Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
Speaker 2: I take refuge in Buddha, the mind that is prior to experience, hosts experience, and remains as experience passes. I take refuge in Dharma, all teachings that point to our sacred interpermeating perfection beyond what the intellect can grasp. And they take refuge in Sangha, the communities that come together to appreciate and support each other in exploring those realities. Tonight, I am going to speak about what does the Zen tradition emphasize about using time well. I think this is something that a lot of us are challenged by, struggle with, wonder about.
There's an old koan where a student asked a master, such a strange term to use. I think I'm gonna retire that term, but in these situations there was that kind of, right, person is up on a pedestal, And the student asked, what's the difference between you and me? And this teacher said, you are used by the twenty four hours. I use the twenty four hours. So as you know, there is a, first of all, a great emphasis in Buddhism on impermanence, on feeling the pulse of time and how it slips away, and how it's limited, and how this character that we are, and the relationships it has, and the opportunities that this character has are slipping away.
Right? Rapidly. And so, the first thing and maybe the last thing that we are encouraged to appreciate and renew an awareness of every day to not waste time is to get a feeling awareness of death and impermanence every day. If you are in a traditional temple, there's usually somewhere, there's some sort of like skeleton that just hangs on the wall. It's done in in different ways, in different places.
Like myself, I have, Day of the Dead skulls on my altar. I also have a piece of art that says, living in the kingdom of death. We have to remind ourselves of this over and over or else somehow we have this strange idea that it just happens to other people. Some people say it's denial that we just can't face the fact of death, but that's kind of weird because it's a fact, and it's kind of weird because facing the fact of death is actually quite joyful. When you really face the fact of death, then you can play.
Then you can love. Then you can actually, I think, use your time a lot lot better. To renew our feeling awareness of death and impermanence every day, to to somehow check-in with that truth. So that you have some sense that I have a day and it's sort of like, one of those pads of paper where you could pull off a sheet and at first when you get that pad, you feel like I've got so much paper. When I was kid, I would just make flip books out of that paper.
I thought I had so much paper. But before you know it, you peel it off and oh my god, it's getting thin. There's not that much left And the closer you get to the end of that pad, the less energy you have. And so the last actual time for doing what you need to do, you have. So time what was what did you say earlier, Kevin?
Time flies and Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. Exactly. Time fly for those folks at home, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. There are lots of, traditional chants around reflecting on death and impermanence.
I was studying with a teacher who said someone who has not sufficiently the truth of their own death hasn't penetrated their heart, they can only go this far in the Dharma. I don't know if that's true, but that was that was his view and that's very interesting. And we really have to grok and face that quivering anxiety, that visceral truth that this being ends as far as we know. No one's ever met someone who's died, but So, the project of personality comes to an end, right, to to reflect on that every day. Now, for some people, this has potency.
For some people, it doesn't. It doesn't necessarily, make us cherish and value our time more. So there are other ways, to work to work with this. Another aspect is in stillness. In stillness when much desire has dropped away, the surface wants, the ordinary longings, the kind of the world's infection in you of what you're supposed to want to get at your particular life stage, when in stillness that drops away, all those desires, what desire doesn't drop away?
This is the thing that, I think doing private retreat, even a short private retreat, is a little different than a group retreat. You disentangle yourself from the, social matrix, from the gaze of others and from your perceived expectations of others. It's just you with a breath, a body, a simple dwelling. You get down to rock bottom, the the kind of the bedrock of your heart, and then what springs up from there? I mean, maybe that's something what like a vision quest is like, I don't know.
But you get down to the bedrock of your heart and you see what what then springs up? When we are in touch with our more shallow desires, and I'm using that term relatively, then it's easy to waste time because we're involved in things that actually don't matter that much to us. Yeah. I don't actually see the reason I shouldn't waste time. Tell me why I shouldn't spend two hours on TikTok.
What else is more important? I really don't know. I'm really disconnected from that. So I don't have a force that can interrupt that habit energy. But it may be for some people, I don't know if this is true for everybody, that there is a more fundamental desire and we touch that and then it gets a lot easier to do what we want to do.
It's a it's a theory. You can check it out. How not to waste time. If no one was watching you do it, would you do it? Whatever it is.
If you were not witnessed in the act, if there was no applause, would you still do it? How much of what we're doing is actually hoping that someone else is gonna have a really good perception of us? How much of what we're doing is to avoid being labeled x, y, or z. So another old, saying from the the Chinese Zen tradition is, when with others, be as if by yourself. When by yourself, be as with others.
So really, potent with meaning. When with others, be as if by yourself. In other words, we waste time when we, when we fake fawn, when we present somebody that we're not. And I'm not I'm not giving a plug to the modern notion of authenticity. When by yourself be as with others, if you were witnessed by yourself, would you still do what you're doing?
That's a very, very kind of fierce and loving mirror to take on through that saying. How not to waste time. How does the thing that you do leave you energetically? Now there are things we do, probably all of us, that are karmic obligations. They're ours to tend to.
They're our responsibility, and we don't feel great after doing them. And that may be workable through practice or whatever through a change in perception. So those aside, the the the obligations aside, how does the thing that you do leave you energetically? Could it be true that when you do not waste time, when you do the things that are truly in your wheelhouse, it raises energy. When you waste time, which is really your business and not someone else's, it actually leaves you drained.
And that's how you can really tell the difference. The same teacher that said that without contemplating death, we can't do spiritual practice, he said that the point of keeping the precepts of doing goodness in Buddhism is not to be good. The point is to raise our positive energy so that we can overwhelm our illusions. But something you can take from that, because there's a whole another talk in that, Interesting. Right?
Something you can take from that is that, or see if it's true, virtuous action gives positive energy. Now, virtuous action is not just, you know, I helped a person cross the street. That doesn't make it virtuous. It's the state of mind that would make that virtuous or not. But when the state of mind and the action are aligned in in virtue, in in authentic goodness, I'll use that word.
His theory, and I think he's speaking for his tradition, is that that energizes one. To not waste time might be, except for few people in this world who are just kind of wired weirdly, to not waste time is basically impossible for, ordinary human beings if we are only relying on our own devices. Right. And we can't rely on our own discipline without support from others, without support from a system, without support from a context to stay aligned with our true north. Because you're not just one thing.
You're not just one way, not just one one not one desire lives in your heart. You're a multiplicity, like all the gods imprint you. You've got Venus in you, and Apollo in you, and Zeus in you, and you've got gods. You've got they're all there. You've got Shiva, Kali.
You've got Jesus. You've got Jeff Bezos. You've got you've got the whole I don't know what's in you. I'm just guessing. That that was just my roll call.
We can't rely on our own discipline to not waste time. So another way of not wasting time, and the original Koan comes out of a context where everybody was living in this very, invowed way in a monastery, is to get embroiled in contexts that draw you into not wasting your time. Right? Find finding a career or a community or a relationship or a project that, you don't always feel good about it. In fact, it might drive you freaking nuts sometimes, but you never feel that it's not worth investing in, or you you rarely feel it's not worth investing in.
Take on meaningful commitments that are not easy to cancel on. Know, Hogan Roshi, Sometimes he would say, for this person, it'd be better if they went to grad school than just hung out at the monastery and meditated, or even word of the cook. And he would say that because to get embroiled in something where we put so much time and money and it demands so much of us helps us kind of get bigger than some of our lesser gods. Because how does one How do you do that by yourself? I mean, you you you have the gods of, you know, San Francisco working to distract you.
They are using all of their divine power to capture your attention. How are you going to resist that? Not easily, actually. So to not waste time is to kind of snap out of an individualistic view of how that could be done and think context. I'm just coming at this at, different angles.
So here's another one. To not waste time, to use the twenty four hours rather than be used by them, we can own our karma in terms of loving what we love. Loving what we love. And that's that's related to what I was saying earlier that if you in stillness can touch more bedrock desires in you. Clarifies a lot.
I and I have lived in in spiritual communities with people who seem to have this thing of boundless energy for service, forgiving, forgiving, forgiving. And, a lot of the time, I was just like, who are you people? What? And I tried to imitate it, but I had a lot of limitations around imitating it. I would often be kind of just forcing myself where I would just be going with the program.
And what I discovered was that these people had this boundless energy not because they attained sainthood, but because they were doing exactly what they loved doing, and they just made a monastery out of it. You meet someone who seems to just put all their energy into helping others, I bet you, especially if they do that in a joyful way, that they are getting 10 times what they give from showing up like that. Or they love the craft. Or they feel that they are, a richer, a more soulful person from that giving. They're not laboring under, I know, some kind of penance.
So when you own your karma in terms of loving what you love, like for example, like, there's always been people around me who are just madly in love with plants, and I like plants. But plants are not as interesting as records or cats or Thai food or Scavenger's Rain on Netflix. I highly recommend it. Great show. Plants don't entertain me.
Plants, I can't speak to them. I've tried. Okay? I give up on trying to be in love with plants. I'm not mad about them.
And when I do that, then I can love what I love and then I can see how what I love can be an offering. When you own This is what I love. This is actually In this universe, there's so many ways that beauty flirts. You can't say that someone who thinks a sunset is beautiful is deeper than a person who thinks a Porsche is beautiful. There's so many ways that beauty flirts and once we say this is how it flirts with me, then we can fold that into the Bodhisattva vow.
And then we can say, okay, I love this. This brings me to life. Naturally, I wanna share it. Nobody wants to really wants to play by themselves. I don't think.
And when we when we love what we love, it's symbiotic. It's it's it's reciprocal. It it energizes. Also, accept that we have limits on how much time we can be focused. Does anybody do the pompadoura method?
Is that what it's called? Did I say it wrong? Oh. Pompadourum? No.
Pompadam? That's Indian crackers. Pompadoro. Pompadoro. Thank you.
Pompadoro method. So I work for five minutes, and I surf the web for fifteen. Yes. And it's very effective at wasting a day. No.
I think it's like twenty five minutes focus, five minutes. You let your mind do what it wants. We have limits on how much we can be focused. Now, is true, especially if you develop your concentration meditation and come to really know what you desire, your capacity for concentration will increase, And you'll be able to stay focused on things that matter to you or the things that you know are gonna be of benefit for a lot longer. You'll have a stamina of engagement.
But also, you're not a robot, you're not a machine. We live in a machine age. Yes, machines, if you keep them oiled, they can keep going but even a machine wears out. If we're at a time, if we lean too hard on not wasting time or always being efficient, which is efficiency is to is worth really looking at. Why is why do we value efficiency?
But if if if we look at our inability to always be on task, to be productive, we might see that wondering and wandering will insist on their proportion in your life. They will refuse to be completely pushed out of the picture. So I sometimes we hear about people in high pressure kind of jobs who like, how do they manage that? Well, they binge on coke on the weekend or they take it all, all that frustration stress out on someone they live with at home, whatever it might be. There is a limit on how much we can be focused.
As interesting as a meditation teacher, part of your job is to say, hey, you focus. You came here to focus, focus. But you also know that no matter how much people try to focus, there is a proportion of the time that their mind has to dream. Dreaming will claim its right amount of time. It will.
Now you can dream within awareness. So wandering and wandering and playing will insist on their presence in some proportion. So why am I saying this? Because we can make room for I would like to really try to use my precious life well, and it's not gonna look perfect. It's not about mastery.
And that's why the I I do wanna retire in my own vocabulary the term like Zen master. What a weird Mastery in a way is incompatible with presence. Presence is not mastered. Finally, how can time possibly be wasted? How can you waste time?
What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: TikTok, you have 100% being. You're you're alive. Feeding, you know, stray cats, you are 100% of being. You're alive. How can you waste time?
How can what we do not inform what we do? Just think about that wasting time as if it's a resource that we have. Time is not something we have. We're time. We're time.
Time is expressing us. It's not like, you know, something we have in our wallet, time. We say spend time, but is that really how it is? So that's a whole another dimension that, for instance, sometimes we feel I'm doing what I don't want to be doing, and then we're unhappy. But what would make that wasted time?
What's the what's the stance inside? What's the attitude that leaves the feeling at least of time being wasted? Is wasted time not being aware? Is wasted time being someone we've outgrown? Is wasted time lying to ourselves?
What is what is wasted time? Can it be wasted? So, to review and there's lots that you could probably add to this list of how to use time well. But renew over and over and over a visceral feeling awareness about death and impermanence every day. Don't forget.
Touch stillness. When you touch stillness and let the outer orbit of your desires dissolve, what remains? What matters to you when that clears. If no one was watching you do what you do, would you do it? If they were watching you do what you were doing, would you do it?
How does the thing you do leave you energetically? Right? Does does does it does it speak its its value by how it brightens or dims? Remember that we all, I think, I'd guess, have a lot of limitations on how much we can be one way or one thing because we're permeated by all the gods. So we need help.
What is that help? Accept that a human mind is traversed by forces other than focus, that dreaming will claim you, wandering will claim you in some way, in some proportion. And then, what does it mean to waste time? If I feel that I waste time, what's that feeling resting on? How do you use time well?
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