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Guided Meditation: How Do I Live Time

And the reflection for today is, how do I live time? How do I live time?

Feeling first as we settle. Feeling this body sitting in time. Feeling the sensations of the breath in time. Feeling the contact points in time. Notice what happens when the invitation is given to feel the sensations of the body. For example, sensations of the breath in time. See if it adds another dimension. Does it bring more presence for you? That is the hope. That is the intention of the invitation.

Some invitations for investigation: Noticing psychological time. Is the mind in the past rehearsing, remembering, longing, or regretting? Is the mind leaning into the future, anticipating, planning, fearing, or fantasizing? Simply notice. Not wrong. Just conditioning.

And investigating the present experience. What is actually here right now before thought, thinking comments on it? Noticing sound. Sensations of the breath. Warmth right here. A vibration. Aliveness.

What makes this moment feel fast or slow? This moment too is passing. This breath arises and passes too. Can we meet it fully this moment? Kindly, gently. Okay. Uprightly. Feeling this moment. Knowing, inhabiting, fully inhabiting this moment, this lived experience in the river of time. This drop. Just this drop fully.

May all the mind moments of our wholesome practice be like drops of water nourishing the seeds of awakening, for ourselves and all beings everywhere. May all beings be well. May all beings be free.

Wonderful to practice with you, friends.

Dharmette: Time (1 of 5): Rushing Through a Fleeting World

So as I mentioned at the beginning, the theme for this week is time, exploring time. I want to start with a sutta quote from Majjhima Nikaya 131, the Bhaddekaratta Sutta^[1], where the Buddha says, "Let not a person revive the past or on the future build his hopes, for the past has been left behind and the future has not been reached. Instead with insight, let them see each presently arisen state."

So, how many of you feel you don't have enough time, and yet you've had five minutes feel eternal? Maybe during a difficult conversation, a sleepless night waiting for medical news, or the last minute of meditation before the bell rings feels so long. Or the awe of watching the ocean at sunset where time seems to disappear. We can already see that our experience of time is deeply conditioned. The Buddha was not merely interested in clocks or chronology; he was interested in suffering. He famously said, "All I teach is suffering and the end of suffering." And suffering is profoundly entangled with our relationship to time. Which is why this week we will be exploring our relationship to time.

Much of human suffering doesn't necessarily come from immediate experience, but it comes from mental time travel. Mental time travel is a cause of suffering. We rehearse the past. We anticipate the future. We replay conversations: "Should have said this. Shouldn't have said that." We imagine alternate realities. We narrate our identity through memory. And we postpone our happiness into the future. Meanwhile, life is actually unfolding right here.

Notice how rarely we are simply experiencing this moment, whether we're actually comparing this moment, editing this moment, resisting this moment, remembering, or preparing for what comes next. Time is really a perception. The way that humans experience time is a perception of our apparatus; it's not absolute time. In Einstein's relativity, time is not absolute in a Newtonian sense, but measurements of time vary depending on motion and gravitational conditions. Physics is increasingly challenging the intuitive sense of one universal flowing clock. Instead, many physicists describe the flow of time as emerging partly through consciousness and memory. So, modern physics softens this naive assumption about time being simple, solid, and objective.

The dharma is inviting us to experience deeply enough our ordinary assumptions about time so that they begin to soften. Maybe many of you have had this experience, both in ordinary life—as I mentioned, time slowing down or feeling like it goes faster—but also in meditation. Many of us might have had the experience that time expands or time contracts: "Oh, that 30-minute meditation felt like it was just five minutes."

So I invite us to explore our relationship with time. Are we spending a lot of time rehearsing the past, regretting the past, thinking, "Oh, the good old past was much better than the present"? Or fearing the future? Am I the type of person who's always expecting the next thing, the next thing, the next thing—tomorrow, later today, next month? Am I always in motion, planning, planning, planning?

It's helpful to realize our relationship to time. Not to condemn it, not to judge ourselves, but to realize, "Oh, this tends to be my tendency." Because many of us may not even realize. I remember a couple of decades ago, I met someone and I realized that this person lived in the past so much. It was striking to me. Only through spending some time with them, I realized, "Oh, I don't spend as much time in the past. Where do I spend time? Maybe I'm spending more time in the future and planning." Be aware. What is your tendency? Again, this project is not to become mindful and aware in order to judge yourself, but to become aware of our conditioning: "This is my conditioning. I tend to..." and become aware of how you relate to time.

There is also a distinction between mechanical time and body time. A silent retreat day can feel vast, can feel really long. When you're anxious, perhaps anxiety compresses awareness, and maybe it compresses time. Presence tends to expand the experience of body time. Joy changes time. Grief alters time. Absorption in the moment alters time. Boredom alters time. Time is not just measured externally, but it is lived internally. Our awareness of our relationship to time can bring some clarity about where we are spending our mental and body time—past or future—and also how these mental states are impacting our experience of time.

The other reflection I want to bring in is the hurry, maybe what can be called the tragedy of hurry, of rushing internally. We could be doing things fast externally, but there may not be a sense of rush internally. Sometimes we are doing something slowly, but inside we're so anxious and we're rushing internally. Become aware of that as well.

And also this rushing through life. Sometimes as we rush through life, we postpone perhaps what's important. We postpone wonder, we postpone awe, we postpone rest, we postpone love, we postpone important conversations that need to be had. And the days and nights are relentlessly passing.

Some dharma invitations as I close. The goal here is not to obsessively cling to the present moment, as I'll expand on in the coming days. Not to put the present moment on a pedestal either. And it's not about becoming anti-planning and pretending that memory does not exist or the future does not exist. It is an invitation to freedom from psychological captivity in relationship to time. To learn to inhabit our experience more directly.

Learning about our tendencies. Learning what the tendencies of our mind should be like: "Oh, there you are, sweetie. Okay, you're planning again. I see. All right, planning mind." Becoming more intimate with life and seeing impermanence more clearly.

Over the next four days, we'll explore together how craving creates time. How identity can become frozen in time. How urgency—saṃvega^[2] as it is called—and preciousness can awaken practice. And eventually, what it might mean to even let go of the present moment itself, as the Buddha has invited us in the sutta.

For today, I want to invite you to become more aware of your relationship to time as you go through your day. Become more aware of where you're spending time in the psychological space: past, future, present. Again, not judging, not beating yourself up. Just become aware with kindness, with gentleness, and how time can feel expansive or contracted externally and internally.

With that, I appreciate all of you for practicing, and I look forward to being with you tomorrow. All right, take care everyone.