No Time to Waste

Just This!

At Zen Centers, there’s often a wooden block that they hit with a mallet to call people to meditation. On the wooden block, it traditionally says, “Wake Up, Life is transient, Swiftly Passing, Be Aware, The great matter, Don't waste time.”

In the past, that often sounded to me like the voice of a stern judge reprimanding me for being such a total fuck up and commanding me to shape up (as if I had a choice). And since all there ever is, is THIS, right now, what could be wasted and who would waste it? The form is already gone, instantly morphed into something else before it even registers, and there is no way to grasp any of it and no one doing it who could decide to do it any differently. So I would wonder, doesn’t this kind of injunction to “Not waste time” just make us feel bad about ourselves? Doesn’t it command us to do the impossible?

Maybe the truth of those words can only be realized by surprise, and maybe we need to be lost in order to be found. As many of you know, I had a near fatal stage-three cancer five years ago, for which I had surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. The treatment worked, the tumor was gone. I was told afterwards, when I asked, that my statistical odds of surviving for more than five years after this particular cancer at this stage were 45%. Not the worst odds, certainly, but not the best either. I’m in year five now.

During my annual rectal exam this past May, the doctor felt what she thought might be a tumor. Another “Wake Up, Life Is Transient” moment. This was the same doctor who had found the original tumor five years ago. It felt like an ominous deja vu. I had a bad feeling about it. As I understand it, I’m pretty much out of viable treatment options if this cancer recurs.

It took over three weeks to finally get a CT scan, and several more days before I got the results. That whole time, I felt like Schrodinger’s Cat, waiting to find out if I’d be dead or alive when they opened the box. I noticed a background anxiety, and a poignant sadness—not wanting to leave life. I also noticed what business felt unfinished—things I’d need to either abandon or sort out very quickly. There was no time to waste. The illusion of the infinite future had (once again) collapsed.

Thankfully, the scan showed no tumor or signs of cancer. Interestingly, as I read the lab report, I experienced both relief and an unexpected tinge of disappointment—some part of me had welcomed the possibility that this might be my exit moment. Not because I want to die right now (I don’t), but because I’ve often said that I’d rather leave the party too early than too late. I know only too well what may lie ahead in older old age—strokes, dementia, increasing degrees of incapacitation, increasing aches and pains, perhaps terrible pain, running out of money, friends dying, not being able to take care of myself or live independently any more, ending up in a bad nursing home—all the things people my age (mid-70s) become acutely aware of as we see it happening to friends and relatives and as we feel it starting to happen in ourselves.

As someone (Mark Twain and/or Mae West) famously said, old age is not for sissies. I don’t fear death, but I do fear what might come before it. So part of me was okay with the possibility of dying now and being spared the difficulties that may lie ahead. But mostly, I felt relief and gratitude. A week after the CT scan, I saw my surgeon, who did another rectal exam. He told me that what the other doctor had been feeling was simply the evolving after-effects of radiation on the rectal tissues, not a tumor. Once again, I had a future, alternately pleasant or scary, and all of it, of course, imaginary.

I’ve had several of these close brushes with death in the course of this cancer—at one point a few years back, they thought I had bone cancer (I didn’t, as it turned out), and I was told on one visit to the oncologist that I was now terminal. Treatments might slow the cancer down or help relieve the pain, but nothing could cure it. And then, a week later, another test changed the diagnosis. I wasn’t terminal after all.

Of course, we’re all terminal. But something shifts when you get a diagnosis and an actual expiration date in the very near future. This is undoubtedly true in many other situations as well, for example, if a war breaks out where you’re living, or if you’re sent to fight or work in a war zone, or in any situation where the odds of dying are suddenly much higher than usual. Aging also increases the awareness of death, as does the unexpected death of a close friend. These surprise wake-up calls can be valuable experiences—they have been for me.

Aging and cancer have both increased my appreciation for the ordinary things in everyday life—a cup of coffee, a morning walk, a visit with a friend, light dancing on the wall, the sounds of rain. I spent so much of my life focused on an imaginary future—dreaming of a better place to live, a new partner, a different career, a new spiritual teacher, a bigger enlightenment experience, whatever it was. And also on trying to be someone else—someone I thought was more perfect, more enlightened, more stable, more evolved—somehow superior or better or different from how I am. It took me into the foothills of old age to really wake up and settle into this life, the person I actually am, the living reality here and now, just as it is.

I know I’m not alone in this. This is our human suffering, our deep-seated belief that, “This isn’t it,” “I’m not okay,” “Something bigger, better, different needs to happen.” And the whole illusion of future time goes with this—imagining that we have plenty of time to do this or that, that the future is an endless expanse. But actually, the future doesn’t exist. It’s always a fantasy.

Of course, sometimes the evolutionary urge or deep longing for something else and the intuition or ability to imagine what it might be serve us beautifully, as do certain aspirations and intentions. The trick is to discern the difference between a genuine calling or aspiration that comes from the heart and that old habitual belief that “I’m not good enough,” and that no place we actually are is ever the right place. We can’t function without memory and some ability to anticipate and plan for the future, but we can become increasingly sensitive to when this is serving us and when it is deadening us.

Nowadays I see young people totally fixated on their phones, never looking up, oblivious to the beauty and the wonder around them, and I want to yell, “WAKE UP!” I want to tell them, life is short. In the blink of an eye, you’ll be old. Wake up! Life is transient, Swiftly Passing, Only Now is real. This is it! Don’t miss it.

Of course, in one sense, we can’t ever really miss it. We ARE it. All our apparent mistakes, false turns, hours spent imagining a better future or glued to our phones are simply the impersonal ways that life is momentarily showing up, all of it ultimately meaningless shapes and textures, and all of it perfectly placed and essential in some mysterious way to the whole unfolding. No one is doing any of it, and this moment cannot be otherwise than exactly how it is. It’s all an impersonal movement of an unfathomable vastness from which we are not separate in any way, and in which everything is included.

And yet…

What a blessing and a relief when that search for something better or different stops and we are simply here as this unadorned present experiencing, just as it is. Wonder of wonders! What a blessing, to be seeking nothing. To no longer believe that something more or better needs to happen. To be at peace with life as it is, even when it doesn’t feel peaceful. To look up from our phone or our fantasies of the future and actually see the light dancing on the green leaves, to smell the rain and taste the food and recognize the radiance everywhere and know that this is enough, just as it is.

And also to know that just this can include sweeping changes and doesn’t preclude unexpected adventures, and that even being lost in our phone or our future fantasies is itself equally this radiance, that nothing is ever really a problem. Truly, nothing needs to happen other than exactly this, just as it is. And how it is, is ever-changing, unresolvable and never the same way twice. Peace comes in knowing that we are being lived or expressed by something much vaster than we can possibly comprehend—that we are not like a ball in a stream that is either in or out of control, but rather, that there is only the streaming, and that our every thought and action is inseparable from the whole universe and could not be otherwise. Knowing this, we can relax. And if we’re not relaxed, we can simply be tense. What a relief!