Time, Please!

In practicing Zazen we can enjoy an interesting perspective on time:

The past is just our own memory made in our own brains, and the future is just a thought made in our brains as well... in a sense we make our own 'time' in this way.

The present, the eternal present that never stops nor starts, is this moment where we can allow all thoughts of 'past', 'future' and 'present' to just come and go. Doing this is to BE Real-time and to understand Real-time/existence: Real-time is not how we imagine the 'past', 'present' or 'future' to be and so we can experience it in letting all our thoughts come forward and drop away... after a while of sitting thus we'll get into the groove of this Real-time and it will come to meet us and help us out.

We might like to think of the wise Buddhas of the past, or some Truth or Realisation that will come in the future... but the only Truth and the only Reality is this present time. This is the only time when we can really exist and act, or be true, or be realised... or just be deluded by all our thinking!

Master Dogen wrote about this in a Chapter of Shobogenzo called "Uji" ('Time-being').

Regards,

Harry.