Uji — Session 2

The only real existing time

Master Dogen says we normally think that events are part of a journey, and that these events are “back there”, and we are “here”. But he puts his alternative view:^[1]

At the time when we are crossing the mountain pass or crossing the river, we are present there, and so time is present there. Time cannot elude the present.^[1]

Our real experience isn’t like the frames of a film: the present is always here, but at the same time it’s moving on. So it’s a contradiction.^[1]

Then how can the time when we are crossing the mountain pass or crossing the river not be swallowed up in the time when we are illuminated by the present?^[1]

So he’s suggesting in a rather unusual way that the present contains the past, and that the past contained the present, or if you like, the present contains the future. And this view is very strange. He doesn’t mean literally that when I went to the cinema last week, that event is still hanging around here somewhere. He means that the present is the only real existing time. So everything that exists must be in the present; there is no other place that it can be. He’s trying to destroy our very strong linear view of time, or rather break it up, and suggest another way of looking at things.^[1][2]

Question: But the future doesn’t exist yet.

Think of an event in the future: where is it?^[3]

Question: But we’re talking about the concept of the future is in the present.

Yes, we can say so.^[3]

Question: I can understand how the past is, but the future…

He says when we are in the present, it’s the only time when anything about the past can exist. That something might be the scar on my hand, or some kind of mental result of the past. My memory of the past, the results of the past all exist here. The past exists here. So turning that around, he says that the past must have contained now in it. But we can’t understand that, you’re right. He’s trying to create an image which is almost impossible for us to grasp in our minds.^[3]

Ditch the linear view

We can’t understand that the present is contained in the future precisely because we have this very strong linear view. He’s saying ditch the linear view and everything is now. Because there is only now, and in the future it will be a now, and in the past was a now, and all nows are at the same place. He wants to break the linear view, not to deny it, not to say it’s wrong, but to suggest another view where everything is here.^[4]

Process and the middle view

Question: Did Einstein say anything similar to Master Dogen?

I don’t think so, no. Though the relative view is very similar, he didn’t posit an eternal now, if you like. Science can’t say that, because once you take away process, science collapses: without a process view you can’t separate causes from their effects. And science is a valid way of looking at reality. But Master Dogen wants to suggest another view, outside of science and also outside of religion, called the middle view. It’s not based on a process view, and it’s not based on a spiritual or eternal view; it’s based on real experience in the present.^[4]

Question: Is the self just a kind of personalization of process?

Yes, but I can’t get rid of myself. People who say that to get rid of the self is the aim of Buddhism, or there is no self: to some extent there’s a validity to that, but it’s impossible to pursue it. We are people, we are selves, we create ourselves at every moment. So in that way we’re illusions, but we are real illusions.^[5]

Process is real, but it’s not real. It’s real because we all agree that it explains the way reality works. It’s not real because only this moment is real: there’s no next moment yet, and the last moment has gone already. So we can say there is process and there isn’t process. And that contradiction is at the heart of the problem of describing reality.^[6]

But Master Dogen comes back to make sure that we don’t think he’s denying process:^[8][9]

… Although time can be seen as a process like this, times arriving do not pile up on time past, neither do they extend out in a continuous line.^[9]

Before we start thinking

Question: Is Dogen saying that before our self comes on to the scene, time just exists as it is?

Yes, that’s called time-present. But he wants to use his discriminating mind to describe the situation before he started discriminating. All of Dogen’s philosophy is trying to point us to the place before we started thinking about it. But it’s impossible; he tried the whole of his life, and he said that it was impossible.^[6]

If we practice zazen, we have a practice which is outside of the area of thinking, and all these sentences that he writes are referring to that essential experience in zazen or in pure activity. We have activities which demand the whole of us, and in that kind of activity we can let go of thinking. We can find it in all sports and in yoga; zazen is the essence. But because he uses words, we’re in a kind of trap in a way. So he creates these strange images.^[6]

Then a pine tree is time-present, and a bamboo thicket is a time-present.^[7]

Not a pine tree is in a time-present, but a pine tree is a time-present. We say “I am in the here and now”, but he says “I am the here and now”.^[7]

Question: It can also feel like time passes through us.

He wants to go even further than that and say, not that time is flowing through you, but that time is you: time is us. Without us, there is no time. Which implies a lot of things, one of which is that time is a human construction.^[8]

It grasps us

Question: You can’t actually identify or define time-present; as soon as you attempt it, it’s gone.

What Buddhism says is that we can’t grasp it, but we have a way to experience it. And if we experience it and try to talk about it, we kind of… we can’t grasp it but it grasps us. And in grasping us, it gives us a focus. In modern life, often our focus is in the next five minutes, because there is pressure on us. We’re on this kind of process-conveyor, which society needs to function, but it also pulls us out of being in the present. If we talk about it as far as we’re able, and if we practice it, it grasps us. This is all Tim Henman wants to do: to focus into the here and now, forget about the point you just lost and hit the ball, now. That’s what all sportspeople want to do, that’s what musicians want to do, isn’t it?^[10]

Question: I think maybe making music and sitting doing nothing are the same thing, but it’s harder to do nothing.

I agree it’s hard. If we just sit down in an armchair and decide that we’re going to do nothing, it’s very difficult. But if we sit in the posture of zazen, the posture itself helps us to do nothing. It’s not only mental effort, it’s something physical too. Even when our mind is really busy, we actually settle, whether we like it or not. It may only be a small amount. The posture itself in zazen gets us.^[11]

Question: In zazen, you’re aware of all things. What do you do with all things that can appear…?

Are they your property to do anything with? They’re there. In zazen we share space with the whole Universe. It doesn’t mean that we imagine everything in the Universe going through our minds. But because we’re sitting in the Universe, we share it with everything. Normally we separate ourselves from the world, but in action, especially in zazen, but also in every other kind of action, in the moment of acting, there’s an equality, a balance between me and the world. Just to share the Universe with everything is enough.^[12]

Simply here

Many people think that buddhas are something you can become after you make very strenuous effort, and then all your problems are solved. One reason they feel like that is because they can’t see that they may be a buddha in the present. But if we think of the word buddha as meaning someone who is awake, then it’s quite straightforward. If you’re awake here and you see everything around you, you’re a buddha. If you’re half here, and half of you is missing and thinking something, then you’re not. The time when you are simply here, you’re a buddha. And the reason you’re a buddha is because you are simply here in time-present. But if you don’t believe that, then you must think that buddha is something else that you haven’t got to yet: “I’ll practice really hard tomorrow, then the day after that I might be enlightened”.^[14]

The state of buddha which wants to search for the truth, practice zazen, attain the truth, and enter the balanced state to make the state of buddha real, exists at time-present.^[17]

That sentence suggests that sincere effort itself is being a buddha, so it’s time-present.^[17]

Question: Very often we spend time trying to have part of our lives outside of time.

Well we have to actually, to function in society, don’t we?^[15]

Question: … when you’re writing for the grant, you can be very much in the present, so it’s not…

You’re right, I agree. But there’s some kind of difference in attitude, isn’t there? We can do a lot of things which appear to be future orientated, but we’re actually doing them now and we know that we’re doing them now.^[15]

Question: In my experience with this house buying, … it took over my life, even though I was thinking about the future.

No, because you were thinking about the future. Because you wanted something that was in the future and hadn’t come yet to be here.^[15]

This is why people imagine that there’s something called a buddha, or a Zen master, who doesn’t have those kind of experiences. But that’s a load of rubbish, because all human beings are affected by what goes on in their lives. But we can notice, hopefully, that we are being dragged into the future by a house purchase. Just that noticing itself is a kind of solution to the problem. Master Dogen says that even the moment in which people make their efforts and reject accepting that they are buddhas because they can’t see that it’s their state, also happens in time-present. He’s saying that we can’t escape it.^[15]

Question: If you sit in zazen and notice that your thoughts don’t focus any more on the house purchase, that is some sign of your coming back to…

Yes, we can feel ourselves coming back to the present, after we’ve been angry, or excited, or disturbed.^[16]

The Universe making itself real

… living beings are time-present; buddhas are time-present. The concrete time-present of being angry makes the whole Universe real. … The time-present in which the Universe makes itself real is called perfectly real.^[17]

“Living beings are time-present” means that there’s time and there’s me, and it’s all one. He’s suggesting some kind of complete identity between the whole Universe, time, and me. So they are inseparable, and they are real.^[17]

Even the times when we seem to be blundering along heedlessly are at time-present. To leave those heedlessly blundering time-presents as they are is to see that they have their own place as time-present.^[18]

When you felt yourself to be very disturbed, to recognise that you were very disturbed, and to leave them as they are, is to be in reality. These sentences kind of shake you around, but if you read them again and again, there’s some kind of taste of some kind of simple experience: that here and now is real. So if we want to look for reality, it’s here already. Or as Wittgenstein said, the place that we’re trying to get to must be the place that we’re already at.^[18]

If I get up and run around the room, in my action I’m making the Universe real. If I sit here, I’m making the Universe real. The Universe making the Universe real suggests there’s no me: there’s not separation between me and the Universe, so the Universe is making itself real.^[18]

Against traditional Buddhism

Question: Why is it expressed so strongly, what was it over against?

It was against traditional Buddhism. Master Dogen wanted to strip away all the misinterpretations and strange beliefs that were around in Japan at the time: sects where monks stood under waterfalls, and other sects who made strange signs with their hands and chanted the name of Buddha. He wanted to establish something very simple, realistic, which he had learned in China.^[19]

He wanted to say Buddhism is about reality, not about burning incense. You can burn incense if you like, but it’s about something called reality, and reality in Buddhism means reality—reality here.^[20]

Question: Which team did he support?

Fukui Rovers.^[20]