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Guided Meditation: Who Am I Across Time?

Greetings, friends. Good to be with you in this moment in time, whether it's morning, afternoon, evening, wherever you are.

This week we are exploring the teachings on time and the relationship of time. Yesterday we explored the human psychological experience of time, how our mind rushes into the past, into the future, and how awareness can soften the feeling of psychological imprisonment.

Today we're going to explore something even more intimate, and that is how our identity itself becomes entangled with time. The Buddha taught that suffering deepens when we cling not only to experiences in the present, but also stories about ourselves across time: who I was, what happened to me, what I became, what I fear becoming.

Today we will investigate how the mind can freeze around memory, anticipation, and becoming. Bhāvanā^[1], becoming. And how practice begins to loosen those temporal identities. So, with that as the setting, let's begin practicing together. Let's arrive and let's settle.

Arriving in this body, arriving in this moment in time. Feeling the body here now, seated. Allowing the back to be upright, having a sense of integrity.

Noticing the touch points of our body with the chair, the cushion, pressure points, warmth, heaviness, lightness. And beginning with becoming aware of the sensations of breathing, in-breath and out-breath, in time, in this moment unfolding right here. In this moment unfolding in time.

Dropping this investigation in like a drop of water into a well or a lake, dropping this investigation into your body. This inquiry into the sense of self, and whether it's arising from who I was, who I am, or who I will be.

Let's take "who I was." That's usually the simplest. Letting this inquiry be gentle. Not so much going fishing, but seeing if it's already present. It's not a thinking expedition, but feeling if it's already present in the waters. The sense of who is sitting here: is it a person who accomplished this great thing, or is this a failure? Identities naturally arising, roles naturally arising, memories, unfinished narratives.

Again, not a fishing expedition. If it's not present, just stay. Be with the breath and the body. And if it is present, are there moments from the past that are defining me right now? Achievements, regrets, longings. And if not so present, again, don't go fishing. Let it be.

And now, dropping a light investigation into becoming. If it's strong, is there a self you are trying to become, or afraid of becoming? Or am I waiting for something to happen before I fully live, to inhabit this very life?

Again, let these reflections be light. Just dropping them in and staying with the breath. If something arises, know it. If it doesn't, fine. Don't go fishing. Staying with the breath and the body.

Returning, staying with the immediate experience of the breath, sensations of the breath, sensations of the body, sound. Here. Now.

And if there are identities present through thoughts, is it possible for just three seconds to put them down? Release. It doesn't take a lot of time to taste the ease of putting it down. And see what happens if you just put it down. You can pick it all up in a few seconds, but to release and just be. No past, no future. Just a breath in the body.

Notice if you take birth, become the person who's identified with a memory or a story. And smile at it if it happened. And put it down. Release. A story that happened long ago, or maybe recently, taking birth, becoming that person who...

The last couple of minutes of this sitting period, again bringing awareness to the psychological time travel. Past, future, and taking birth, becoming the person who is, who was, who will be, or who doesn't want to be, is afraid of being. All these variations. And how easy it is in just one second to let go, to release, to put it down. And taste what it's like to put it down.

May the seeds of awareness that we're planting and watering be of service to the awakening and well-being of all beings everywhere, including ourselves, in time.

Dharmette: Time (2 of 5) Frozen in Time

Hello friends. Exploring the theme of time, and today with the exploration of identity. And becoming in time.

One who is involved in desires and attachment to pleasures tied to the agreeable grieves over what has passed away. Such a one is not freed from suffering.

The Buddha understood something extraordinarily subtle: human beings don't merely remember the past, but we build our identities, ourselves, out of time—past, present, and future. So, the self, this being that we construct, is a continuity-making device of our psychology. We continually make this being from memory, from anticipation, from preference, from fear, from narrative, from habit. And this whole process that we keep making and making, we call it "me."

In fact, the word in Pali, māna^[2], which is often translated as conceit, is the last fetter to drop at the fourth stage of enlightenment. Joseph Goldstein^[3] describes it as this feeling of "I was, I am, I will be." The sense of me in time. All right, well, time is already here, right? This concept of time is interwoven into suffering, into becoming, into freedom.

So, who would you be without your favorite story about yourself? And the favorite story could be the story of either great success or happiness, or the greatest wound. Who would you be without that? Are we loyal to our stories in time? It's not about denial. It's really about loosening our identification and this continually becoming.

The Buddha emphasized not-self, anātman^[4], not as an abstract philosophy, but because clinging to a temporal identity creates suffering. Often our identity in the present is constructed from past stories.

So, this profound teaching on dependent origination^[5], bhava^[6], becoming... Sorry, not bhāvanā. I'm saying bhāvanā, which is wholesome cultivation. Let that go, the extra "n". Bhava, becoming.

The mind is constantly leaning forward to become—become loved, safe. Becoming someone from being nobody; becoming somebody successful, loved, awakened. Psychological time is often powered by craving. This craving of moving forward into becoming—bhava, bhava, bhava.

Here's an invitation for reflection: Notice if, besides the stories from the past that give us a sense of self and identity, there is a feeling or thought in the mind that "I will finally be okay when..." When X, Y, Z happens. "I will finally be okay when..." Many of us live our lives that way. I remember when I was in graduate school, it occurred to me that so many of my colleagues and friends were postponing their lives until graduate school was over. That was a phase in life. And anything can happen at any time, of course.

Another theme I want to bring in today is this idea of being frozen in the past. Some people become—and maybe we become frozen at times—around an old hurt, a betrayal, a loss, an identity, a success, or a failure. I want to share a couple of stories from this book that I love, Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman^[7]. Alan Lightman is a physicist and philosopher. In that book, he has all these vignettes of different worlds where time works differently. I want to bring in a couple of stories to make this point.

One story he talks about is a man in a house below the mountains. On his walls hang his certificates of excellence from school, his trophies fill his shelves. On the table is a photograph of him as a young captain of the fencing team, his arm around his friends who've long since gone on to become engineers, bankers, married, aged, etc. His old fencing clothes are still in the dresser, twenty years unworn, and they no longer fit. A friend who has been trying for years to introduce him to new people sits with him, nods politely, and quietly struggles to breathe in that tiny, sealed room.

In another house, a woman looks at the photograph of her son, young, smiling, and bright. She writes letters to him to an address where he no longer lives. She imagines the warm replies. And when her son, older now, his face changed, his life hard, actually knocks on the door, she does not answer. When he calls up to her window, she does not hear him. When he leaves notes begging to see her, she throws them out unopened. In the morning, she looks again at the photograph of the bright boy and writes another loving letter to the address where no one is.

Lightman ends that work with a line that is beautiful. He says that the tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. Whether you're stuck in a moment of pain or a moment of joy, it doesn't matter, because a life lived in the past cannot be shared with anyone in the present. Each person stuck in time is stuck alone.

Stuck in time. Is there anything about our being that is stuck in time alone? It does not mean bypassing trauma or grief. But allowing life to move, to continue moving. We are time. It's not that we have time, we are time. As Heidegger^[8] says, we are time. Allowing time to continue to move.

Considering also that modern neuroscience increasingly suggests that memory is reconstructive rather than perfectly archival. We know this, right? It's not archival. We pick and choose what we want to remember; we make new narratives. So, every remembering is a recreation. It's a re-enactment, and you know how re-enactments are not exactly the same thing. The self is not a fixed subject traveling through time; it's a process. It's an ongoing process.

The freedom is in realizing that we are less defined by who we think we are, less defined by stories in time—past stories, future stories, becoming, bhava, becoming someone in the future, someone who's been in the past.

The invitation for practice today is not so much erasing memories, abandoning responsibility, or becoming detached from ordinary life, but the invitation is flexibility. Can there be flexibility? Can there be forgiveness? Can there be fluidity? Can there be greater intimacy with immediacy? Greater intimacy with immediacy. Maybe that's the phrase I want to leave you with for today. Greater intimacy with immediacy.

Perhaps awakening is not creating the perfect future self, but relaxing the compulsive project of becoming. Bhava, becoming, becoming.

So with that, I thank you, friends, for your practice, your presence, and look forward to feeling... I don't see you, you see me. It's unidirectional. Feeling your presence with your comments and with your presence. Tomorrow we continue this series on time. Being in time, practicing in time, being time-bounded beings. Thank you all. May you have intimacy with immediacy today.