Being with Being

Mackenzie Hawkins
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Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own. Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try. As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already. Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.

  1. 3d ago

    Innumerable Clocks, Innumerable Times - No Time, No Problem?

    When we look at the clock and think it is telling us THE time, then there’s the time, this abstract time that’s passing us by, and then there’s this clock. We almost don’t even think of that as a relationship. It’s almost like the abstract time that’s passing us by is driving this clock. This poor clock. Maybe driving us all. But when physics is telling us how clocks behave, and how there’s not one clock that we can say is the true time, then we’re left with this clock relative to the other clock. This particular changing thing, and that particular changing thing, and a relation between them. There is no truer time. There are two times and they change relative to each other. Neither is more “the real” time than the other. The clocks really do run at different speeds—the faster a clock is traveling, the slower its time goes—and we couldn’t even use our GPS without accounting for that. We can’t perceive that in our own experience. That web of relations amongst this multitude of times is not something we need to usually pay attention to as we go about our daily living. But there’s such a habitual sense of checking the clock and feeling that I’m looking at “the” time—and maybe that we can begin to dismantle. Maybe this fact about clocks in relativity is something that supports us in reclaiming the flow of time into each particular changing thing that’s affecting and being affected with each other. Everything and anything can be a clock, and there’s no one clock that’s telling “the” time. Maybe everything is, in a way, its own time. So we might come to feel the breath itself as a clock. I’m not going to say that this is the best clock ever. But this rhythm of widening and coming closer together is a kind of clock. We get to be a clock. That might not be the most inspiring thought you’ve ever had. What—I’m just a clock? Maybe feeling into the effect of getting to own “being a clock.” What if that rhythm is only in relation to other rhythms? What if that rhythm is only in a web of other rhythms? There’s no one time that our breath is happening in.  I’ve been so struck at how much flow time has been stealing from me. The flow of time has seemed to monopolize flow. What’s it like to feel the flow of breath in itself? A flow in this web of flows. All relative to each other. All interacting. And then in an exploration like this, it’s like this small explosion, blossoming of all these particular flows, reclaimed from the abstract sense of time passing us by. No Time, No Problem? An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering? Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  2. Jul 24

    Being Time: Reclaiming Flow for Being - No Time, No Problem?

    So I'll begin with a passage where Dogen says: "Although you never measure the length or brevity of the twelve hours, their swiftness or slowness, you still call them the twelve hours. As evidence of their going and coming is obvious, you do not come to doubt them." I remember having those school schedules — you know, your day mapped out, blocked, A period, B period, C period, and it's down to the very minute. And we can grow up in this and not have any doubts about this sense of that we are living in time. The comings and goings, the goings and comings of the passage of time can just seem quite obvious to us, so that though we might have doubts about many things, they don't necessarily tend to converge on this doubt about time passing. And today's exploration is going to be about coming to question, doubt in a way. Why we take this flow of experience and, in a way, hand it over to this flow of time, this sense that there is time passing. And then what is that time? And how does that shift my relation to my own experience once flow belongs to time rather than flow belongs to the being of what is? Perhaps a bit unfairly, Newton usually gets the blame for the modern-day sense of why we tend to have this sense of abstract and flowing time. So he says in his opening of the Principia: "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, in and of itself, of its own nature, without reference to anything external, flows uniformly, and by another name is called duration." It's a powerful way that he was able to bring together so much of what was known piecemeal into physical theory of everything from an apple falling to the moon orbiting around us. The power of being able to model the world in this way can get us swept up in the mathematics: There is this mathematical t, this t variable, flowing, flowing in its own passage by its own nature. And what I was hinting at before and would suggest is that the way we use time just tends towards that sense of giving the flow over to time. And this was the case, it seems, way back in the day when Aristotle was first questioning about time. He writes: "Now the most obvious thing about time is that it strikes us as some kind of passing along and changing." And then this is where he goes further than what our assumptions are. Because if I have that sense of time, everything seems to be changing in time and so time is what seems to be flowing. But he says: "If we follow this clue, we find that when any particular thing changes or moves, the movement or change is in the moving or changing thing itself and occurs only where that thing is. Whereas the passage of time is current everywhere alike and is in relation to everything." Well, that's kind of interesting, right? So once we have the sense of time, passage and flow of time — it seems like everything, just everything is flowing, passing in time. But if we really touch in on something that's changing or in motion, it's always the particular. Always a particular thing that's moving or changing and only occurs where that thing is. With that in mind, let's pop back over to Dogen and "Being-Time" and explore why he might say "Hence pine trees are time, so are bamboos. You should not come to understand that time is only flying past." Let's see what it's like to reclaim flow from time. No Time, No Problem? An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering? Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  3. Jul 17

    Setting Time Aside: Changing Spatial Relations - No Time, No Problem?

    Today we’re actually going to start really slow. You might feel like this is the preliminary warm-up, and you can skip ahead if you’re super eager to get to the juiciness of time—because we’re actually not going to meditate or talk about time today. And the reason for that is that going into this exploration, I do think it is helpful to have some tools. And one of them is that as the perception of time more recedes, alongside that, our perception of space—changing spatial relations—is going to come out more. And the more we have a sense of changing spatial relations—well, I don’t want to give away the punchline. That might cover more than we actually expect. So today we’re going to be in the realm of some very mundane aspects of experience. Sorry, sorry about that. Space. And the physics we’ll bring in is nothing more and nothing less than Galilean relativity. Really wonder what that’s going to get us. But maybe further down the line in this series, you can circle back and come back to this session here, and see how we really are laying the groundwork. For perception, for understanding. Maybe a little less time-dependent, that we could feel into it, know it for ourselves. No Time, No Problem? An Honest Look at “Timelessness” in Physics and Living What if there’s no time—and that’s not a problem for physics? What if there’s no time—could that be a solution for our suffering? Rather than offering answers of what to think, this series offers ways of thinking that can move us past the pressures we put on ourselves: from the “should” of trying to “be present” to the “should” of being 4D spacetime worms to be compatible with relativity! Somewhere between those “shoulds,” I got stuck until physicist and Tai Chi Master Wonchull Park showed me how to think about nature simply, livably. Each session includes an hour-long meditation practice, where we get to try on different conceptions and perceptions of time to discover how equivalently valid options that physics provides can impact our levels of illusion and freedom. We’ll be reading together from a few sources—such as Wonchull Park’s Essential Reality & Time, Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Dogen’s Shobogenzo Uji—to deeply question the role(s) of time in our lives. Looking forward to our discoveries. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  4. Jul 10

    The Great Together Interdependent Arising Party - Simply Settle Series

    Typically, there are those things on one list of what is nice and pleasant and spiritual or “good meditation.” And then there’s the other list. And there’s a feeling that what we need is to take what’s over here and change it to what’s over there on the better list. When it doesn’t work, we can get caught in a layer deeper of distress. That hurts. We’re taking some aspect of ourselves, some aspect of our experience, and saying, “Go away. You’re not allowed into the altogether party.” And I’m actually not even gonna look into my own experience and see the altogether party while you’re around. I’ll wait until you go away first or fix yourself first, and then I’ll look, because then I feel like I’ll find something good and together and nice. As Patrul Rinpoche says, “This is not the genuine view; it is favouring the good and rejecting the bad.” But what if, underneath it all, instead of that kind of existential, fundamental striving, there can be more of this trust that everything, every arising, shares the same nature? The great party. The great together interdependent arising party. And when we let ourselves settle directly into the very nature of whatever is arising, it doesn’t change it. It was all already always that way. And yet our experience of it can shift. It’s the non-shift shift. Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me. What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality. So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  5. Jul 3

    Not Toward, but Is-ward in Meditation Practice - Simply Settle Series

    Patrul Rinpoche nails us with his list of the many flavors of doing in meditation — drawing the mind outward, inward, spacing out, chasing thoughts, blocking their arising, anticipating them like a cat anticipating a mouse, squeezing and staring intensely with concentration. So what direction is simply settling? It’s not a settling outward. Not a settling inward. Not a settling toward something over something else. If it has any direction, it’s towards what is. I’m going to make up a word on the spot and call it is-ward. It has every direction and no direction. And so this series has been approaching this from the bottom-up — tangible experiences of the is-ward direction that can be a way of relating even to thoughts, even to mind. As Patrul Rinpoche says: “Simply settle directly in thought whenever there is thinking and in non-thought whenever there is no thinking, and that is it.” I do not find this easy. I don’t find living easy. I don’t find having a mind easy. But I find that this helps it be easier. Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me. What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality. So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  6. Jun 26

    Still Laid Down Reality? The Altogetherness of Perception Itself - Simply Settle Series

    What’s so truly amazing as a sentient being, a human being, is that the flows that make up us, the flows that help give rise to our own unique experiences and feelings and perceptions, and even mental activity and mind — are flows that carry content. And yet are also at the same time are pure flow of nature, unfolding altogether in nature in this fine-free-yet-together way. So the bit of a leap that we embark on today is — what is it like to simply settle directly into perception? Whatever the content of perception, there’s that underlying togetherness as a flow of nature. And we get to settle directly into that underlying nature. It is not separate from the content. Even so, it is unconditional. No matter what the content, and no matter what we feel about the content, still a flow. What is it like to simply settle directly into the flow of perception? We start with sound — and wonder where would we go to simply settle directly into the receiving of sound? Patrul Rinpoche speaks of not seeking outside and not turning inward to look either. We can bathe in the flowing altogether experience of silence and space and sounds. Nothing to grasp outwardly or inwardly. Nothing to seek. Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me. What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality. So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  7. Jun 19

    Laying Down to Reality: Nature’s Flow - Simply Settle Series

    What’s it like to simply settle into that there is space? To simply settle into that there is the flow of change? The space and the flow of change don’t need our tweaking. They don’t need our adjusting. It’s just the way of nature. And we can simply settle into it. Gradually we let our perception of this sense of the flow of nature, our own inner feel of it, begin to become finer and finer. And then we see where all that may take us. What is it to abide in something that’s ever changing? What is it to simply settle into flow itself? Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me. What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality. So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

  8. Jun 12

    Laying Down to Reality: Nature’s Togetherness - Simply Settle Series

    Once we get the feel of laying down to the ground, “the ground” can become many things. It doesn’t have to just stay as the most obvious thing, the ground. Our torso acts like the ground upon which our shoulders rest. Whatever layer of our spine we pick, one vertebra lays down upon the one beneath. We could put that sense of ground throughout our body. And as we begin to feel the sense of ground as more all-pervasive — this resting upon this, this interacting and inter-being with this — we might begin to feel it as a deep metaphor. There’s the ground of the Tao. There’s the ground of the way of nature. In a way, we practice less interfering, less blocking out that way of nature. We’re laying down to that reality, letting that reality more fully support us. Not because we’re making it or cultivating it, but because it’s there, and when we appreciate it and feel it, it becomes more of our experience. Simply Settle Series: A Practice That’s Not a Doing Two words from Patrul Rinpoche’s Self-Liberating Meditation — simply settle — so resonated for me. Not from the perspective of a Dzogchen practitioner — I’m not one. More like hearing a piece of music where I couldn’t begin to know the mind of the composer, but I can share what it evokes in me. What it evokes comes from over ten years of Taoist practice with Master Wonchull Park, who is also a physicist. He always starts with what is immediate, tangible, and in a way universal. And I needed that. I had such a tendency to over-try, to over-control, to really just torture myself with pretty much any practice. One of the practices that first opened up for me was something so basic — laying down to the ground. It gives me a starting place where I can know that way of nature is there. As much weight as I give the ground, the ground is going to hold me up. I don’t have to search for it, make it, go someplace else for it. I just get out of my own way and simply settle into the support that’s there. As Master Park says, it’s already laid down reality. So this series takes that tangible metaphor as its starting place and asks — what else is a way of nature we can simply “lay down” to? What else could we simply settle into without having to create it, cultivate it, or alter it in any way, as Patrul Rinpoche says? From laying our physical body upon the earth to simply settling into the flow of nature, we can come to know a direction in practice that’s not toward what should be but is simply is-ward. A practice that’s not a doing. And then wondering what it would be like to apply that to both thinking and non-thinking, to the nature of mind itself, to whatever is arising in our experience. Thank you for Being with Being. beingwithbeing.org

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Philosophy, contemplative practice, and the physics of nature's flow — for finding your own way. For those who don't need the added pressure of another's way, but are curious about ways of understanding, perceiving, and living that mesh with each other — and that only you can make your own. Each episode is a complete live recording — typically around two hours — opening with a 15-30 minute inquiry into the session's theme, moving into an hour-long guided practice, and closing with comments and discussion. These explorations grew from years of my own searching — trying to fit into practices that promised relief, never quite finding home in any tradition, and stumbling upon a rational basis for getting traction on ways I don't have to try. As your fellow explorer, I'm Mackenzie Hawkins — researcher in philosophy of physics, contemplative practitioner, and co-author of several books with physicist and Tai Chi Master Dr. Wonchull Park. Drawing from his nowflow philosophy, these series-based explorations use philosophy and physics as ways of understanding and perceiving what's here already. Not ways to follow, but ways that might help you find your own — for anyone looking to explore beyond the pressures we put on ourselves.

Information

  • Creator
    Mackenzie Hawkins
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    41
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Being with Being
  • Show Website
    Being with Being