Time flies free

 This is a post by Rev. Jundo Cohen from the Treeleaf bulletin board, republished here by permission. It is about the interpenetration of mortality and eternity, and interprets Dogen's fascicle on Being/Time.

What time is it?

Looking in the mirror, my grandfather's face stares back at me. My hair is whiter with each day, my cheeks are rough and sunken. I cannot run as fast as I did just awhile ago. The children, come to us late in life, are now grown, or nearly so. Calculating in my head (no longer as sharp), my remaining years are few at best. "Time waits for no one, flies like an arrow, sands through the hour-glass, passes with a candle flicker," and all that. Even the Buddha grew old, grew feeble, became cold ashes. He found no way to halt his own body's aging.

The Buddha could not halt aging. However, fortunately, the Buddha found the trick to halt time.

Not only halt it, but also (as later Zen masters like Master Dogen further elucidated) slow it, reverse it, make it speed up and twirl around, cause it to flow backwards, ultimately to vanish. The Buddha and Masters found something beyond aging and illness too, even death itself.

Hard to believe? And how did Buddha and Dogen grow old and die, yet were free of time, of dying too ... all at the same time?

What I claim might sound like some mystical power, a violation of the laws of physics, of common sense, impossible to achieve.

I assure you that it is all quite real.

Oh, I am not speaking of sorcery, nor a magic incantation to make the world spin backwards, wishes to a genie, secret military tech to travel faster than light. I do not mean a time machine from an H.G. Wells tale, nor have I gone mad.

Rather, it is just a matter of fresh attitudes, of changed perspectives, of new ways to count the minutes and seconds, to divide life (or, better, to stop dividing life), creative ways to see. These abilities derive from changes of heart, mind-altering insights, very literally from quieting the temporal regions of the brain so that we experience time differently, leading to our mentally substituting new inner models of time's flowing (and lack thereof) for the old. Zen practice, the stillness and silence of Zazen, opens these doors.

I think that most people have had moments when they have experienced such states to greater or lesser degree: How time grows slow when we are children waiting for the recess bell, then fast as the end of summer vacation draws near. Looking at a sunrise, or a new baby's smile, we might sense something truly infinite, timeless. Remembering our roots, our ancestors, we may feel intimately connected to the past, as if the past is still present in some way. Holding our children and grandchildren, we know our part in the future.

But I am speaking of something stronger than any of that, longer lasting abilities we can train to summon at will, to taste whenever we wish. It is a skill like any skill, learned talents that are among the fruits of this "goalless, nothing to attain" Zen practice. We can be emancipated from time, also from time's goals and push to attain. No, not from the wrinkles, the nights and days, the grave which calls ... but from concern for time, from seeing it as only slipping away.

It is hard to describe, but I will do my best. Words fail miserably in such things. Nor is this about just a single way of knowing. Rather, I would indicate a collection of ways of knowing time, some quite contradictory when described, any or all of which can be reached for as needed, like tools in a clockmaker's toolbox.

Master Dogen, our Soto Zen non-clockmaker, wrote of such time(s) ... and timeless suchness too ... in his old-time masterpiece, entitled "Being-Time." He spoke there of everybody, every thing, being in its own time, of all our times blending together yet being their own precious individual thing-moment too, of there being something timeless which encompasses it all. Hundreds of years before Einstein made “relative time” a household world, Dogen spoke of each of us, and all things, existing in our own vibrant being-time, connected to the being-time of all other beings and things in this vast, fluid universe. Why is this important? Because it allows us to see the amazing, syncopated, backward-forward, moving-still, timeless-time of this whole life-world where we temporarily find ourselves alive. It also frees us from simply witnessing time as an unstoppable flood in which our youth turns to old age, time passes quickly, life becomes death, and all is nothing but change. The Buddha taught that all composite things are impermanent and ever changing, but he also taught a way beyond all things and change. If I may quote from my own book, "The Zen Master's Dance" (please read it when you have time ), Dogen declared:

For the time being this staff or whisk here held, being-time.
For the time being a pillar or lantern, being-time.
For the time being the children of common families ... being-time.
For the time being the earth and sky, being-time.
In this word “being-time,” time is already just being, and all being is time.

We have our "common sense" measures of time, taking time for granted. However, it need not be only so:

We should come to know in this way that there are myriads
of forms of things, hundreds of blades of grasses
through the earth, and that each blade of grass and each
single appearance is not apart from the entire earth. ... And when
we arrive in the field of the ineffable, there is not but one
blade of grass and one appearance here and now. Whether
there is understanding of this phenomenon or no understanding
of this phenomenon, whether there is understanding
of things or no understanding of things, all is
only this exact moment. Since there is nothing but just
this moment, the time-being is all the time there is. All
moments of being-time are just the whole of time, as all
existent things are time too. The whole universe exists in
individual moments of time, and each moment contains
all existences and all worlds. Reflect now whether any
being or any world or the whole universe is left out of the
present moment of time.

He continues, speaking to us from so long ago:

So, we should not understand only that time flies by.
We should not feel that “flying” is time’s only ability. For if we
just let time fly away, separations from and in it might appear.
Those who fail to experience and grasp the truth of
being-time do so because they only understand time as something that passes.
Ultimately all existences are linked and become time.
Everything that exists throughout the whole universe is
lined up in a series of all individual moments, and at the
same time is each and all time. Because all moments are
being-time [and you are being-time], they are your being-time.
And because time has the nature of flowing, today flows
into tomorrow while today flows into yesterday, all as yesterday
flows into today, today flows into today, and tomorrow
flows into tomorrow.

Finally:

We should not just feel that the passage of time from one
moment to the next is like the movement from east to west
of the wind or a rainstorm. The whole universe is not
unmoving, for all is moving and changing, and the universe
is flowing from one moment to the next. An example
of such a moment-by-moment passing of time is the spring.
The spring has countless aspects arrayed as what we call
“the passage of time.” ... [Yet] because spring
embodies the momentary passing of time, passing time is
being realized and actualized in each present moment of
springtime here and now. The flowing of time occurs by
spring, thus the flowing is completed and brought to fruition
in just this moment of spring.

Dogen's poetic images may be hard to fathom. Let me summarize and bring them down to earth, hopefully not to waste your time:

One can feel, for example, that each moment is whole and complete, as if it holds all time, as if it is timeless with no before or after. It is a wonderful experience, good to know when we worry that this moment will slip away. Nothing slips away, even as time keeps passing, for this moment with no before or after, becomes this next moment with no before or after, then the next and next, each with no before or after ... and not a drop lacking from any one. There is no other moment, nor better moment, than this.

That is so even as, in our ordinary experiencing, time passes, and sometimes brings along so many moments we do wish were otherwise. Though we wish sometimes that they were otherwise, moments of sickness are just moments of sickness, times of loss just times of loss, days of sadness are simply days of sadness ... and all of life is fully life. Our heart flows with acceptance even as, in another chamber of our heart, beating as one, we wish it were not so, and that the times of suffering would never come or quickly pass. Each instant is, in its own way, a shining jewel on the bracelet of life. And, no less, so are the times of health, winning and happiness that we naturally welcome more. Our Zen practice teaches us to welcome all of it, letting each day be that day, welcoming even the hard and terribly ugly parts we do not welcome at all.

And though we might regret the past, feeling still the scars of long ago pain, or we may long for the past and something or somebody now lost, we learn to bow to the past, letting the past just be the past. We honor the past, then let it go, living on from now and here.

Likewise, though we may fear for the future, plan for the future, hold some dream for the future, we learn to grip things lightly and let the future be too. Oh, we take our medicine, work our plan, pursue practical steps to stay healthy and safe. Even so, deep down, we let what will happen happen too. If our health does not return, our project collapses, the whole world comes to an end ... the wisdom within us will flow with it all somehow.

We also sense that the whole world is connected, all things are connected, all times are really one, and all times are each other too. Much as the bird above is merely the fish flying in the sky, while the fish is but the bird in other guise swimming in the sea, tomorrow is yesterday become tomorrow, and right now is tomorrow right here. In fact, it is all now now now ... for yesterday is now as it was then, and Friday is yesterday-now as it will be on Friday. But all is also yesterday yesterday yesterday ... for now is just yesterday posing as now, and Friday is Friday on Friday too. And all is tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow no less, for they are all the same. Realizing so is powerful medicine for our usual sense that all things are separate, conflicting, broken in the world. Nothing is broken when known as the flowing whole. In the flowing, there is this which is wholly stillness yet flowing.

For time flows from today to tomorrow, but also (felt Dogen and those who share his visions) tomorrow flows into today and today into yesterday. In fact, each moment fully holds within all the future and all the past, plus embodies every other moment ... and is just flowing flowing flowing. There is also a face beyond measures of time, beyond all coming and going (thus free even of birth and death), and such is also fully present in each and every twist and change. Thus, to the wise, even moments of passing and death are also free of passing and death. Dogen said that when death comes, let it come, dive right in. He's now gone, but has he truly gone at all?

The famous Zen challenge, inscribed on the wooden Han clock in the temple, alerts us:

Life and Death are the Great Matter;
Time swiftly passes by like an arrow;
Thus, we should strive to awaken;
Do not squander this life.

It is timely advice.

How many of us waste this life, chasing unhealthy desires, caught by anger and revenge, pursuing false treasures and temporary pleasures, all to realize too quickly that the years have gone. Instead, learn to appreciate this moment and the next, all that life brings. Live gently, be kind. Learn to appreciate what is in your life, without running heedless in search of another. Oh, sometimes we must run from fire, from tigers, from wars ... but even in running, see if you can sense the stillness within.

For you see: What we awaken to, the resolution of this Great Matter, is the rediscovery that time is both flowing and still all at once, free of passing even as the clock ticks and the calendar pages are turned. The arrow is always flying and hitting the target at once. There is nothing in need of striving for, no swift or slow. Not a moment, not one drop, is ever squandered ... nor are we confined even within borders of life and death. That being so, live well, live wisely ... keep moving.

It is hard to express.

Better, please sit Zazen, and taste all these time(s) and timeless in each sitting moment.

Gassho, J