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If we buy a candle at Spencer Gifts shaped like something naughty, light it, then use the flame to light a second even naughtier-shaped candle while simultaneously blowing out the first, is the flame on the second candle the same flame as the first or entirely different? Where is the first flame? Where was the sound of Tommy Ramone hitting the first rim shot on Teenage Lobotomy before you heard it? After you heard it, where did it go?

Still, to say that when we die we return to the Great River of Being continues to miss the point. The notion of returning implies that right now we’re separate from the Great River of Being or from God or from anything else. We aren’t. That bubble was always part of the river even when it appeared as a bubble. We don’t return to God, because we never left God in the first place.

Don’t get too hooked on explanations, though. Explanations are never complete.

When we die, we die. We never appear again. Dead, dead, dead. Gone, gone, gone.

But in truth, we die all the time. Every moment of every day we die. Where is the person who slid out of your mother’s womb greasy and purply-red and screaming like a banshee all those years ago? Are you that person? You have no memory of that day. It’s a day that was over and done with a long, long time ago. Where is the person who lost5 your virginity? Where is the person who woke up bleary-eyed and crabby yesterday morning? Where is the person who will fill your casket?

Our understanding of time is just plain wrong—and that misunderstanding leads us to believe that we could reincarnate, that we could live again after we die, that we could go to heaven, hell, or purgatory. That misunderstanding leads us to believe that it is even possible we might have a soul. But every one of these ideas is, ultimately, stupid. They really make no sense at all once we understand what time really is.

The moment you were born was you. The moment you die will be you. This moment right now is you. There is no difference between this moment and yourself. You live through a million you/moments every single second. Being and time are not two things. Dogen uses a compound to express this just like our buddy Brundlefly. Dogen writes about “being/time.” In Dogen’s words “being/time is you and being/time is me.”

Moments of you whip by so fast you can’t possibly notice them, just like movies create the illusion of movement by showing you a series of still photos in rapid succession. The illusion of time is created by moments of you whizzing by so fast they make the standard film speed of twenty-four frames per second look glacial. The light from an electric bulb is caused by the current flickering through it, on and off and on and off, yet the light seems to be constant.

Real time is just this moment. That’s all there is. There’s no room for souls or for reincarnation because in order to have a soul, you need to have a past and in order to be reincarnated you need to have a future. But as I’ve been saying all along: You don’t. Past and future are just ideas. When there is no past and no future, the question of life after death in any form including reincarnation becomes entirely irrelevant. This is what Gautama Buddha was talking about when he said, “The question does not fit the case.”

All the problems I’ve ever had all stem from being unwilling to stay with the life I’m living right this moment. And the same goes for all your problems. Sort out your misunderstanding of time and all your problems go away. Just like that.

MY WIFE WORKS MOST WEEKENDS and I do not. But last week she had Sunday off. She planned a day out for us at Kunitachi, an area on the far west part of Tokyo where there’s a beautiful university with spacious grounds and a lovely Chinese vegetarian restaurant. All week I was looking forward to that trip. It was pleasant knowing that I’d get to go out there and spend time with Yuka that day.

It took forever but Sunday finally came. There we were out in Kunitachi walking