Sometimes the big questions are just too big. Things like, “why am I here”, “what’s the meaning of life”, “who am I”, seem so big that finding a beginning, an entry, is impossible. So let us step back from the really big questions, and consider less big questions, questions like what is space, time, and place.
The first two of these concepts, space and time, have been bent by Einstein’s theories of relativity, and his description of a space-time continuum. An oversimplified view (2-D view) of this model is a simple X-Y graph. Let’s put space on the horizontal axis, and time as the vertical axis. Now draw one line up from the bottom and another over from the side. Where these two lines intersect is the third concept, place. On our simple graph, place is where time and space meet.
This rudimentary model is easy to conceptually grasp, it makes sense intuitively. The conjunction of time and space is place. Sitting right here right now; 39047’52”N, 105036’43”W 2:53PM on 1/15/23, is this place. But alas, by the time that coordinate was typed the time had changed. Similarly, since the planet is rotating on an axis while circling a star, the space had also changed. So, place, where we think we are, this conjunction of time and space, is both arbitrary and fleeting.
We don’t know where we are!
Where we think we are is a description of where we are, and that description is always changing. We are living in change, change is the fabric of our lives, even when we don’t notice it. Consider change so infinitesimally small that it is imperceptible to our senses and (apparently) inconsequential to our ordinary experience. Fractions of a second on a stopwatch, fractions of a degree in our angle from the sun. Consider change so gigantically large they don’t register. The glacial pace of mountains walking, the light-year time of a distant star. We live our lives on the scale of our bodies, what we can notice with our senses. The scale of the foot before and the foot behind in walking. Our slice of place is bounded by our bodies, but place is unbounded, unknowable.
We have a saying in our culture, “the map is not the territory”. This is why: the map is fixed and unchanging, but the territory (the place) is unfixed and changing. Place as it is, is not a constant fixed “thing”. It is not in continual flux; it is continual flux. In Buddhist terms, it is impermanent.
Impermanence is a central concept in Buddhism. Its description, its ramifications, are beyond this simple consideration, but here we are now, having worked our way through space, time, and place, to one view of a core tenet in Zen, impermanence. Did it help with the existential angst posed by the big questions? If so, great! If not, let us together continue our explorations of the smaller questions like time and space…in another place.