Hello again. So in this ongoing reading of Zen My Beginner's Mind, we are now in the section, third section, third and final section called Right Understanding. And the title of this talk is Transiency. So the teaching that heads this talk right under the title, they usually pick a sentence out from the body of the talk. to kind of highlight the choice of topics, also made by the editors. So in this case, transiency. And then they pulled out from the talk the sentence that we should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. We should find perfect existence through imperfect existence. So I think this is a pretty familiar way of talking to most of you who've been around the Zen, camps for any period of time, that we have this teaching that's basically about the two truths.

[01:21]

Not taking one or the other as the solo, the only truth. And there are many, many examples. The Buddha gives this teaching in the very first sentence of his very first lecture. Avoid the extremes, O monks, of there is something or there isn't something. He uses the example of devoting your life to luxury, to indolence, or on the other hand, devoting your life to asceticism. So these are two of the extremes that he names. But we can put in any of the two extremes that are in our language, and there are many, right and left, wrong and right, up and down, inside and outside. Our language is basically made up of extremes. And Buddha said, you know, Avoid the extremes and find the middle way. What's between the extremes? Not eliminate them, but use them as a gauge to find out, is this the right way?

[02:22]

Oh, maybe that's too far. Maybe it's this way. Was this the right way? Oh, and that's too far now. Now, it's a little bit like a sailboat. We're kind of looking and we're feeling the directionality of our lives and of the influences on our lives, just like the sail feels the directionality and influence of the wind. And without... you know, cooperating without joining into that suggestion coming from the wind, then very likely we can just kind of knock our little boat right over, you know? So we want to go with the conditions that are coming into our lives. So sometimes I like to use various examples for the two truths, but one that I've been mentioning and reviewing in my own head is a very nice one because it comes to mind whenever I do this... very familiar activity of walking. So, you know, left foot, relative truth. Right foot, ultimate truth. You know, left foot, relative truth. Right foot, ultimate truth. You know, so left foot, right foot.

[03:24]

With each foot belonging to the same body, right? They're just parts of this one entity. And yet they come in these different... They look like they're different. It looks like the body... reality itself is made up of all these parts you know it looks like that and still there's the unified field of the universe that holds all of it so within the universe there appear to be all these parts and that's what we're doing here and that's what we are concerned about is the that we're parts we're parts of the whole and it's kind of challenging to be a part you know like the sailor with the boat it's challenging to find our own way to find our own balance as we walk. So, you know, even though these two feet appear to be separate, you know, we depend on them behaving as if they're separate as well. We need them not to act like just one thing that we hop on. We need our legs to act like they're separate and to behave as if they're separate in order for us to walk.

[04:28]

So that's the relative truth, the truth about our relationships, the relationships of the parts. each one to the other. The closer in hand the other parts are, the more influence they have on one another. You know, all these objects around me and my house have a much greater influence on me at the moment than the cars driving by on Highway 1. So this is how we live. We live within this context of parts and also of unity, of a kind of oneness that is not... Oneness is an extreme... And broken into parts is an extreme. So what's the middle way between it's all about parts or it's all about oneness? Well, the Buddha said, leaping clear, Dogen said, leaping clear of the many, of the multitude and the one. You know, don't get stuck in one or the other. I like the image of leaping. You know, Suzuki Roshi was very fond of frogs. Leaping clear of anything that would trap you into one-sidedness, one-sided thinking.

[05:29]

You know, oftentimes at Zen Center people will say, well, you know, this is how it is, but on the other hand, and I thought, why do they always say on the other hand? I think part of that was just to try and train ourselves, not to think that we knew the answer. You know, I know, and on the other hand, maybe I don't know. So this is both a practice encouragement and a way of trying to understand, you know, the waters in which we swim. The nature of our existence here. So we need this relative truth. We need the truth of our everyday lives to be true enough. True enough. Truthiness. It needs to be true enough so that we can function. And to be what we humans call common sense. It's not just common sense. The things we talk about all day long are just common sense. That doesn't mean they're true or accurate. We've kind of... We shoot at and around the bullseye, but don't always hit it. It's like, I'm not so sure exactly.

[06:31]

But hopefully, sometimes at least, we're in the vicinity of the target. So there's a lot of things that are common sense for us that we talk about all the time, we use as part of our everyday vocabulary. Things like time, you know what time is it? And space, where are we? Where am I? Matter, substance, solidity, energy, how I get from here to there. when I'm walking, gravity, why I don't fly off into space. When I try to walk down the road here, I manage to stay, my feet stay on the ground. Well, that's odd. Why is that? So if we look deeply into any one of these aspects of what makes up our common sense, what we come up with, according to the Buddha and what, according to modern science, is a very uncommon nonsense. The truth is uncommon nonsense to our ears. So I think you might know that since I've mentioned it a lot, that I am now in my second reading of Carlo Rovelli's book, The Order of Time.

[07:37]

And, you know, it's so lovely and wonderful and challenging all at the same time that it's kind of like a good murder mystery. And I was like, what? You know, and I go back over it again, like, what? But I think he's really expressing Buddhist principles in terms of what science is coming up with. It's like I remember talking with a nuclear physicist, and also we have an astrophysicist that comes to Green Gulch. And basically, when I talk to either one of them, the conclusion is, wow. What we're finding is just wow. It's just amazing what's showing up. as, you know, inside the magic sphere of our common sense, there's this incredible uncommon sense. So in Ravelli's book, The Order of Time, he casually and poetically debunks all of the primary elements that we utilize in order to carry out the activities of our daily life, you know, such as the ones I just mentioned.

[08:44]

Time, space, Matter, energy, gravity, you know, can't find them. They're very elusive, very hard. We had to get a hold of any of those things of the ungraspable nature of our reality at every level. So not only does he and the scientific community debunk these terms and what they are said to refer to at both the local and at the cosmic level, at the nuclear level and at the at the astrological level, they inform us that such terms, such as time, only exist in relation to what we humans think of them. Our life is a creation of our mind, something that the Buddha said, you know, 2,500 years ago, without a telescope or a microscope. Our life is a creation of our mind. So on the back of Ravelli's book, it says that he invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike.

[09:55]

And I would add, including Buddhist philosophers like Dogen Zenji, whose fascicle called Time Being would be very much up Ravelli's alley. You know, it's the very same kind of speculation. And I'm going to read a little portion of that fascicle. Fastical means a lecture or a talk. So Dogen gave many, many lectures, and they were recorded by his disciples. And now we have them in various collections. One of them is a collection that was printed by the Zen Center many years ago called Moon in a Dewdrop. So if you want a nice sampling of Dogen's talks, that Moon in a Dewdrop is a very good place to start. I don't know what press it was. It was... Yeah, yeah. North Point Press. So probably you can find it online. You all know much better than I about how you can find things these days, but I have an old copy from North Point Press.

[10:56]

So Cavalli says that Rovelli, excuse me, I keep confusing him with Cavallo Point here in Marin. Rovelli says tears down our assumptions about time one by one, revealing this strange universe where at the most fundamental level, time just disappears. Can't find it. There's no directionality for molecules or Higgs bosons or anything. They're not going in a direction like from the past to the present to the future. That's not happening. There's just this... There is no time at the fundamental level of the universe. And then Covelli suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective. Better understood, starting from the structure of our brain and the emotions in our bodies than from the physical universe. So he's like his instruction to turn the light around and study the self, study the mind, study the mind and the creations of the mind.

[12:04]

This is the direction where we're going to find time and place and person. All of these things that we tend to externalize and think of being outside of ourselves or having been there, whether we're here or not, you know. But actually he's suggesting, you know, this theoretical physicist, that the place to look is in the structure of our brain and of our emotions, not at the physical universe. So then I was reading this talk by Suzuki Roshi, called transiency, and then repeatedly drawn back to Ravelli's scientific approach to the same topic, and that is transiency, another term for what appears to us as the flow of time, this flow of time. You know, a flow that we humans describe as having started in the past, you know, it's had a beginning, and it's arriving now, we call the present, big fat present, and going on from here to create the future. So past, present, future, time.

[13:05]

So according to modern science, it just doesn't exist, except as a set of transient relationships and events that combine to make for us our identities. So, you know, here we are. Here we are. We've been formed. Each of us is a formation that is a result of innumerable, incalculable various events and relationships from beginningless, From the beginning of whatever this is, you know, we can say the universe or before the Big Bang or however we like to think, as far back as we can think, all of the changes and events and causes and conditions, as we say in Buddhism, all the causes and conditions that took place from then, whenever that was, till this is me. You know, I'm a result of that, as are each and every one of you. Kind of no big deal, because here we are. It doesn't really matter if we understand how we got here or not, because we're here anyway. You know, just some of us are, you know, whatever, foolish enough to try to figure this out.

[14:11]

You're like, what is it? Where am I? Who am I? What am I doing here? Where is here? You know? So all these are the great questions that the curious have been asking for millennia. You know, like, what is going on here? What is this place? You know, what is time? What is a person? And so on. So I thought I would just invite you to take a minute maybe or minutes or two to think about time passing. What it is for you as an individual? What is it for you when you think about yourself and how you are a creature of time passing? The story that you have told or you repeat or you simply remember as flowing through, your so-called life that go back as far as you can think that come up until like today or what you were just doing 20 minutes ago or what you're doing you know but just before you sat down and what you imagine you're going to be doing you know an hour from now so just take a minute to think about yourself in relation to this question of time you know

[15:23]

not a lot to hold on to in my experience of trying to conjure myself you know what i think of myself like what is it made out of you know but there are a few pointers to see if these got included in your own you know considerations like one of them is i have a unique point of view as do each of you i don't know if you remember the image of indra's net where all the jewels of indra's net reflect all the other jewels that basically indra's net is the universe as a reflection of all these points of view, reflecting all the other points of view. So, you know, each of us is a point of view. That's one of the things that makes us imagine a separation or a self. I have a point of view. And each thing has a point of view. Each person, each object is a point of view. Okay, so that's one thing. So then another thing is that I am a collection of parts. And I depend on those parts for this self to go on living.

[17:24]

I depend on my legs and my arms and my torso and my head and my heart and my brain and so on. So I, this person, is a collection of parts. And then another thing that seems most important of all is that I'm a collection of memories. So this is a very interesting function of... of us human beings. Other creatures, too, remember things. They can remember where they stored their nuts. They can remember all kinds of ways about their ways of living. But we seem to have really gone overboard in creating memories. The way we're built, the way we're made, includes this amazing capacity to hold on to things that have actually passed away from the present, like what you had for dinner. You might be able to remember that. Maybe not last week. maybe last Thanksgiving. You know, so some of those memories are called long-term memories that go back to your childhood or a couple years back or something particularly amazing that happened or something horrible that happened.

[18:29]

But all of those memories, whether long-term or short-term, are kind of woven together by this function that we have of remembering, you know. And as Revelli says, in terms of current neurological scientific studies, that the brain is really a mechanism for collecting memories from the past in order to use them continually to predict the future. So the purpose of all those memories, all those things that we hold as, oh, I know how to get home from here, or I know where in the grocery store to find the milk, or any of these other things that we have created patterns of behavior for our survival. So by... By learning, by remembering various features that happened to me throughout my life, I'm able to be safer. I learned how to drive. I remembered how to drive. I remembered how to signal for a right turn. I can remember all kinds of things that allow me to function in meeting what's coming, what's next.

[19:33]

So this is an amazing quality that we have. We can continually do our best to predict the future. course, not perfectly. We all know that. I didn't know that was coming. But that's part of what we as humans, that's part of our specialty, is using our memory to predict the future. So given the fact that the past is literally completely gone and the future has not arrived, it's within our minds, back to this idea, that it's within our minds that the passage of time for this person is being created. You know, I'm an ongoing production of a novel, a long-term novel featuring a person called Fu. I'm writing a novel. You're all writing a novel. Some people even write novels about their lives, autobiographies. We can do that. That's an amazing thing. So Ravelli then quotes St. Augustine. I'm not sure what century I meant to look up when St. Augustine was around. I don't really know. Medieval ages, medieval times, I'm pretty sure.

[20:38]

But anyway, he, like all of us who are, you know, trapped in these stories that we make up about ourselves and about time, was thinking about this. He was a monastic. So a lot of times monastics think about really obscure things because they don't have a lot of other things to do. So they're sitting around and they're not that busy. And so they get to think about things like time and so on. features of our lives. So stories about this person that lead us to believe in ourselves are really believe in ourselves as things, as solidities. You know, the problem with the way we think is that we think, we think ourself into being a thing. You know, I'm a thing, not a process as a series of processes like storytelling is a process. So, so one of the things that we think exists, is this thing called time.

[21:40]

We think there is time. It's independent of the world that's around us. You know, stories which we conclude, in fact, are inside of us. They're not about something going on outside of us. You know, this is a tricky little shift. I think that Suki Roshi's talking about in this teaching story, what Dogen's talking about in the fascicle, I'm going to read a little bit of that to you, and what Ravelli's talking about. We need to unbelieve the way we think about self and time. These are critical truths that we may not like, you know, because they kind of disrupt our way of moving around, moving through the world when things are not so solid. There aren't things. They're just processes of change, constant change, okay? So it's kind of interesting what Augustine says about this, you know, because he's not right. He's thinking about time. And he says, it's within my mind then. that I measure time. It's within my mind, then, that I measure time.

[22:42]

I must not allow my mind to insist that time is something objective. When I measure time, I'm measuring something in the present of my mind, something in the present of my mind. So when I'm thinking about the past, I'm doing that in the present. And when I'm planning or strategizing for the future, that's happening in the present. So when I measure time, I'm measuring something in the present of my mind. Either this is time, or I have no idea what time is. So he's drawn this really solid conclusion. Either I don't know what time is, or it's something in my mind that's happening in the present. So Suzuki Rishi begins his talk telling us that the basic teaching of Buddhism is this teaching about time, which the Buddha called the truth. of transiency or of change, constant change, that everything changes is the basic truth of each existence.

[23:43]

He then adds that the truth of transiency is also the truth of selflessness, since there is nothing that isn't subject to constant change. So think about that for a sec. Nothing that isn't subject to constant change. So where would there be a self? that remain the same as we imagine ourselves to do throughout this period of our lifespan. But always changing from the moment we were born, before that, from the moment we were conceived, through all of those transformations that made this little thing turn into a baby and then the baby into a teenager and yada, yada, yada, and now I'm getting old and I'm in a retirement center. How did that happen? Well, constant change. All through that, all of those days, every day of that time, that was happening here was unique, a non-repeating universe. Everything that's happened to me is happening to me now has never happened before, and then it will be gone and something else is going to happen.

[24:48]

So, for that reason, we can't really speak of a self that remains constant or outside of this ongoing process of transiency. So, transiency leads to the teaching of no self. Because there's constant change, there's no place for a solidity called a self to abide. It's also changing. Whatever we're pointing to as our self is a matter of process, a matter of change as well. He says that this teaching is also the teaching of nirvana, or of relief of suffering. You know, nirvana, the extinction of suffering. Adding that when we realize the everlasting truth of everything changes, and find our composure in it, we find ourselves in nirvana. That's a very interesting point because, of course, the reason we even care about any of these philosophical issues like time and person and so on, there's no big impact on my life, how I think about it one way or the other.

[25:51]

However, we do care about suffering and we do care about the wish to have a relief of our suffering. And nirvana in Buddhism is understood to be the relief of our suffering. It's the cessation of suffering. So, you know, this nirvana he's talking about is the nirvana like the sailing ship, like the sails of the boat that are finding harmony with the wind, that are moving in a harmonious relationship to the various factors like the ocean and the wind and the direction to get back to the harbor. You know, all of that, all of that, the seaworthiness, of our vessel, of our bodies, and then how we navigate constant change, that's where nirvana, that's where we will find ourselves in a state of relief. One of the definitions of nirvana that I really like is called, I read somewhere, I said, utter contentment.

[26:51]

Nirvana is utter contentment. I can relate to that. I've had moments of utter contentment, you know, where I'm just like, okay, this is... This is good. This is good. And oftentimes, for me, it's things like long-distance travel by train. I love to be on trains. So there's contentment that comes from just moving along with this beautiful scenery just passing by. You're just sitting there relaxed, watching this world just swimming by you. So that's kind of utter contentment in my memory. Evening a meal with friends. is contentment. Watching some skilled athlete climb a rock or ride a wave, great contentment in those kinds of experiences. I used to think of nirvana as something that used to call me into the idea of a meditative absorption and immobility, like kind of frozen.

[27:52]

Ice Nine, if you remember the Kurt Vonnegut book, where the whole world is kind of frozen into a stasis. You know, nothing's moving. It seems like, well, that might be good. That might be the way out of suffering. If nothing moves, you know, just extinguished. Sounds kind of appealing. But I don't think that's really that appealing. I think that seems like might as well just get out of life, you know, forget about it. Just go on to whatever's next, seem immobile enough, you know, those last breaths. I think that's up ahead. But I think right now I want to find the kind of contentment that comes in. in movement and in being in harmonious relationships with other people, with my activities and so on. So I'd rather focus my attention on the activity at hand, you know, to a full release into whatever it is that I happen to be meeting at the moment. Can I really give myself over to whatever's coming, whatever's here now?

[28:54]

You know, that kind of... coming together of the sail and the wind and the water. Can I just move into that space? You know, can I find the contentment in what it is I'm doing, you know, in this kind of big fat moment with a universe of continuous change? So Suzuki Rashi says the reason we suffer is that we can't accept these fundamental facts of our existence, you know, momentariness, transiency, or as we chant at the end of the Heart Sutra. You know, gatte, gatte, paragatte, parasam gatte, bodhisvaha. Meaning, you know, gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond. Awakening, hallelujah. Gatte, gatte, gone, gone. Paragatte, completely gone. Parasam gatte, completely gone beyond. Bodhi, awakening, svaha, hallelujah. So this is kind of the same thing. Gone, gone.

[29:55]

It's already gone. Already gone. Already gone. Like on the train. Already gone. Already gone. But what a wonderful vista as it's passing through. You know, what a wonderful thing for us to see and witness as we pass through life. You know, the constant change. So, as a scientist, Ravelli joins this chorus with statements such as, the world is nothing but change. And this is, again, this is the scientist speaking. The world is nothing but change. The events of the world do not form an orderly queue like the English do. They crowd around chaotically like the Italians. I thought that was rather cute since he's Italian. So the events of the world do not form some orderly queue like the English. They crowd around chaotically like the Italians. And therefore, he says, the entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is of change, not of permanence. not of being, but of becoming, not of things, but of events, of processes, and of happenings, none of which are permanent in time.

[31:02]

And then he adds, the difference between things and events is that things persist in time, and events have a limited duration. So a stone is a prototypical thing, you know, or a mountain or a stone. It's kind of what we think of when we think of a thing. How about a mountain? That's pretty permanent, isn't it? And we can ask ourselves about that permanent thing, you know, where it will be tomorrow. Where will the mountain be tomorrow? So that's pretty common. And conversely, he says, a kiss is an event, and it makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. So this world is made up of a network of kisses, not of stones. Things that are most thing-like, such as stones and mountains, are nothing more than long events. Constant change. Even the mountains are tumbling down. I don't know if any of you saw this years ago. They had a wonderful series. Back when there were DVDs, because I have the DVDs still.

[32:07]

I don't know what I'm waiting for in the future when the DVD player comes back. But anyway, the DVDs were of walking with dinosaurs. And it was so beautifully done that they had the technology down to the extent that you really thought you were seeing dinosaurs. And there were, you know, all kinds of adventures that dinosaurs were having back then. But one of the first things that they showed was a spot in England where they're going to be studying this time warp of dinosaurs appearing and the first living things appearing and so on. And they had this one place, it was in Surrey or something, where right now it's flat. But they go back, you know, millions and millions of years, and there's huge mountains there, which over millions and millions of years come down, and then there's an ocean there, and then there's a mountain again, and then there's a, you know, a lake, and then there's a plain. So this is millions of years of mountains wearing down, that we can't see that, right?

[33:08]

Our eyes, our lifespan is too short. But basically mountains are nothing more than long events. So this notion of a long event is also the best way to describe a human being. You know, we're nothing more than a long, complex event where food and light and information and words and so on enter and exit. It's like a knot of knots in a network of social relationships, a network of chemical processes, a network of emotions exchanged with our own kind. You know, I share my feelings with you. You share your feelings with me. These are networks of processes going on and on and on all the time, continuously. Right now, think of all the processes that are going on. Your blood's circulating, your heart's beating, your chemicals are pumping in and out of your organs to provide you with some kind of, you know, the right temperature for your body. There's all this work going on right now. I'm just sitting here, you know, chatting, chatting away.

[34:11]

So we are best described by what happens rather than by what is. You know, what happens rather than what is. Is is a solidity. That's kind of like the Ice Nine thing. So Suzuki Roshi goes on to say that it is our reluctance to accept the truth of transiency and selflessness that causes us to suffer. So these truths, both scientifically proven, at least for the time being, and philosophically proven by the Buddhist ancestors of ancient times, We're reluctant to accept the truth of transiency. Because we don't like it. We don't like it a lot. And it's our lack of acceptance of this truth that causes us to suffer. We suffer when the things we love pass away, when the things we hate refuse to go, and when the things we don't understand continue to be beyond our grasp. So this is the Buddha's teaching. the truth of suffering and its cause. Suffering caused by our reluctance to accept the truth that everything changes in relationship to everything else.

[35:20]

So therein are the teachings of dependent core rising and emptiness, and all that there is arises in dependence on everything else. You know, as I was saying earlier, everything that I am right now is dependent on everything that's come before me. Everything that went together and came together and all those other things, all that, you know, years and years and centuries and millennia of, you know, sexual encounters between various species of animals and so on. Primates finally coming along and getting in these Homo sapiens and yada, yada, yada. And then somehow, oof, there I am. There we are. It's impossible. The odds are impossible, but here we are. And so we are the result of this dependency on everything else that goes into making us. And therefore, there is, you know, this, what's empty. So divinical arising means that what emptiness is, is that we're empty of some separate existence.

[36:23]

We're empty of what's called own being, empty of being on our own. We're not on our own. We are empty of such a thing as existing on our own. That's what emptiness means. No own being, no separate self. Everything is dependently co-arising, in process. Suzuki Roshi then quotes Dogen Zenji, saying that teaching that does not sound as if it is forcing something on you is not true teaching. Teaching that does not sound as if it's forcing something on you is not true teaching. I think what he's saying basically is that this is tough. It's like, I don't know, but I don't want it. That's too much for me. It's something like that. Well, you're probably on to something that you really want to pay attention to. These teachings are not common sense. They are definitely not our common sense, not what we've been taught. And therefore, it feels like, I don't know. It's a lot to swallow here. And then as Ravelli points out in his chapter called Dynamics as Relation, it isn't the absence of things that causes our sorrow.

[37:35]

It's not the absence itself, not the absence of our loved ones that causes our sorrow. It's affection and love. You know, without affection and love, such absences wouldn't cause us pain at all. You know, we're creatures of emotion. We have feelings. You know, whether they're about something real or not real. You know, those entities that we have been created here, that we are, we love each other. We have this kind of, we're wired also to be attracted to one another. Don't want to hang out together. You know, we're a species that likes to hang out together. We also like to fight with each other. We like to do all kinds of things about, you know, with each other. So we're really wired for connecting to our species. So this is the point Zigeroshi is making as well about the need for us to accept the truth about reality in order to live here in this world as it truly is, including the pleasure that we may find in our difficulties. If it's just difficulties and we try to avoid them, we're missing out on all that we could learn as we meet those difficulties and as we bring our own life to engage with those difficulties, an engagement that makes us stronger.

[38:47]

that makes us more mature, that helps us to grow up, and to be ever better able to deal with challenges as they're coming. And that's what we're made to do. We're made to proceed the future with some knowledge and skill sets so that we can deal with what's coming. Very important for us to not turn back, turn away, to keep facing what's coming. Especially this challenge of impermanence. And then ironically, As Roshi says, when we are suffering, we may have actual less difficulty accepting the truth of transiency. When we're suffering, we may have less difficulty accepting the truth of transiency. Because there's, in fact, great relief in knowing that this too shall pass. This difficulty shall pass. It won't last. You know, there's nothing that lasts forever. So no matter how much our hearts are aching or how much, you know, that broken leg, oh my God, I'm never going to get over that.

[39:50]

But actually we do, you know, many times we do. Whatever it is that we're stuck in, we're not really stuck in it because it will pass, it will change. And that's why that law is a blessing as well as something that is a challenge for us. You know, we even talk about parting as sweet sorrow, you know, parting from the things that we have loved. Sweet sorrow. Parting is such sweet sorrow. So that's something that the residents here at Enso Village talk about quite openly. The sweet sorrow of giving away households full of things of their possessions. The furniture and their paintings and the plates and the table settings and the house itself. This sweet sorrow of letting those things pass on. None of which their children are interested in having or that they even need. We're all saying, my kids don't want this stuff. They certainly don't want my stuff, for sure. So with very few exceptions, I think the overall feeling that most of us are having is that we've lightened the burden of possessions, the burden of riches, as it says in the loving kindness meditation, to not be caught up by the burden of riches.

[41:04]

So there's some relief in that and letting all of that go. It's going anyway. That's the law. And then Roshi says that our practice is to find perfect existence within imperfection. That those two are not different, in that they depend on one another, as do all dualistic propositions. Just like two sides of a coin. Light depending on dark. Cold depending on heat. Up on down. Inside on outside. Something on nothing. My life on your life. And on all life. Dependency. Everything depending on everything else. So I thought I would end my comments this evening with reading you a little bit from Dogen's Time Being fascicle, which is amazing, actually. There's a book one of our students wrote about this fascicle, which is worth time, worth taking the time reading. I'll take little snippets of it.

[42:12]

He starts with this quote from an ancient Buddha. And it's a little bit of a repetition of this term, for the time being. So for the time being, on the top of the highest peak. So these are various conditions that we may find ourselves in. And when we're in those conditions, that's the time being. He's making time being one word. Time and being, one word. For the time being... standing at the top of the highest peak. For the time being, proceeding along the bottom of the deepest ocean. For the time being, three heads and eight arms. That's an image of a wrathful deity. For the time being, three heads and eight arms. For the time being, an eight or a 16-foot body. That's the Buddha. So you've got the wrathful deities on one side, and the Buddha on the other. For the time being. For the time being, a staff or a whisk. That would be a teacher holding a staff or a whisk.

[43:15]

For the time being, a pillar or a lantern. And that would represent a monastery. So this building, this temple, where these practices take place. For the time being, the sons of Zhang and of Li. So the commoners, the children of commoners. And for the time being, earth and the sky. So he's basically just pulling all of these different elements, all these parts of existence, you know, mountain climbing and walking in the bottom of the water and deities and our imagining of gods and deities and Buddhas and all of these time being, all of these things that happen within time that are familiar to us. You know, our friends, the commoners, all the commoners, like Zhang and Li, pillars and lanterns. You know, I've got pillars and lanterns holding up my house. So these are just examples. You know, at the beginning, this poetry. And then Dogen says, for the time being, here means time itself is being. And all being is time. A golden 16-foot Buddha is time.

[44:17]

Because it is time, there is the radiant illumination of time. Study it as the 12 hours. Study it throughout the day of the present moment. Even though you do not measure the hours of the day as long or short, far or near, still, you call it 12 hours. Because the signs of time's coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. We don't doubt time. Just look at my watch. And although we don't doubt it, we don't understand it. Or when sentient beings doubt what they do not understand, their doubt is not very firmly fixed. So even though I don't understand time, I don't doubt it, and I don't have much of an interest in any of that anyway. And because of that, Our past doubts don't necessarily coincide with our present doubts, and yet doubt itself is nothing other than time being. And on and on. This whole thing, you have to read it yourself. This whole thing is just this riff on time and being, all the different examples and ways.

[45:22]

And if you read it out loud, which I've done a number of times, it becomes kind of like a trance induction around time. You know, it sort of begins to work internally. to help sort through some of these kind of complex notions that I know this thing I'm talking about is complex. And at the same time, it's the primary teaching that underlies our understanding of the Buddha's awakening. He understood that nothing lasts. He understood the present moment. He understood that our life is a creation of our mind. He understood all of that and tried to help us to turn our attention toward how it truly is. You know, if we spend time looking at these issues, we can begin to testify for ourselves and to ourselves. Oh yeah, I'm beginning to see that, beginning to, you know, hack in to this way I've been habitually thinking about the world and about time.

[46:23]

So with all of that said, I'm so sorry. I know that was a lot and it's kind of dense. But we have time, and I would be very happy to hear anything that you might like to ask or whatever, comment. Karina, are you going to put me on a gallery, please? There we are. Hello, everybody. Good to see you. Good to see you. May I please welcome Chris. Chris Enders. Hello, Chris. It's good to see you here and the rest of you. Oh, good. Jerry's got the moon and the dew drop. That's what it looks like. And there's Kosan, the question, and there's Linda and Helene, Carmina, Echo, Griffin, Drew, Kathy, Lisa, Hope, hello, Hope, Annette, Senko, Chozon, Kakwan, DB14, which I think is Dean.

[47:23]

Indeed it is. Hello, Dean. Marie Stockton, Kira K., Lociti, Tom, Michael, Robert, and Michelle. Wonderful. Welcome, all of you. Close on, please. Hello. Good evening, Sangha. Good evening, Fu-sensei. As soon as you started talking about time, I also just purchased Carlo Rovelli's book, so I'm really looking forward to reading it, but the The first question that comes up to me when I think of time as nonlinear is what about karma? There is that very logical part of me that wants to believe that I am suffering now because of my karma. And if I can go back and figure out what I did wrong and not do that anymore, then maybe I'll suffer less, right? Like that's my attainment that I'm working out right now.

[48:27]

And I think... that gets all thrown into the wastebasket if time isn't linear. And I'm prepared to accept that there's, you know, as a human being, there's only so many dimensions I can perceive and blah, blah, blah. But what about karma? What about blah, blah, blah? Yeah. Well, your karma, if, you know, if I'm understanding all of this myself correctly, is something you consider in the present. Your karma, whatever it is you think happened back then, is gone. But there is some kind of trace of that in your memory, right? It's your memory of events. Whatever you thought happened back then, maybe as a child, no one helped you to say, well, that's not what's happening. So as children, we made up an interpretation of the events happening to us, which are still true for us, because that's my story. I made up my story. And until it gets hacked into by something, and my therapist hacked into my story quite a lot.

[49:33]

I'm very grateful for that. So, you know, just to kind of sow some doubt about the solidity of our stories. But that's all going to take place as healing in the present. As you work through your story, you know, you know that that's something that came out of your past, but you're thinking and talking about it now. And the healing will happen now. So what you are today comes from those thoughts and stories of yesterday. Your present thoughts and stories build your life of tomorrow. Your life is a creation of your mind. So how you work through in the present those stories and find other ways of understanding them, of forgiving the child. You were just a kid. You didn't know any better. So my therapist would say that you were just a child. How would you have done better than that? No one helped you. No one told you when that sad thing happened to you. No one came over and put an arm around you and said, it's okay. So we're left to do that work now, right?

[50:36]

So that's why you and I and many of us have been working with other people to help reflect back to us. That's just a story. That's a story. And it has no power. It has no power here. My therapist... It used to remind me of Glenda the Good. Remember, she arrives in the pink bubble when Dorothy is there and the evil witch has been hit by the house. Her house has landed on one of the evil witches. And the other witch is threatening Dorothy. I'm going to get you, my pretty. And Glenda the Good shows up in her pink bubble. And what does she say to the other witch? Her sister. No, no. Be gone? I don't remember. Be gone. You have no power here. Be gone. You have no power here. So that was, you know, sort of my therapist, you know, how to treat those stories when they come because they're very powerful. And so karma is a delusional process.

[51:40]

There really isn't that happened and this happened and so on. Those are, you know, you can't find them through the microscope. Or the telescope. Or they're not scientific. They're human. They're human weavings. We're storytellers. So the cure is in the storytelling. Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. I just wanted to mention that we got this lovely help from Carmina and also from Tim that St. Augustine was in the 4th century North African Roman Empire. 354 to 430 of the Christian era. Thank you both for that. Okay, Tim. Is it Tim? Tim next? Yes. We were talking about time. This is much more abstract than cosmological. About 10 years ago, people may remember a meteor entered...

[52:46]

the atmosphere above Northern California, and it broke up over Placerville. Nice surreal here. Yeah, I remember, well, my friend lives on the American River in Lotus near Placerville. I said, hey, Sandy, that meteor broke up. Go out and see if you can find a fragment. And sure enough, she found a little cube of that chondrite meteor in her driveway she sent me a picture with her granddaughter the astrophysicist descended on that area looking for fragments because they wanted to get samples that were fresh that hadn't been contaminated and so i i she asked me what do i do with it she loaned it to a uc davis astrophysicist for analysis And he actually gave a talk about that at the Lotus Grange Hall that I went to. It was interesting.

[53:46]

But then only like five years ago, I went to a party at her house and she asked me, have you seen the meteor fragment? I said, no. She handed it to me. It was in a baggie. I took it out. I held it in my hand. And the thing about that type of meteor, it's a chondrite. It's carbon. And they have amino acids in them. And what it is, our solar system is formed from an older sun that went supernova and then formed our sun and our planets. And that meteor was 5 billion years old. It had been orbiting the solar system for 5 billion years. And so what that means is that we're made the foundation of what... were made from amino acids, and I believe all life on Earth came from the amino acids of that previous supernova, which, and who knows, maybe other civilizations lived.

[54:57]

So looking at that thing, it's the jet black... you know, non-reflective with little white flecks in it. It's like I'm holding a 5 billion year old one centimeter cube of star material that we came from. And to me, that's time. That's your great grandpa. That's my... That's like many Buddhas ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And thrilling. It's thrilling, isn't it? It's really interesting. So that's my understanding of time. That's wonderful, Tim. Thank you for that. Thank you. Someone once said that we just evolved in order for the universe to admire itself. Somebody's got to notice. Look at this. You know, that's our job.

[55:57]

We're the ones that are here to admire itself. existence before we float away and become the next carbon rings swarming around the solar system. Thank you so much, Tim. I get thrilled with those kinds of things. I just love them. Thank you so much. Cynthia. Hi, Fu. Hi, Cynthia. Well, I just have a couple of questions. First of all, which is the Carlo Rovelli book that you keep referring to, or which is a good starting place? The first one I read was, Lisa sent it to me, actually. It was called Helgoland, H-E-L-G-O-L-A-N-D. H-E-L-G-O-L-A-N-D, which I think is an island off the coast of Scotland or something. Is that right, Lisa? Uh-huh. Anyway, it's an island where somebody, I don't remember who, came up with a great theory.

[57:01]

One of these theoretical physicists came up with this great theory. Anyway, so he's done a lot of books. He's sort of like the Carl Sagan of our era, as far as I can tell. He writes beautifully in the vernacular. So we can, those of us without that kind of mathematic or scientific training can understand these amazing concepts. So Helgolam is great. And the one I'm reading now is called something, The Flow of Time. Okay. Because he has so many books. Yeah, he does. Yeah. You know, I just want to know which one you think maybe might be good to start with or which one is the one that you keep talking about that's really connected to our practice. Well, the first one, Helgoland, he quotes Nagarjuna. Okay. Because his students are saying to him, have you read Nagarjuna? So after he's talking about all this theoretical physics, then his students are saying to him, but have you read Nagarjuna?

[58:05]

Maybe you've got to look at that. He does, and he's awestruck. As I am listening to him, he was listening to the Buddhist theoretical teachers, the philosophers. So I would say Helgoland's a good place to start for that little thrill of finding Nagarjuna, and then he gives a very nice explanation of Nagarjuna's teaching. So Nagarjuna is called the second Buddha. He's second century Indian. And then the one I'm reading now, and hold on just one second, because I don't want to mistake the title that I'm telling you. And I've got it right over here. The order of time. The order of time. Thank you. So the order of time, not the flow of time. That's right. The order of time. And his covers kind of all look like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw that one. Okay. Something you said that really resonated is that when you're reading something and you...

[59:07]

Get information that's just like, no way, or no, that can't be, I've never been down that path. That's when, to me, life can be very exciting. Or interesting, or add years of time to my life. Just all these new places that I can go. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And that... And we're tempted to turn back, but I think that is where the real learning happens is what you don't know already, not what you already know. And then when he said, well, give yourselves a minute to think. I had to start the talk in my car, but I could still hear. And you said, what's your experience? Give yourself a few minutes to imagine what time is. what you think of time or whatever your question was, I turned it into my own thing. But, you know, just over the last year, I started to really have a sense that I have a good amount of time left, but I can almost see the end of the tunnel, whereas that was just too abstract before.

[60:26]

So now there's all, you know, people die, parents die. You just... You just get closer. And so it's really making me think how I want to spend the hopefully couple decades I have left. But a couple of decades is really countable. Yeah. You got this many left. And the experience of having it be countable is. It's kind of, it's a little mind-blowing. So anyway, but I wanted to get the names of those books and then just tell you how I appreciate the ideas that don't make sense to us or the ideas also that can pull us into a very interesting path.

[61:31]

Yeah. So I'll see you on Wednesday. Good. You're going to send something out? Yeah, I am. I'm going to send all those of you. Let me know. I've got about 14 names right now for the precept class. And so I will be sending a link a little before four to to those of you on the list. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, I think what this kind of stuff does is, for me anyway, is kind of break up the set that I, my presumptions about things, you know, that I've been carrying around in my head since I was a kid. And I was taught, well, you know, here's the sun and here's the planets or here's the atom and here's the molecule, whatever it is, you know, none of that is accurate. I mean, everything that I learned in terms of science as a child, most of that is not even close. So I think what's exciting is to see what the new understanding is for us, about us, about what's going on here.

[62:34]

So I think that's part of the thrill too, is just, you know, getting rid of the old socks and getting something fresh that comes from people that I really enjoy. And they enjoy what they're doing too. This guy really enjoys his mind and offering his teaching. So I think that's a wonderful thing. Thank you, Cynthia. And Carmina. Oh, Lisa. Hi, Lisa. Whoever. Who? I think Lisa first and then Carmina. Okay. Hello, you and all. So, where to start? This is your fave, isn't it? Oh, it's totally, totally. And, yeah, I think... You know, it's interesting. Time, I think, is an even greater delusion than self. And it may be even more embedded in our language than concepts of self.

[63:44]

Just the exercise of listening to what one is saying or thinking and feeling, you know, seeing where time is embedded in that, which makes it almost, it makes it incredibly difficult for me to think about time not being linear or not truly existing. And the point that gets me stuck is, it's related to karma, but causality. Yeah. change and you know the where where does impermanence how does impermanence intersect with time being and the now what do you think

[64:58]

I mean, you think about this a lot. Where have you put the now? Okay, so the now, the big fat now. I'm stuck. I'm stuck on causality. Because causality and change require difference. And difference has to happen in a vector in some dimensions. Well, according to your friend, Rovelli, the only thing that is different in all of these different principles, gravity and atomic energy, all that stuff, is entropy. The movement of heat from a hot body to a cold body is the only directionality there is in the physical world. Everything we think of as directionality has to do with heat moving toward cold. Only that.

[65:59]

You know, there's a whole chapter about that and I'm going, what? Excuse me. So, you know, it's heat. It's this transfer of heat to cold bodies that gives us some feeling of something. Like even our brains are warm when we're thinking there's heat. All of this stuff has to do with temperature, with the shifting of molecules. Like he said, you look at a glass of cold water, the molecules are fairly quiet. They're not going very fast. But you put heat in there, and they start moving around. There's something that happens, and then they turn into steam and so on. So it really is this factor of heat that is not personal. No, nothing is personal. Well, there's no karma there. Yeah. But there is change. Constant. There's nothing but change.

[66:59]

Time is change. Okay. So I'll take it. Okay. I'll sit with it. All right. Yeah, me too. I'm going to keep working on this because I think it's like a giant crossword puzzle. I know there's somehow the clues are in there. We just keep working on the words, the terms. reference of the terms, like causality. What does that refer to? Yes. You won't find it at the subatomic level. You're going to find it in the human mind. It's what they're saying. It's an invention of ours. But I'll argue that the human mind is molecular, so. Absolutely, absolutely. Like I said, the universe created something to appreciate itself out of its own, right?

[68:00]

It didn't borrow the material from somewhere else. It was all right there. As it was, what was it? Carl Sagan said, if you want to make a universe, first you have to make an apple pie. Oh, no, if you want to make an apple pie, first you have to make an apple pie, right? So you need, right, other way around. In order for this to be happening, first you need to have the whole of it, which we don't understand. Tim got to hold a little piece of that that we don't understand in his hand. It's kind of miraculous that it would land in her driveway. So, I mean, I just think, don't you think it's just thrilling, basically? Oh, I mean, for me, it's, I think time is my koan. Yeah, yeah. It's an endless thought. Yeah. And it's great. You know, if you don't impress yourself with it, you know, because the don't understanding it is a big part of the curiosity about trying to understand it is, and I don't understand, you know, that's, I'm a little hard on myself for not understanding.

[69:09]

Thank you, ma'am. See you soon. Armina. Hello. Oh, you are muted. Ah, there they are. Thanks to Marianne. Anyway, this... It was a wonderful, wonderful chapter and obviously engaged us all. And as I was reading it and you were talking about it, I couldn't help but remember where art meets time and the shifting of time in that novel, Time Being.

[70:16]

I'm not sure that I... Yes, and I wish that we could have an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny book club where you would lead us through that book. I got about halfway through it and really did not know enough physics to really be able to go to the end, but it was just fascinating. And I thought the woman was a genius who wrote it. Yeah, yeah. What's her name? You guys, I can't remember. Was it? Ruth Suzuki. Ruth Ozeki. Ozeki. That's a great idea. Let's all take a time, sometime this year, sometime to read that book. Because that really, I've heard nothing but good things. And I haven't read it. And I know I should. What a treat. Yeah, yeah. Have most of you read it? Some of you read it? What's the title again? It's called Time Being, isn't it?

[71:17]

Yes, I think something like Time Being. Yeah, I think so. Karina, could you look that up for us for a sec? You did? Okay, we're going to get the... It's called A Tale for the Time Being. Ah, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth... So you spell her last name? O-Z-E-K-A? K-I. O-K-I. O-Z-E-K-I. Good. So that could be our homework for the year. Find that one and read it. I hear it's great. I look forward to that, too. And Ruth Ozeki is a student of Norman Fisher, and she just received a transmission. Oh, she did. Oh, wonderful. Wonderful. Well, that's family. Yes, it is, isn't it? So buy it for someone you love for Christmas. There you go. Who wants to get involved in all this expanding universe of knowledge.

[72:25]

And I will be sending you for something about Augustine and time. Okay? Great. Thank you. Augustine. Thank you. Not Augustine. St. Augustine. Okay. Yes. Okay. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye. See you soon. um echo echo are you i think you're next no no go ahead please hello echo hi good evening well sometime in the past i don't know 20 minutes or so this uh for some reason it came to me that um Science has this great comforting effect on me anyway. Science means that if I follow the certain procedures, I can reasonably expect the outcome.

[73:31]

And that's very comforting. And as we human being getting better, you know, knowing things and controlling things scientifically, we do better and better at getting that outcome. Whereas in the past, a long time ago, if we want certain outcome, we just do whatever we can and then we pray for the best. More than one people, I think great scientists had said this, something along the line that's, you know, the more we learn, the more we get into, the more we go deeper. It makes us humble. Like it brings us back in, you know, just pray for the best that time.

[74:40]

I think that's true. I think that's true. I think the people, the scientists, at least the ones I know, have more of a spirituality to them, more of like awestruck, you know, they're sort of awestruck by what they're finding, you know, like kind of kids in a magical world. So, yeah, I kind of pray and gratitude. Seems like a good response. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Vermont, Drew. Hello, Drew. Hi, how you doing? What helped me was when we were studying time being by Dogen, and that thing that had confounded me when he said, don't think that firewood turns into ash.

[75:43]

I finally think I understood when you read further and he gets into everything in the universe is manifesting its own Dharma position 100% all the time. So if that's the case, then there's no time, there's no moment, there's no micro moment, there's no movement. There's just, it's hard to, peer into that where everything just is exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But our senses don't seem, we don't operate on that level. That seems to be like the one end side of the two truths. The other side is, well, I'm scooping out the ashes. Obviously, the firewood turned into ash. So there's those balancing those two.

[76:47]

Yeah. And Dogen was clearing, you know, he was dealing with firewood and ash. He wasn't like, he hadn't gone, he wasn't mentally ill. He wasn't falling into some kind of alternate reality where that firewood did not turn into ash. But what he's saying is more in line with what you're saying. It's complete this moment. Complete this moment. This moment is complete. There's no room for anything else. In this moment, it's complete. And I've just said that through several moments. So it's more like staying on the boat as it's moving through the environment. We're just living in harmony, as Suzuki Rishi is saying. Nirvana is the harmonious acceptance of reality, transiency and selflessness and so on, and learning to navigate with the actual truth, not with the one that we would really like to be so, but wishing and hoping and dreaming. I'm planning, you know, not that one, but the actual one that's given in each moment, you know.

[77:59]

So I think that is what Dogen's doing is bringing us to the completeness. So thank you for bringing it up. Yeah. Thank you very much. Robert. Robert, are you hearing me? Can you hear me? You're muted if you're wanting to say something. There you go. Robert, did you go? Time being. Oh, dear. We just lost our completeness. Okay. Well, maybe that's good. Maybe Robert will come back. I don't know. Oh, Robert, you're still here. Can you, did you want to say something or was your hand up?

[79:00]

All right. I'll trust you. Here's the forecast for tomorrow. Alexa stopped. I didn't say her name. I don't know why she doesn't. Okay. Well, that was great. Great in terms of complete. Thank you all so much. It's always wonderful to see you and spend time talking about the teaching. So please have a wonderful week. We'll see you hopefully along the path and next Sunday as well. And some of you I'll see on Wednesday when we do the precept class. Time well spent. Time well spent. Yes. Thank you so much, Fu. Thank you, Sangha. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.

[80:01]

See you. Sleeping clear. Yeah.

[80:05]

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