How's that? Okay. So this is the second of two talks about Dogen's discussion of being-time. So if I haven't completely confused you the first time, then I'll finish the job this time. Actually, being time isn't an idea of Dogen's. He's commenting on the sayings of what is announced as an ancient Buddha. It's Yushan Weiyin. But he died in 828, which is not so long before Dogen. at least compared to our timescale. But I'd just like to read what Dogen commented on once more to kind of give us what he was working with.

[01:13]

Being time, I stand astride the highest mountain peaks. Being time, I move on the deepest depths of the ocean floor. Being time, I'm three heads and eight arms. Being time, I'm a staff or a whisk. Being time, I'm a pillar or a lantern. Being time, I'm Mr. Chang or Mr. Lee. Being time, I'm the great earth and the heavens above." And then Dogen begins his commentary by saying, in this word being time, Time is already just existence and all existence is time. So, kind of going from poetry to logic, but it's not normal logic, it's Dogen's logic, which is a little more inscrutable than Boolean algebra.

[02:21]

But he goes on and the gist of what, at least to me, of what he had to say is that time doesn't flow and being and time are the same and all times are here now. And both Wuyen and Dogen reached this conclusion to their insight and their effort. And what they're trying to tell us is they've seen where we live. We live in this being time. And it's like if you go into a strange city and you don't know exactly where it's safe to be and where it's not safe to be, and someone tells you about your neighborhood, you know, you can go here, you don't want to go there, and this is how you survive.

[03:36]

And I see this fascicle of Dogen's as telling us about our neighborhood. It's just where we live. And And of course, if you don't know your neighborhood, you can suffer. So it's good to pay attention and try to get the feel for the place. And last time, I went over how these ideas were not so different from some contemporary ideas in quantum mechanics and physics in general, and how they were reached sort of like from two different directions.

[04:41]

One would be starting with very small things and going up, and one would be coming and seeing the sort of the whole thing at once as it emerges from the complication of the small things. But they're both methods, both Dogen and the study of physics comes from looking at the world around you and trying to understand it and making tests and I guess I see them as both as controlled by empirical approach. So what I'd like to do is try and get an idea over, I'm not even sure I have it over on myself, but I'll try and

[05:50]

and describe what I think is going on and how we can actually feel and live and be in time or point a path and see what it feels like. There are some clues in how the modern guys approach this sort of thing. And I'd like to read a quote from this fellow, David Deutsch, who I quoted last time about quantum mechanics and time. And he says, what he did is the theory that I talked about there. He put us in multiple universes, many different versions, slightly different when they were close, wildly different when they were apart, and was able to resolve a lot of paradoxes.

[07:07]

had a lot of similarities to what Dogen had to say. But then in some places he talks about how he feels about, you know, does he really feel like he lives in this multiple universe beast? And he says, I may feel subjectively that I am distinguished among the copies as the tangible one. But I must come to terms with the fact that all the others feel the same about themselves. Many of those Davids are at this moment writing these very words. Some are putting it better. Others have gone for a cup of tea. So he seemed to have a comfortable feel. He also mentions that he needs to be careful so that he doesn't make the other Davids suffer.

[08:22]

It's this connectedness that we feel sometimes between all of us, and the world, and the worlds. And so he seemed pretty comfortable. But there was another fellow that I'd like to quote, a mathematician, a cosmologist, his name's Roger Penrose, and he's a real heavyweight guy. I only saw him speak once. I was in Birmingham and he came to give a seminar about the latest discovery.

[09:30]

This was maybe 15 years ago when a fellow named Smoot at Berkeley Lab, right here in Berkeley, did the first measurements of the black body radiation's non-uniformities. And it was all over the papers. It had this sort of a contour map with little bumps in it. He said he was seeing the face of God and everybody got real excited. So Penrose was talking about this and he picked at it and picked at it and he really wasn't happy with the whole thing because England, or Britain I guess, had some radio astronomers that were right on the verge of the same discovery and maybe they'd even been too conservative to not put it out

[10:35]

So he was really upset with this and really wanted to find something wrong with it, but he couldn't. And actually, the Britons ended up corroborating the work that they did in Berkeley. But it was fun to see him. work on this. But he's written books about a lot of things and he's written a book called Shadows of the Mind, A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. And I think it's more towards the side of self-consciousness rather than just pure consciousness, sensitivity to light and things like that. And it's also kind of an attack on artificial intelligence. He has a long derivation about artificial intelligence and pretty much has convinced himself and anybody who can get through it that actual consciousness is just too complicated to be done artificially.

[11:58]

mainly because he sees real consciousness as going out through the whole universe. But here's what he says. He says, every one of our conscious brains is woven from subtle physical ingredients that somehow enable us to take advantage of the profound organization of our mathematically underpinned universe. so that we in turn are capable of some kind of direct access through that platonic quality of understanding to the very ways in which our universe behaves at many different levels. You know, this is a serious guy in a suit, you know. So I kind of like to hear that. He's got some feeling in him. But then there's Dogen. And Dogen doesn't beat around the bush.

[13:00]

He just, if you can imagine this coming out with the beat of a drum. I'll read some of what he had to say. All things exist in ourselves. Short, definite sentences. Everything, every being in this entire world is time. No object obstructs or opposes any other object, nor can time ever obstruct any other time. Therefore, it's logic. Therefore, if we have the resolve to attain supreme enlightenment, the entire world will also be seen to possess that resolve at the same time. Here there is no difference between your mind and time. You are related through the resolve for enlightenment. It is the same for the practice and attainment of the way.

[14:06]

The entire world is included in ourselves. This is the principle. We ourselves are time. Study the principle that everything in the world is time. Each instant covers the entire world. If we can comprehend this, it will be the beginning of practice and enlightenment. When we attain this level, we will have a clear understanding of the significance of each and every practice. One blade of grass, every single object, every living thing is inseparable from time. Time includes every being in all worlds. So that's... That's where we live and those are the possibilities. So, if we can comprehend this, it will be the beginning of practice and enlightenment. Notice that practice and enlightenment are mentioned right together.

[15:15]

Practice is enlightenment and enlightenment doesn't come from practice. So how do we get used to this living in this... How do we actually feel it and is it possible? Do we have to be enlightened first? Probably not. according to Dogen, it'll be the beginning of practice and enlightenment. So there's hope. So thinking about how to go there, I read back over some of the modern stuff just to get some ideas of And I picked up a book in the library called Zen Physics.

[16:28]

I figured, well, I've never read that sort of a book. But I took a look at this one, and it has a... It's by David Darling, and it has a... interpretation of quantum mechanics that's different from the one that I've used of David Deutsch's, of the multi-universes, which is a very smooth interpretation. There's nothing discontinuous in it. David Darling talks about the standard interpretation, which is called the Copenhagen School. It was developed in the 20s. They had a lot of trouble with measurements. What David Deutsch does is if a measurement is made and something is pinned down, it becomes a universe to itself.

[17:31]

And all of the other possibilities are other universes. No problem. But in the Copenhagen School, they didn't want to do that. So what they did is they said, oh, well, when you make a measurement and you tell where an electron is, then that wave function, the probability distribution for that wave function suddenly collapses because you know where it is. And what causes it to collapse? Well, they thought and they thought and they thought, and what they finally decided to say is that it was because a conscious being interacted with this. I mean, this is the standard school. Well, I think they were pretty desperate. And also, I think they were pretty proud of themselves, too.

[18:33]

That we could be responsible for all of these things just because we I had a consciousness. Consciousness is a new invention, at least I think it's a new invention, in the evolution of meat. And time will tell if it's, you know, it certainly has been good for increasing the numbers of some of the species, pretty much decreasing all the rest of the species.

[19:35]

But whether it works in the long run, This is another question. So I suspect consciousness or self-consciousness in this search for being-time. I think that our consciousness may be leading us astray. Our concept of self and the flow of time has a tendency to become embedded in our thinking. So that's one clue. And the other clue comes from our friend Roger Penrose again. He says, in fact, it is only the phenomenon of consciousness that requires us to think in terms of a flowing time at all.

[20:42]

According to relativity, one has just a static four-dimensional space-time with no flowing about it. The space-time is just there and time flows no more than does space. It is only consciousness that seems to need time to flow. So we should not be surprised if the relationship between consciousness and time is strange in other ways too. So, he's not too comfortable with I don't think he's against consciousness, as much as I am. And then he goes on to point out some psychological experiments, trying to determine if there's free will, telling somebody to randomly raise a finger. And then he's got them all wired up. And this is supposed to be a spontaneous act and yet they can see this build-up in there of little charges coming around about at least a second before the finger goes up.

[21:54]

So what's spontaneous about that? So the clue is from the modern guises to beware of ego and the concept of self. We have to do something about the bad habits of the consciousness, especially its desire to have time to flow. So how do you do that? go to a shrink and pay $75 an hour or something, but they might not have a plan. I mean, think of the amount of money that's spent on consciousness.

[22:57]

I mean, straightening it out, you know, it's probably be enough to buy a submarine. So what I'd like to lead into is I've seen people change. I've seen people really change and it's been in this practice. And for centuries in Japan they would send people who were having psychological problems to the monasteries. they'd get... they'd get... they'd get help. And... I remember people coming into the Zen Center in San Francisco, in Sokochi, and... there was one fellow in particular, he just couldn't sit still.

[24:05]

He was always after Suzuki Roshi to have him do this, let me ring the bells, let me carry the stick, let me do this, let me do that." And Suzuki Roshi just whacked him a couple times with his stick and told him to go sit. But it worked. It worked. It took a while, but it worked. So it's working on the mind with the body in a certain sense. And working on the mind with the mind. And if you think about sitting Zazen, It's structured a certain way.

[25:09]

You sit here for so many minutes and then you get up. And in order not to disturb the people around you, you try and sit still. And if you think about the passage of time, You can still go ahead and do it, although if it gets to be a session where you're sitting for many hours a day, thinking about time can be kind of hectic for you. But some people are lucky and they have pain. And pain comes And Suzuki Roshi used to always say, your pain will help you. And I could never understand that.

[26:11]

It seemed very sadistic. But if you have pain when you're sitting and you're attached to it, you have a very difficult time. And if you're attached to time, and you're seeing this ticking of the clock going on into the distance. So the effect of this practice of sitting, and especially sitting with pain, is that it pulls you right into this moment. You just are in each moment, and it's a painful moment, it's not a painful moment, it becomes irrelevant.

[27:11]

You're just sitting. So, if your mind is soft and flexible and doesn't attach to the various ramifications So it forces your mind in this direction. And what's going on actually? You're kind of making new, you're making new circuits. You're kind of aligning things with the, the environment that you set up. And there's a description of this sort of process. There's a book called The User's Guide to the Brain.

[28:15]

It's a great book. John Rady, it just has a lot of little interesting things in it about brains, experiences, He says, changing your pattern of thinking also changes the brain's structure. The neurons get stuck in a rut of abnormal patterns of activity, becoming underactive or overactive or just non-performing, it being either too easy or hard for them to fire. A person who forcibly changes their behavior can break the deadlock by requiring neurons to change connections to enact the new behavior. Changing the brain firing patterns through repeated thought and action is also what is responsible for the initiation of self-choice, freedom, will, and discipline. And this is called Neural Darwinism.

[29:17]

The brain continually adapts what works stays connected. And what doesn't work, the neurons disconnect or they die. When we're born, we're born with many more neurons than we end up with. And those early... I mean, after a couple of years. And those early times are a wiring up process. By the time you're two or so, you've lost a lot of neurons. And the ones that you've used and have been stimulated have stayed and made their many connections. So those years are important. But the brain stays flexible after that as far as changing its

[30:22]

its internal pattern goes. So that's one of the good things about our situation, is that through our practice and effort we can really change what we are. and how we feel and what we think. And we can go from a feeling of separateness to a feeling of togetherness. But we need a structure that encourages us to go that way. So one of the structures is our zazen practice.

[31:26]

But the rest of our practice, if you look at the rest of our practice and think about what it's doing to direct you towards being time and being all together, it's interesting, like a schedule. We usually operate on a pretty rigid schedule. So, if you're not flexible, and the schedule tells you to do something different, you get upset. This spring, I was at Tassajara when my daughter came with me, and she was working in the kitchen. And I told her, you're really honored to be able to work in the kitchen, you know, so do a good job.

[32:27]

And so she was trying to do a good job, and it came time for the break. But she was cleaning something or chopping something. She said, oh no, I'm going to finish this. And the head cook just came down on her and said, no you won't. Take your break. And she asked me about that. And I said, well, I said, First of all, you do what you're told, but second of all, the schedule is something that you just surrender to. And it keeps you from being attached, and it helps you to be flexible, even though it's so rigid. So the schedule helps us too. Another thing that I think really helps us, pulls us into the moment is when we have our services.

[33:41]

And I think it both pulls us into the moment and gives us a feeling of being one, where we do this chanting and bowing all together. And we do it the same every day and yet every day it's different and some days it's glorious and some days it's just bad. But we all do it together. We all do it as one. And it just fills our bodies and minds when we do it. So I think that's another component of practice that brings us into being time. So, And also the sangha, this is a difficult idea.

[35:06]

The effort that we make, we always talk about effort. There is something that goes from one moment to the next that sort of can be considered setting up the next moment. Dogen talks about the flow, there's flow between these instants. And actually those similarities are what physics deals with. But more as I think about our effort, I think that our effort is allowing the free flow between these moments of what can develop.

[36:19]

And we call it effort. I think it could be more considered as like a natural order. And I think that together, when we do this practice and encourage the natural order, we actually help. each other and all beings. I don't know if it goes out as an inverse square law or what, but I just feel this feeling. Suzuki Roshi used to say we should have a warm feeling when we sit, and sometimes it really feels that way, it feels that way now.

[37:21]

I think I'd just like to say that we don't have to worry about understanding all of this stuff logically or in our minds. It will come to us from our practice. We just trust our practice and do it with all your heart and soul. And don't worry. No, let's...

[38:05]

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