This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. Welcome at Green Gulch at this nice summer foggy day as we often have it in the summer here. Thank you for coming all. Welcome at Zoom. I also want to welcome especially the Stevenson High School, which is with us since a few days here and joining us for the sittings. I want to thank the abbot and Tanto for inviting me. They can't be here today. Tanto, they are participating in one of the 100-year Soto Zen in America events down in LA.

[01:10]

And so I want to thank them. I also have a personal anniversary today. It's my 10-year wedding anniversary. So I also want to give special thanks to my wife for bearing with me for 10 years now already. That's quite an achievement. And so anniversaries, I think, is a great introduction for me because I would like to talk today or explore with you today time. Time. And Who would be better than to consult our founder of Soto Zen, Aihei Dogen, who lived like 1200 to 1200, I don't know, 60 or so, in Japan.

[02:13]

And he was the founder of Soto Zen, and he wrote a famous classical, which is called Time Being. And so I will use that classical a little bit as a frame of this talk. And at the beginning of the fascicle, he explains himself what he means with time being. And there he says, for the time being here means time itself is being and all being is time. That's essentially what I want to say during this talk. We could just stop here, but I have some more time. I got an amazing clock here from my G-shop. It shows exactly what time it is right now.

[03:15]

And so I want to go to a later paragraph. And there he says, do not think that time... merely flies away if time merely flies away you would be separate from time the reason you do not clearly understand the time being is that you think of time only as passing not think that time merely flies away. What do we think of time? I could say like, yeah, it's now 10.25.

[04:19]

And I came in here like maybe 10 minutes ago. I'll continue maybe for another 30 minutes, and then you can go out and have tea. And tomorrow is a holiday. And all of that, when you hear all of that, when we hear all of that, that sounds, I mean, very usual to us. Maybe not as an introduction for a Dharma talk, but we deal with time in this yesterday, tomorrow. next day we deal with it every day and we are very used to it so it's very natural and intuitive and we don't see we don't realize how many assumptions are actually behind us when when we talk about time when we live within our concept of time

[05:30]

And so I want to explore a little bit with you the assumptions which we have. And maybe the first one and the biggest one is time exists, like time, past and future. Sure. But of course, anybody here who has experienced past and future, in real life? No, of course not. I mean, most of us, maybe in the movies, but most of us say, of course not, but, and then we have lots of arguments, of course, how that would fit and why that would all work. But you might be surprised to hear, or I was surprised to learn, actually, that many thousand years ago, like in the

[06:32]

all Greek already, like Plato, Socrates, Aristoteles, there were discussions about time, and there were some really serious thinkers, as you can imagine, and they concluded that time does not exist. Time is a made-up thing of human mind. Some of them concluded that time And even further, they say change does not exist. Change is a pure illusion. And so I just want to bring that question in our assumptions. And the further assumption is, of course, what Dogen then brings up, like the second stage, time exists and time flies away. It flies from... the future, to the present, into the past.

[07:33]

Just one direction. And then what comes with that? Like Dogen says, we make time something separate from us. We say time exists. It passes by and it's separate from us. Like now, I mean, we have a certain time now, 10, 20 something. And we probably have the feeling, or I have the assumption like, yeah, it's that time anyway. It's not dependent on if I'm sitting here or not. It's not really... Time is there if I'm there, if I'm not there. So that's our standard daily perception of time.

[08:39]

And all these perceptions are pretty deeply ingrained in us. People find out there are even different parts of the brain which deal with future assumptions or memories of the past and so on. So it's not surprising that we really live in that world of the concept. Not that we were born with that. I think as babies, we didn't have a concept of time. And I hear like two to three year old kids, they learn to distinguish between now and not now. And I don't know if you've ever tried to tell it. three-year-old or so to say like, oh, be ready in five minutes and see what happens. And what I learned in this teaching is like, yeah, in five minutes falls in the category of not now, which means it's just as good as never.

[09:46]

And then when we grow up, I think six to eight years old, then we learn like, oh, we can deal with past, present and future. And then we grow up in our cultures. And the cultures have very different conceptualization of time. There are some which are more in time is making circles. And then there are others where time is more moving on in a linear way. It's more the Christianity type where it's moving into a linear way. And this different bringing up in our cultures just affect also our daily view and our daily importance of time and how that goes. There are some cultures, for example, I mean, here it's very normal that, for example, if I'm late, if I would be late for this time, I would apologize and feel pretty bad for being late. And then there are cultures where the priority is on bringing together in the meeting, interacting like we plan to.

[11:01]

Being late is not a reason to apologize because it's not that important. So just for us to know that bringing up of our concept of time really forms us, how we live in time. daily life with it and encourages us also to be flexible and tolerant to maybe other peoples of use and picture of time oh yeah i wanted to to make a little test here because i read people to to just demonstrate how people have different feelings of time. If you would point out to somebody like, where's the future? Where would you point? I don't show you. Just point to where the future is. Okay.

[12:04]

Good, good, good. Oh, yeah. So I just tell you because you can't look around. So there are some, maybe the majority, I would say like, pointing to the front, a very common destination for the future. I saw at least one person pointing to the right that comes often with cultures which write from the left to the right, like from the past to the future. And I saw one person who pointed behind. There are actually cultures who say like, yeah, The future is behind. That's where we don't see. We see the past. That's where I can look into my past, but I can't see the future. It creeps up from behind. And then there's, I think in New Guinea, there's a culture which says the future comes from the top.

[13:06]

That's where the stream, the river flows down towards us. Anyway, I was very excited when I when I read about this. But now I want to go back to the original question. What is time? What is time? And does it exist separate from us? I mentioned the philosopher's struggles at the beginning. And just for my personal preference, I want to go a tiny bit into Western science view about that please apologize if that doesn't suit you um but just like our or my usual conception of time and our world is based on um what westerners call like newton's classical physics i mean you might have heard newton like this was this

[14:12]

big physicist guy in the 1700s or so who lived there and made up all the classic physical laws like how the planets move around and how the stone falls when you throw it. So that was a major, it was a major change. And it represents in us actually, in most of, sorry that I say us, in, yeah, I would still say maybe in most of us, how we see the world. Like there's material things out there and they follow the laws. And most importantly, like they follow the laws of time. In Newton's worldview, which is still guiding our everyday life. I mean, if you're not in quantum physics, that's a different world. But for our everyday life, we still live in Newton's physics and there time is a real thing. Time is a thing and it's independent and separate from us, just as we like it to be. It goes from future in one way to the past.

[15:13]

And in addition, there is a now, which is somewhere, minor in the middle. And the now is for everybody the same in the universe at the same time. And then 1920s came Einstein and messed it all up. He brought the relativity theory up, and you probably haven't noticed much. I haven't noticed much of going that in my mind. But for you to know, since the relativity theory, which everybody accepts as a reality, everybody, sorry, scientists accept as a reality, it means like there is first nothing like time separate from anything. Time does not exist on its own. Time with relativity only exists together with space. It's a fourth dimension.

[16:14]

It exists together with space, but the fourth dimension doesn't exist separately, as you might. It's all one clump. And so there's something which he called space-time, the construct, and that includes not only space, you might say, every object includes us. So there's no separation since then anymore on time, which you could justify. And also... or maybe even more important, the whole thing between past, future, and present gets all totally relative. It all depends on the standpoint where you are. Depending on the standpoint, some events might be for this standpoint tomorrow, for the other one yesterday, and for a third one now, and the other way around. So all of this got completely mixed up. And I want to... just quote Einstein himself, saying, the distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

[17:23]

So does time exist or not? at least not in the way we think of. And it seems like somehow, not intentionally, Dogen and Einstein agree that this is not a separate thing from us. But going back, this might be all a nice theory. Okay, but what problem is it to have our standard view of time. What's the issue with feeling time passes and time is a separate thingy from us? I mean, that Einstein teaches that, I understand. I mean, he was a scientific nerd. But why does Dogen teach that? I mean, Dogen is, at least for me, one who really is into liberating beings.

[18:39]

So why does he stress that teaching so much? Do not think that time merely flies away because then you think time is separate from us. And so maybe just an example right now I want to go into. what's the problem right now, seeing time separate from us? I mean, what's that problem? Like, what could my problem be? My problem could be, like, I watch, I look what the time is to see, like, oh, do I have enough time still for the rest of my talk? It's one tiny. But you might think, like, oh, my God, how long is that going on? will that ever finish?

[19:43]

Or will there be enough tea left outside when I get there? Or you might think, this is a real waste of time. And I want you to look at that. I mean, these assumptions, what we have, like, this is maybe like a very benign little thing, but for us to make all this exemption, like, I want to get out here, or I need some time to rest, or This is really like wasting my time. They come with us, seeing time separate from us. And they only come this way. And So the same you might see, of course, when you explore the bigger challenges of your life, just to look at where your separateness of time comes in there.

[20:52]

And I feel like that is one of the major reasons why Dogen wants us to look at it, to see how this separateness of time creates, makes our suffering. How that leads to us longing for the future or hanging into the past and not being right here in our lives. I actually saw a little YouTube video of Krishnamurti. And interestingly, he was asked about fear. And he said, there are two reasons for fear.

[21:57]

And one is time, our perception of time. I want to bring up, I think at this point, another very famous story. I don't know what the source is of it, but I think in Buddhist circles, it's often quoted. And that is of a monk, I think, getting water in a forest. And then there is a tiger creeping up through the grass. And he notices that. And he, she, runs, and she comes to a cliff, and then they decide to jump. And just while jumping, they manage to hold on a vine and are hanging on the cliff.

[23:00]

And then looking down, they see another tiger, just waiting for, I don't know, breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And above, it's like the tiger of the past above and the tiger of the future below. And then, you might know that story, they notice a strawberry just next to them. And so they pick the berry, plug it into their mouths and enjoy life. I don't think there's anything more reported about this story. But for me, it's like, how do we, how do I become like this monk?

[24:08]

You know, like living in a world where you feel like, oh, they're just waiting for you to gobble you up. One down there, one up there. How in the middle of this crazy world, how can we be ourselves? How can we enjoy life, whatever that is? And I feel like that's what Buddhism wants to teach us. And there are many very good hints given to us to come to this time being, to this moment, to this now. And one is just like as simple as remembering.

[25:10]

remembering now, or remembering our body, remembering our breath. And you can find also some help to break a little bit through the habits of our chopping the time up into past and future. Like there's, for example, the lineage of venerable Tishnatan, who uses a mindfulness bell. I think we used it here in the kitchen also for a while. Just reminds you, oh yeah, yeah, it's a strawberry. And of course,

[26:12]

One of our main practices, Zazen. Zazen is a great field to play, to play, to find ourselves, to find our time being. And it's to, it's to explore to our suffering of feeling separate from time. Maybe to find out also one of the reasons why maybe we as humans are so much into making concepts of time, are so much into chopping it up, is that we have something to hold on to. Because not having anything to hold on to, being in the now, is at least strange. If not, maybe a little bit scary.

[27:18]

Because it's like being in the stream and I'm not in control. I'm not in control of the now. And that's what we are practicing now. Maybe I want to briefly come back to Dogen, because he himself, of course, was totally hooked by time. And she reports a story when he was seeing himself as really not realizing time being. And I think it's in the show book where he

[28:22]

the story he was working in China he traveled from Japan to China to look for the truth and he was in a monastery there and he saw Tenzo an old head cook he had already bent back and he had like eyebrows like feathers and he was working in the heat very hard. He didn't have a hat on, and so he was sweating. And so Dogenfeld, compassion with him, went up to him like, oh man, why are you doing this really hard work? He was drying mushrooms on, I think there needs to be a mushroom on every single tile. So it's a lot of work because they ate lots of mushrooms, I heard. And so he's like, good old man, why are you doing all this work? Can't you just, at your age, maybe sit zazen or study texts, would that not be a much more, much better use of your time?

[29:33]

And you could ask other younger monks to do the job for you. And his response was, others are not me. And Dogen was struck by that, but he came back and he said like, yeah, you know, but I really would like you to rest and find some time to take care of yourself. And the old tensor replied, what other time do you want me to wait for? I think that was quite an imprint for Dogen. And maybe that was how he came to be writing, this time being fascicle, which I can recommend very much and which I want to read now.

[30:45]

Maybe just another little paragraph, which for me touches very much of what Dogen wants to transmit. He doesn't get into, oh, do this and this technique, which is helpful. He does it his way by, he's a poet. So he just draws a picture that guides us in his poems. And that's the last things I want to, I want to read. Dogen says, see each thing in this entire world as a moment of time. The rat is time. The tiger is time.

[31:46]

Sentient beings are time. Buddhas are time. Practice attaining enlightenment. And enter nirvana. It's nothing but being. It's nothing but time. Reflect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment. I want to finish with that. Maybe add just one comment of Shunryu Suzuki, our founder here of San Francisco Zen Center.

[32:55]

He says, you may say I must do something this afternoon, but actually there is no this afternoon. At one o'clock you will eat your lunch to eat your lunch itself. is one o'clock. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our programs are made possible by the donations we receive. Please help us to continue to realize and actualize the practice of giving by offering your financial support. For more information, visit sfzc.org. and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[33:49]

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