a kind of openness to all time. that is kind of part of the current of this. At least that's one way to see it. Then there's the sentence at the bottom of page 105. In theory, 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. to tell the gist of it all. All existences in the whole world while being lined up are individual times. Because it is being time, it is my being time. And we talked about this before. It's not that it's my being time as opposed to your being time. It's intimate being time. It's one's own being time. It's our personal dynamic being time. It's not somebody else's being time. It's not somewhere else.

[06:31]

It's this being time. And I just think about it passes from today to tomorrow, it passes from today to yesterday. The kind of multi-directional aspect of it. Tynan, does time, does the character of time have other meanings? Or can it mean other things? The Aru Toki that I drew on the board the first time, it's just very simple, day-to-day, some time, or there is time, or to be time. So I like thinking about it as to be, to really emphasize the verb of being. So it's not just being as a dead thing, it's dynamic being of time, to be in time, to inhabit time, to really be present in time. One of the things that he does with language a lot is he makes all nouns into verbs, and we're going to come to that in a second. So, I don't know what you were getting at.

[07:35]

Well, I just think, I mean, because I keep thinking, well, what is he trying to say or what's he getting at? And I thought, well, maybe, you know, I'm, I'm finding some limitation or some narrowness in hearing the word time. Like it relates to a certain thing where actually maybe time, time is a, is a, like a I know it's not a slang, but let's say a shortcut way or an in-way, if you know the language, I mean English or whatever, of saying, you know, some experience or some... I think experience is a very relevant word. So we could say experience time. So this is an experiential thing. Take time out of it. I mean, take the word time out of it. I think that time equals our sitting here talking with each other. But he's saying that's what time is. So the word he's using is just the most ordinary word for time. But he's saying how our ordinary way of seeing, our ordinary experience, it can be much richer.

[08:37]

To me, this is all about enriching our experience. To not get caught by the particular ways that we limit our experience. So to see that I've said, I've talked about this before, I think that there's a way in which we are used to seeing us a little bit more in space, to see how we're connected. You know, in this room there's a circle and we can see how we're all connected in various ways. And we could, you know, we could do exercises on the connections that any two people here have. You know, just by being in this room and, you know, they're endless once we get into it. Places you've, places in common you've seen or you remember, anyway. We could do it in terms of space, but we could also do it in terms of time. Pick any time that you have a memory of, and what is that right now, and how are the different, or any time that you've never imagined, any time in the future. This kind of interconnectedness and interweaving of times.

[09:40]

So time is just how we are. How we are is we're doing, we're sitting in this room right now. So how we experience things is time. I like someone's point that if you use time as a slang word, I think in a way, I know people sometimes use slang words and they put a lot of emphasis on it, but when I think of slang words as opposed to real heavy duty, if I thought of time as a slang word, I wouldn't worry about it so much or I wouldn't be controlled by it, because you don't use it every so often. I'm not sure what you're saying, say it again. I just didn't get it. When you have slang words, you use them very limitedly, and so they're here and there, you know, and there's not much emphasis, you're not, you're not, it seems like you're really, you're putting emotion into it mostly, but not,

[10:45]

So if you looked at time in the slang word, rather than this big word that we're always controlled by, you might not be so controlled by it. OK. Right. It's just a word. Yeah. And we don't have to get clucked by it. And that's why on the page on Adele's, on 127, at the top of it, he has a really great thing about words and mime. And that, like, words can liberate you or they can trap you. And we're going over that, like, in some of the lines in the Prashna Paramita. And also in Chapter 40 in Bhagavad-Gita, like, words can free you or they can, you know, torment you. Right. I think that's very much what this is about. You know, how we get caught by words, how we get caught by our definitions. And, uh, so, I'm not sure what... I guess the part of the word that I wasn't clear about how you were using it was the word slang.

[11:49]

In what sense do you mean? I'm not sure I do a good thing either. Slang. Slang, like... Slang word, like, uh... You know, you use it very casually. Uh-huh. So you're saying it's better to use it like it's a common word? I'm not saying it's better, but... Do you emphasize it somewhere? Yeah. Yeah, so he's not using this as a kind of philosophical term. This is like the everyday... This is the everyday slang word of time, you know? In all the different ways we see it that way. Good try. Aki-san, here's the... This is the translation by Waddell, and... So well, we've gone through the text. Before this class started, somebody who lives here said, gee, how can you spend six weeks on being time?

[12:54]

And I'm feeling like, how could we even do more than even get halfway through the text? And there's actually, in the Cleary version, six pages. So I imagined kind of roughly a page a week. Which means that... We're behind. No, actually, it means we're doing pretty well. But I feel like we could easily spend the next two classes just reviewing what we've done so far. So I kind of want to push ahead, even though I know we could spend a lot more time on any one paragraph here. We could spend six weeks on any paragraph here, actually, easily. But partly I just want to push ahead because there's this wonderful story or actually set of stories that I want to get to next time. Can we touch on them this time? Well, okay. There's some stuff in between that's really cool and I want to talk about tonight. But yes, maybe I'll introduce them now.

[13:58]

For next time, even though we haven't totally got everything up till now, Hi, Lorraine. Let's look at the stories next time. So just to introduce them now, there's actually, there's a story that begins the last section with Yaktuzan Igen. He's one of the people in our lineage that we chant every morning. It's at the top of 125 in Waddell, and it's the top of 108 in Cleary, and Cleary uses the Japanese and Waddell uses the Chinese, and this is terribly confusing, and just don't get too confused by it. It's the same people in different Chinese and Japanese names. So there's three main people. So let me just talk about who those people are so that you get the context for those stories. And I think these stories are useful because it's a way of applying the stuff that we've gone through, the ways, different ways in which he looks at time.

[15:04]

So it's a particular koan, a particular old Zen story that he's saying something about in terms of this idea of being time. And they actually use the phrase being time. So, Yaksan Igen, Yueshan Hongdao in Wadels, is the same guy who said at the very beginning, for the time being I stand on the highest mountain peak, for the time being I move on the deepest ocean floor. It's the same guy. So he's the one who's, in the beginning, Dogen just says, an old Buddha, an ancient Buddha said, but that's also the same guy, Yakson. So I was saying, I wanted to, next two weeks, try and focus more on the stories, and I wanted, there's some stuff that we haven't gotten to in between that, but just to kind of give a little preview of the stories. This guy, Yakson, studied first with Shuto or Sekito. Shuto or Sekito is the guy who wrote The Merging of Difference and Unity, which we chant many mornings.

[16:09]

And he's very important in our lineage. And the story goes, there's actually a first part of this story. So maybe I'll read that to you. So we're getting further into this, but this is a tough being time also. So the story goes, And I'm reading this from, for those of you who have this clearing book, this is at the back of the chapter called Such. But this is just background. The story is that Yakusan was a scholar of Buddhism and knew the Buddhist sutras backwards and forwards, was very learned in that. And he came to Master Sekito, to Shuto. And this part of the story is before what's in Shobo Genzo Uchi, before the part that's quoted in Being Time, but it's the same story. So first he, Yakuzan said, I have a rough knowledge of the scriptural teaching of Buddhism, but I've heard that in the South, this means in the Zen school, which was strong in the South at that particular time,

[17:21]

They directly point to the human mind, see its nature and attain Buddhahood. I really do not understand this and hope you will be so compassionate as to give me some indication of it." So this is very important to understanding this whole story. Part of what Zen was about in China, what Chan was about, particularly at this early stage that this story happens, is that there were all these monks in all these monasteries, and they were all very learned in the scriptures, and Zen and Bodhidharma and the early Zen guys, the early Chan guys, were about making this your own experience, not about just some philosophy, but actually how can you really, you know, inhabit your own time to use the language we've been talking about in being time, to really bring it down to experience, to free these very scholarly, very learned, you know, very fine practitioner monks from their kind of rigid understanding based on particular scriptures, particular formulations to really bring it alive into their experience.

[18:22]

So that's the real thrust of all of that. It doesn't matter if you understand or if you've read all these books or whatever, how do you bring it alive in your everyday experience? That's what this is about. And that's what he was asking. So this is a guy who was very well-learned, but he wanted to know, well, how do I directly point to the human mind, see its nature, and attain Buddhahood? How do we actually live as Buddhists in our day-to-day life? That's what this whole thing is about. So Dogen says, this is a question of Yakuson, who originally was a lecturer. He had mastered the canonical Buddhist teachings, so it seemed there was nothing further about Buddhism that was not clear to him. In ancient times, before the separate schools had arisen, just to understand the canonical teachings was considered the way of doctrinal studies. Nowadays, many people, being stupid, set up individual schools and assess Buddhism this way, but this is not the rule of the Buddha way. So all of Zen is about kind of putting down that kind of getting caught by particular philosophy.

[19:28]

And because we're, you know, Americans and we don't have this cultural context, we have to do this remedial Buddhism to understand what they were talking about. We have to go back and look at what are the philosophies that they were, you know, cutting down or that they were getting free of? What are the, what were the, you know, we have to have this background. But the point still is how is it real in our everyday life? That's the whole point of all this. How do we actually take on our, be present in our own time? Whatever this time is. So, in reply to Yonkasan's question, Shuto or Sekito said, it cannot be grasped as such. It cannot be grasped as not such. As such or not such, it cannot be grasped at all. What about you? He says, what about you? It can't be grasped this way, it can't be grasped that way. What about you? It's like what you were saying. You try and grasp it and it slips away. So, this was his answer, and Dogen says, truly, because it cannot be grasped at all as such or not such, therefore it cannot be grasped as such, it cannot be grasped as not such.

[20:38]

So, and there's some more comment, but anyway, that's the first part of the story. So, Shuto, or I mean, Yaksan, or Yueshan, heard this from Shuto. It can't be grasped as such. It can't be grasped as not such. What about you? By the way, this Yueshan, or Yaoshan, or Yaksan, is also the same guy who, later on, when he was a great teacher, a monk said, what are you doing sitting there upright? He said, I'm thinking of not thinking. And the monk asked, how do you think of not thinking? And he says, beyond thinking, or unthinking, or to unthink, or not thinking. So that's the same guy. He only had a few students. He had maybe eight students, but they had a very powerful practice. We're still talking about him. So, okay, that's kind of the background to the rest of the dialogue that's in here.

[21:42]

In Waddell, it's top of page 125. And in theory, it's top of page 108. Is this the same as being just so wont to, not being just so wont to? Yeah. Is it the same? Yeah. So what happened is that after, that Yakuson didn't understand, and Shuto, Seki just said, go see Maso, go see Japanese Baso. and he went to see this other great teacher. There were two great teachers then, Shuto or Sekito and Mazu or Baso. Mazu's the one who said sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. There were these two great teachers in China at that time, and they sent their students to each other. There are numbers of stories of a student kind of not understanding with one, and he would say, go see the other guy, and then he would get it. And monks would go back and forth between the two of them. And this is this case with Yueshan. He couldn't understand what Shuto or Sekito said, so he went to Mazu and asked the same question.

[22:47]

And this is the question that's in Shobo Genzo Uji in being time. I'm fairly conversant with the three vehicles and the teachings of the 12 divisions, but what about the meaning of the first patriarch of Bodhidharma's coming from the West? What's the real meaning? So Bodhidharma's coming from the West means what is the real meaning of our experience of Zen teaching. And then there's this thing about, for the time being, or sometimes, I let him raise his eyebrows and blink his eyes. So that's kind of the background for this story about raising eyebrows and blinking eyes. And then there's another story that relates to that with another teacher, who's a very interesting guy, also a real character. I'll tell you some other stories about him. And then there's the third part, is at the very end, is Dogen's comment about eyebrows and eyes. So there's kind of three parts. The next two weeks I want to go into these stories using the stuff that we've done up till now and that we're going to do the rest of today's class in terms of looking at what is Dogen saying about our time and how to really be present in our time and have a wide context of time and really enrich our being, enrich our experiencing

[24:01]

in time. So the whole first two-thirds of this essay of being time is kind of Dogen's kind of turning this wheel of time and letting us see it in different ways. And then he ends with these stories, which are examples where we can see in a very concrete dialogue how this teaching is being played out. So this is tricky stuff. This is ungraspable stuff. We can't exactly hold on to it, but there's a way of working with it that we can kind of get a sense of how to have a broader feel for our being. Or I would suggest that might be the case anyway. See how it is for you. So maybe we'll get back to those two ways, but let's backtrack a little bit.

[25:08]

So the part I want to talk about today, and again, I'm going to start with Waddell, but we'll refer to Cleary. Does everybody have a copy? I have extra copies. Does everybody have a copy of the Waddell translation? If you don't have it with you, you can borrow it. Okay, so on page... Can I just ask a quick question? Sure. In Waddell's, on that same page, 125, but on the left-hand side, there's a word, I don't know what it means, it's seriatim? Seriatim, yeah, we talked about that a little bit. I don't know what it means either. Somebody said it's from the Latin. It's in series, or serial, same root as serial, one after another. Sequential. Sequential. And he even says that you can translate it just as passage, and Cleary translates it as passage. So you could just kind of skip that word, or you could just... He's kind of talking about passage as in series, a series of passing events.

[26:12]

Okay. So, the part I want to start with is the last paragraph on page 106 of Cleary's And it's near the top of 122 in Waddell's. And I'll just start by reading theory, but then I want to really read more closely in Waddell what he says. And there's a number of, all of this essay is pretty rich, but this, anyway, let's see. So clearly he says, now exhausting the limits of the whole world by means of the whole world is called investigating exhaustively. So we talked about this a little bit last time. To actualize being the 16-foot golden body of Buddha by means of the 16-foot golden body as determination, that's determination for enlightenment, bodhicitta, the will towards enlightenment, cultivating practice, enlightenment and final nirvana, is being, is time.

[27:14]

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." This is one of those sentences that to me is a key part in this whole essay. Just investigating exhaustively all time as all being, there is nothing left over. Because anything that you think might be left over is just left over, even the being-time even the experiencing time of half-exhaustive investigation is exhausted in this investigation of half being time. He's making everything equally being time. Everything actually is our being in time, or our timing in being. So it's a way, it's like this very non-judgmental, now there's still, there is a half of investigation, but that's completely what's happening.

[28:17]

So this is his non-judgmental side of seeing that everything is just what it is in time. It's maybe not the whole story, but it's... So, the same place that I started in Waddell is the third sentence on page 122. Thus entirely worlding the entire world. Do you see that? This is an example of what I was talking about before. He takes a noun, in this case the world, and he makes it a verb. And this is something you can do in Chinese and Japanese very easily. You take any noun and you put a suru after it, and it becomes the activity of that. So it turns all of... Nouns are like static objects. In Chinese and Japanese, and particularly in Dogen's writing, he turns what we think of as static objects into process, into activity, into something dynamic. And it's an example.

[29:20]

He's using language to show us how to do something with our whole life. Make something come alive. Like I was thinking of piano, if you made it piano-ing, in a way, it wouldn't just be this object that sort of noise comes out of. I mean, it would be sort of a life Yeah, so someone could go over there and piano the room, just by keying the keys. There's that kind of sense, and he uses language to show us that. It's really wonderful. And it's very hard to translate it. I've translated some of it, and it's very hard to get it to really bring that side of it alive. So I think this translation of Waddell, that's why I want to use this more the rest of the way, because he manages to capture more of those things. It's not always possible. Anyway, this is a good example. So this is the same sentence that Clary says, now exhausting the limits of the whole world by means of the whole world.

[30:21]

Waddell says, thus entirely worlding the entire world with the whole world is called penetrating exhaustively, right? I mean, that's penetrating exhaustively. In his note he says, nothing can be left out of this exhaustive reciprocal penetration. Just to entirely world, the entire world with the whole world. It's like to make our experience, just to see our experience as complete and make it complete by completely seeing it as completely seeing. Try, as an exercise, you could try, just during the course of the week, reverbing some of your nouns as you're working in the fields or as you're on your way to Tassajara or whatever it is you're doing. To immediately manifest the body of the tall golden Buddha with the body of the tall golden Buddha as the arising of the mind, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana.

[31:24]

That is being, that is time. The bodying of the tall golden Buddha. So you could say embodying, but he doesn't even, yeah. So this next sentence I think is another very key sentence. And it just popped out to me after reading this about five times a couple of days ago, I just noticed, I just noticed this sentence in another way. One does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being. If you read it in context, then you can kind of pass over it. But I want to underline that for us. This is like this essential utterance. One does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being. One can imagine that one's only doing it half-heartedly. We can imagine that that was a crummy period of Zazen, or I wasn't really into it, I was feeling tired today, I wasn't working that hard. One can imagine all these things, but actually, One does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being.

[32:27]

Whoever it was who was, you know, out there digging potatoes or whatever it was, that's completely what was happening. That was the whole time right there and that was your whole being. And you might think, well, I wasn't really into it, I was thinking about whatever. But actually, you were right there. What happens with the notion of quality? Quality? Because if you're out there half-heartedly, you're not qualified. The quality of the work isn't as good as if you're there wholeheartedly. Well, this is our judgment. Now, this is not to negate the side of there is the ordinary time of 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock. So he never said that that way of seeing time is wrong. He just said, see it this other way, too. So yeah, we can make judgments. We all know how to make judgments. We all know how to say, What, you only got that much done in three hours? You know, we can all do that. And we're not gonna stop being able to do that by virtue of being able to do this too.

[33:31]

But he's giving us this other way to see our life at the same time. It doesn't mean that the judgment's wrong. It just means, well, okay, that's what was happening. Now, what do we do with it? Are we in conflict with this because of pure mechanical? We can choose to be. We can choose to be. I don't think he's saying that there is not half-heartedness and whole-heartedness. In fact, he's encouraging whole-heartedness. But, you know, this thing about even a half... Well, it's the next sentence. Let's keep going. Let's do Waddell's version. There is no... Because he's talking about what you're talking about. There is no remaining Dharma left over. We can imagine, in our discriminating mind, we can imagine all kinds of leftovers. We can imagine all the things that we left undone. We can imagine all the things we should have done, or could have done, or didn't do, or would have done. We can imagine all this extra leftover stuff. But he's saying, actually, one does nothing but penetrate exhaustively entire time as entire being.

[34:39]

There is no remaining dharma left over. In this case, dharma just means thing, activity, experience, anything. Good question. I kind of get stuck on the idea of gaps, when he's talking about gaps, in relation to this sort of, and then when I, I'll be thinking about this, trying to understand being time, and like potatoing, being out there and doing that sort of thing, but then when I come to a point where my mind stops and I say, well I could have done this, somehow my mind picks it up as a gap. I don't understand it sometimes. That's the not graspable part of it. Yeah, well, I think that's what he's talking about, that if time really was like that, there would be gaps, and we do imagine gaps. So there is that way of seeing time where we see the gaps. I don't thoroughly understand this either. My feeling is that he's saying, we imagine gaps.

[35:45]

That's one way we see time. But if time was only that, then we couldn't, then there would only be gaps. We'd be separated from our time. So it's gaps between time, but it's also the gap between us and being in this time. But I have this, like, if I were to mention being time, I can just be time every time I, you know, every moment that comes forth is being time to me, but then I can perceive gaps in that. But you're perceiving a gap is being time. Yeah. That's what he's saying right here. You're perceiving this space, this time that you were not present. That is being time. So he's saying to being time, the time of being time when you thought you weren't being time. Using being time as a verb. Is that? Yeah. Yeah. Nicole? and the wills and the wants that preoccupy us when we're tataling or pianoing or whatever.

[36:59]

Is that sort of like, when he's talking about the very beginning, perfect present or present, not perfect present, but future present or past, present, present, past, where all time sort of is like all those intermingling circles is how I've envisioned it. That's good, yeah. All of those times are, and we can imagine them now, But all of those times are there. So that's the thing about if you remember the time when you were crossing the river and going to the mountaintop, and you think that's some other time, but that was a time too. And this is time now. So there's this quality of time which is just how we experience things. And that's present all the time somehow. It's not graspable in our ordinary way of thinking. We're so locked into thinking of things as A, then B, then C. And we don't, it's hard for us, especially using this kind of language to put that together.

[38:04]

So he's saying, he's kind of saying, let go of that and, or one part of what he's saying anyway, is let go of that and see that this is being time. And this is being time then, and this is being time later, and this is being time now. And partly doing it is completely a part being time. And there's only one value for all of it. That's one side, yeah. So there's these two sides here. There's the side of, and the stories are about this. The stories about blinking eyes and raising eyebrows is correct, raising eyebrows is not correct. There's both sides. You know, he's including both. And they're both being time. He's kind of getting us past that division of thinking of everything's okay all time versus good time, bad time. You know, we have those two, those are two ways we can see it.

[39:07]

There was a half being time, gap time. Right, there was a gap time and there was a fully present time. There was a totally there time. Past and future make me think of Memories and kind of fantasies on both sides. Right. Instead of thinking of it as just, you know, past, or present past, or something like that. Okay, memories are completely being times of memories. Fantasies are completely fantasies of in-being time. So there's a side where we devalue, where we think there's some time that's right time and there's other time that's wrong time, or that's good time, or there's good times and bad times, you know. You know, I've had my share of upsets. It was the best of times and the worst of times. Right. We see time that way. And he's saying, yeah, there's the side of seeing time that way and there's the side of time where it's all just being time. And take those two, the good and bad times and the all time. And how are those both being time?

[40:08]

Does he ever talk about when you lapse into time and you forget who you are, where you are, or anything about time? Or what we perceive as timelessness? Well, that's the interesting thing. I don't think he's talking about timelessness. I think he's talking about really being present in your experience. He's not talking about... So timelessness, I think in terms of the language of this essay, is kind of being... you know, being vacant, you know? Maybe it's like half being there and it's just the half being there. Sometimes timelessness kind of gives, is like totally being there, gives you the feeling of dropping away this whole puritanical concept of time. Right. I think he's saying something else. This is an important question, because we have this idea of being in the present versus the eternal now, which includes all time. I don't think he's talking about that kind of eternal now. I think he's not talking about some space where we are outside of time.

[41:15]

He's actually saying, be there in time, and just include all of it. Bring it all in. It's all being time. Now, it may be that he, in some other essay, he might have, and I don't think there is such a one, but if we have that kind of duality, he could probably collapse that too. But I think he's talking about actually inhabiting time. I mean, really fully experiencing your time as opposed to trying to escape from your time. So it's subtle, but there's this way in which when we talk about the eternal now or timelessness, we're kind of trying to escape. We don't want to be stuck in time. Time is a drag. We've got to get up in the morning. We've got this to do, that to do. We've got all these lists of things. All the things we did wrong and all the things we're going to do wrong. we can see it that way and we want to get out of it. I think he's not talking about that. His mission is to be present. Yeah. And to be present doesn't mean just to be present in some idea of the present.

[42:19]

It means like really present in any being time. So it's very, very wide. It's like, yeah, accept your time, accept your karma, accept who you are and how you got here and what you're going to do and really being time it. You know? experience and inhabit and really fully enjoy this being-time, even if it's a half-hearted, even if you think it's a half-hearted being-time. Totally do that. Yeah, totally experience your half-heartedness, you know. And that's where you get past half-heartedness, by the way. Let's keep going, let's keep reading, and this is great. I mean, I'm really, I think we're being-timing. 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.

[43:25]

Okay, let me do that again. Any dharma left over is as such, remember we're talking about such, is totally a leftover dharma. this being-time of a partial exhaustive penetration, even this being-time that we thought we didn't really completely be-time it, even that being-time is an exhaustive penetration of a partial being-time. So he's playing with the words here. He's just kind of turning around our ways of getting stuck in this. Even a form of understanding that appears to be blundering is being. Even when we're making mistakes, even when we're just making total fools of ourselves, we're there, we're being. On a still broader plane, the times before and after one immediately manifests the blunder are both together with the dwelling positions of being-time. This thing about dwelling positions, I like it that Waddell uses that phrase because that's a really important phrase, dwelling position.

[44:31]

Also, he talks about Dharma positions. Juhoi in Japanese, it's in No. 28, but he talks about this in other essays, too, to completely take your Dharma position, to completely take your dwelling position, to fully dwell in the position you're in. Whoever you are, whatever place you're holding, however old you are, whatever your experience has been, whatever job you have, wherever you are, just to completely be there, to completely do that, completely due to the life you're doing. So, on the still broader plane, the times before and after one immediately manifests the blunder are both together with the dwelling positions of being-time. This next thing is great. The sharp, vital, quick itself of dharmas dwelling in their dharma positions is being-time. This phrase here, nidartana, nidartana, cause or Tom theory translation is sharp vital quick itself of Dharma's dwelling in their dharma positions as being time that's his translation for kapatsu pachi the same right kapatsu pachi [...] tell us what does it mean about scratch ah friend we didn't tell them I'm feeding

[46:00]

or clearly. This feeling is kappachi pachi. So it means very intense? Yeah, clear. Sometimes we can get a good feeling because of doing zazen. This is kappachi pachi. Uh-huh. Special term. Very, very special term. But he says that the term itself comes from an onomatopoeic, the sound description of the lively slapping of a woman. Powerful. Powerful means we can feel like clearly or clear in my head. Very intense, immediate. Yes. Like fish jumping. Jumping for its life. Yes. powerful or... Yeah, the way it just shoves around.

[47:03]

Struggling. But it sounds like it's nothing else. I mean, like when you're in that state, it's just that there's no room for anything else. It's not like you're, you know, it's not actually a sort of spaciousness in a way. It's just that point. Yeah, it's very sharp. Yeah, only that. like an adrenaline rush or something. Yeah, you're not thinking about some other time. Right. Like when they talk about athletes being in the, is it the slot or being in the whatever it is, where everything is just totally concentrated. I remember reading an article about a basketball player. And he says he loves the part in the game where he is just 100, I mean he's a million percent there. He's so far beyond 100 percent. He's just totally, he sees everything, he understands everything, he just knows exactly He's just one with the game and the ball and the players. There's a phrase, there's a couple of phrases that are used for that, kind of slang phrases.

[48:04]

In the zone. In the zone, yeah, there's one way of saying it. Yeah, he was in the zone. Sometimes I've heard, this is very funny, but sometimes I've heard like sports announcers say, he was unconscious. Talking about somebody who was like so totally there that they were like doing these amazing things, nobody could touch them. Basketball comes up a lot. They say he was unconscious, which is interesting because it was like his mind, I think it's a recognition that it means his thinking mind wasn't in the way. Yes. Do they have a term for that in dancing? In climbing, yeah. In rock climbing. In rock climbing? Flash. The flash. If you do something like, just like that, where your mind's right into it, and you make no mistakes, it's a flash. In OJ's legal case, it'll be temporary insanity. Right. So they use that as a verb or a noun? The flash or to flash? To flash. To flash.

[49:04]

So that almost has a... Yeah, that's like Kappatsu Pachi. Flash. In English, flash. Kappatsu Pachi is one of the figure of speech. Figure of speech, yes. You are like the dragon when he climbs the water, like the tiger when he enters the mountain. It's like the same thing. Japanese people usually don't use this expression, kappatsu pachi. Kappatsu pachi comes from China. But there are many expressions in Japanese that are kind of onomatopoeic. There's sound. The sound has some meaning. Like tokidoki. It means sometimes. It means, literally, it's time-time. And that means sometimes. Tokidoki. Shinkai roshi, like... This expression, kappa's touch.

[50:08]

Do kappa's touch to us, being with the man. Oh, good. There was another one. Unconscious. Oh, I heard some... It happens in sports a lot. So we were talking about sports expressions in English. In sports. basketball or football players that sometimes they get this experience. I think it happens to musicians, too, and to dancers, when there's this kind of experience. I think Billie Jean King called it grace. Grace. Actually. There's a book called The Psychic Side of Sports by Michael Murphy, which is real interesting. I've read that book. Yeah, it's real interesting. He talks about times when an athlete will go in the zone, or go unconscious, or I've heard, go ballistic, which is another metaphor. There's another book out there called Flow. Yes. Which is all about this. So in a sense, for Zen people, in Zazen, we get this pach pach, this intensity sometimes.

[51:16]

We get this flash, or this zone, or this, you know, sometimes. So what Dogen's saying about it though is, that being in your being time, that's what it's like. And he says the times before and after a blunder, the blunder is when you totally miss it, these are all dwelling possessions of being time. And this sharp, vital, quick itself of dharmas drawing in their dharma positions is being time. So even the blunders, even when we think we're missing it, actually there's also this flash, it's right there. I think that's what he's saying. There's a wonderful book by Nicolides called The Natural Way to Draw, and he says after the first 5,000 mistakes, then you can do a drawing. You're not going to land on it the first time.

[52:28]

Well, Dogen also said that his life was one continuous mistake. So, just to be totally continually... I mean, continuous is the sense of seeing these times before and after the blunder, or before and after the mistake. That's kind of reassuring to hear that he said that, you know? We know about our own mistakes. Our country is a continuous mistake. But still, our building's getting it. There's this concept about making mistakes happen because you learn through mistakes so that you become... Oh, okay, one of my favorite Zen texts is the Merging of Difference and Unity, and the one we chant in this Zen Do in the morning, there's two places where there's really mistakes in the translation by theory. One of them, this one isn't so much a mistake as just it's only one side of it. He says, merging is auspicious, do not violate it.

[53:30]

That can also be read as making mistakes is auspicious, do not violate it. That's actually a more, primary meaning there. So this is exactly what you're talking about. To allow yourself to be in the sharp vital quick of manifesting the blunder and before and after manifesting the blunder. That's auspicious. Don't violate it. So the next sentence here is don't violate it. You mustn't by your own maneuvers make it a nothingness. You mustn't forcibly make it a being. So by our own maneuvers, take the mistake and we don't let ourselves completely be there. Or we make this discrimination that that's not being time. We kind of separate ourselves from our experience. We don't allow ourselves to make mistakes. We don't allow ourselves to just be present in our half-hearted presence. But he says actually the last part, you mustn't forcibly make it into a being, which is also

[54:35]

attached to it, or make it into a thing. That's right, it's both sides. Yes. Is that what you're saying? Well, that's one way to read it. I think that... Like you could make it into something. You can't elevate it either. It's like, don't get stuck in any being time, keep going. Keep going. Be here, be in this present, which includes those. Anyway, by our judgments we make gaps. By our seeing time as separate from us, we separate ourselves from our experience. We make it into a being, we forcibly make it a being. It reminds me of, it just came to my mind when I used to take tennis lessons. And every once in a while, I'd get a good shot. It was there. And I was so startled that I would do this perfect. I mean, it was just like, who did that? And then the teacher would say, don't stand there and congratulate yourself.

[55:42]

The next one's coming back. That's exactly. It seems like that's what you mustn't make it into a being either. It just sort of happened. I understand a new way of saying that Katagiri Roshi said at Tassajara once when I was there, that I've quoted a lot, but from what you just said, I understand it more. He said, if you see a beautiful flower, if you see a beautiful sunset, and then you say, wow, the wow is too much. Just be time there. Then you say, well, it's not that it's bad to say wow, but then you're separating yourself. Yeah, you'll miss the next step. I mean, we have this impulse to do that, but it's like, I see those flowers and I say, boy, that's beautiful. Now, where's that at where I stop and say, and make this judgment, and put this word beautiful on it? It's flowers.

[56:42]

But we're always doing that, right? It's really, it's hard. It's a real tricky place. It's interesting in something like photography students who see something that most people wouldn't consider beautiful. And they isolate it out. And in essence, they're saying it's beautiful. But most people wouldn't consider it, even the thought of saying it's beautiful. Or they wouldn't see it until it was photographed. If they even see it then. They'd still say, why did you take that picture? But that's why, is that they're showing us something. Yeah. So even when we say, oh wow, or call it a beautiful sunset, or what a great shot that was. So that's a blunder, right? I mean, his technical term for that in this text is a blunder. And he's saying even the time right before and after that blunder, as well as the blunder itself, actually is just right there.

[57:46]

and you can get caught on it by making it into a being or you can make it into a nothingness. But the point is that you're being time. Or noticing you're noticing actually. Let's keep reading because he just keeps going with this stuff and it's great. You reckon time only as something that does nothing but pass by. and do not understand it as something not yet arrived. Although our understandings are time, there is no chance for them to be drawn in by time. So he says in the footnote, not yet arrived means not yet understood. So this footnote is interesting. Even though man's understandings are not apart from time or being, The nature of discriminatory understanding is such that there is in it no cause by which it may be drawn by being time into true understanding of that fact.

[58:56]

I think he's saying that our discriminatory understanding is a partial understanding in effect. I'm not sure I understand this, this time through. So the not understanding it is something not yet arrived, we don't yet understand it. If you reckon time only as something that does nothing but pass by into not understanding it as something not yet arrived or not yet understood, Although our understandings are time, there is no chance for them to be drawn in by time. When we set up understandings, those understandings, those discriminations, they're time too, but we don't allow them to be drawn in by time. We separate ourselves. That's actually what we were saying before. When you set up an understanding, you're separating yourself from time. Now those are times too, but we're, it's like that, you know, just missing it.

[60:10]

He said in the note that When you reckon time as only something that does nothing, does nothing but pass by, and you do not understand it as something not yet arrived, this also means not yet understood. Right. So it seems like that, it refers back to our idea that time flies, or a misunderstanding. Right. Like... So our time, our reckoning of time... That we don't get it. I mean, we haven't penetrated it deeply enough. Right, right. Yeah, he's asking us to look at how we see our time. There has never been anyone who, while taking time to be coming and going, has penetrated to see it as a being-time dwelling in its dharma position. So this next section, he kind of goes into deeper ways of seeing time. And he doesn't invalidate any of them, but he just kind of goes beyond. So there's never been anyone who, while taking time to be coming and going, has also penetrated to see it as a being-time just dwelling in its dormant position.

[61:13]

So if you think time is coming and going, you don't yet see that it's just fully there, doing what it's doing. Then what chance have you then for a time to break through the barrier to total emancipation, to be free from being-time and dormant dwelling position? even if there was someone who knew that dwelling position, who would be able truly to give an utterance that preserved what she had thus gained? Yeah, who is that? Yeah, so even if you can see through the ways in which you're caught by time, who's the one who could actually make some... An utterance is not like an explanation, it's like... to say kapatsapatchi or to say flash or, you know, flash isn't such an utterance. The other one I was thinking of, I went to a baseball game once and some outfielder made this great catch and somebody near me yelled, what it is! I thought that was great. That's not in your dictionary.

[62:18]

That's in Oakland. Yes. It was Oakland. And even were someone able to give such utterance continually, he could still not help groping to bring his original face into immediate presence. So all he's saying here is like, you know, that no matter how much we realize this, no matter how much we actually inhabit our time, experience our being time, that there's more to see about it. I think that's the main thing in that section. There's more to see and more to say and more to inhabit. Left entirely to the being time of the unenlightened, both Bodhi and Nirvana would be being time, which was nothing more than a mere aspect of going and coming. but no nets or cages long remain. All is the immediate presencing here and now of being-time."

[63:21]

So presencing is a verb, I like that. All is the immediate presencing here and now of being-time. All of these things, all of these being-times. There's an English philosopher, I'm forgetting my notes on this. But he had the very first, no he called it firstness, secondness, and thirdness. And in the firstness he describes as near possibilities, which is before it even happens. And then the secondness is the event, I guess, no the thirdness is when you begin to analyze or something. But it seems to me he's taking that part, there has never been It's almost like he's saying, living in the mere possibility.

[64:36]

Yeah, it sounds like that's part of it. But I think he would say that coming and going is actually being time. It's one way of seeing being time. I mean, it's actually the usual way. It's the way we've been trained for decades to see our time as we're coming and going. And one of the names of Buddha is to come and go in lessness, Tathagata. Or to come and go as such, Nyora. So... Maybe it's an encouragement to keep looking even though you've looked. Yeah, I think he wants to be encouraging rather than discouraging. And I think, you know, we can understand it that way, that when he says that all is the immediate presence in here and now of being time, he's not being, he's not negating any of the being times.

[65:42]

So, jumping ahead a couple sentences, everywhere else in the universe, the very last line, The hosts of being-times in water and earth are now immediately manifesting themselves through my exerting my full power. I really want to read up to, at least up to, the story. I've got a few more minutes. Entities of every manner and kind being time in the realms of darkness and light are all the immediate manifestation of my full exertion, all the passing career of my full exertion. So when he says my, he's not talking about Dogon, he's saying one's own full exertion. One must learn in practice that unless it is one's self exerting itself right now, not a single Dharma or a single thing can immediately manifest itself or make a passage either. One must learn in practice. So this is not theoretical, this is like how do we do this in practice in our actual life?

[66:52]

That unless it is oneself exerting itself right now, not a single dharma or a single thing can immediately manifest itself or make a passage either. So there's no time that exists outside of oneself doing it. I think this is one of the most important sentences in this whole essay. or points to something really basic that's in the whole essay. The last sentence in page 124, the last sentence in the first paragraph. One must learn in practice, so in the practice of watching one's time, in the practice of watching one's experience, of watching one's life, one must learn, one should learn, please do learn, that unless it is one's own self exerting itself right now, Not a single Dharma or a single thing can immediately manifest itself or make a passage either. Unless you're there doing it, it's not time. So any time that is there, you are there, actually.

[67:56]

And you can not see that. So one can feel like a victim, like one's being victimized by time. You know, here I am and I have to sit in this office and I can't leave until it gets to be four o'clock. And one can imagine a time where one is not really present, where one is being kind of subjected to whatever it is that you think what your experience is. Is there a difference between the tunnel of light, the tunnel of death, the tunnel of In this case, I don't, I think, he's not talking about that specifically here. You're talking about like intermediate stage between life and death and rebirth. That's something that he does talk about in different essays. In the one that we chant before the abbot's lecture, he talks about many lifetimes.

[68:59]

So that's part of this way of looking at things. But that's not what he's talking about here. From what he's talking about here, he would say all of those are being time. And I'm stretching here, this is a guess, but my sense is that he would say being time includes, if you accept that theory of life, intermediate state, like the Tibetans talk about, rebirth, all of those are times of being. So as long as there's a self present, I guess that's where your question's coming from. I don't know, I have to think about that some more. I don't know, he doesn't, he's not talking about, he's talking about this quick flash of life here. So, if you see a dead person as actually a potential new person, then this would apply. If you don't, then maybe that's not a being type. That's just my immediate response to that.

[70:02]

Yeah, it's a relevant question, but it's sort of not what he's talking about right here. You must not construe this passing to be like a squall of wind and rain moving from place to place. The entire world is not changeless and immovable, nor unprogressing and unregressing. The whole world is passing in serial continuity. Then here's the thing about spring. And there's an example, he talks about that in his Gendrokoan. Spring is not the, how does he say it? We chant it sometimes. Do not think of spring. In the winter, in the beginning of summer. Right. Right, it's just spring. So this is the same example. So do not call spring the end of spring. winter or the beginning of summer. Spring is just spring, completely, and it's in passage the whole time, but it's not the aftermath of, it's not the after winter, it's spring. I think he's saying the same thing here. You should learn and practice that passing takes place without anything extraneous.

[71:07]

That's another underlying sentence. You should learn and practice. It's kind of like the one just above it. You should learn in practice that passing takes place without anything extraneous. So I like this statement that William Blake made, anything that can be imagined is an image of the truth. So any way of seeing time is actually a true image of time. I think that's completely in line with what he's saying. So you should learn in practice that passing takes place without anything extraneous. Everything that happens, so we say there's no coincidences sometimes, or everything that happens has its cause and effect, has its meaning. So everything that passes, that happens, is completely happening in passing. For example, springtime's passage invariably passes through spring. Passage is not spring, but since it is the springtime's passage,

[72:09]

passing attains the way now in the time of spring. All of this you, so Dogen says this kind of thing often, all this you must give careful and repeated examination. So these things he's saying are not something that we can read once and get what he's saying, obviously. But, you know, each time you go through it, something else can pop out or you can start, you know, you can get a feeling for it. It's not something you can understand in our usual way of understanding. It's like reading poetry or listening to music. If you keep going back over it, there's ways in which you can hear it fresh. And it's about, so the main thing that I feel is that we should see that it's about our own lives. It's about how we live our own lives. And when we see that, and we can start to be able to get that, then we can read Dogen and really get a lot from him. He really has a lot. I mean, it's just so rich. Being Time and Olive Dogen. So if you can learn how to flow with his music, so to speak, or to dance with the way he uses language, then you can start to get a feeling for how to move in this kind of way of non-dualistic understanding, of totally taking on your whole life.

[73:27]

So the last thing before the story, in speaking of a passage, if you imagine the place of passage lies somewhere outside, And the dharma of the one doing the passage moves toward the east, like the spring, through a hundred thousand worlds, over a hundred thousand couples of time. That is the result of your not giving your single-minded devotion to the soul practice of the Buddha way. So if you imagine that this place of time passing lies somewhere outside, and that the path of one doing the movement, or the passing, moves away, That's the kind of view of time that he's been talking about from the beginning, is where you separate yourself from time. You estrange yourself from your own time, you make a gap. You think of time as something outside. Now there's still, there's the clock. He's not saying that there's not that part of time, but you have to see it more deeply too, to be able to enjoy your time.

[74:36]

in the same time that you don't ignore, you know, that when it's nine o'clock, it's nine o'clock. It's like he's including all of that. So, we made it to the stories, and it's not quite nine o'clock. So, questions, comments, reflections on any of those passages? There's a lot there. There's obviously a whole lot there. Well, I have a question that probably pertains, but maybe not really. Or it's not even a question. It's a little bit of laziness, because if anybody has some hint on it, or a question, I'd be interested. But I think this, I think I was in, I saw us in, or I don't know, just thinking, and what, the thought that occurred to me was, I was imagining, let's say, like, let's say, not seeing someone for a long time and how it can seem like a hundred years or a million years, you know, when there's this long time, you want to be somewhere or see someone or something, you haven't seen your friend forever and it just seems like a million years since you've been together.

[75:54]

And then you see them, you know, you meet and all of a sudden it's like no time has passed at all. It's like you're right back in step or whatever. And I thought, oh, this has to do with blinking and winking, I'm sure. Or it seems in this way, what we've been talking about, how moment is all time. But anyway, that's kind of as far as my little tired mind could get. I think that's an interesting situation that you're describing. I think it's relevant to working with this text to bring up that kind of situation of seeing somebody you haven't seen for a long time and an old friend that you continue the conversation with. We all have old people who we meet them after a while and we just are there with them.

[76:59]

So that's interesting. to try and bring up situations like that and see how that relates to our views of time is actually part of the exercise of this essay. Right. Well, I thought probably everybody in this room has had that experience at least once, so maybe somebody would have a little insight or could say some more words. The passage of time kind of freezes where the friendship was before and the incremental disappointments that happen on a day-to-day basis don't build up because there's that time that was between then and now of the old friendship.

[78:04]

Well, there's also this multi-dimensionality of time that we can move back and we can jump around in time. At least part of our experience is that we can do that. I mean, we can't ignore cause and effect, but part of our experience is that we can do that. We can see somebody from the past, or then the other side is you meet somebody you've never seen before, but you have this instant kind of connection with. Well, what's that about? Is that somebody that you're remembering from the future? You know? I mean, well, yeah, somebody that you have some connection with, maybe it's past lives or maybe it's just that part of you recognize them from from your future friendship. I don't know. We can see it. The more we can kind of be flexible about how we see these things, it kind of gives us more juice in there. So let's just say a couple little things about this blinking eyes and stuff, because I know that At least Sonia's very interested in this stuff. And she's leaving. And she's leaving. There's just a couple little, there's this thing about, he talks about these in the notes here, in Wandel's notes, but raising, so eyebrows and eyes, any, this is true of any koan, so this is a koan, right, this is a Zen story, and it works on lots of levels, and on one way it works on the most literal level, and it's just about that.

[79:27]

But also there is in it a kind of symbolism, So eyebrows, so he talks about eyes being water and eyebrows being mountains, or form and emptiness, or, you know, one can see these as images of something, and it works on that level as well as working on the most literal level. But think about blinking, and what does that have to do with time? It's like, are those gaps in time? And thinking about raising eyebrows, wide-eyed, you know, to really look at something and kind of absorb it. When you see something astonishing, your eyes suddenly go wide, you raise your eyebrows. Does that mean you're absorbing more time than if you're blinking? Anyway, look at what this story has to say about time. And then he talked, remember in the beginning he talked about, for the time being, being on the mountaintop, being in the bottom of the deepest ocean.

[80:28]

So Eyebrows and Eyes kind of echoes that. There's a kind of, this is poetry, this is literary, as well as being, I mean, more than it is philosophy. So one has to see these images in this way and be affected by them and see the resonance of that. And there's this famous statement about being like a mosquito biting an iron bull. So this thing about reaching and not reaching in the second story, for the time being the mind reaches but the word does not. What else is the mind reaches but the word does not? One can also say the intention, so clearly reach an intention. In character for mind there could be intention and expression. So one's intention gets there but their expression doesn't. So you have an intention to do something, but you can't quite express it. Sometimes the expression gets it, but the intention doesn't. Patient-limited. Well, yeah. Reaches and not reaching.

[81:29]

What does that mean? When we get into koans, even more than the stuff before, we have to look at this language with kind of intensity. If anybody wants to stay later, I'll tell a story. If anybody's going to Tassajara and is not going to be here next week, I can tell a story about this Gweshe and his mission. Then the last thing, just Dogen's comment, it's the very last poem, letting him raise his eyebrows and think his eyes as a half being time and a wrong being time. And what is this letting him about? Anyway, these three stories are lots of fun. And there's a lot going on there. I'm not completely clear how it relates to the stuff he's been talking about in Being Time, but let's see if we can bring the kind of sensitivity we have about time based on the stuff we've done up to here and looked at to these stories. Yeah, keep working. Send us the answer.

[82:31]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_83.51