On Being Time

A short talk on how Zen, Dōgen, and Tolle point to the same place: time is not something we are in, it is something we are.

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My research, with some help from Claude, suggests there are two concepts of time: one in math and physics, another in life. They are not the same. Zen takes it further by equating time with Being: Being-Time.

Dōgen Zenji, some 700 years before relativity, taught that time and being are inseparable. It's curious how everything formless, like Time, Space, Silence, Peace and Love, ends up attached to Being. Why is that?

I summarize my findings in a poem.

No beginning, no end.
To have a start and a finish,
you must first imagine Time.

Buddha said,
Anityam anityam, sarvam anityam,
everything is impermanent.
And again,
Kshanikam kshanikam, sarvam kshanikam,
everything is momentary.

A symbol in algebra,
a variable in all of physics,
Time is a tool for measuring
this impermanent creation.

Dōgen Zenji turned it inside out:
Time is being, being is time.
Each moment complete,
nothing to carry in, nothing to carry out.

The time I live is not apart from me.
When I look for the one who watches,
I find only watching.
No me, no separate time.

So when Tolle
offers you the power of now,
it's not the ticking present
but a moment that is forever.

Through the hourglass of awareness
flow the sands of creation,
one moment at a time.

Breath rises in the belly,
the chest opens, the shoulders drop.
In the pause between,
the body rests and no one is keeping count.

Left foot, right foot,
soles meeting earth,
trees sway, birds sing.
No walker, only walking,
the world moving through itself.

Seasons change,
day surrenders to night.
The body surrenders to sleep.
Sun rises in no time.

Suffering comes, suffering goes.
Ecstasy comes, ecstasy fades.
Peace arrives and departs.
Each one felt in the body,
each one a whole moment, then another.

Mind wanders to then and later.
The body is always here.
I come back to the breath,
and time is no longer a weight.

This moment, perfect and pristine,
is this body, this breath,
the ground beneath my feet.
And a feeling, just a feeling,
that I am home.

To summarize Dōgen

All creation, including body and mind, is Being-Time. Each moment is whole in itself, with its own before and after. What we call "flowing" is the way these complete moments continuously arise as the world. They are connected by Being, which we call Time.

Dōgen and Tolle, together

Dōgen says yesterday is complete in its own place, not behind us. Tolle gives us the practical doorway: the past is only memory, and the future only imagination, and both arise in this moment. We stitch moments into stories to remember and to plan. But the story-making is itself time, happening now.

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