March 3rd, 2004, Serial No. 04103

00:00
00:00
Audio loading...

Welcome! You can log in or create an account to save favorites, edit keywords, transcripts, and more.

This talk will not appear in the main Search results:
Unlisted
Serial: 
SF-04103
Photos: 
Auto-Generated Transcript

good evening

hey

okay well i have this cruel a little sheep to take and want like stay on that
how do you
oh so tonight i want to talk about time
and i told you during my first topic that i was very very very interested in a topic and i wasn't kidding
and on therefore i am really frustrated that there are obvious things that i would like to have read for this topic so that i could expound the dharma that they contain but there wasn't time
so i'm going to talk about some of my own experiences
and
how time manifest in my own life and some other ways but i struggle with time
so you can hear from the way i express that that i'm in the habit of thinking of time else something very separate from myself a contender
but we've been studying the actually i am time
so that something for me to practice will also work on these things
and i do notice that the problems i have with time are exactly the problems i have with myself
which are wanting to be more than i am and not being satisfied with myself
so let me give you a few examples of some ways that i'm working with time
for a number of years of zen center i was afraid to give talks or even speak up at meetings because my voice was unreliable
and when i opened my mouth i was never quite sure what kind of sound was going to come out
mostly the sun that did come out was highly unsatisfactory to me
my voice have the tendency to crack and i had trouble making myself heard
in in any of those kinds of meetings where people just speak up as they think of something that they went to say i would have a lot of trouble entering the conversation and finding a place to insert myself
when i lived it tells a her in the eighties i had a lot of trouble chanting
i had trouble finding a perch that was comfortable for me and also harmonious with the other people who were chanting and my voice would give out line before morning service was over
that's really bothered me and it became something about myself that i wanted to fix
so eventually i started working with a speech therapist
and i learned many interesting things
one of the things i learned was that i had not been bring a thing
i learned that my voice was much less likely to crack if i had sufficient broth support
when moods breath in order to speak
i also learned about opening my mouth wider to create more resinous and about speaking with more connection between words
i went through a phase of study with my speech therapist
where i spoke very slowly and what seemed to me like a singsong voice
but when she would play back a recording of me speaking that way it sounded perfectly natural and normal
so my previous habitual speech has been much too fast and it left me literally breath was

when are the things they did with this therapist
was what newscasters on t v who have to speak both very quickly and very understandably
interesting way though almost everything i learned was about radically slowing down
and paying mindful attention to the business of speech production on a really detailed level
i think i understand some of the reasons why i developed this difficulty
somewhere along the line i got the idea that i was too slow
and when i looked at myself with through that lens of too slow i was always rushing to keep up
to keep up with what i'm not quite sure
but i felt so compelled to keep up with the chatting or a conversation that i didn't feel like i dared take the time to breathe
and this was emblematic of my way of being in the world
i have often felt so pressured by time and by what i imagined to be pupils expectations
that i didn't really give myself permission to let things take the time that they actually take
so one of my ongoing practices
i'm a and especially during those practice period
is to find and accept a pace that's appropriate to the circumstances and remind myself to breathe or to stop and think if that would be useful or it is necessary
panic about time and keeping up his the state of mind that are so familiar to me
that i can fail to recognize that when it arises
recently i was working in the kitchen here doing my dinner prep
i do dinner prep on saturdays with one other person and there is considerable variation in the amount of work involved sometimes we're just teaching up leftovers and it's really is the and we have lots of spare time and sometimes there
is a more complicated meal that's really challenging for us
so in this particular night there was more work than we could do and it was only half an hour away from meal time
the tensile start by as she often does to see of things were ok
a and she saw that we needed help so she stayed and helped
and another person in the saga also pittston and helped so we had two additional people
i was working on a really simple dose but it was unfamiliar to me and i was just following the instructions
there was too little of one of your ingredients and i thought about adjusting the other ingredients to correspond but i didn't do it
i just kept going hurrying as much as i could
when the dose was financed i tasted it and i wasn't very happy with it at all and i'm afraid a lot of it may have gone to waste
i realized i had fallen under the spell of that familiar feeling of needing to rush and not wanting to take those extra few minutes to stop and think were evaluate
and i wished i had taken just a few minutes to consider the ingredients
and the quantities and what might have made that the tastes good
since we had additional help those few minutes were really readily available
so i have found that hurrying rushing often leads to problems that could be avoided by taking some time and care in the first place
we have some common expressions about that the hurry or i go the behind her i got
a stitch in time saves nine
during my last tart i told you that there was a period of time when i had a lot of trouble getting to the zendo in the morning and i want to talk about that a little bit
during that time i really thought that i wasn't going to the though because i was working too hard and there just weren't enough hours in the day and i really needed more sleep
so every night i would set my alarm
to wake me up in time for zazen
but i figured i'd decide in the morning based on how i felt whether i'd actually go or not
well i have a feeling that someone you know how that would be likely to turn out
so morning would come and i would help set the alarm early enough that i had time to think about it
and i would lay there and think about it and notice that i will slow tired
and i'd fall asleep thinking about it happen
and i might wake up again and time to go for a second period
and again i would fall asleep thinking about how i was so tired
and then i'd wake up again when it was too late to go to either first or second period
and suddenly i felt completely rested and refreshed and ready to get up and i would
this happened over and over
as soon as six am was safely passed i felt great relief and i was ready to get up and started my day
it took awhile for me to notice that this had absolutely nothing to do with knitting more sleep
it was just resistance and my desire to spend that time doing something more entertaining than going to 's awesome
so when it became that clear
it was possible for me to look again at the priorities i have for my life and rededicate my intention to get up and go to zazzle

oh

recently i was talking with michael about time and i said i really wondered how the understanding that i am time was the a helped to me when i was overwhelmed with task and didn't know what to do first
first
he said one time as experienced as scarce it's usually because of preferences
some activities avoiding unpleasant activities or hurrying through them to get it over with
he said the in using time as opposed to being used by time was a matter of priorities
well i didn't say this to michael but my internal reaction was this is not about preferences i just helped too much to do and there's too little time
nevertheless i've been thinking about it says and watching to see how my preferences may be creating a feeling of time scarcity for me
a couple of years ago can i taught myself to knit from the dating for dummies book
and it quickly became my absolutely favorite thing to do
however even before i learned to knit i have planning to do and there were already lots of things including pleasant worms like reading and going to movies and studying and singing art exhibits and keeping up with the new
who's that i wanted to do but i wasn't getting around to
so learning to the actually put more time pressure in my life
soon i always had a knitting project going and not only that i had a whole raft of ideas for future projects
and every time i would start a project it would sort of go on my mental to do list and i noticed that it was really causing me some anxiety
before i learned to knit i had imagined that it would be this wonderfully productive thing to do that i could feel really good about i would have all these scarves and sweaters and i would make lots of presents for my friends
and it would just be very youthful and pleasurable to boot and would not be wonderful
well actually knitting is pretty slow and a project may or may not come out well
and buying yarn to knit a sweater probably will cost more than buying a sweater
so the cost benefit analysis approach didn't work here
and it was really clear that the online justification for a knitting was that i love to do it
so then as michael said it became a matter of priorities did i love to do it enough to forgo all the other things they will have to give up to do it
and what we're really the priorities for my life
during those practice period while i am being had student
my time is pretty well filled up with scheduled activities
most of these activities are really really pleasant like having tea with practice period students are going to other people's lectures
but they do come one right after another
with little or no time and between
and this is very different from the way i have her bids will a set up my life
i like what subspace around the things they have to do and i've always been pretty careful to maintain some time between events and commitments
so you can see that being held student has really reoriented how i think about time and live my life

darlene com has offered from workshops here at city center
where's she talks about the fact that most of us make some judgments about which events in our lives we feel are worth showing up for and which ones were just as soon mills
we want to show up for the good stuff and check out for the rest
the problem with that is that if you're not in the habit of being mindful and present for all the times in your life in our lives
we'll probably find that it's impossible to be truly present even for the good and important moments when you'd really like to be there
so for me being issue so here now definitely falls into the category of something i want to show up for
i'm aware that it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it's really very important to me
so i'm practicing hard to stay where i am where i actually am and fully enjoy this practice period
and i am really enjoying this time i'm enjoying every single part of it
the wake up golf the morning john doe being in this than though even looking at your faces right now i'm even preparing tax on it's just been a really wonderful experience and kind of a turning point for me
when traditional idea about some practice is that dislodging a person's habits shaking things up a bit can be very beneficial
and i imagine maybe that is what as contributing to my pleasure in this time
i know it will never do this way again and that the time as very short
of course everything on our lives is just like that but in this case it's really highlighted for me
another of the obvious ways than i notice time is that i'm aging
of course we're all aging but it comes up for me with particular for a snow
i'm fifty seven
i imagine advancing age impacts different people in different ways
for me it's less about physical limitations or a feeling and indifferent than about what i see what i look in the mirror or how much time i have left
one of the first sort of sharks about age for me came about five or ten years ago when i was in the dentist's office and we were talking about doing some procedure
and the dental assistant said
you know you could live another thirty years
and i was really kind of taken aback
recently i was talking to michael about my life and what i wanted to do in the future
and he said you know there's really not much time left for his earthers not that much time left
and again i was a little bit shocked
and has come out also touched on one of the big issues about aging which is that most of the decisions about how you're going to spend your life have already been made
and the absence that are still open to you at that point are somewhat limited
recently i was watching a tv special on cake you do about the folk music hero which was happening as i was coming of age
and it included the kingston trio and judy collins and the lime wider than the smothers brothers and glenn yarbrough and it was very pregnant for me to hear all those old favorite songs and see them all up in the states together
and they looked like a bunch of really nice old geezers
with a reminder to me that my generation is doing what i'm used to think i was getting old
at sunset or to participate and what we call a coming of age group for people over fifty
and we've talked about things like retirement homes and exercise and taking care of our age of parents and our parents doves one member of the group told me that she feels very kind of flute to about participating because this is the posts to be a supper
art group that helps us to feel better and actually it's a reminder of all the hard facts of aging
elsa perennial salt and improve your i help the habit of thinking that the future will be better than the past and that i will be better in the future than i was in the past
i still feel that way and i'm inspired by the some models of elders amazon center sanga who's still contribute to all our lives with great energy and sustained practice i look at them and
think that if practice will make me look like that when i'm that age i will do it

oh
lately in the news we've been seeing predictions that more and more people can be expected to live into extreme old age one hundred and beyond
many of those people will live on manufactured time
years gained from a technological advances
better medical care better surgical techniques and some of them will be quite frail and will require continuous care for longer periods of they're very long lives at an extremely high cost
so the expression that time is money may take on new meaning
and prolongation of life is likely to be a really important so social financial moral issue and the next century
so enough of that tree business
i am i think let's see what time it is i think we've been really fortunate to have so much teaching during those practice prude about time
on both from michael and i i'm friday night we had a wonderful presentation by to show haiku okumura and then on saturday teigen layton tart about on the column about not being busy
in my frustration over not being able to read the books that i would have liked to talk about i did surf the net a little bit
and i discovered there are some fairly interesting things that there on the topic of time
i just typed buddhism told time into google and got some stuff that i found quite interesting and you might wanna do the same
and actually i think there's time i'd like to read one thing that i found that i that i think is interesting if that's okay

so this first comment is by the sixth patriarch john mestre when
in this moment there is nothing that comes to be
and this moment there is nothing that ceases to be thus there is no birth and death to be brought to an end
thus the absolute peace in this moment
though it is at this moment there is no limit to this moment
and herein lies and eternal delighted
elaborating on that on this comes from zen master sale songs burke the campus of world
and i hope
i hope this works to read to you
everyone thinks that this is extremely difficult teaching
something beyond their reach or experience
how can things appear and disappear
and yet there is a roots and away even in those constantly moving world no appearing and disappearing
a student oneself me
the maha parra nirvana sutra seems very confusing
everything is always moving and yet everything is not moving i don't understand this buddhism
but there is very easy way to understand those
some time you go to a movie
you see an action movie about a good man and a bad man lots of fighting cars moving very fast and explosions all over the place everything is always moving very quickly
our daily lives have this quality everything is constantly moving coming and going non-stop it seems like there is no stillness place
but this movie is really only a very long strip of film
in one second there are something like fourteen frames each frame as a separate piece of action
but in each frame nothing is moving everything is completely still
each frame one by one is the complete picture
in each frame nothing ever comes or goes or appears or disappears each frame as complete stillness
the film projector moves the frames very quickly and all of these frames run past the lens very fast so that the accident screen seems to happen nonstop
there is no break in the movement of things but actually when you take this strip of film and hold it up to the light with your hands there is nothing moving at all
each frame is complete each moment is completely not moving action
our minds and the whole universe or like that this world is impermanent everything is always changing changing changing moving moving moving nonstop
even one second of our lives seems full of so much movement and change in this world that we see
but your mind right now is like a lens whose shutter speed is one divided by infinite time
we call that moment mind
if you attain that mind than this whole world's movement stops
from moment to moment you can see this world completely stop stop stop stop stop stop
like the film you perceived every friend this moment which is infinitely still and complete
in the frame nothing is moving
there is no time
and nothing appears or disappears in that box
but this movie projector you're thinking mind is always moving around and around and around so you experience this world as constantly moving and you constantly experience change
you lose moment mind by following your a conceptual thinking
believing that it is real
so thank you for your patience for letting me read that and there is a lot of discussion and question and answer around this stuff that's on the web i have read a tiny bit of it and am i
can't really answer questions about it from my own experience but i think it's a very interesting thing to investigate and i hope some of gop interested to do that
so that's all i have to say
oh thank you very much