6,400,099,180 Moments

(cross-posted from Instagram)

These words from a great teacher of mine have lived inside of me since I first heard them. I look at my life differently because of them—every day, every moment. I look at writing and storytelling differently, too.

“We think time is outside of us, and we also think time moves linearly, from past to present, and it’s like a fast train and we’re trying to grab on and ride it.

But time isn’t like that. Dōgen, a 13 century zen master...didn’t just listen to that and believe it. He thought, ‘For the time being - what does that mean?’ He turned it around to ‘being time.’ That we all carry time in us. There’s no time outside of us…

A day consists of 6,400,099,180 moments.

To make it easier, one finger snap has 60 moments. One moment is 1/75 of a second. And these moments are falling all the time like rain, like a mist.

And that’s us. We’re not separate from that.

We’re rising and falling and being recreated over and over in sixty moments in a finger snap…

Transiency is the naked nature of time. But it’s not separate from us.”

From “Down to the Marrow,” Natalie Goldberg’s dharma talk at Upaya, September 13, 2017.