| AMIDA TRUST | |
Occasional paper A COMMENTARY ON DOGEN'S TEXT: UJI by Dharmavidya David Brazier |
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The title: Existence – time Or "Just for a moment", "Just for the time being" Or "Time that is real", "Time that exists" Text: An old Buddha says Sometimes standing on top of the highest peak Sometimes moving along the bottom of the deepest ocean Sometimes three heads and eight arms Sometimes a 16 foot or 8 foot golden body Sometimes a staff or a whisk Sometimes an outdoor pillar or a stone lantern Sometimes the third son of Chang or the fourth son of Lee Sometimes the earth and space Commentary: The old Buddha in question is Yakusan Igen. The story comes from the text called Transmission of the Lamp. The Buddha appears in many instances. Some may takes these instances to actually be manifestations of something that lies behind the appearance. However, Dogen does not understand it that way and the whole of this text called Uji is devoted to disabusing us of any such notion. These instances are not "manifestations". Rather they are what Buddha is at a particular time. That Buddha exists means that one or other of these or other forms exists. Existence is the very form that stands out and shines forth. It is not something that lies hidden behind that form. Existence is itself primary. There is no Buddha other than "standing on top of the highest peak" or the raising of a staff or the movement of a whisk. The idea of "Buddha" as some kind of essence behind appearances is actually a mental contruction built upon actual instances. "The third son of Chang or the fourth son of Lee" means nobody special – any old person. Sometimes a Buddha appears as an exalted figure as on a mountain peak. Sometimes a Buddha appears as any old person. What is "a Buddha appearing"? A Buddha appearing is a time that is real. Times that are real are just for a moment. Did your life become real? When was that? Text: In this word "sometimes", time is already just existence and all existence is time. Commentary: Existence is time and time is existence. Time exists as existence itself. Time and existence are not separable. If we were to build up theories of existence that omit time we would only speak nonsense. Buddha therefore taught dependent origination and conditional co-production. Every "thing" is also a point in time with a before and an after. It is a condition in a chain of conditions. Text: The 16 foot golden Buddha is time itself. Because it is time it has the resplendent brightness of time. Commentary: In whatever form the Buddha exists, whether 16 foot or whatever, that is the substance of that time and that substance is a resplendent brightness. Buddha as a 16 foot golden body symbolises this resplendence. The object of the Buddhist way of being is to live in the resplendent brightness, to be golden and walk tall, not out of self pride but simply because we walk amidst Buddhas and bodhisattvas, going into and coming out from the Pure Land. The resplendent brightness is what appears when our mind is free from ignorance of time. The mind is caught in ignorance of time when it is clinging to mental formations, for they are already dead. They are the marana, the deadness of heart, that the Tathagata seeks to raise us from. What is dead is out of time. Even deadness, however, has consequences in time, giving rise to all manner of illusion and multiplication of affliction. That is the meaning of dependent origination. Text: We should learn it as the 24 hours of today. The three heads and eight arms are time itself. Because they are time, they are completely the same as the 24 hours of today. Commentary: The resplendent brightness is not a special time different from this time. It is the same time as this very day. The Buddha appearing as Quan Shi Yin with three heads and eight arms symbolises compassion. The Buddha can also appear as a demon with three heads and eight arms. This may also constitute compassion even though it may not immediately be realised as such. Sometimes we appear as Quan Yin and sometimes we appear as demons. Quan Yin's three heads can look in all directions and the eight arms can reach out to beings in many ways. The three heads also symbolise the three objects of refuge and the eight arms the eightfold path that is the working of enlightenment. The three heads also look to past, present and future. They symbolise the realness of time in its three modes. Compassion does not only have one face: it looks to the past, it looks to the future and it looks to the present. Buddhism is not about only seeing the present moment, since that would be a form of madness and could constitute attachment just as powerfully as being fixated on the past or future. It is the whole nature of time that must be realised, not a disected fragment of it. Text: We can never measure how long and distant or how short and pressing 24 hours is; but, just the same, we call it "24 hours". The leaving and coming of the directions and traces [of time] are clear, so people do not doubt it. They do not doubt it but that does not mean that they know it. Commentary: The subjective experience of time differs from the objective evidence of it. This difference gives us pause. We cannot live in a complete dream when we have evidence that the objective world is different from our subjective experience. This is acute in the case of time. We feel some days are long and some short but the clock ticks relentlessly the same. It is this kind of evidence that can bring us out of our miasma. Text: The doubts that living beings have by nature about everything and every fact that we do not know are not consistent; therefore, our past history of doubt does not always exactly match our doubt now. Commentary: Doubt is the means by which we attempt to neutralise the unsettling effects of counter-intuitive evidence such as might lead us to awakening to the reality of existence vis-à-vis our phantasy. However, if we are honest about our subjectivity we see that even there, there is not consistency. This is because these doubts are rationalisations that owe more to the expediency of the moment than to consistent principle. They are the "eel-wiggling" that the Buddha refers to in sutras. Text: We can say, for the present, however, that doubt is nothing other than time. Commentary: Doubt, although it appears to be something to do with our ability to stand aside from the flow of events, is actually, itself simply a conditioned phenomenon, each particular doubt having a past, present and future. Text: We put ourselves in order and see the whole universe. Individual after individual, object after object, in this "whole universe": see them just as "moment of time after moment of time". Object does not hinder object nor moment, moment. Commentary: Putting our self in order means getting perspective about our doubt. Doubt realised to be a shifting conditioned phenomenon can be a wake up bell. Doubt deceiving us into thinking that we can stand aside from the flow of existence-time only multiplies our self-delusion. When we have put ourselves in order, however, we see the parallel between time and space. Moments do not hinder one another any more than items in space. Here is one and there is another. Text: Thus there are moments that are made up in the same moment of time and there are moments of time (plural) in which the same mind is made up. Practice and realisation of the truth are also like this. Putting the self in order we see what it is. The truth that self is time is like this. We should learn in practice that because of this truth the whole earth includes myriad phenomena and hundreds of things, and each phenomenon and each thing exists in the whole Earth. Commentary: In one sense this is all quite obvious, but it is also subtle and elusive. For "realisation of truth" we can say "faith". For "practice" we can also say "training". For "mind" we can as well say "heart". Faith awakens and training occurs as moments in time. In a given moment many hearts may open in faith. The same heart may open in faith at many different times. All these different times and all these different hearts are different. They do not hinder one another. At the same time it is also true that they are part of the whole earth, which Dogen is here conceiving as a space-time phenomenon. His point, however, is that the fact that you can conceive them as occurring within some over-arching ambiance in no way detracts from the singularity of each and therefore of the plurality of the whole. Dogen is here arguing against a reduction to oneness and for the radiant vitality that arises from seeing the multiplicity as it actually is, i.e. as existence itself. In other words, over-arching categories are superstructure not essence. Text: Such toing and froing is the first step of practice. When we arrive on the solid ground of the ineffable, there is just one thing and just one phenomenon here and now, irrespective of whether we understand or do not understand things or phenomena. Because there is only this exact moment, all moments of existence-time are the whole of existence-time, and all existent things and phenomena are time. The whole of existence, the whole universe, exists in individual moments of time. Pause a moment and reflect whether or not any part of the whole of existence or of the whole universe has leaked away from the present moment of time. Commentary: Even though there are innumerable moments of time, each moment of time is complete experience. In a given moment there is nothing else except that moment. The vast limitless expanse of time and space is therefore implicit in this and any moment. Time is delivered as it were in momentary packets. Each packet, however, contains the whole story. Most of the story is, however, hidden from our view being beyond the horizon of perception. The quality of this thing and this moment is therefore ineffable. Ineffability is, however, a sounder ground than knowingness. When we think we can encompass the knowledge of everything, then we confront reality with the kinds of doubts from which the illusion of self is made. When we realise that we are merely foolish beings for whom most of what is is over the horizon and even what is within view is not capable of being completely grasped, being inevitably always seen from a partial perspective, then that very limitedness serves us as a foundation for practice and faith. Text: Yet in the time of the common man who does not learn the Buddhadharma there are views and opinions: when he hears the words "existence-time" he thinks: "Sometimes I became three heads and eight arms and sometimes I became sixteen foot. For example it is like crossing a river or a mountain. The mountain and the river may still exist but now that I have crossed them and am living in a jewelled palace with crimson towers, the mountain and the river are as distant from me as heaven is from the Earth." But true reasoning is not limited to this one line of thought. When I was climbing a mountain or crossing a river, I was there in that moment of time. There must have been time in me. And I actually exist now, so time could not have departed. If time does not have the form of arriving and departing, the time of climbing a mountain is the present as existence-time. If time does have the form of arriving and departing, then I have this present moment of existence-time and this is what existence-time is. How could that time of climbing the mountain and crossing the river fail to swallow and fail to vomit this time now in the jewelled palace with crimson towers? Commentary: Dogen is pointing out that time can be viewed in more than one way. He has in mind the debate between the sarvastivadins and the other schools about time. According to the sarvastivadins, past and future exist. According to the other schools past and future do not exist. Dogen is saying that both sides have a point. The common sense view is that time arrives and departs, but in fact time is not something that can come and go. Time is simply the fact of change. Moment succeeds moment and each is complete in itself. However, in this present moment when I dwell in the palace, the time of crossing the river cannot be eradicated. Dwelling in the palace having crossed the river is not the same as dwelling in the palace never having seen the river. The time that was "crossing the river" has not gone anywhere. It is the same time as the time of dwelling in the palace. In the same way, being a three headed demon or being a sixteen foot Buddha are simply instances of being myself. When I am one I may think that the other is as distant from me as heaven from Earth, but this distance may not in fact be so great. So, if this present moment is all there is, then it must encompass all the other moments. And if, on the other hand, there are many times all equally existent, then the existence they have is not separate from the existence of this very moment. Text: The three heads and eight arms were time yesterday; the sixteen foot and eight foot is time today. Even so, this Buddhist principle of yesterday and today is just about moments in which we go directly into the mountains and look out across a thousand or ten thousand peaks; it is not about what has passed. The three heads and eight arms pass instantly as my existence-time; though they seem distant, they are present. The 16 foot or eight foot also passes instantly as my existence-time; though it seems over there, it is present. This being so, pine trees are time and bamboos are time. We should not understand only that time flies. We should not think that flying is the only ability of time. If we just left time to fly away some gaps might appear in it. Those who fail to hear and experience the truth of existence-time do so because the understand time only as having passed. To grasp the pivot and express it: all the exists throughout the whole universe is lined up in a series and at the same time is moment of time after moment of time. Commentary: If, when I am being a three headed monster I fail to perceive that I am also a sixteen foot Buddha then I will not awaken. If when I am being a sixteen foot Buddha I fail to perceive that I am also a three headed monster, then I will not train. Yet being a three headed monster and being a 16 foot Buddha are just instances of being me. They are also instances of Buddha appearing in the world and instances of the doors of hell opening and closing. When I survey all these peaks and valleys I realise that near and far are of little account. Whether we see a solitary pine or a thicket of bamboo, the panorama of time, with all its beneficence and evil, is truly magnificent just as it is. Text: Existence-time is, therefore, it is my existence-time. Commentary: Dogen is emphasising that abstract knowledge and reasoning cannot enable us to escape from the experience of the actual transitory nature of being. To be is to be existence-time, or, we can say, to be "just for the time being". That is my life. That is your life. There is no way to stand outside of existence-time. "Just for the time being" is what is. All of this is obvious and would not require such emphasis and repetition were it not that human beings spend so much effort upon trying to extract and thereby exempt themselves from the ephemerality of their being. Text: Existence-time has the virtue of passing in a series of moments, i.e. from today it passes through a series of moments to tomorrow; from today it passes through a series of moments to yesterday; from yesterday it passes through a series of moments to today; from today it passes through a series of moments to today; and from tomorrow it passes through a series of moments to tomorrow. Because passage through separate moments is a virtue of time, moments of the past and present are neither piled up on top of one another, nor lined up in a row; and for the same reason Seigen is time, Obaku is time, and Kozei and Sekito are time. Commentary: The nature of time is perplexing for us because we think of it as a journey. Then we are inclined to ask: "Where is it going?" or even "What is the point of it all?" We think that life will have a solution and that this lies in the future at the end of the journey. But then we reflect that at the end of the journey in that sense there lies only death and dissolution. So then we may fall into despair and even dread. We might then, like Kierkegaard, experience ourselves as a self standing alone before God. On the other hand, we may also realise that we are not alone. We live with a community and a tradition. We live in a realm where time does not necessarily all flow in the same direction and past and future may be as real and important as the present, present and past may be as important as the future or present and future as important as the past. The ancestors of our tradition may be important. Yet they two were simply instances of time and existence. These instances are not piled up on top of one another nor are they reducible to a series. Dogen's effort is constantly employed to disrupt our habitual tendency to try to reduce the experience of life to organised data that can, as a result of being organised, then be discounted. When he says that existence-time "has the virtue of" … he means, in a sense, that it "does us a favour by". In other words, since it passes in moments we are enabled to understand it. Understanding, however, can also become a pathway to deadness since it is a short step from understanding to prediction to habituation to ignorance. Text: Because subject and object already is time practice and experience is moments of time. Going into the mud and going into the water, similarly, are time. Commentary: Much Buddhist, and especially Zen, philosophy is about the non-duality of subject and object. However, life is experienced as subject and object and Dogen is anxious that we do not short-circuit the real experience of life by jumping to a concept that may seem transcendent and elevated but which, if grasped in the wrong way, may, like a snake grasped by the tail, turn back upon itself and bite us grievously. What unifies subject and object is the fact that each experience is a vibrant moment of time. This is the sense in which subject and object becomes just object: the radiant presence of something other, i.e. something alien, mysterious and ineffable. Practice, or training, is this act of letting go of self in each moment of time which means in each encounter. Letting go of self means having no selfish motive. From a worldly viewpoint, Buddhism is a rash madness. One does not follow the path of self-seeking. However, it is on the path of non-self that the most wonderful rewards and intimacies are to be encountered. Not only that, but one learns how all encounters can be so. All encounters can be instances of sometimes on top of the highest peak and sometimes moving along the bottom of the deepest ocean. All are instances of Buddha, or, we may say, of other-power. Going into the mud and going into the water refers to daily life. In daily life we do not stay aloof. We go into the mud and into the water. Sometimes going into the mud is also an instance of Buddha. Sometimes going into the water is also an instance of my existence-time. Text: The view of the common man today and the causes and conditions [of that] view are what the common man experiences but are not the common man's reality (Dharma). Rather it is that reality has, for the moment, made a common man into its causes and conditions. Because he understand this time and this existence to be other than reality itself, he deems that "the 16 foot golden body is beyond me." Attempts to evade by "I am never the 16 foot golden body" are also flashes of existence-time; they are glimpses of it by a person who has yet to realise it in experience and to rely upon it. The existence-time that causes the horse and the sheep to be as they are arranged in the world today, is a rising and falling which is something ineffable abiding in its place in the Dharma. The rat is time and the tiger is time; ordinary beings are time and Buddhas are time. This time experiences the whole universe using three heads and eight arms and experiences the whole universe using the 16 foot golden body. Commentary: The reference to horse and sheep is to the names given by the Chinese to different hours of the clock. The 24 hours was divided into 12 periods starting at midnight whose names, respectively, were, rat, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, chicken, dog, boar. The point of this passage is that the ordinary person is used by causes and conditions rather than being liberated by them. Dogen believes that a clearer perception of the nature of time will liberate a person, enabling them to put everything in its proper perspective and thus freeing them from the anguish of living in a world that appears oppressive and meaningless. We can realise that we too are the 16 foot golden body sometimes. Text: To universally realise the whole universe by using the whole universe is called to "perfectly realise". Commentary: The term "perfectly realise" here is taken from the Lotus Sutra. The whole phrase is "Buddhas alone, together with Buddhas, can perfectly realise that all Dharmas are real form." This is a phrase that meant a lot to Dogen. This passage, therefore, encompasses two principles: the one stated and the one alluded to. The alluded one is the principle of being alone with others. The stated one is acting locally with universal perspective. For Dogen these are two sides of a single coin. In the matter of being alone with others, each of us can be an instance of samsara or an instance of nirvana depending upon how we experience our aloneness and our togetherness. We act alone, whether we experience the aloneness or not. The aloneness that matters is what the Buddha called ekagata – the singularity that is the absence of "companions". Companions, here, does not particularly mean real companions. It refers rather to our attachments. The common person brings along with him or her a host of expectations. These are rooted in grasping and constitute the "companions" that Buddha would have us relinquish. The kind of state that is "solitary like rhinocerous", therefore, is not necessarily literally that of a hermit. Periods of literal solitude may help one to find it, but the real state is independent of circumstance. A person can be ekagata in the midst of a crowd. However, when one is alone in that particular way, one is "with the Buddhas". A completely different kind of companionship opens up. Thus the intimacy that is possible within a sangha goes far beyond that found in ordinary families. This intimacy rests, however, upon the aloneness of the individuals. Although none acts for himself, each takes initiative with complete responsibility. They are able to be alone because they orient their lives according to the universal and eternal rather than the short-term and the petty. Nonetheless, acting universally and eternally does not mean being aloof. It means "entering the mud and going into the water". This is why the Buddhist life is one of "Buddhas alone together with Buddhas". Acting universally and eternally is another name for faith. Text: Enactment of the 16 foot golden body by using the 16 foot golden body is realised as the establishment of the mind, as training, as the state of bodhi, and as nirvana; that is, as existence itself and as time itself. Commentary: To live by faith is different from living by self. Living by faith is an enactment. We say, "Let the robe do it". We could also say that this body is a robe. This body is the Buddha. The task of the trainee is to animate this body of Buddha and to do so in as faithful a way as possible. Although my efforts to do so are feeble, it is no less a 16 foot golden body that appears and it is only by means of a 16 foot golden body that I am able to do so. This is the same as saying that it cannot be done by self-power. Therefore, to animate the body of Buddha by reference to the body of Buddha is what is meant by training and that is the state of bodhi and nirvana. It is to be directly identified with existence and with time without the smallest chink of separation. Self, however, is always an attempt to be separate and to create an own power. Letting go thereof cannot be simply a negative act. It requires the faith that there is a larger than life golden body to animate and that there is a means to do so. Text: It is nothing other than the perfect realisation of the whole of time as the whole of existence; there is nothing surplus at all. Because something surplus is just something surplus, even a moment of half-perfectly-realised existence-time is the perfect realisation of half-existence-time. Even those phases in which we seem to be blundering heedlessly are also existence. Commentary: Something "surplus" would be self. However something surplus would merely be surplus, i.e. it would be redundant. To train is to animate the robe or body. To do so is completely clean, however poor one's attempt, so long as it is an act in complete good faith. Even a poor effort is a perfect realisation if it is sincere. It is the perfect realisation of an imperfect manifestation, but even an imperfect manifestation is still a real instance of existence-time. We do what we do. There is no way out of that. What we did is what we did and it can never be otherwise. If we were trying to preserve some element of self apart from the act of enacting an instance of Buddha, then we merely wasted something and that imperfect act can never be undone. Looked at from a distance, however, it may still become the raising of a flower or the sounding of a bell: it may be the instance that becomes the condition for awakening of true faith. Text: If we leave it utterly up to him (existence), even though before and after manifest heedless blundering, they abide in their place as existence-time. Abiding in our place in the Dharma in the state of vigorous activity is just existence-time. Commentary: Here it becomes clear that existence-time equates with other-power. Even though we are heedless blunderers, our heedless blundering may still be of service. When we are settled in faith, we will always abide in our place in the Dharma. There is, however, nothing complacent about such a "settling". We do exist. Therefore, we have to act. If we do not find the "vigorous activity" it is because we are still trying to carry or carve out something surplus. Thus the lazy person often spends more effort trying to avoid working than the work would consume. They are not really not working. They are working hard at trying to be a certain self. This, however, is surplus activity that merely serves to get in the way of getting the job done. When we just "abide in our place", we do what reality presents us with, each eventuality being an instance of sometimes using a staff or sometimes a whisk. The person of faith thus has no flurry of surplus worry and so is able to stand on the highest peak or walk along the bottom of the ocean as appropriate. This is all by the power of faith that allows what is surplus to fall away. Text: We should not disturb it [by interpreting it] as "non-existence" (mu) and we should not enforceably call it "existence". In regard to time, we strive to comprehend only how relentlessly it is passing; we do not understand it intellectually as what is yet to come. Even though intellectual understanding is time, no circumstances are ever influenced by it. Skin-bags recognise [time] as departing and arriving; none has penetrated it as existence-time abiding in its place; how much less could any experience time having passed through the gate. Commentary: The very concepts by which we come to understand something themselves become traps if they become objects of attachment and, thereby, become building blocks for a sense of self. Actual circumstances are effected by action and action comes from experience. The most important aspect of time is impermanence. This is something we experience. Passing through the gate is a common metaphor for awakening. To have passed through the gate is to have found faith. We can have faith in existence-time, i.e. in reality, as it is and we can know that existence-time trusts us in a similar fashion. This is what is meant by "coming home". When we are at peace with the universe we do not need time to be going somewhere. We are already in the Pureland. There is, therefore, no need to depart nor to arrive. However, departing and arriving continue unceasingly. Text: Even among those who are conscious of abiding in their place who can express the state of having already attained the ineffable? Even among those who have been asserting for a long time that they are like this, there is none who is not still groping for the manifestation before them of the real features. If we leave even bodhi and nirvana as they are in the existence-time of the ordinary person, even bodhi and nirvana are existence-time: merely forms that arrive and depart. Commentary: In the existence-time of the ordinary person, bodhi and nirvana are goals that lie in the future at the end of the spiritual journey. But even if we concede such an idea, then bodhi and nirvana would be merely occurrences in time, things that appear "just for the time being". Dogen is critical of those spiritual practitioners who think this way, implying that it is no better than the thinking of ordinary folk. The supposedly wise teachers of his time are, he suggests, merely thinking in a conventional way and this will never yield for them a direct experience of how things actually stand. In Dogen's account, nirvana and bodhi are not any more to be located in the future than in the past or the present. They are not instances of moments of time. They are direct encounter with time relentlessly passing. Text: In short, without any cessation of restrictions and hindrances, existence-time is realised. Celestial kings and celestial throngs now appearing to the right and now appearing to the left are existence-time in which we are now exerting ourselves. Commentary: Spiritual practitioners tend to think that they will experience something wonderful and magical when their inner obstacles are overcome. They perceive a gap between their present state and the state of bodhi or nirvana and they understand the barrier between the two states to be certain hindrances and restrictions. However, Dogen, like Honen, prescribes a spiritual life in which we discover reality in the very midst of our hindrance-ridden state. Equally, even if we do get visions of celestial beings and some sort of epiphany, it is only another instance of existence-time. The problem is not how to get rid of something any more than it is how to create something surplus. The problem, if such it may be called, is how to be exactly what one is and how to live constructively in a world exactly as it is, characterised as it is by the relentless flow of time. Text: Elsewhere, beings of existence-time of land and sea are [also] realised through our own exertion now. The many kinds of being and the many individual beings that live as existence-time in darkness and in brightness are all the realisation of our own effort, and the continuance of our effort from moment to moment. We should learn in practice that without the moment to moment continuance of our own effort in the present, not a single Dharma nor a single thing could ever be realised or could ever continue from moment to moment. We should never learn that passage from moment to moment is like the movement east and west of wind and rain. Commentary: Life is encounter. Our own efforts are our participation in it. Moment by moment we encounter what is not self. Moment by moment things arise and pass away. We are not, however, merely passive victims of this situation, receiving it as one might the vagaries of wind and rain. We have a responsibility toward all other beings. Our effort is directed to sustaining them. This is like Dharmakara making his great vow to serve all beings. Dogen is not making a metaphysical point nor saying that others do not have their own lives to lead and their own reasons for doing things. What he is saying is that others and their realisation are the reason for and purpose of our life. The pre-eminent precept, therefore, is to always act in ways that sustains the faith of others and does not lead them into despair. We are always building a Pureland for the sake of all sentient beings. Text: The whole universe is neither beyond moving and changing nor beyond progressing and regressing: it is passage from moment to moment. An example of time passing from moment to moment is spring. Spring has innumerable different aspects that we call (collectively) a passage of time (or season). We should learn that the passing of time from moment to moment continues without there being anything external. The passing of spring by moment to moment, for example, inevitably passes, moment by moment, through spring itself. It is not that the moment by moment passing of time is spring; rather, because spring is moment by moment, passing time has already realised the truth in the here and now of springtime. Commentary: "Anything external" means, in this instance, something called "spring" that is in any way separable from actual trees blossoming, actual birds singing, actual snows melting, actual gusts blowing and so on. All these actualities are instances of spring. They are also instances of Buddha and of the calling of kalavinka birds. The real spring that one can experience, rather than conceptualise, is a matter of this bird singing and that gust blowing. These things do not pass through something called spring. Their occurrence makes a spring. Text: We should research this in detail returning to it and leaving it again and again. If we think, in discussing the passing of time moment after moment that circumstances are individual things on the outside, while something which can pass from moment to moment moves east through hundreds of thousands of worlds and through hundreds of thousands of kalpas, then we are not devoting ourselves solely to Buddhist learning in practice. Commentary: In other words, the concrete instances of things happening are not something that happen within or as manifestations of the universe: they are the universe. Dogen is saying that existence is all. There is no essence separate from actual existence. This is pure existentialism. Text: Great Master Yakusan Kodo, the story goes, at the suggestion of Great Master Musai, visits Zen Master Kozei Daijaku. He asks, "I have more or less clarified the import of the three vehicles and the 12 divisions of the teaching. But just what is the ancestral masters intention in coming from the West?" Thus questioned, Zen Master Daijaku says, "Sometimes I make him lift an eyebrow or wink and eye and sometimes I do not make him lift an eyebrow or wink and eye; sometimes to make him do so is right and sometimes it is not right." Hearing this, Yakusan realises a great realisation and says to Daijaku, "In Sekito's order I have been like a mosquito that climbed onto an iron ox." Commentary: The ancestral master is Bodhidharma. The question, "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" was a perpetual challenge to those Buddhists who maintained that all is already perfect just as it is. If everything already has Buddha nature or original enlightenment or some such, then why bother to do anything and in particular, why bother to travel all the way from India to China in the service of the Dharma. Yakusan believes that he has grasped the general sense of the Buddhist teaching in that way, but it leaves him wondering what is the point of doing anything. A good question. Daijaku reveals a deep understanding of the truth as existential. The idea of Buddha nature originated simply as an assertion that if Buddha can be enlightened, so can you or I. Quickly, however, people started to understand Buddha nature to indicate some sort of soul or essence that continued over time as it were within a person. It is precisely this kind of idea that Dogen is arguing against in this text. Daijaku says, in effect, that there is no Buddha nature separate from the concrete acts of real persons. Sometimes lifting an eyebrow and sometimes not lifting an eyebrow are instances of Buddha. They are also instances of oneself. They are instances of the universe and they are instances of existrence-time. Doing so when it is right to do so, is an instance of Dharma. In this way, Daijaku reveals the fact that living the Buddhist life is a total commitment to the action of this moment, because there really is nothing else. Bodhidharma committed his life to what he saw as most worthwhile. He raised the Buddha's foot by travelling to China where he was needed. Dharma is simply to do what is right to the best of one's ability without recourse to surplus notions. If there is no recourse to surplus notions there will be no burden in the heart to slow the Buddha down. Text: What Daijaku says is not the same as what others can say. "Eyebrows and eyes" may be mountains and seas, because the mountains and seas are his eyebrows and eyes. Commentary: The mountains and the seas are the eyebrows and eyes of the Buddha to us. It is their reality, i.e. the reality of natural phenomena, that is existence, and Buddhism is to learn the real existence of these things. When the mountain really speaks to us, therefore, it is old Shakyamuni raising his eyebrow, looking askance upon our surplus notions and our reductions by which we strive to carve out some separateness for our self, some island that may be secure from the relentless passage of instance following instance. Text: In his "making himself lift" he may be looking at the mountains and in his "making him wink" he may be presiding over the seas. Being right has become familiar to him and he has been led by the teaching. Neither is "not being right" the same as "not making him act" nor is "not making him act" the same as "not being right". All these are existence-time [i.e. just for the time being / situational]. Commentary: Inaction is not always wrong nor action always right. We cannot cease to raise the eyebrows of the Buddha simply be always acting or always being passive. We have to make a fresh start each time. The Dharma teachings give us much guidance on the question of what is moral and what is not, but we still have to make a decision each time. Much as one might like to find a formula that would live life for one in a mechanical way, that would only be something surplus and something deficient. The formula would be surplus and the resulting life would be deficient. Text: The mountains are time and the seas are time. Without time, the mountains and the seas could not exist. We should not deny that time exists in the mountains and in the seas here and now. If time decays, the mountains and the seas decay. If time is not subject to decay, the mountains and the seas are not subject to decay. In accordance with this truth the bright star appears, the Tathagata appears, the eye appears, and picking up a flower appears, and this is just time. Without time it would not be like this. Commentary: There is an oblique allusion here to the debate that was raging in Dogen's time about what is called "the latter age of the Dharma". Many people believed that the Dharma declines in proportion to the length of time that has passed since the time of the Buddha. It was believed by many that the world had already passed into the Dharma-ending age in which practice according to the original intention of Buddha was no longer possible. In Japan in particular it was possible to believe this since the times were full of catastrophic occurrences – war, famine, plague and natural disasters. Dogen, however, completely rejected this idea. For him, the purpose of Buddhism and the meaning of Dharma were to bring us into direct encounter with existence and existence was just as existent in his time as in any other. If anything, the occurrence of natural and social disasters simply made the encounter more sharp and penetrating. In any age, whether there be a living teacher of the quality of Shakyamuni or not, the mountains and seas wil still raise their eyebrows at our all too human attempts to evade our responsibilities in this life. He, therefore, ironically points out that time itself is not in decay. The appearing of the bright star is a reference to the awakening of Shakyamuni who was enlightened when he saw the morning star and the picking up of a flower is reference to the enlightenment of Kashyapa who was awakened when the Buddha held up a flower. Dogen is saying that what happened to them can also happen in our lives because existence-time is as it ever is. Text: Zen Master Kisho of the Shoken region is a Dharma descendent of Rinzai and the rightful successor of Shuzan. On one occasion he preaches to the assembly: Sometimes the will arrives but the words do not arrive, Sometimes the words arrive but the will does not arrive, Sometimes the will and words both arrive, Sometimes neither words nor will arrive. Commentary: Dogen here points out that a great teacher like Kisho can also say that he frequently finds himself inadequate to the situation. Sometimes the words are there and sometimes not. Sometimes the will is there and sometimes not. Though we are all doing our very best and have established ourselves in faith and willingness, still, sometimes, the necessary words and will do not arrive. By this means Dogen is emphasising that the Dharma he is revealing is real not something confined to super-humans. Text: Will and words are both existence-time. Arriving and not arriving are both existence-time. The moment of arriving has not finished when the moment of absence appears. The will is the donkey and the words are the horse; horses have been made into words and donkeys have been made into will. Arrival is not related to having come. Non-arrival is not related to not having come. Existence-time is like this. Commentary: We cannot arrange arrive simply by our own will. "Having come" refers to having made the effort oneself. However, one can make the effort and the words or will still do not arrive. We are not under our own disposition. Things come as part of the flow of conditions, in other words, as existence-time. Text: Arrival is hindered by arrival. It is not hindered by non-arrival. Non-arrival is hindered by non-arrival. It is not hindered by arrival. The will hinders the will and meets the will. Words hinder words and meet words. Hindrance hinders hindrance and meets hindrance. Restriction resticts restriction. Such is time. Commentary: In other words, our efforts are often even counter-productive. Text: Restriction is utilized by objective dharmas, but restriction that restricts objective dharmas has never occurred. I meet with a human being; a human being meets with a human being; I meet with myself and manifestation meets with manifestation. Without time it could not be like this. Commentary: Although we seem to get in the way of reality, in fact this is impossible. The hindrances that we throw up are used by reality. They become part and parcel of our Dharma training. They are the means by which we meet ourselves and realise that we are ordinary beings, ourselves subject to the relentless flow of existence-time. Text: Furthermore the will is the time of the realised universe; the words are the time of the pivot which is the ascendant state, arrival is the time of laying bare the substance and non-arrival is the time of "sticking to this and parting from this" We should draw distinctions and should enact existence-time like this. Though venerable ancestors hitherto have each spoken as they have, how could there be nothing further to say? Commentary: We think of will as something that is our personal possession and the means by which we assert ourselves over against the circumstances that we encounter. Will conjures the idea of a struggle between self and world. In fact, however, will arises or does not arise according to conditions and is part of the flow of time. It is dependently originated and so is not under our direct control. The ascentent state is the condition of needing to "leave it utterly up to him". At the same time, this is not a recipe for passivity, because often enough, the will and words do arrive and, miracle or miracles, we are able to animate the 16 foot golden body. Text: I should like to say: The half arrival of will and words is existence-time The half non-arrival of will and words is existence-time Commentary: Dogen like to use the term "half" in order to indicate what is it like for actual human beings rather than idealised ones. In the real world, we are often in the position of half arrival. We do not necessarily do the best possible job every time. Whatever blundering effort we produce, however, it can be an instance of standing on the highest peak and using the staff and whisk. The difference between a practitioner and a non-practitioner is not that the former has a special accomplishment, but rather that he or she has truly given up trying to be a special accomplishment. He or she is in tune with existence just as it is and therefore naturally does not generate surplus fuss, simply doing what reality demands with whatever will and words are to hand. Text: There should be research in experience like this, Making him lift and eyebrow or wink an eye is half existence-time Making him lift and eyebrow or wink an eye is mixed-up existence-time Not making him lift and eyebrow or wink an eye is half existence-time Not making him lift and eyebrow or wink an eye is mixed-up existence-time When we experience coming and departing and we, experience arrival and non-arrival, like this, that time is existence-time. Commentary: Such is training: to exercise the will and discover the power of existence-time that is beyond our personal will and thereby to discover that the will has a completely different nature to what we formerly believed. This discovery set us on a path on which there is no surplus and no deficiency and on which, even if we are the third son of Chang or the fourth son of Lee, there is no alientation between us and this space and earth. We are in our true home. Dh.D.J. Brazier The translation of the text used, with a few minor modifications of my own, is that found in Nishijima G. & Cross C. (1994) Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Book 1. Woking, Surry: Windbell |