being yesterday—being time

The sun seeps into the zendo in New Mexico. The smell of sandalwood drifts from the hallway. I adjust the long sleeves of my robe. The lingering taste of a Tibetan tea is on my tongue and settles the moment. Quiet at morning zazen, the desire to visit old friends, play, sing, and dance near the canyon and the mesa, surfaces. Each year we sing and dance, our prayers as strong as the call of coyotes. The different colors of the sky tint our skin. We are the color of the flags waving high over the arbor. The mesa in the distance watches. Still and without a word, ancestors kiss our eyelids. We dream together, chilled by monsoon rains. Missing my friends is to miss yesterday’s self, laughing and smoking cigars. Yesterday’s self wants the same laughter and old friends sitting in the same old places, outdoors, near the open fire, repeating stories that make us laugh. The feeling of being without them creates desire for time already lived.

What makes us long for that which is no longer? Is it really gone? Everything we come upon in life seems to leave traces. The woman sitting on her rotting porch on Sapelo Island in Georgia two decades ago stays with me. The cows crossing the road at night on Extraterrestrial Highway still haunt me. The fascination of what appeared then and still appears now in some other place and time, calls my attention. We gather memories and store them, sift through them as a pastime. It feels important to us to remember, to recall what we were taught and who we know. Yet, remembering keeps us in places and with people that no longer exist in our lives. Memory replays our conversations, refuels emotions, and stimulates various sensations. The capacity to look back is a curse and a gift. We are taught clinging to the past or dreaming of the future is to suffer, as it takes us away from our present lives. As humans we can’t help thinking of both the past and the future. It’s human nature to consider time. It’s comforting to think back on what a grandparent shared with us in front of the fireplace. It’s a pleasure to dream of a future filled with what is missing in the present. We string moments along a rope like orange marigolds to be placed around our necks.

We take time and whirl it into life so that we can feel, smell, taste, and reminisce. I’m not with my old friends. Still, buzzing flies and the smell of wet desert where I sit remind me of them. Time is taking an old form. I will eat a banana for breakfast, remembering old friends crawling in and out of sweat lodges. Last night’s rain drips from trees like tears falling, remembering the firelit faces of old sojourners who spirit walk. Ancient prayers are released in the smoke, rising from red dirt into the open sky.

It feels as though time is not going by. Time is being. The old friends are time. The memory of them is time. The prayers said years ago are in the time being. The smell of the wet desert is here now as it was then. If being is all time, we need not worry about what we cling to in the past or dream of the future. If time is being, it’s impossible for it to pass into the past or future. Everything is being. If being is time, then we are time whether we are thinking of the past or future. And if we are time, then we are space, fire, water, air, and all dimensions of existence.

What we see passing as time, what we hold as memories, is serial time, that happens within being time. The magic of our existence is that we can go through serial time, such as the seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall—even though we are time itself. Remembering the earth as the source of life is to recall the earth as being time, and ourselves in such time. Time is what the web of life is made of.

I heard of a family that recently lost a loved one. They shared photos of their beloved son from infancy to the age of his sudden death as a young adult. Cause unknown. It may not be comforting to his family to say he is still with us, or that his death exists in the same time as his life, or that his music is now in the time being. But what might be helpful is to know that the son in the time being, in death, was and is everything as he was in the realm of multidimensional time. He is his mother, father, brother, and siblings, because he is in them in this time. He is his friends and community. He is the loss and the grief. He is me in the time of being as I am made aware of his death. The feeling that he is not gone will last as long as those connected to him in time are alive, and as long as those who will come to Earth later are introduced to him.

Being time is good fortune. It’s to be alive in a dynamic cosmology in which our state of being is steeped in time and space. We’re in the past, present, and future with each other all at once. If we’re living and dying, we’re living and dying together every moment. It’s no wonder our memories are so expansive. Being and time are inseparable. In the same way, peace is available here and now. It’s not separate from our lives. We don’t need to create peace as much as it needs to be realized.

Missing old friends and a time with them already lived, is still being lived. A drawer in my house is filled with shawls gifted to me by sundancers. Clothes and earrings given away during the dances are still treasured. Our dance in the time being is time itself despite the frayed edges of what feels like the past.

Thinking of my friends while sleeping throughout the night has caused my head to ache. I sit this morning in the zendo soothed by the drum. I’m grateful for the teachings. Later, I will ring small bells on my ancestors’ altar to let them know I haven’t forgotten them and that I’m in time with them. The winter cold is kept at bay with the heaters. I smell sage. But there is none burning where I sit.