Uji — Session 1

Sitting in balance

Question: How to you define zazen?

I like to say sitting in balance, because to me it’s a balanced posture, and it’s the same balance at the centre of sport. But the posture itself is not rock still, it’s rock solid, but it’s dynamic. And because Buddhism says that body and mind are two sides of one whole, if we balance our body we balance our mind. It’s a total balance. That’s the best I can do.^[1]

A difficult chapter about time

Uji is one of the three or four particularly important chapters of Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, and the important ones tend to be quite hard to understand. But the principle he’s talking about here is rather important: the principle of time in Buddhism. We’re going through my modern interpretation; sometimes it’s quite close to the original and sometimes quite different.^[3]

“U” means is, exists, even yes, you could say; “ji” simply means ordinary time. We can say existence-time, being-time, is-time, or we could even say something like right-here-and-now. What “uji” points to is something about being here at this time.^[4]

Time is the present

A buddha of old said,

Time-present is standing on the mountain heights Time-present is sinking to the depths of the ocean …^[5]

I’ve chosen the phrase time-present, because it’s the nearest thing for me to what I feel Master Dogen is trying to say. We can say that the poem is just snapshots of different states in the life of a monk: sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes elated. But Master Dogen has a much more strict interpretation than “sometimes”.^[5]

Time-present means that time is the present, and that the present is time.^[6]

He equates here and now with this time; he says that time is actually the present. When we’re lost in our thoughts, we may have quite strong images in front of us, but they are hazy. But the real world in front of us is clear. So to be “illuminated by the light of the present” means simply to be clearly aware of what’s around us, not caught up in our thoughts or caught up with images. Buddha means to be awake, and to be awake means to see what’s around us, now, at this place.^[6]

Twenty-four-hour time is relative

His statement in the first paragraph is very existential; we could say that he’s almost denying that time has any kind of process: throw away your watch, time is only now. But then he changes his view and says that we must also study time as 24-hour time, and that 24-hour time is relative. Sometimes we feel that time flies and sometimes that it drags, and we usually think that this is our subjective feeling, and time is really ticking on objectively; we habitually ignore this contradiction. He doesn’t reject our subjective feeling of time being relative in favour of objective absolute time; he doesn’t reject either of those.^[7]

He says, “although we never doubt our ability to clearly trace the passage of time, we cannot be sure that we clearly know what time is”. Of course I know what time is! It’s sixteen minutes and 15 seconds before 12 o’clock! But he’s suggesting that this objective statement about time is not complete. Then he says that even when we’re doubting, that doubt is always the time now; he brings us back to time-present.^[8]

Everything has its time-present

We must also understand that all the people and the things in the Universe have their time-present. Just as individual things are independent of each other, so individual time-presents are independent of each other.^[9]

In a way he’s trying to break up our process view of time, our very strong belief that time goes on and we’re in it, and say that everything, everywhere has its time-present. And this is certainly true for me: I have my time-present. You have your time-present. That plant on the window sill has its time-present.^[9]

Question: There’s a lot of powerful evidence to suggest that time is a process: memory, and cause and effect.

Yes, it’s true. He doesn’t deny it. But he denies that the objective view is true, and he denies that the subjective view is true. We have objective time that we learn about – the clock, or the watch, or the atomic clock – but he denies that any of those are absolutes. He doesn’t deny that this is a valid way of looking at reality, for example in terms of hands going round, but he denies that this objective time is absolute.^[10]

Question: So we have to synthesise both views of time?

He suggests that to have more than one view of time is better than to have only one. But these views conflict, and Master Dogen always resolves conflicting views in the present. He says in the end there’s only one moment that’s real and only one place that’s real, and that’s here and now. But our brains can’t work without process, so we have to spread things out into a process.^[10]

Practice and the self

He wants to say that although we think of Buddhist practice, “I’ve been practicing for three years”, actually it’s all at one moment: wanting to find the truth, realising the truth and practicing a Buddhist life each happen at a time-present. Just this time-present, there is no other time-present.^[11]

This person I think of as myself is a “person” that I put together at one time-present.^[12]

The “me” that was here this morning doesn’t exist, and the “me” that’s going to eat beans and beef burgers later doesn’t exist either. I create “Michael” at this moment. We spread ourselves out through time, but Master Dogen says that this all happens at one time-present.^[12]

We can apply this thinking to everything in the Universe. This kind of intellectual analysis is the starting point of Buddhist practice.^[12]

This means that from Master Dogen’s point of view, understanding the Buddhist view of time is very important.^[12]

Acting, not thinking

But a person who has clarified their real state sees only each thing, each thing, each thing, and lets go of understanding the nature of each thing.^[12]

Question: What does “lets go of understanding the nature of each thing” mean?

It sounds like a person who has clarified their real state must be a special kind of person, an enlightened person if we like, but it doesn’t mean that at all. It’s a common, everyday state that we all experience, and we can call it action: picking up a cup and drinking the tea. When we act fully, we let go of understanding; it’s impossible for us to think about what we’re doing and do it fully at the same time. What Master Dogen is describing here is not some kind of process towards a special state, but something momentary: simple action in the present moment. If you think about hitting the ball, you miss it. When you’re jogging, after a while there are just flashes of moments: just now, just now. And in zazen we can settle down sometimes to a state where we are just sitting, just sitting; Master Dogen calls that “shikan-taza”.^[13]

In other words, in order to experience time-present in the sense that Master Dogen is trying to describe it, we need to act, we can’t experience it by thinking about it. If we try and think while we do something, we split ourselves; in ancient Buddhism that was described as having two moons. When we just throw ourself into what we’re doing we are one moon – we are whole.^[13]

The past is here, now

We’re all taught that time is a process, so we think that we experience time as a process; actually we don’t, but we think we do. Master Dogen describes this normal view as a journey: we cross a river or a mountain pass, and we think they are still back there. But then he says:^[14][15]

This is not the only way to think about it. And the time when we are crossing the mountain pass, or crossing the river, we are present there, and so time is present there.^[16]

He’s suggesting that the events are all here. And it’s not such a crazy suggestion, because where is the past? Can you point to it? The only place I can find the past is here, now. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a past, it doesn’t deny that past events affect the present, it doesn’t negate cause and effect. He’s chipping away at the very, very strongly-held view that we all have, and which we find almost impossible to drop. So sometimes in zazen we keep thinking, “oh, I’ve got to do this tomorrow”, and all these worries come from our view of time; our view of time is hard-wired into our brain, because we’re taught it since we were little.^[16]

Question: What does Dogen say about the future?

He says that the future is an idea, and the idea exists now. And he says the past has gone already, but the past we’re talking about now exists now. There is no other past now but the past in our thoughts now.^[18]

He’s saying, as there is no other time but now, and no other place but here, everything must be here and now. But we imagine a kind of time-line; we create a life, a personality, ourselves. Not that they are not real, but they are real creations that we make at the present. I wake up one morning feeling depressed, and I create a depressed “me”. But it all happens in the present.^[18]

We can’t live without process

Question: We need to construct a self…

Yes, we can’t help it. That’s why he doesn’t deny our 24-hour time; he says ordinary people think about time in this way, but it’s not the only way to think about it. He’s not saying that it’s not the correct way, because we can’t live without process. But process we create at this moment, because this moment is all there is, and we somehow, with our consciousness, stretch ourselves out between past and future. We all do it, and we can never stop.^[19]

But Master Dogen is suggesting another view, the experience that we have in, for instance, zazen: time here and now, time here and now. Thinking “five minutes to go, my legs are hurting” spreads us out again. But sometimes when we sit, we can just be here and now, and this is what he’s trying to explain in this chapter.^[19]

Words and zazen

In all the chapters of the Shobogenzo, Master Dogen is trying to describe what reality is like. Society has taught us a particular view; he is giving us another view, the Buddhist view, based on the practice of zazen; in practicing zazen he notices the true nature of our experience here and now. The way we think about reality is not the way reality is. But even his words in this chapter are not enough, so we practice zazen, and in zazen we experience time-present in the sense in which he’s trying to describe it. So to understand the chapter, we can refer to our own zazen. And our own action.^[20]

Question: Surely the writing down, the conceptualising of the experience of zazen, is an active impediment to experiencing time as it is?

Yes, I agree. Let’s throw it away! But then we sit for a bit and we start thinking again, don’t we? Unfortunately, we can’t do without thinking about it, and writing about it, and discussing, and we can’t do with too much of it. We need both to throw it away, and to discuss and to write and to think about it – both. But we don’t need to hang on to one or the other.^[20]