The Pool

At the time, I was reading Dōgen’s, Uji, also called Being Time, and one morning while meditating an image of the phrase “No coming or going” arose.

This is what I saw: Everyone throughout all time and space, all being in the same swimming pool at the same time. No one ever enters the pool and no one ever leaves the pool. Water, the metaphor for the essential ground of being and the limitless pool, Maha (means great, or in the context here, limitless).  

That was my initial realization of the phrase “no coming or going”. Here’s the famous section of Uji where that phrase comes from:

“We cannot be separated from time. This means that because, in reality, there is no coming or going in time, when we cross the river or climb the mountain we exist in the eternal present of time; this time includes all past and present time. . . . Most people think time is passing and do not realize that there is an aspect that is not passing”

I got turned on to Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order Of Time“. As I read it I was astounded, once again, of how quantum physics some 700+ years after Dōgen, is just now discovering the methods and language to describe what has been known by the awakened masters of old.

Here’s a quote from The Order Of Time, (2022): “The idea of time and entropy, past and future are qualities that belong not to the fundamental grammar of the world but to our superficial observation of it. If I observe the microscopic state of things, then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between ‘cause’ and ‘effect’.”

Cause and effect…coming or going, time or being? Nothin’ new under the sun, moon or stars.

Most of us are deeply attached to idea of “reality”. We are conditioned, both karmically and by nurture to accept a foundational belief in the concept of linear, non-fungible time. We don’t seem to grasp the eternal present of time. In other words, we think that ‘we come and we go’ in time and in space. It’s a comforting idea that seems to help a chaotic reality feel manageable. However, as Dōgen, Rovelli and many enlightened beings have pointed out, it’s not accurate, a superficial observation. Although it is perhaps a part of our collective view of reality, it is not an enlightened view. What is? Time is being and being is time. Nothing is in a fixed state.

As things continually change; the death of a beloved now gone from our daily lives, our living situations, people move away, our ideas falter or perhaps suddenly expand dramatically, our friendships shift, what once resonated now no longer does, our paths once bright and shining now lost completely in darkness, our job disappears or can no longer be performed, our kids grow up and leave, our lives change…but really, we’re still just in the pool, aren’t we?. When we experience these mundane occurrences we are comforted by our fundamental reliance on the notion that time is linear, reliable and it moves-on. It’s a funny way to to take comfort in the idea that things change, isn’t it? We have many idioms involving time to justify nearly everything. We say; It’s about time, it’s only a matter of time, it’s a sign of the times, ahead of time, time on my hands, etc., time changes everything.

It’s not really so, is it? Time does not exist. It’s just our thinking. How can it change everything? We are all, already, all in the same swimming pool always!

Each thing we call a ‘moment’ contains every moment that’s ever been, will be and is, in every dimension. No coming or going, no cause and no effect. Referred to as the eternal present. Often times we grasp for an explanation of the perceived passage of time, what we call change, the cause of it, but the question Why? is an irrelevant question. This more so when it’s the type of shifting we’re not comfortable embracing. We hope that we can make sense of it, frame it within our compartmentalized reality, thinking that we somehow can condition it to suit ourselves. What we call time enables that illusion. There is actually nothing that has past or is coming. We’ve totally missed the eternal present.

In looking deeply at things as it is you may begin imagining letting go of the idea of time, releasing all that coming or going. Can you see that the concept of time, the concept of cause and effect imprisons us by limiting our ability to view the limitless-out-there (mugai), how it also limits possibilities for engaging in growth, change and learning? It suffocates our zazen. Can you relax in awareness and be cognizant of the what is? Our conditioned extremely limiting view involving time also forces our thinking into a corner where instead of being approached by the ten thousand things we become confused by things as it is. Our minds work overtime to create delusions such as; things as I ‘think they are’, or, things as ‘I think they should be’. How can we embrace the untold, incomprehensible spaciousness of being with such a limited view?

Nothing will so much limit a persons perspective and understanding more than conditioned response. It eliminates seeing what is and immediately brings us into the delusional realm of separate-self-thinking. This is conceptual-time. This is coming or going.

Presence and clarity arise from the action of bearing witness. This alone is not enough, we have to work with this in conjunction with with not knowing, dissolving our preconceived notions and pre-conditioning. By dwelling in the conditioned response of coming and going, or cause and effect we limit our ability to respond to the constantly vibrant unfolding of life’s permutations with curiosity, delight, and compassion. In conditioned-response-mode we find ourselves trapped in emotionally desperate self-preservation, grasping and averting in order to avoid the very real slipping away of a perceived comfort. This is only the illusion of comfort we have when we’re dwelling in the mistaken condition of cause and effect, coming or going, where things only seem manageable. Nothing is manageable. It takes courage to dwell in the eternal present. Will you accept the unmanageability of unfolding chaos as creativity as it is constantly manifesting?

Capsize your own boat! Let yourself slip effortlessly into the all-encompassing sense of being in the swimming pool with everyone, beyond the idea of always, beyond the delusion of the present moment. Can you be the eternal moment? What if you could just feel the water, sense the limitlessness of the pool. Enjoy the exuberation of being there with all your loved ones, all your friends, all beings, those who have been, are, and will be your mother and father and all those who’s mother and father you are, will be and have been. You, with all beings equal to space in the limitless pool. Being in the pool is beautiful-open to experiencing the arising of the ten thousand things. Realize and release the delineated restrictions of time you put on yourself.

Do a cannonball as your life expands! Could you practice no coming or going and perhaps experience curiosity, inquiry, joy, and most importantly, your already existing, natural, authentic, awakened mind?

Be the swimming pool, be the water.

Deep peace and great love, Issan (author) and Zenho

Noah’s poem

Underneath the

Doings and accomplishing of the 

Day 

There is a gentle river

Winding itself through the

Silent Frontier

Flowing flowing

even in the 

Summer desert heat 

And the stiffening bones of 

Anger’s visit 

And shame of tasks unfinished.

Each day is not here to be 

Completed but

Felt completely

As you rest

Like a child

In the inhale and exhale

Of a rainy day.

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