Episode 38 - Mutability, time & presence

The brevity of life and the nature of time are topics that humans have puzzled over for at least two thousand years – and probably for as long as our species has walked the earth. In this episode I want to offer a few thoughts on these matters and on the mysterious phenomenon we refer to as ‘the present moment.’ What I have to say is rooted in my experience of zazen, Zen meditation, and in my study of Buddhist thought and other philosophical traditions. The practice of zazen is the practice of bare attention – just being here, being present.

Transcript

I want to begin by reading three pieces of poetry – to set the scene so to speak. The first two are from China and were probably composed sometime between the first century BCE and the end of the first century of our era. The third is from North America and dates from the late nineteenth century.

First, a verse that was sung at the burial of Chinese kings and princes, reminding everyone present of the finality of death set against the continuing passage of time:

How swiftly it dries,

The dew on the garlic-leaf.

The dew that dries so fast

Tomorrow will fall again.

But he whom we carry to the grave

Will never more return.

(Waley 1918: 38)

The next one is also about the swift passage of time and about how friendship can help us to deal with our mortality:

Green, green,

The cypress on the mound.

Firm, firm,

The boulder in the steam.

Man’s life lived within this world,

Is like the sojourning of a hurried traveller.

A cup of wine together will make us glad,

And a little friendship is no little matter.

(ibid: 40)

Though we are seemingly surrounded by substance and firmness, in actuality everything slips through our fingers as we hurry on through life.

The third text was written by a native American, known to the English-speaking Americans as, Crowfoot. He was renowned as a warrior and hunter, and was an eloquent spokesperson for his people, the Blackfoot Confederacy, in their negotiations with the Canadian government. As he lay dying in 1890 these were his last words: 'What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.' (McLuhan 1973: 12)

It is hard to imagine a more eloquent or moving evocation of life’s brevity and mystery – ‘the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.’

* 

I want to begin my reflections with a simple question for which there is no simple answer: what is ‘the present moment?’ – a phrase that is given much prominence in Buddhism, and in Zen in particular? 

While often described as ‘ultimate reality’ or the ‘really real,’ the present ‘moment’ is also an illusion, a phantom. For each moment has no substance, no existence in, and for, itself. Moments, as independent units only exist as abstractions or linguistic categories – in practice, there is only the flow of experience – ‘moments’ merging one into another. As the moment is experienced it is simultaneously another moment – a fluid, seamless stream of experiences in momentum. Indeed, it might be better to use a word such as momentum to describe the movement of experiential time. And yet, in a sense, there is only one eternal moment for each of us, or there is no moment at all that we can identify or hold on to. This may be why time seems to stop when we are truly present.

All we find when we pay attention is process – a continuous flow of experiences, one merging into another – ‘empty’ of separateness and self-existence. Yet we often try to grasp or hold on to these phantom moments in a vain attempt to prolong pleasure or relief from pain. We identify with this fluid stream of experiences, as if it is the core of who we are. We claim these experiences as if they were our possessions – the bundle of memories, tastes and thoughts we call ‘our own.’ And yet, fundamentally, there is nothing substantial that can be grasped, for it is like trying to grasp fine sand, or water in a river – it is ungraspable, dynamic, always in motion, always renewing and changing.

When we observe what is occurring NOW, we notice that there is no enduring substance to what we are experiencing – there is no single moment, no object of attention – as there is no substance to all phenomena, for all phenomena are in process. There is only the motion, the flow of consciousness - endlessly changing patterns of experience, thought, memory, feeling, sensation – light, fleeting and wonderful. 

This is the great mystery of consciousness, and of time and the present. In a sense it might be more correct to speak of ‘instanting,’ rather than ‘the instant’ – for there is no perceptible instant. Or to say we are ‘presencing’ – rather than that we are observing a present moment – or ‘momenting.’ To be present, or presencing, is to be in the flux of experiencing – to be participating in the unfolding process, which is life, reality, existence.

These ideas about time, or rather experiences of time, can be related to the ideas put forward by the French philosopher, Henri Bergson (1859-1941). Bergson distinguishes between two modes, or two ways of looking at, time. On the one hand there is ‘le temps’ – clock time or scientific time; and on the other hand, ‘la durée’ – psychological or ‘lived’ time. The former is quantitative and measurable – able to be analysed, computed and used for prediction. The latter is the time we experience – merging and flowing – the experiential present that contains both past and future as we remember and imagine. The former is abstract and mathematical, while the latter is what we feel to be actual.

Bergson suggests that with le temps we are treating time as if it were an object, a spatial phenomenon – as if ‘moments’ were discrete entities succeeding each other, one after the other, like footprints across wet sand. This is very useful as a quantitative measure, as an abstractive device for analysing and predicting, but it is very different to la durée - the actuality of time as we experience it. Another analogy he uses, is the difference between an analogue piece of film, a strip of celluloid divided into frames projected on a screen one after another, and our experience of the film as a continuous life-like phenomenon.

These insights into the insubstantial nature of the present moment have echoes in Buddhist notions about the self – which is considered not as an object or thing, but as a process without a fixed centre or separate existence – a verb rather than a noun. So, just as there is no substantial separate moment, there is also no substantial separate self. On the one hand the ‘moment’ is so fleeting it doesn’t exist, on the other hand the moment lasts forever. In a sense, as the Japanese Zen teacher, Eihei Dogen, argues, consciousness is time and time is consciousness. Science also suggests that time and space exist on a continuum – they are not separate. As well as three dimensions of height, width and depth, any entity also has a fourth dimension, time. Here is a brief thought experiment described by the science writer, Vicky Stein: ‘Imagine a 15-year-old leaves her high school [and travels into space] at 99.5% of the speed of light for five years (from the teenage astronaut's perspective). When the 15-year-old got back to Earth, she would have aged those 5 years she spent traveling. Her classmates, however, would be 65 years old — 50 years would have passed on the much slower-moving planet.’ (Stein 2022) This is another aspect of the great mystery of being and time, or ‘time being.’

In mindful meditation, we experience what it is to be alive, to be living, to be in process, evolving, growing, in motion. There is no isolated moment, no present, only process and presencing. What we experience is a stream, or river, of consciousness not a series of static images or staccato moments. In a sense, this means that past and future are always folded into the present – ‘past present’ and ‘future present.’ To live, to manifest presence, to be present – is to be in the stream of all of it, participating in the whole of creation as it is creating itself. 

Just as the self and all supposed ‘objects’ have no existence separate from the rest of reality – they are ‘empty’ of self-existence (what is known as anatta (non-self) or sunyata (emptiness) in Buddhist terminology) - there is no moment separate from the flow of all moments. To ‘be’ is a great mystery, an activity that is indefinable, paradoxical and contradictory. To pay attention, is to be attentive and to be in the indefinable present – to be in the momentum of living and being. Realising this process is integral to any understanding of who we are and is a vital part of learning the art of awakening. Mindful meditation is one method of attending to the mystery of time.

MUTABILITY

I would now like to look at all this from a slightly different perspective. In his poem, Mutability, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) reflects on the great mystery of transience and change – and what he calls ‘the unimaginable touch of time.’

Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear

The longest date do melt like frosty rime,

That in the morning whitened hill and plain

And is no more; drop like the tower sublime

Of yesterday, which royally did wear

His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain

Some casual shout that broke the silent air,

Or the unimaginable touch of Time.

(Wordsworth 2023)

In his poem, also titled, Mutability, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 –1822) ponders on the passage of time and the ceaseless change that happens all around, and within, us.

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

  How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon

  Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

[……]

We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep;

  We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day;

We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;

  Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! — For, be it joy or sorrow,

  The path of its departure still is free:

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;

  Nought may endure but Mutability.

And in another poem, he has this to say:

The flower that smiles to-day

          To-morrow dies;

All that we wish to stay

          Tempts and then flies.

What is this world's delight?

Lightning that mocks the night,

          Brief even as bright.

(Hayward 1956: 291) 

Shelley reminds us, as have the ancient Chinese poets and Crowfoot on his death bed, that time’s arrow is swift and always heading in one direction. Life, no matter how many years we live, is short and now is the only event that really matters.

Dogen – tree firewood & ash

With some trepidation I now want to say something about the influential, thirteenth century, Zen teacher, Eihei Dogen’s, views on time. As is often the case with Dogen, he offers us an image that seems obvious but very soon becomes puzzling. Dogen writes: ‘Firewood becomes ash. Ash cannot become firewood again. However, we should not view ash as after and firewood as before.’ (Okumura 2010: 118) According to Dogen, the firewood and the ash, only exist in their own time. Though we experience a before and after, for the firewood and the ash there is only the fact of their own presence – in a sense, in time, but in another sense timeless. For Dogen time and being are one phenomenon, not two. How can this be? What does he mean?

In his excellent book on Dogen’s writings, the Zen teacher, Shohaku Okumura, offers some clarification of Dogen’s thoughts about time and being. It seems to me that Okumura and Dogen offer another way of describing what I have already said about the present moment.

It could be argued that Buddhism’s essential insight on time’s passage is its fundamental lack of substance. As Shunryu Suzuki put it, ‘You may say, ‘I must do something this afternoon,’ but actually there is no ‘this afternoon.’ At one o’clock you will eat your lunch. To eat your lunch is, itself, one o’clock.” In his great work Uji, or The Time-Being, Eihei Dogen draws a direct link between time, being, and the self. For Dogen, they [are] all of a piece, unfolding through a present that is essentially dynamic and creative [……]’ (Frank 2008)

Dogen says, ‘Time runs from present to past,’ which seems nonsensical, but as Kazuaki Tanahashi writes, ‘Time, according to Dogen, is experienced moment to moment; actual experience happens only in the present. Past was experienced in the past as the present moment, and future will be experienced in the future as the present moment.’ (Tanahashi 1995: 13) It is only the present, what happens here and now, that is real – and yet this reality is so insubstantial, intangible and indefinable. Tanahashi continues: ‘… past is remembered as past in the present moment as future is expected as future in the present moment. Each moment carries all of Time. Time can only disclose or unfold itself in our now.’ (ibid) According to Dogen, our consciousness, makes us, simultaneously, observers, participants, and creators of what we experience. Fields, grass, flowers, and wind always appear in the ‘now’ – and the unified ‘now’ is both everlasting and endlessly renewing. Dogen has a word to denote this unity: being-time, or uji. To be, is to be time. For Dogen, time right now is all there is, each being is a being-in-time – time, in this sense, is being, and being is time. And yet, and yet, being, now, this moment, is somehow timeless. This is the paradox and mystery of a ‘moment’ – that it is both eternal and instantaneous, as real as the touch of firewood, yet as insubstantial as ash blowing away in the wind.

Change, contingency & being-here

I would now like to turn again, to another aspect of time, that is, karma, causality and interdependence – and the uncertainty that arises in relation to the passage of time. In Buddhism a lot of emphasis is placed on pratitya-samutpada, a term that is often translated as: ‘dependent-origination’ or, put more simply, ‘interdependence.’ That is, the way in which each apparent thing or event is dependent upon all other things and events in mutual relationship – also, the process by which this interdependence is manifested as cause and effect. When we sit in mindful meditation, we are observing causality at work – noticing the web of relationships that binds the universe together into a cohesive whole – spatially and in time. I want to say something about a particular aspect of dependent-origination – the quality of ‘contingency.’

If we look up ‘contingency’ in a dictionary we find the following definitions: Contingent – contingency: ‘of uncertain occurrence; liable to happen or not ….. happening by chance; fortuitous …. conditional; dependent on …… not predetermined by necessity; free …. subject to accident; at the mercy of …’ and, in legal circles: ‘dependent on a foreseen probability.’ [Shorter Oxford English Dictionary] Because all events or objects in the universe are dependent upon each other, there is always an uncertainty as to how things will progress. We can never be sure what will happen next, because there are countless factors that determine what is going to occur. Predictions we make are always provisional. Surprises and shocks are always just around the corner. This uncertainty lends a poignancy to life, to everything that happens, arising from the inherently fragile, impermanent, and contingent nature of existence. In a sense we are born and die at each moment of consciousness. We celebrate and mourn with each breath.

It is surprising that we happen to be here. Somehow the conditions are just right for us to be alive at this moment. For any phenomenon to exist a huge array of conditions have to be in perfect balance. This means that there is always an ‘edge’ to living and breathing - an uncertainty to being here that fills me with a feeling of surprise, wonder and thankfulness. To be here is a miracle – contingent on so many other miracles.

In a universe of ceaseless change - of comings and goings, births and deaths – everything that exists is both unique, and, dependent on almost infinite currents of causality. All things realise suchness (tathata) – they are just as they are, never-to-be-repeated, unique, special, one-offs – and yet they are also manifestations of dependent-origination (pratitya-samutpada) – dependent on all the other entities and events, moving through and around them. Whenever we consider an object, event, or being, as distinct and seemingly independent, we need to be mindful of its intrinsic interdependence – its inseparability from everything else.

I remember Stephen Batchelor saying in one of his books that instead of hankering after the past and speculating about the future, we need to consider the present as the fruit of what has been and the germ of what will be. Buddha did not encourage withdrawal to a timeless, mystical now, but an unflinching encounter with the contingent world as it unravels moment to moment. It is this day-to-day mindful encounter with the everyday world that constitutes awakening. When we pay attention, without clinging or disturbance, to the contingent and dynamic uncertainty of each moment, we can be at peace with the world and with ourselves. It is possible to maintain equanimity and peace of mind only if we are undisturbed by not knowing what the future holds, and unclinging to what has occurred.

As we go about our daily lives, we can pay mindful attention to the uniqueness, and transience, and interdependence, of everything as it arises and passes through our consciousness. We can value each moment for what it is, and for what it is dependent on, and for what it gives rise to. In being mindful we care for, and treasure, each moment, even as we mourn and let go of it. Being awake, being here, is to be alive to our good fortune, even as we feel life running through our fingers - as we say hello and goodbye at one and the same time.

*

But how can we be mindful in this way, aware of time and change, if we are also being urged to be in the present, to be awake to the here and now, letting go of past and future? This seems like a contradiction: how can we be both in the present, yet observing the passing of time? In my view, being present is to be alert to, and to engage with, the flux of experience – the arising and decaying of events, the process of living, breathing and experiencing. It is about being alert to what is happening – how one event is followed by another. It is not about developing, or entering, a rarefied state of suspension, timelessness or transcendence. Awakening, being mindful, is a process – a realisation of the process of being alive. And process involves time, change, the comings and goings of things – the procession of experiences that constitute who we are, and how we are, in the world.

In this way we can observe relationships, mutual dependencies and causality as they occur within the stream of experiencing. We can become aware of how one action, thought or feeling gives rise to another. How our actions, thoughts and feelings give rise to actions, thoughts and feelings in others – which, in turn, effect yet others. This is the web of causality and interdependence of which we, other beings and the whole universe, are composed.

This experience of causality, interdependence and contingency gives rise to questions about how we should act, think and feel, if we are to co-exist with others and the world, in peace and harmony, with care and understanding? That is, how can we minimise conflict, misunderstanding, pain, harm and suffering in its many forms? These questions, articulated and addressed by the Buddha 2,500 years ago, are still central to contemporary mindful ethics – and it is up to each of us to address these questions in the light of our own experiencing. The uncertainty of each moment provides a space for wonder, surprise, awareness and action – and a space in which we can decide who to be and what we can do to cultivate wellbeing in ourselves and in all beings.

So, enjoy the pleasures of ‘just being-here’ – drinking tea, weeding the garden, eating a sandwich, being irritable or relaxed, walking or driving to work, hearing birdsong in the middle of a city, hearing the chatter of children next door, seeing blossom opening, listening to music, watching TV, feeling lousy with a cold, noticing weeds growing on the pavement. By paying attention to all experiences, unburdened by craving and reactive habits, these simple pleasures become nourishing, enjoyable and opportunities for insight. 

Life is short, precious and ever-changing. To be here at all, is a miracle. When we are mindful of the passing nature of existence, we notice how each moment has no beginning or end. The river of life flows in and around us – connecting us to all beings past, present and future. So, be open to the stream of living. Feel the flow. Appreciate what comes along. Be prepared for surprises and shocks. Nothing stays the same, so, try not to hang on to what is always slipping away. Enjoy the great mystery of being here. And always keep in mind Crowfoot’s beautiful image of each life as ‘the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset.’

Thank you for listening and bye for now.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frank, Adam. 2008. Article: Time & Again. Tricycle Magazine, Winter 2008.

Hayward, John ed. 1956. The Penguin Book of English Verse. London: Penguin.

McLuhan, T. C. ed. 1973. Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence. London: Abacus.

Okumura, Shohaku. 2010. Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dogen’s Shobogenzo. Massachusetts: Wisdom Publications.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. c.1907. Poems of Shelley. London: Caxton Publishing (Golden Poets Series). 

Stein, Vicky. 2022. Article: Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity. Space.com website, online at: https://www.space.com/36273-theory-special-relativity.html – accessed on 17 December 2023.

Tanahashi, Kazuaki, ed. 1995. Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen. New York: North Point Press.

Waley, Arthur, trans. 1918. 170 Chinese Poems. London: Constable & Co.

Wordsworth, William. 2023. Mutability. Poetry Foundation online at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45531/mutability - accessed 16 December 2023.