7am Sit and Talk with Nikki Mirghafori

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:09:33]good morning, good afternoon, good evening friends, whatever time it might be, mechanical time, local time, wherever you're joining. Lovely to be with you and practice together.

[00:09:48]So this week uh we have been exploring teachings on time, the aspect of time.

[00:09:57]Um and we continue today with the perhaps one of the most apparent to me and to many uh to the Buddha. Well, most apparent I'll just leave it at that aspect of time which is um which is the brevity of human life um and what a short time relatively we have um on this planet in this life in this birth. So and and the teachings on time with especially with the brevity of life um the Buddhist teachings have to do with uh the ethical dimension and the cultivation dimension as in time is short. How am I spending my time? Or if this was the last moment of my life, how would I want to be cultivating my heart and mind in this moment? So there's always this cultivation, this wisdom aspect that the Buddha brings in together with the practice of brevity of time. It's not just, oh, I'm going to die. I have limited time um in panic but how well am I spending my time? How am I cultivating my mind and heart? So with that as the frame for today exploring time let's uh start meditating together.

[00:11:40]self arriving arriving in the body in this moment in time.

[00:11:56]Turning our gaze inward.

[00:12:06]Turning the gaze of awareness towards the body, towards the touch points towards the body. Sitting and being breathed and towards the sensations of the breath. Breath in the body.

[00:13:49]And for the first few minutes, inviting the breath, the sensations of the breath within the body.

[00:14:05]to serve as the anchor, the length of the breath, the time, the length of the breath.

[00:14:16]Bringing awareness to the length of the inb breath and the outreath.

[00:16:55]And now I'd like to invite you to drop in this reflection in the body. Not so much in the head.

[00:17:05]It's not a thinking practice. But drop the reflection in the body. Let it reverberate.

[00:17:19]If my life was as long as it takes to breathe in after breathing out or as long as it takes to breathe out after having brea breathed in.

[00:17:39]If my life is the length of this breath, the time it takes, the length of this breath, and this is all the time I have.

[00:18:03]How do I want to be cultivating, to be present to the teachings of the Buddha, teachings on wisdom, kindness, compassion, nonharming, presence, letting go, awareness.

[00:18:42]How do I want to be?

[00:18:46]How do I want my heart and mind to be? If this is all the time there is, the length of a whole inb breath or the length of a whole outreath It says all the time there is. What if this was the only time I had?

[00:19:39]How does it change and shift this moment's presence, awareness, state of heart and mind?

[00:21:22]Let there be an intimacy with the immediacy of this moment.

[00:21:29]And also in these teaching, the Buddha brings about conjures up spiritual urgency. If this is all the time I have, would I let my mind wander? Would I allow myself to be resentful or angry?

[00:21:57]How would I want the state of heart and mind to be cultivated if I'm only alive for the duration of one inb breath or one outreath Intimacy with brevity of time.

[00:32:35]intimacy with the brevity of time in the duration of just this inb breath.

[00:32:45]What if I were only alive?

[00:32:49]My lifespan, remaining lifespan is the remainder of this inb breath.

[00:32:58]or this outreath the time it takes to breathe out.

[00:33:15]Notice the time intimacy with brevity. And how do I want my heart and mind state to be right now?

[00:33:30]This brief moment in Night.

[00:38:38]What if the entirety of life of your lifetime lifespan was the length of this inb breath?

[00:38:52]The length of this outreath And as we bring this time for our sitting practice to a close, appreciating that we showed up and dedicated this time to cultivating our hearts and minds for the benefit of All beings, may all beings be happy. May all beings be free, including ourselves.

[00:41:12]So, greetings everyone.

[00:41:22]The topic that we've been exploring this week has been the topic of time, exploring time.

[00:41:31]And this morning we continue with um one of the important teachings of the Buddha um on the brevity of of human life and how do we want to spend our time. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the guided meditation, um when the Buddha conjures up and brings an awareness uh a teaching of of the brevity of human life, um there's always a um an ethical a wisdom teaching with it. It's so life is short. How do I want to spend my time? If this is the last moment that I'm uh living, if this is my remaining lifespan, um how do I want to be? How do I want my heart and mind to be? How do I want to attend to the blessed one's teachings?

[00:42:33]So um the the quote I want to start with actually is um one of my favorite quotes favorite u Buddha teachings from the Buddha. It's from the Anguturan Nikica um an 1048 in the polycanon and the teaching is this. The days and nights are relentlessly passing. How well am I spending my time? This should be reflected upon again and again by one who has gone forth. So the days and nights are relentlessly passing. How well am I spending my time?

[00:43:21]When I heard this in a Dharma talk almost 20 years ago, actually more uh than 20 years ago, um it it really shook me. It really shook me. The days and nights are relentlessly passing. How well am I spending my time? And I remember writing this on a piece of paper and putting it on my bathroom mirror and I saw it every day. And it brought really this sense of spiritual urgency.

[00:43:51]And um in this way again as you see the Buddha is bringing in the the brevity of time and pairing this with with the the wisdom question or the ethical question.

[00:44:06]How well am I spending my time? What am I doing with my time? It's not just that the days and nights are relentlessly passing. let's go party. Uh but like how well how well am I spending my time?

[00:44:20]Similarly in the teaching in the maranaati suta mindfulness of death suta which actually I brought in into the guided meditation um which is alutan nikaya 619 the Buddha when he's teaching the monks um he's teaching them that the best way to really practice uh awareness death awareness the limited of night of life awareness is to consider that okay well what if uh I might only live for the interval that it takes to breathe out after breathing in or breathing or breathe in after uh breathing out and how if this is the only interval of time I have so again Buddha is bringing awareness to the duration of time uh being alive your lifespan is just this breath remaining lifespan is just this inb breath or just this outreath then the remainder of the phrase is how would I attend how do I attend to the blessed one's instructions basically how do I how would I live how would I cultivate my mind and heart considering that this is all the time I have what state of heart and mind do I want to be in in this brevity of time so so time is always of course um paired with this awareness to be aware of our hearts and minds and how we're cultivating.

[00:45:56]So, so today exploring that our time, our time is short. Life our life is short. Um we have not been in existence each one of us in this um shape or form in these causes and conditions in this body in this birth.

[00:46:18]We haven't been uh we were not born we were not existing for billions of years consider that in terms of time billions of of years we were not in existence for eternity we're not in existence here we are a flash of lightning um in the cosmic scale it's a flash of lightning of course my our lives is So short so short a flash of lightning and then we will not exist also we will be non-existent for billions of years. So here we are aware conscious with agency uh with some cocreated agency that's another um another um topic altogether and here we are and and how do we want to cultivate our hearts and minds our life for the benefit of ourselves and the benefit of others this brevity of time.

[00:47:30]So the one story I want to bring in today um actually maybe another thing I want to bring in is is that uh what I just mentioned bring bringing awareness to the brevity of our time. If we don't bring awareness to the brevity of our time, because most of us live, we all do, we live as if we're going to live forever. We do things that really only make uh make sense in light of eternity.

[00:48:05]The way we waste our time, especially in the modern life with with scrolling and with just social media and various things or doom scrolling or or getting riled up about something. Uh taking birth as an angry person who is just fuming about, you know, something someone said um some time ago. um the ways that we spend our lives really make sense sometimes in if we had if we were eternal beings but we are not. So bringing awareness to the limitedness of our time helps us live a more awakened life instead of just wasting these precious precious precious moments of life. Um, and it's not just so much spending them.

[00:49:04]It's that as Haidiger, the philosopher who wrote about time a lot, being and time is one of is is his um um what um a a book that he wrote is a magnificent volume.

[00:49:25]being in time, being in time. Um, we we are time we we it's not like we have time. It's not a commodity. It's not like I have a mug or I have something.

[00:49:39]Time is all I am all we are. We un unfold in time. So when we're not aware of our time and how we're spending our time and this precious resource that is our time, we are basically not aware of ourselves, we're not aware of our life, we are wasting ourselves, our lives. So every attent moment that our attention is hijacked by social media for example and that you know we're going to check email and then we get distracted and it becomes 5 minutes of this and becomes 30 minutes of a YouTube video. We are spending we it's it's our life that is it's our beingness that is becoming um basically a log that is is is being burnt on the altar of of uh social media uh we we become the fuel our life our being our limited resource that is us.

[00:50:46]So bringing awareness to the limitedness of our time and mindfulness of death is the way to do that which is really the way to um to bring awareness really fine uh nuanced awareness to the preciousness of this moment this breath right here with the ethical perspective of course with the ethical aspect How do I want to be? How do I want to spend my time?

[00:51:22]And the spiritual urgency that this practice brings in is a spiritual urgency without anxiety.

[00:51:33]So I mentioned I think on the first day the quality of Sam Vega when we contemplate the brevity of our time it brings naturally brings in as I mentioned to you when I read when I heard that quote 20 years ago the days and nights are relentlessly passing how well am I spending my time it brought spiritual urgency for me some vega in poly another time I was a a Um actually I was not a dharma teacher. I was a practitioner. I was a scientist. I was at Berkeley doing research and in AI. Um so that's was a sense of oh how well am I spending my time?

[00:52:20]Um so spiritual urgency spiritual urgency.

[00:52:26]And there's another Buddha's teaching I want to bring in here. And the Buddha says, "Practice as if your hair were on fire." Actually, the original is practice as if your turban was on fire, but most of us don't wear turban. So, practice as if your hair were on fire, which is not the idea of practicing in a frantic way, but the idea is to practice with wholeheartedness.

[00:52:53]Because when your hair is on fire, there is a there is a wholeheartedness. There is an intensity of giving ourselves to this practice to waking up to cultivating our hearts and minds for the benefit of everyone. So this wholeheartedness is really it's not like oh I will practice tomorrow or endlessly uh distracting ourselves. And the Buddha again has another teaching in the dharmapada that one um who forgets about the brevity of life basically is like a fool who's picking flowers in a flood.

[00:53:30]So it's such a poignant image. Um so so much more to say and maybe I'll just end with with a story I wanted to bring in earlier. Um and again this story is from Einstein's dreams book from Alen Lightman that I've been bringing in the past couple of days. And in this book uh there is a world in which the uh entirety of the human life happens in one day. So people are born at midnight and then they die in midnight. So they so everything birth, schooling, love affairs, marriage, professions, old age, everything must be fit within one transit of the sun. And in this world, time is too precious. A life is a moment in a season. A life is one snowfall and life is one autumn day.

[00:54:34]And in the story finally when the old age comes a person discovers that they know no one because there hasn't been time.

[00:54:44]So the genius of the story that it helps us feel what we ordinarily resist feeling that our life is already extraordinarily brief. It's just that we normalize it.

[00:54:59]So so with that friends thank you for your practice. Thanks for your awareness. I want to invite you today to really bring in this reflection. My the days and nights are relentlessly passing. How well am I spending my time in this moment? All right. Thank you, friends. Take care and looking forward to tomorrow for the culmination of our week together.