I wish everyone a Peaceful, Healthy, Beneficial and Joyous New Year to come.
We Zen folks have some good understandings of the change of years, and of time's passing overall. It is not just the ticking clock.
Of course, even physicists and astronomers these days will remind us that time is relative. Your time moving slowly in the valley does not flow the same as my time traveling fast above the mountain top. A year on earth is not the same as a year on Mars and other worlds. Currently, the Earth revolves around the sun at nearly 30 km/s (67,000 miles per hour). A "new year" is celebrated every 365 days as we complete one revolution (although that must be "leap" adjusted every so often to keep our calendars in check.)
But at the same time, our entire solar system is orbiting the black hole at the center of our galaxy (at 230 km/s, 560,000 mph), and it takes about 225 million years for our sun to do that once. The last time we were at this same point in such a "galactic year," dinosaurs roamed the planet. In fact, since its birth, the sun has circled the galaxy some 20 times. Going back even further, if we were to hold a clock to it (which we really can't because no clock exists outside the universe and its own internal scales), the whole universe banged into existence about 61 such "galactic year" units ago. During that time, roughly 18 galactic years ago, the Earth first formed from the cloud of interstellar dust and gas which surrounded our sun. Eventually, at 17 galactic years ago, the first oceans appeared when the planet cooled enough to allow centuries of rain to coalesce. Then, a mere 16.8 galactic years ago, life first appeared, relatively not long after those oceans (only some 500 million years after, give or take). At 12 galactic years, we find the first bacteria, stable land continents at 10 galactic years, and multicellular life at give or take 6.8 galactic years.
The Cambrian Explosion, the sudden appearance of life forms in diverse and ever changing varieties, happened a mere 2.4 galactic years ago, the first brain structure is noted in our earthworm progenitors just 2 galactic years ago, the dinosaurs were wiped out about 0.29 galactic years ago. Of course, while homo erectus and other ancestors and cousins were around before us, the modern human (homo sapien) has only been walking this planet from some 200,000 years ago (9/1000th of one galactic year). The industrial revolution began roughly 150 years ago. Buddha (the one bound by time) is said to have been born in Iron Age India, only some 25 centuries ago. (I won't bother even to translate those whisps of time into galactic years.) **
That's all pretty mind blowing!
Nonetheless, Zen Buddhist folks might offer a couple more perspectives on all that change, including, of course, this coming New Year:
For example, all that movement and change is just us, in most intimate and inter-identical sense, since we are just that, that just this. More than miniscule and finite products of all those developments, here for a time then gone in a flash, you and us are the very movement and change itself ... as much as you are you, if just seen in another way.
What is also true is that there is a timeless aspect to it all, somehow encompassing all that change, birth and destruction. Even as things keep spinning, coming and going, fast or slow, there is a face which is still. It is something like the waves on a sea which rise and fall, and the currents which swirl about, yet the sea itself is always just the sea. (I'm not talking about those relatively "little" seas that appeared on Earth awhile back, but some greater Big "S" Swirling Sea that holds even that, all reality, stars and space, holding all measure, all things great and small. This Big S Swirling is also who we are, by the way, so we are timeless too.) It is like the silent face of the clock as the clock hands turn, and that face is our face too in other guise.
And if you have another moment to spare, that's not all to tell you:
For, to the Mahayana Buddhist, every single moment of time fully contains within itself all moments, as if every single tiny drop of ocean water contained the entire ocean within its space. It is true. This right now fully holds all moments, all past and everything that might be in the future. It is as if there were a beach filled with countless grains of sand, and every grain of sand on the beach, examined with a microscope, was seen to contain the whole beach ... and all beaches stretching everywhere, and all other grains of sand on those beaches ... all comfortably within, and everything else and then some with room to spare tucked within every one grain. So it is for every dot of people, things and moments of time. That's pretty nice to recall when we encounter a galaxy so filled with stars as ours, and a universe so filled with galaxies ... because that's a lot of sand!
Master Dogen also noted that past does not just flow into present and future, but future and present flow into past. In fact, there is just flowing flowing flowing, like a mountain which flows from top to bottom and bottom to mountain top, even as the whole mountain flows in every mountainy inch. No less, all moments of time flow into each other, and flow in and out as all things. In being-time, we and all things are this flowing in all directions, in and out and as all things. He writes in Uji (Being-Time):
Do not think flowing is like wind and rain moving from east to west. The entire world is not unchangeable, is not immovable. It flows. Flowing is like spring. Spring with all its numerous aspects is called flowing. When spring flows there is nothing outside of spring. Study this in detail. Spring invariably flows through spring. Although flowing itself is not spring, flowing occurs throughout spring. Thus, flowing is completed at just this moment of spring. Examine this thoroughly, coming and going.
In this passage, Dogen also makes the point that just this time in time is just this time in time, wholly contained, as if there is no before or after (In fact, is there truly a "before" or "after" without our mind to demark and imagine so by memory pictures and speculated tomorrows?) There is only where the sun was then (which is "now" back then), and where the sun will be in the future (which is "now" too, become next week). Frankly, what need even for the word "now" if no "before" or "after" to compare a "now" to? Each time is wholly that time and the ONLY time. As Dogen also noted, in the Genjo and elsewhere:
Birth is an expression complete this moment. Death is an expression complete this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring.
In such view, yesterday is fully yesterday, and tomorrow will be wholly tomorrow.
For this reason, let's also stop thinking of "long vs. short" - A million-quadrillion years and a half-instant are each beyond measure, each infinite in their way. Life is as long as it is, the whole universe is as long as it is, this second is as long as it is ... so let's stop comparing.
The Japanese have a lovely expression, 一期一会 ("Ichi-go ichi-e," 'each single encounter is the one meeting'), meaning that this moment, this meeting, is its one complete moment and meeting ... even, alas, if such meeting is not always as one might wish. Thus, this coming year is bound to be filled with its own ups and downs, coming and going, gain and loss, happiness and sad times too, as will every year of life and all time. Overall, let's be grateful for that fact! Such is the flowing and change which is life, which is dandy for otherwise we would live in a lifeless, frozen, stagnant, sterile, very dull place. Nonetheless, each such moment is its own complete moment, wholly whole just as it is. Savor this moment as the treasure of this moment, without demand that this moment be some other way. Remember that each smile or tear down our cheek fully holds the whole flowing thing, all of this, dancing round and round.
Even so, may I wish you ample moments of smiles to come, very few tears ...
I do not mean to waste more of your time but, finally, remember that each moment is to be treated as precious, its own jewel, filled with a few drops more of love and goodness, peace and generosity, if we choose to make it so, to act, speak and think with love and goodness, for we are all together the creators of this moment. Because every moment is a brand new moment, it is a cross-roads and time to make resolution, to do good in act, word and thought. Every moment is a moment for Buddha to appear in our loving kindness, avoidance of excess desire and anger, acts of generosity, attention and care, and all the good Buddhist values. Wonderfully, in the midst of all those galactic years, you have popped up with this life ... use it well.
All this is Buddha too, bound by time and not by time at once, always flowing. Yes, all expressed in every moment of Zazen!
Thus, this one moment is no moments, all moments, every moment and its own complete moment, all things and moments, my moment and totally your moment. And each moment is new ...
Happy New Year!!
Gassho, Jundo
stlah
** ** (There is some disagreement on the exact numbers, of course, but I thank NASA's webpage, as well as my friend James who introduced a little film from the SOU folks illustrating all this: https://www.facebook.com/secretsofun...2440206742997/
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