Dogen’s Being-Time

Notice what happened.

Most of us carry a quiet, chronic tension in our bodies caused by our relationship with time.

Most of us do.

We treat time like an invisible monster or a raging river.

And we imagine ourselves standing in the middle of it, getting swept away toward aging loss and death.

We're chasing time.

We're running out of time.

We're wasting time.

Right? Which do you prefer? Chasing, running after, or wasting? We do all three of those.

And then we sit down to meditate.

What happens if we sit down to meditate? The bell rings, and five minutes later, your legs begin to throb, or you get an itch.

I got an itch in my nose this morning.

As soon as I sat down, what does my mind do? Leaps into clock time.

How long have we been sitting? I've only been sitting two minutes.

It's 20, how many more minutes is this set? It's 23 minutes? Maybe, can I, I'm the guiding teacher, should I be going like this when everybody's sitting still? Oh, I'm not the guiding teacher anymore, I forgot.

I'm the ex-guiding teacher, that's worse.

I should be setting a model for everybody, right? How many minutes are left in the period? When is the dawn going to ring the bell? When is John, who's the dawn this morning? Is he asleep? Am I wasting my time sitting here when I have 50 emails or texts to answer? Et cetera, et cetera.

So we have two categories.

Real life, somewhere in the future, and this annoying waiting room right now.

So Dogen, in the 13th century, looked at this, how we suffer from this, and offered a revolutionary way out.

And that is, he talks about in his essay, Uji, Being Time, which I'm leading a study group on right now at Sun Center.

And I have taught before, but I didn't even remember that I taught it.

Rosemary reminded me.

So, Dogen says, time is not something outside of you that's sweeping you away.

We don't have time.