Our Perceptions of Time

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Nikki Mirghafori: Perceptions of Time. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Nikki Mirghafori at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 22, 2019. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Our Perceptions of Time

You're awake! Great. Lovely to be here together this morning. For reflections this morning, I'd like to talk about our perception of time from the lens of the Dharma.

There are a lot of different things I'm going to bring together. Oftentimes, given my background and training as a scientist, my talks are like bullet points and sub-bullet points. Today's talk might be more like a watercolor painting. We'll see how it goes—as much as a scientist can do a watercolor painting!

What I'd like to do today is share some vignettes from a marvelous book called Einstein's Dreams. Is anyone familiar with this book already? Yes, a couple of people. An enthusiastic thumbs up! It's a lovely book. Let me tell you a little bit about it now that I've introduced it. It was written by Alan Lightman, who is a physicist trained as an astrophysicist. He has a PhD in theoretical physics. This book contains imaginary vignettes of what Einstein dreamed.

We often think of Dharma with a capital "D" as the teachings of the Buddha, but with a small "d", the same word dharma^[1] means the way things are, the natural law. The natural law, the way things are, includes our perception of life, of reality, of ourselves, and of this mind within the context of time. The way we perceive time may not actually be what time is. In fact, according to many current physics theories, there are multiple parallel universes where different versions of you live. Thinking about it is like, whoa! There was another physicist I was just listening to on the radio the other day whose theories basically suggest that every moment you make a decision, another version of you in another world spawns off. It's almost like that movie Sliding Doors, where Gwyneth Paltrow misses the train or catches the train, and the movie shows what life would be like if she caught it versus if she missed it. According to the theory of this scientist, every moment you make a decision, different versions of you spawn off in different worlds.

But I'm going to pull us back. I bring these reflections up to set the space for reflecting on ourselves in time with different ideas about time. I'll make it a lot more concrete in a moment. What I've presented so far is kind of out there.

This is all still the preamble; we haven't gotten to the meat yet. The other part of the preamble is why I decided to present this, besides simply loving the book. As I was reading it, I have been reflecting more and more on emptiness, and on teaching emptiness. In about four weeks, I'm actually leading a day-long retreat here on emptiness. So, I'm starting to sit and prepare my material, thinking more and more about emptiness and how to teach it, because it's been a big part of my own practice.

Emptiness pertains to all phenomena, not just experience. Seeing every phenomenon as empty is freeing. It's not a way to veer into nihilism—which I think is one potential danger of jumping into practices of emptiness without quite grokking them. The healthy way to work with it is as a way of freeing up. There is often a prison that we make for ourselves, taking everything to be so solid, both about our own experience and about what's happening around us. Tightness and contractions come up with our taking things too real and too seriously.

Emptiness creates a space of possibility and openness, which can then be inhabited by meaning, by grace, and by beauty. It's not an empty emptiness; it's full, alive, and divine. Because there is so much more space when things really are empty, there is a lot more room for beauty, for joy, and for really experiencing the divinity of our experience.

My intention is to jiggle and juggle our fixed notions of view. The way the reflections today about time relate to that bigger picture of emptiness is that it jiggles our perception of time and our perception of what we think is real. This is not to disorient us, but to allow for more possibilities to live more freely. Does that make sense how these themes fit together? The theme of time fits into freedom instead of contraction. You're with me so far? Okay, that's the preamble.

A Life in One Day

Now, with that, let's see which vignette I want to start with. I had them ordered, and then this morning I decided to reorder them. I'll start with this one. It's interesting—each chapter's title is a date. The date on this one is the 3rd of June, 1905.

Imagine a world in which people live just one day. Either the rate of heartbeats and breathing is speeded up so that an entire lifetime is compressed to the space of one turn of the Earth on its axis, or the rotation of the Earth is slowed to such a slow gear that one complete revolution occupies a whole human lifetime. Either interpretation is valid. In either case, a man or woman sees one sunrise, one sunset. In this world, no one lives to witness the change of the seasons. A person born in December in any European country never sees the hyacinth, the lily, the cyclamen, the edelweiss. Never sees the leaves of the maple red and gold. Never hears the crickets or the warblers. A person born in December lives his life cold. Likewise, a person born in July never feels a snowflake on her cheeks, never sees the crystal on a frozen lake, never hears the squeak of boots in fresh snow. A person born in July lives her life warm. The variety of seasons is learned about in books.

It gets more interesting here.

In this world in which a human life spans but a single day, people heed time like cats straining to hear sounds in the attic, for there is no time to lose. Birth, schooling, love affairs, marriage, profession, old age must all be fit within one transit of the sun, one modulation of light. When people pass on the street, they tip their hats and hurry on. When people meet at houses, they politely inquire of each other's health and then attend to their own affairs. When people gather at cafes, they nervously study the shifting of shadows and do not sit long. Time is too precious. A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. One life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and legs.

I'll read the last paragraph and then I'll comment, but just let it wash over you.

When old age comes, whether in light or in darkness, a person discovers that they know no one. There hasn't been time. Parents have passed away at midday or midnight. Brothers and sisters have moved to distant cities to seize passing opportunities. Friends have changed with the changing angle of the sun. Houses, towns, jobs, lovers have all been planned to accommodate a life framed in one day. A person in old age knows no one. He talks to people, but he does not know them. His life is scattered in fragments of conversation, forgotten by fragments of people. His life is divided into hasty episodes witnessed by few. He sits at his bedside table, listens to the sound of his running bath, and wonders whether anything exists outside of his mind. Did the embrace from his mother really exist? Did that laughing rivalry with his school friend really exist? Did the first tingle of lovemaking really exist? Did his lover exist? Where are they now? As he sits at his bedside table, listening to the sound of his running bath, vaguely perceiving the change in the light.

Whew! So much there. I appreciate that there are so many different aspects to us imagining if our lives were lived in a single day. One thing he's doing very cleverly is making it more accessible for us to realize how short our life really is. I think that's the point of the story. The same way he talks about people in this world only reading about seasons in books, we read about history in books. We don't live long enough to know what the Depression era was like, what the World Wars were like. We know none of these firsthand; we read about them in books because really, our life is just a day in this long, cosmic span.

To really appreciate our own mortality and the briefness of our life—we appreciate what a short life of one day is. We grok it. But for us, 60, 70, or 80 years feels like a long time. It really isn't. To truly appreciate the impermanence—the anicca^[2]—of our lives, it's really just a day in the cosmic scheme.

Another aspect of the story that I appreciate is the hurrying. People hurry on, and by the time they are at old age, they don't know anyone and wonder if it ever happened or if it was just in their minds. In some ways, we do that too in our society. We are so busy; we don't linger. There's always the to-do list. There's always a next thing to do. Yesterday, I was walking by the pool where I live, and I overheard a lady saying, "Oh, I meant to come when the sun was out, but I had the to-do list. I had to do this, I did do that, and now it's cold. The sun is gone." I was like, "Oh yeah, that's familiar."

These are reflections on our time being short and how we choose to spend it.

Reflections from the Audience

I want to pause and ask if there are any other reflections you'd like to share before I move on to other vignettes. Does anything come up for you about this reflection that really lands?

Yogi 1: I've noticed in sitting meditation, I don't go into jhānas^[3]. My mind proliferates. Maybe toward the end of a sitting period, I realize, "Oh, I haven't focused yet." So I make a little more effort. In that last minute, even though my body is a little jumpy or agitated and not comfortable with being still—so it's not necessarily pleasant—because I'm really noticing every moment, that last minute can seem like a very, very long time.

Nikki: Interesting, yes. The perception of time. And even though it's not pleasant, just the fact that you're noticing, noticing, noticing is great. Different perceptions.

Yogi 2: When I go on a retreat—I don't know why this doesn't happen other days—but on the first full day, you get up at 5:30 AM and sit until 9:00 PM. Even though my mind isn't really very focused as a rule, still, I'm noticing more than I usually do. That day can seem like two weeks.

Nikki: Absolutely. I appreciate that. How many people can relate to experiencing different perceptions of time differently? It's interesting, right? I think what we're noticing is that we're alive. Thank you for that. I'm going to move on to the other reflections now. Ready for another one? Here we go.

A World Without Memory

This is a very good one. This world is a world without memory. I was actually reminded of this one when my bio was being read earlier! I was listening to it as if I had no memory, like, "Wow, this is an interesting person!"

A world without memory is the world of the present. The past exists only in books, in documents. In order to know oneself, each person carries their own Book of Life, which is filled with the history of their life. By reading its pages daily, one can relearn the identity of their parents, whether they were born high or born low, whether they did well or poorly in school, whether they had accomplished anything in life. Without one's Book of Life, a person is a snapshot, a two-dimensional image, a ghost.

In the leafy cafes on the Kramgasse, one hears anguished shrieks from a man who just read that he once killed another man. Sighs from a woman who just discovered she was courted by a prince. Sudden boasting from a woman who has learned that she received top honors from a university ten years prior. Some pass the twilight hours at their tables reading from their Books of Life. Others frantically fill its extra pages with the day's events. With time, each person's Book of Life thickens until it cannot be read in its entirety.

Then comes a choice. Elderly men and women may read the early pages to know themselves as youth, or they may read the end to know themselves in later years. Some have stopped reading altogether. They have abandoned the past. They have decided that it matters not if yesterday they were rich or poor, educated or ignorant, proud or humble, in love or empty-hearted—no more than it matters how a soft wind gets into their hair. Such people look you directly in the eye and grip your hand firmly. Such people walk with the limber stride of their youth. Such people have learned how to live in a world without memory.

Wow! Imagine a world without memory. Imagine if there wasn't a past. Living in the present, in a way, is what we invite in the practice of meditation: be in the present, let go of the past. But I think the more radical teaching of the Buddha is to let go of the past, to let go of the future, and to let go of the present. Ah! That part we usually don't teach, or we don't emphasize, or maybe people miss it.

Why is that? One thing that tends to happen in mindfulness and vipassana^[4] practice is that people tend to value the present moment as God. It's all about being in the present. But as the Buddha says, let go of the present. The present, too, is empty. It is completely empty. It only serves as a doorway to realizing that everything else is empty, light, and held with lots of lightness. The present moment itself does not need to be put on a pedestal. It's just a doorway. Do you take the window or the door of your house, put it on a pedestal, and worship it? No. It's just a doorway to get outside, to wake up, to go out and play.

The invitation I have for you in these different worlds is to pick one. Today, as you go about your life, experiment. See what it would be like if you let go of a memory. Or imagine what it would be like if this was the last day of your life.

Stuck in the Past

I'd like to offer a couple more. Are you up for it? Okay. This next one is the opposite. The one I just read was about a world without memory; this other world is about being stuck in the past. This is quite relevant, actually. In this world, different parts of town are stuck in different periods of history, and people are too. I'll skip the part about the town itself and just focus on the people.

The same way that portions of towns become stuck in some moment in history and do not get out, so too individual people become stuck in some point in their lives and do not get free.

Just now, a man in one of the houses below the mountains is talking to a friend. He is talking of his school days at the gymnasium. His certificates of excellence in mathematics and history hang on the walls. His sporting medals and trophies occupy the bookshelves. Here on the table is a photograph of him as the captain of the fencing team, embracing the other young men who have since gone to university, become engineers and bankers, gotten married. There in the dresser are clothes from twenty years ago: the fencing blouse, the tweed pants, now tight around the waist. The friend, who has been trying for years to introduce the man to other friends, nods courteously and struggles silently to breathe in the tiny room.

In another house, a woman looks fondly at a photograph of her son, young and smiling and bright. She writes to him at a long-defunct address, imagines the happy letters back. When her son knocks at the door, she does not answer. When her son, with his puffy face and glassy eyes, calls up to her window for money, she does not hear him. When her son, with his stumbling walk, leaves notes for her begging to see her, she throws out the notes unopened. When her son stands in the night outside her house, she goes to bed. Early in the morning, she looks at his photograph and writes adoring letters to a long-defunct address.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

That's profound. I love this perspective. Are there ways in which you are stuck in time? Maybe not all the time, every day, but is there an identity from the past that you are stuck to? "I am this." "I am a survivor of X." This is not to say that events don't affect us and don't change us, but do we continue to define ourselves based on that one moment that happened at some point in the past?

When we're stuck in the past, we limit ourselves. We are so much more magnificent beings than to define ourselves simply as a moment in time. If something happened to us, can we see that identity and let go? If it's something that perhaps we did unskillfully, instead of self-flagellating, asking "Why did I do this? Why did I not do that?" and analyzing it over and over again, maybe we can forgive ourselves and move on. We don't have to be stuck in that moment in the past, letting it define us and every moment in the future.

That's another invitation I have for you to see if you are stuck. I love how Lightman makes caricatures of these people so we really get it. We really grok it. Are there moments in your past that you're stuck in? There's a loneliness to it, because those moments in the past cannot be shared with anyone in the present. You're stuck in the whirlpool of that moment alone.

Body Time vs. Mechanical Time

As I said, this is a watercolor today, so I have lots of different colors for you! In this world, there are two different types of time: body time and mechanical time.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.

Many are convinced that mechanical time does not exist. When they pass the giant clock on the Kramgasse, they do not see it, nor do they hear its chimes. While sending packages or strolling between flowers, they wear watches on their wrists only as ornaments, as courtesies to those who would give them timepieces as gifts. They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythm of their moods and desires. Such people eat when they are hungry, go to their jobs at the millinery or the chemist's whenever they wake from their sleep. Such people laugh at the thought of mechanical time. They know that time moves in fits and starts. They know that time struggles forward with a weight on its back when they are rushing an injured child to the hospital or bearing the gaze of a neighbor wronged.

Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. (Do you know any people like that?) They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock. They work forty hours a week, read the Sunday paper on Sunday, play chess on Tuesday nights. When their stomach growls, they look at their watch to see if it is time to eat. When they begin to lose themselves in a concert, they look at the clock above the stage to see when it will be time to go home. They know that the body is not a thing of wild magic, but a collection of chemicals, tissues, and nerve impulses. Thoughts are no more than electrical surges in the brain. Sadness no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum. In short, the body is a machine, subject to the same laws of electricity and mechanics as an electron or clock. As such, the body must be addressed in the language of physics. And if the body speaks, it is speaking only of so many levers and forces. The body is a thing to be ordered, not obeyed.

I appreciate this reflection as it turns things around again with respect to time. There are two different times, and which one do you obey? As I was reflecting on this myself, I realized that there are these two truths. There is the internal time that we have (body time), and there is the external time (mechanical time). External time is passing—we have six more minutes left this morning for my talk. You might feel like, "Oh wow, is it really? What happened?" Or maybe, "Oh, that just felt like forever."

In his writing, Lightman seems to ridicule a little bit the people who live purely by external time. That's my impression. And yet, I think what is really important and wise in terms of living our human life is to appreciate that there are these two times and to notice our own tendencies.

Are we in the first group or the second group? Do we sit and meditate only whenever we feel like it? If we don't feel like it, it might never happen. ("The last time I sat was two years ago because I haven't felt like it.") Or do we sit every day at 5:00 AM for a whole hour, whether or not we're in pain, tired, or sleep-deprived, just doing it because "that's the time"? This applies not just to our sitting practice, but to all other aspects of our lives.

Knowing what our tendency is, wisdom comes in working with both wisely, not just choosing one over the other. If we have the tendency to only do things as we feel called to them, maybe we can bring in a little more structure. We can live a little more according to external time, pushing our edge. If we are the type that tends to live mainly according to external time—"I should do this, I should do that," living tightly by the timetable—we can try loosening it up and listening to our internal body time. "I'm supposed to do this now, but I actually really don't feel like it. What does this body need right now? What is this body saying?" If we listen to the body, there is so much wisdom there. But we shouldn't rely on it completely. It's about really finding the balance and the wisdom between both of those.

When I teach meditation retreats, especially for beginners, we tell people to give themselves to the schedule: sit, walk, sit, walk. Do whatever the schedule says. And yet, if you're tired, take a nap in the afternoon. People might ask, "Wait, why did you just say to give yourself to the schedule, but then say if you're tired to listen to your body and take a nap?" Absolutely! Both. Give yourself to the schedule and listen to your body. If you're tired, take a nap, go for a walk. Do what your body needs. There is so much wisdom in both of those.

Similarly, as I work individually with people, if I see a lot of rigidity—for example, they're sitting all the time, but they aren't liking the practice anymore, they have a lot of aversion to it, and they're only doing it because they "should," because they "have to," or because they have a goal—I say, "Don't sit." My teacher used to say, "Don't sit!" But seriously, don't do it if it's such a "should" and is bringing up so much aversion. Instead, listen to your body. If in the middle of the day you're really exhausted, your mind is fried, and you just want a break from all the busyness and the people, that is the time to listen to your body. That's the time to go and sit. Maybe even go to the bathroom for two minutes if you're at work and just sit in the toilet stall. When you really listen to what your body needs, you can fall in love with your practice again, little by little.

Then you can bring it back to your daily routine. If you usually sit at 5:00 AM, but one morning you think, "I'm really tired, I want to sleep more," respect and honor that. Don't worry, you're not going to become a couch potato. But if every morning for a whole month you wake up and say, "No, I just want to sleep," well, then maybe you want to tighten it up a little bit and practice more according to external time.

So, it's 10:43, speaking of time!

Conclusion and Dedication of Merit

In the last minute we have left, I'd like to repeat the invitation to take one of these reflections today and play around with it—whichever one really spoke to you.

Also, consider taking this reflection home: just as characters in a play are given a role to play, the time of the play is defined. It's three hours, there's an intermission, maybe it's set in a particular time, and maybe between the first act and second act, ten years pass. Time is imaginal. In your life, you are a character in a play. Actually, it's not your own play; you are just given a role in a play. You didn't choose your parents, your body, your mind. You didn't choose any of this. You're a character. So play your part the best you can—with joy, with delight, loving it. It's not going to last. It's a limited play. It's a day, it's three hours, it's however long it is. This construct of time, we always think it's the present, it's always "now"... but then again, that's another topic I won't get into right now!

I hope the reflections today were of some use to your practice, to your life, and to your growth. May you all be happy. May you all be well. Let's dedicate the merit of our sitting and our reflection together. May all beings everywhere be happy. May all beings everywhere be free.

[Laughter]

Thank you for your kind attention.