Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dо̄gen's Understanding of Temporality 9780824844844

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Impermanence Is Buddha-nature

Impermanence Is

Buddha-nature Dogen 's Understanding of Temporality Joan Stambaugh

University of Hawaii Press / Honolulu

© 1990 Joan Stambaugh All Rights Reserved Printed in the United States of America 90

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stambaugh, Joan, 1932Impermanence is Buddha-nature : Dogen's understanding of temporality / Joan Stambaugh. p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8248-1257-3 (alk. paper) 1.

Dogen, 1200-1253. BQ9449.D657S73

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Title.

1990

294.3'42'092—dc20

90-30062 CIP

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

To Masao Abe Noriko Kameda

Contents Preface / ix . Impermanence / i Buddha-nature / 18 3. Being-time / 24 Birth and death / 72 5. Dialectic / 78 T i m e and eternity / 94 7. Thinking / 113 Epilogue / 130 Notes / 133 References / 141 Index / 145

Preface Dogen is a profoundly original and difficult thirteenth-century Buddhist thinker whose works have begun attracting increasing attention in the West. Admittedly difficult for even the most advanced and sophisticated scholars of Eastern thought, he is bound, initially, to present an almost insurmountable barrier to the Western mind. Yet the task of penetrating that barrier must be undertaken and, in fact, is being carried out by many gifted scholars toiling in the D5gen vineyard. I do not bring any special or even adequate competence to the task of explicating Dogen. But I have been fascinated by him for the last twenty years and have benefited greatly from the writings and seminars of those more qualified than I to mediate his thoughts to Western philosophers. If Western philosophy is not to subside into the dubious role of a kind of " m e t a " literary criticism or to pursue similar paths that seem the only way open to a philosophy and theology that have lost access to any "transcendence," it would do well to listen to the voices of Eastern thinking. The encounter between Western and Eastern thinkers ideally should be dialogical, not comparative—a distinction made by Masao Abe. Comparative studies have their definite role and worth and provide various stepping stones to understanding. But eventually the comparison should become somewhat more "existential," and the form perhaps best suited to existentiality is the dialogue. A good and fruitful example of such dialogue is that between Paul Tillich and Shin'ichi Hisamatsu published in various volumes of The Eastern Buddhist. M a n y of us have lost our receptivity to what for lack of a better word I shall call spirituality. "Transcendence" is very much out of fashion; metaphysics is dead. But spirituality does not have to be tuned into anything metaphysical beyond this world. Dogen can show us that there are unimaginable dimensions of this world

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right here if we will only open our minds to them. Take away the conceptual overlay constantly generated by our substantializing and objectifying habitual tendencies, and things look totally different. Although my interest in Dogen goes back twenty years, this is still the book of a beginner.

Eternity cannot be explained by duration. Spinoza

I. Impermanence For centuries, Western thinkers have been concerned with the question of time in many divergent ways. Frequently the question of time included in its scope a possible relation to its "transcend e n t " opposite, eternity. More recently, inquiries into time have come up with various kinds or experiences of time—in other words, the realization that time can be experienced more or less genuinely and authentically. This has led to the explicit insight, which had often been latently present, that the experience of time is in no way to be equated with objective time measurement, as the ordinary conception of time might have it. In his own way, the thirteenth-century Japanese Buddhist thinker Dogen was concerned with the two problems just mentioned: the relation of time to eternity and, intimately bound up with that relation, the different experiences of time. O n the basis of his experiential conception of time, Dogen worked out his own understanding of the relation of the world to something traditionally conceived in Buddhism as transcending the world. T h e Western formulation for this is the relation between the world and God (or the Absolute). T h e traditional Buddhist formulation before Nagarjuna (second century A.D.) was the relation between the cycles of birth and death (samsara) and liberation from those cycles (nirvana). Dogen follows Nagarjuna in his rejection of nirvana or liberation as something beyond the cycles of birth and death. But, instead of primarily conceiving of an "identity" of the cycles of birth and death with liberation from them, which was Nagarjuna's innovative insight, Dogen's focus appears to be primarily on the nature of "being-time" (the Japanese word is uji) and the possible experience of liberation inherent in it. Thus, while Nagarjuna's orientation was primarily logical, that of Dogen is experiential and phenomenological. T h e title of this study embodies one of Dogen's preferential characterizations of the relation under consideration here. Imper-

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manence expresses our experience of the finite world of birth and death, and is founded on the bedrock of one formulation of the three Buddhist statements concerning the nature of that world: (i) all is impermanent, (2) all is suffering, and (3) till is without ego or self. Everything is impermanent. Thinkers and poets in the East and the West have written about impermanence—the fleeting, transitory nature of everything worldly or earthly. Often they have stayed with that experience of impermanence, not finding any way out of it. Others claim to have found a way out, as formulated in the four noble truths expressed in the first sermon preached by the Buddha after attaining enlightenment. 1. 2. 3. 4.

All is suffering. There is an origin, an arising of suffering. There is a stopping of suffering. There is a way leading to the stopping of suffering.

It was Nagarjuna's startling and radical insight that the " w a y o u t " of the cycles of birth and death lay right in the middle of these cycles. In this study, we want to examine briefly this fundamental M a h a y a n a tenet concerning the "identity" of samsara and nirvana and then go on to see how Dogen's conception of being-time, or uji, affects the understanding of that identity. Although we shall have occasion to discuss several of Dogen's fundamental conceptions, for the purposes of our inquiry we shall focus on the following: genjo - presencing gujin - total exertion gyoji - continuous practice juhoi - dwelling in a dharma-situation keige - impeding kyoryaku - taking place nikon - right now, absolute now

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In o u r attempt to understand these strikingly innovative conceptions, we shall occasionally draw on Western thinkers, not for the purpose of a comparative study but rather to use what is more familiar and better understood as a bridge to what at first would appear to most Western readers, even the more sophisticated a m o n g us, as simply unintelligible. However, given the utter seriousness and genuineness of Dogen's soteriological intention, we know that he is not deliberately trying to mystify us or to take selfsatisfying delight in obscure intricacies that ultimately have nothing to do with anything outside their own "logical" internal relations. W e can at times suspect some Western philosophers of this —not so Dogen. A word about the central significance of uji. It might be argued that the most f u n d a m e n t a l conception in Dogen's thought is not uji but rather Buddha-nature or perhaps genjo, presencing. W e have no quarrel with this at all. Rather, we are looking for one of the conceptions in Dogen that will best enable us to understand the radicalness of what he has to say. T h u s , ail though one might say that B u d d h a - n a t u r e is Dogen's f u n d a m e n t a l thought, as Western readers we might then think we already understand what that is, just as those of us with some intellectual acquaintance with terms such as nirvana, suchness, etc. might think we really and concretely know what these mean. In this case, o u r understanding of Western ideas, of what is more familiar, does not serve as a bridge to what is initially unintelligible, but rather blocks any possible transition. T h u s we might read Buddha-nature and think: the Absolute. T h i s is not exactly false, for the idea here does have to do with the " w o r l d " and something transcending the world. But a term like the Absolute or perhaps even Buddha-nature is initially too general, too abstract, to lead us m u c h further. T h e same difficulties apply to the concept of time, which we are hoping will give us access to such central ideas as B u d d h a - n a t u r e and suchness. W e come across the term " t i m e " as being-time and are confident we know what that is. Everybody knows what time is. But what we Westerners know time to be is not just an

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" i n a u t h e n t i c " understanding of Dôgen's more " a u t h e n t i c " conception of time; what we know time to be absolutely blocks any understanding of Dôgen's conception of time or, more importantly, of anything else. A last remark concerns the recent preoccupation of philosophers and writers, now almost passé, with the question of time. Of course, any question that gets twisted and distorted into a kind of fad automatically loses any possible dimension of seriousness (in Kierkegaard's sense of the word). W e do not wish to participate in fetishism, m u c h less contribute to it. W h a t we mean when we inquire into time is simply one thing: the question of how something takes place. This expression might serve to show that we are hardly excluding the question of space and we are certainly not talking about anything like time measurement or even, as o u r epigraph might indicate, about duration. T h e " r e l a t i o n " between impermanence and Buddha-nature is one formulation for a whole set of relations that can be alternatively expressed as samsara-nirvana or practice-enlightenment. In Western terms, we are dealing with the relation of the finite to the infinite, of the world to the Absolute, or G o d . Intriguing and innovative thoughts on this relation can be found in philosophers such as Nicholas of C u s a and the G e r m a n Idealists, particularly Schelling. In the Eastern formulation, as in these Western thinkers, however, we cannot say that one of these terms is finite while the other is infinite, or that one is particular while the other is universal. Early Buddhism conceived of nirvana, to the extent that it could be conceived and expressed at all, as some kind of release or liberation from the cycles of birth a n d death, or samsara. T h e growing trend in the development of M a h a y a n a Buddhism was to focus, not on release from these cycles, but on the cycles themselves. T h e bodhisattva, for instance, does not enter final nirvana (parinirvana) but returns to the cycles of birth and death in order to liberate other, ultimately all, living beings. It was N à g à r j u n a who brought about the culmination of this development with his statement that there was n o essential difference between samsara and nirvana.

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Samsara is n o t h i n g essentially different from nirvana. N i r v a n a is nothing essentially different from samsara.

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T h e limits of n i r v a n a are the limits of samsara. B e t w e e n the two, also, there is not the slightest difference whatsoever.'

T h e whole problem, and the whole difficulty, is to understand what these statements are really saying. It cannot be the case that early Buddhism conceived of nirvana as release from samsara, and then Nagarjuna came along and proclaimed that samsara is nirvana in the sense that there is no liberation from samsara or that no liberation is possible or necessary. N o Buddhist has ever said that. Nor can the "identity" of samsara and nirvana mean that samsara, just as the deluded person perceives it, is in and of itself nirvana. T h e fundamental issue at stake here is a philosophical as well as a soteriological one: how to think "identity," how to think "difference." Closely linked to the problematic of identity and difference is the more explicitly theological question of the transcendence or immanence of God. If G o d is solely and utterly transcendent to the world, he is too remote and disconnected to be a source of strength, or of any solace to us. But if, on the other hand, he is totally immanent in the world and if this immanence is conceived as simply the sum of all the things in the world followed by an equals sign (the question of identity again) and the word " G o d , " then this sort of God is of no use either. In fact, this latter conception is hardly worthy of the name God. I suppose this has always been the instinct operative in the traditional, rather vehement rejections of so-called pantheism. It should, however, be emphasized that no seriously philosophic thinker was ever guilty of this kind of pantheism, including (and especially) Spinoza and Emerson. T h e theologians' general conclusion was that both aspects, immanence and transcendence, were crucial to an adequate conception of God. Transcendence alone has nothing to do with anything; immanence alone is meaningless. Bringing the problematic of transcendence and immanence in relation to Dogen by way of anticipation, one would have to say

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that both factors are utterly necessary in their entirety to encompass what he is saying. But due to his uniqueness, this problem, too, will take on a different cast. The concept of mutual interpénétration (deriving from the Hua-yen school of Buddhism) that is operative in Dôgen's thought cannot simply be equated with "immanence." Bearing these questions of identity-difference and transcendence-immanence in mind, let us take a look at what Dôgen has to say about the relation of Buddha-nature to the world, to all beings. Taking the passage from the Mahâparinirvâna Sutra that reads "All sentient beings without exception have the Buddhanature: Tathâgata (Buddha) is permanent with no change at all," Dôgen boldly reinterprets the passage to mean "All is sentient being, all beings are (all being is) the Buddha-nature: Tathâgata is permanent, nonbeing, being and change." 2 The first half of this reinterpretation gives us Dôgen's own version of identity-difference and transcendence-immanence; the second contains his understanding of the relation of the Buddhanature to time. All beings are the Buddha-nature. This statement does not say that the Buddha-nature is immanent in all beings (or the "world"); nor does it say that all beings are immanent in the Buddha-nature. Hee-Jin Kim asserts the latter view that all existences are immanent in the Buddha-nature, but then goes on to qualify this statement.

The mysterious relationship between the Buddha-nature and all existence is expressed in a slighdy different context as follows: "Though not identical, they are not different; though not different, they are not one; though not one, they are not many." This is Dôgen's (hence Buddhism's) way of expressing the nondualism of beings and being itself in terms of "neither identical nor different" or "neither one nor many" (fuitsu-fui or fusoku-furi) or the Hua-yen principle "mutual identity and mutual penetration"

(sôsoku-sônyù).3

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O n the other h a n d , M a s a o Abe states that neither transcendence n o r immanence is predicable of the " r e l a t i o n " between the Buddha-nature and all beings. 4 T h e reason for these apparently conflicting views as to the suitability of the concepts of transcendence and immanence to characterize the relation of the Buddhan a t u r e to all beings is that the " t e r m s " of the relation are conceived differently by Dogen from the way they have traditionally been thought in the West. T h u s even a thinker in some ways close to Dogen, Spinoza, is not of much help in understanding this relation. Spinoza has often been called a pantheist, one who holds that all things are G o d or that God is all things. T h e concept of pantheism has also been adjusted to m e a n pan-en-theism—that all things are in God or that God is in all things. Pantheism, then, stresses identity, panentheism immanence. But one must defend Spinoza against the somewhat mindless charge of pantheism since for him all things are finite modes of the infinite substance, God, and can thus never be simply equated with that substance. T h e mode of a substance is at best a way of being of that substance, not the substance itself. It was precisely finitude that Spinoza could not explain. Yet m a n , in his intellectual love of God, has the possibility of attaining a kind of identity with G o d , which is miles away from saying that all things are automatically God without further ado. Let us see what two twentieth-century thinkers have to say about this traditional problem and see if they throw any light on the question in Dogen. T h e first thinker is Paul Tillich discussing the question of transcendence and i m m a n e n c e in their most appropriate setting, that of theology. The question whether the relation between God and the world should be expressed in terms of immanence or transcendence is usually answered by an "as well as." Such an answer, although it is correct, does not solve any problem. Immanence and transcendence are spatial symbols. God is in or above the world or both. The question is what does this mean in nonspatial terms? . . . God is imma-

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nent in the world as its permanent creative ground and is transcendent to the world through freedom. . . . T h e meaning of the spatial symbols for the divine transcendence is the possible conflict and the possible reconciliation of infinite and finite freedom. 5

As a Christian theologian, Tillich is concerned with preserving the freedom of both the creature and God, with upholding both finite and infinite freedom. H e does not want either side of the relation between G o d and creature (world) u n d e r m i n e d or erased. These concerns eventually lead him to the problem of evil and the question of theodicy. A predecessor, who also had considerable influence on Tillich, Schelling, wrote an entire treatise on the essence of h u m a n freed o m dealing with precisely these questions of how to preserve the freedom of both God and creature, how not to eliminate one half of the statement "all things are G o d . " In his study on Schelling's treatise, Heidegger sums u p the possible formulations of pantheism in one passage as follows: T h e statements of pantheism read: i) everything is God, 2) individual things are G o d , 3) G o d is everything. T h e first two statements and interpretations of pantheism turned out to be "insipid" because God's nature is annihilated in them and precisely that is lost in relation to which everything and individual things are supposed to be in God. T h e third statement alone is permissible, but at first as a question. A n d the question must be geared to the meaning of the " i s . " W e found the identity of S and P stated in a proposition in general and, in this proposition in particular, the identity of G o d and everything cannot be understood as mere identicalness, but as the belonging together of what is different on the basis of a more primordial unity. 6

This analysis leads Heidegger in the direction of his own interest — u n d e r s t a n d i n g the " i s " of identity as belonging together. 7 For the purposes of this inquiry, we have arrived at the statement " G o d is everything" as the most adequate formulation of panthe-

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ism. To make God a mere predicate is to lose any possible independent m e a n i n g of the t e r m " G o d . " Grammatically speaking, God must be the subject of the sentence. (This rather abstract statement will make more sense in the course of the following pages.) Suffice it to say that Heidegger understands the identity of Being (Schelling's " G o d " ) and m a n (Schelling's "all t h i n g s " ) as appropriation (Ereignis), as belonging-together. G o i n g back to P a r m e n i d e s ' statement that thinking and Being are the same, Heidegger interprets the statement to m e a n that thinking and Being belong together; one is not to be found without the other. If there were only Being, there could be no knowledge of it. W i t h o u t m a n who is the access to Being, Being would remain u n k n o w n and unrevealed. A n d if there were only thinking, there would be nothing to be thought, apart f r o m Aristotle's thinking on thinking, which does not interest Heidegger. Thinking is not encapsulated within itself; it is open to Being. T h u s , Being and thinking do not constitute a numerical identity but belong together in a relation that is more f u n d a m e n t a l than the constituents of that relation. Only f r o m the "is," from the relation of belonging together can both thinking and Being be adequately, appropriately understood. Now Dogen is fundamentally dealing with the same problem discussed by Tillich, Schelling and Heidegger, but not in a theological context. Dogen cannot be described as theological, theocentric, or even anthropocentric, but rather as coimocentric. All things, not just m a n , are at stake here in their relation to something " t r a n s c e n d e n t , " to Buddha-nature. In the Genjokoan fascicle of the Shobogenzo, Dogen states: " T o practice and confirm all things by conveying one's self to t h e m , is illusion: for all things to advance forward and practice and confirm the self, is enlightenment." 8 This is the counterpart in Dogen to choosing the formulation " G o d is all things" over "all things are G o d " in the question of pantheism. First and foremost, it is God or Buddha-nature that must be preserved; we will never reach it by starting out with all things. In fact, starting out with

10 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature the self and forcibly conveying ourselves in the direction of all things, we will not even reach all things—we will simply get stuck in the "self." Of course, much hinges on what is m e a n t by the self. Conceptions of the self, not only in Buddhism but in all religions and even most philosophies as well, range from the narrowest kind of ego to the f u n d a m e n t a l , true Self, such as the A t m a n of Brahmanism or the Buddha-nature (although these are very different). But we have to begin with the self; it is our access to reality. W e have, so to speak, to begin with the self and go through it— leave the self behind, forget it. Dogen's well-known formulation for this is also to be found in Genjokoan. To learn the Buddha Way is to learn one's own self. To learn one's self is to forget one's self. To forget one's self is to be confirmed by all dharmas. To be confirmed by all dharmas is to effect the casting off of one's own body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well. All traces of enlightenment (then) disappear, and this traceless enlightenment is continued on and on endlessly.9

W e cannot search for the Buddha-nature somewhere outside ourselves. In the Fukanzazengi fascicle, Dogen uses the expression " t o turn the light back upon oneself and let it shine on one's own nature." 1 0 But to study the self is not to discover something like "subjectivity," be it the Cartesian or even the Husserlian cogito. Nor is it to probe the depths of the conscious and unconscious M i n d of the M a h a y a n a Idealists, as found, for example, in the Lankavatara Sutra. Dogen is not an Idealist, nor is he even primarily concerned with consciousness per se. Taking the first sentence of this passage by itself, one is tempted to interpret " T o learn the B u d d h a Way is to learn one's own self" in a religious context, where it would mean, as is most notably the case in H i n d u i s m , searching within and finding the true Self (Atman) to be fundamentally identical with G o d (Brahman). But things are not that simple with Dogen. T h e next sentence tells us: to learn the self is to forget the self. This is a n absolutely crucial

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statement that distances Dogen from any form of traditional "mysticism." To learn is to forget. H e r e one is reminded of Wittgenstein's remark in the Tractatus: " O n e realizes the solution to the problem of life when the problem disappears. (Is this not the reason why men to w h o m after long doubting the m e a n i n g of life became clear, could not then say wherein this m e a n i n g consisted.)" 1 1 W h a t possible answer could be given to such a question—a question that we all have at one time or another? H e r e we begin to become aware of the fundamental inadequacy of verbal answers, of verbal expressions in general, to satisfy certain questions or to express a response. Take a very " e v e r y d a y " example. In an upstate New York resort there is a splendid lake surrounded by cliffs and trees—a truly breathtaking view. O n weekends buses arrive disgorging hordes of visitors on a day outing. Invariably, as each visitor rounds the corner of the hotel a n d catches sight of the lake, he exclaims, " B e a u t i f u l ! " W h a t of the splendid view does this word express? Nothing! A platitude, n o t h i n g more. O u r fundamental questions, then, are not "solved," but dissolved. T h e anecdote about Gertrude Stein on h e r deathbed is of some relevance here. She is supposed to have said something like: " W h a t is the answer? Nobody has told me the answer. Well, if nobody has told m e the answer, then what is the question?" It might have been even better if she had said, why the question? Dogen, too, h a d his fundamental question: if we are all inherently possessed of the Buddha-nature, why the necessity to engage in strenuous practice? This question actually embraces all questions, including that of the identity of samsara and nirvana, although this might not be immediately evident. H a d Dogen not been plagued with this question, he would never have gone to C h i n a , he would never have "discovered" his "original" enlightenment. T h u s , questions, even when they don't have answers, are crucial. In fact, there are times when a question is the most appropriate way to express or " u t t e r " the inexpressible.

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"Whence do you come?" is not an ordinary question. Zen often indicated the ultimate Reality beyond verbal expression by interrogatives as well as negatives such as "nothingness" and "emptiness." An interrogative " w h a t " or "whence" is that which cannot be grasped by the hand, that which cannot be defined by the intellect; it is that which can never be objectified: it is that which one can never obtain, no matter what he does. Indeed, " w h a t " or "whence" is unknowable, unnameable, unobjectifiable, unobtainable, and therefore limitless and infinite. Since the Buddha-nature is limitless and boundless, without name, form, or color, it can be well, indeed best, expressed by such an interrogative. This is the reason Dogen finds the essence of his idea "all beings are the Buddha-nature" precisely in the question "what is it that thus comes?" 1 2 Negative expressions are familiar to us in most religious traditions, from the Pali canon's neti, neti (not this, not that) to the via negativa of the medieval West. But n o w we are exposed to yet another possibility to "express the inexpressible," a via interrogativa. A "what" or a "whence" expresses or utters without asserting anything. A n d , D ó g e n says, w e must make an utterance. That is why Po-chang said: "To preach that sentient beings have Buddhanature, is to disparage Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. To preach that sentient beings have no Buddha-nature, is also to disparage Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha." Therefore, whether it is "have Buddha-nature" or "have no Buddha-nature," both end up disparaging the three treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha). Despite such disparagement, however, you cannot go without making an utterance. 13 Despite (or in some way because o f ) the fact that every statement w e make "misses the mark," whether we say sentient beings have Buddha-nature or have no Buddha-nature, w e must make an utterance. T h e utterance is an integral part of the "experience." As h u m a n beings, we must respond to what we see or what becomes manifest to us. W e are not lifeless tree stumps. Meister Eckhart

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expresses this sentiment as well: " W h o e v e r has understood this sermon, let it be his. H a d no one been here, I would have had to preach it to this poor-box." 1 4 T h e emphasis here is not so m u c h on " c o m m u n i c a t i o n " — a l t h o u g h that too is of course i m p o r t a n t — b u t on response. To r e t u r n to our passage from Genjokoan, the next sentence states that " t o forget oneself is to be confirmed by all d h a r m a s . " 1 5 We begin by studying the self, we forget the self and find all dharmas, all things. This expression "all things" does not stand over against the self (the self has been " f o r g o t t e n " ) but includes everything. For Dogen, as long as we are still trying to find or assert some kind of identity between self and Buddha-nature, we are still stuck in a degree of subjectivity and have not penetrated to the dimension of "all things," to the cosmic dimension. In this dimension, each thing (trees, grasses, rivers) is the totality of all things, but no one thing is this totality exclusively. This difficult and complex idea is not unique to Dogen, but he will give it his own characteristic twist (in relation to " t i m e " ) . We shall return to this idea in a m o m e n t . Next in o u r passage comes the penultimate step: " T o be confirmed by all d h a r m a s is to effect the casting off of one's own body and m i n d and the bodies and minds of others as well." T h e crucial phrase " b o d y and mind cast (dropped) off" was the trigger for Dogen's own experience of satori when he heard his master, J u ching, scold a sleeping monk in the Zen hall. J u - c h i n g had said, " I n Zen, body and mind must drop off; you cannot attain this by sleeping!" U p o n hearing these words, Dogen became greatly enlightened. As usual, these occasions (not causes) for enlightenm e n t , such as the sound of a pebble striking a broom, hardly seem extraordinary or even significant to outsiders, but in some extrarational way they suddenly change everything. N o doubt Dogen had heard this phrase m a n y times before, but this time it struck deep within him. In his translation of Genjokoan, D u m o u l i n gives a perhaps idiosyncratic but certainly thought-provoking interpretation of the

14 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature " b r e a k t h r o u g h " that occurs when body and m i n d drop off. W e give his translation and parenthetical c o m m e n t a r y here in the hope that it might throw light on " b o d y and m i n d cast off." If bird and fish, when they have traversed water and sky to the end, try to go on further through water and sky, they can attain no way and find no place in water and sky. Whoever attains this place, to him true reality appears in this practice. Whoever grasps this way, for him reality is manifest in this practice. This way and this place are neither large or small, neither self nor other, neither previously existent nor now making an appearance: it is as it is. Therefore, whoever grasps a dharma in the practice of enlightenment [in der Erleuchtungsiibung], penetrates a dharma ( = all dharmas), and whoever brings about a practice, brings about a practice ( = all practices). Because the way is without hindrance, one is not conscious of the limit of knowing. This is so because this knowing is life and change in unity with the Buddha-law. 1 6

In the passage previous to this one, Dogen h a d asserted that "if fish swim in water, the water does not come to an end, n o m a t t e r how far they swim. If birds fly in the sky, the sky does not come to an end, no m a t t e r how far they fly." T h e r e is an apparent contradiction here, but the situation is more complex than mere contradiction. Let us look at one possible interpretation. T h e passage just quoted presents no immediate problem and has a somewhat Taoist flavor. No matter how far a fish swims in the water or a bird flies in the sky, there is always enough water or air for it to continue. It is unthinkable and impossible that water or air should come to an end. Of course, water—for example, a pond—can come to an end, but not for the fish who simply changes direction and continues swimming. N o fish in his right fish-mind swims onto land. But suppose a crazy fish or a crazy bird should m a n a g e to traverse the whole of water or of air and come to an end. T h e r e would be nowhere for it to go. T h e r e would be no way and no place for it. T h e crazy fish or bird that comes into this situation is

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called m a n . At or in this " p l a c e " where there is no f u r t h e r w a y or place, true reality appears to m a n in practice. T h e twice-repeated phrase " i n practice" now distinguishes m a n from fish or bird and sets him apart. M a n can come to the end of water or air or whatever; he can come to the top of the one-hundred-foot pole. 1 7 A n d then he can go, not so much further, as through. T r u e reality appears, is manifest to him. Dogen proceeds to describe this way or place in negative terms in order to distance it from any ordinary physical way or place. It is neither large n o r small, neither self n o r other. Most important for our purposes is the third and last negation: this way and this place are neither previously existent nor do they now make an appearance for the first time. We shall have occasion to discuss this further when we consider the problem of time. 1 8 For now, let it suffice to say that true reality is not "always there," as it were, waiting to be attained, n o r does it first appear when attained. In contrast to fish and bird, m a n comes to a place where there is no further way or place, and body and m i n d d r o p off. T h e r e is no possible continuation. T h e unenlightened self of everyday, blindly u n a w a r e existence slips away, much as the skin shed by a snake is left behind once a n d for all. T h e final step in o u r passage states that all traces of enlightenment disappear, and this traceless enlightenment goes on endlessly. This final stage is perhaps most vividly portrayed in the well-known ox-herding pictures, of which there are several versions. These pictures portray the search for the true self through the various stages of glimpsing the ox's footprints, seeing the ox itself, catching it and taming it. But while some versions of these pictures end with an empty circle—that is, with the disappearance of both m a n (the h e r d s m a n searching for the ox) and ox (the true self, Buddha-nature)—the version of K u o - a n Shih-yuan, a Chinese Zen master of the twelfth century, ends with the m a n in the world, entering the marketplace with helping, bliss-bestowing hands. 1 9 T h e process portrayed in these pictures is not totally unfamiliar

16 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature to students of Western thought, whether they have seen the pictures or not. T h e loss of innocence or purity, the search for and attainment of a pristine state, the true self, or God, and the return to everyday life are unforgettably presented by Plato in his allegory of the cave or by Kierkegaard with his knight of faith, to n a m e two quite disparate examples. Of the ten pictures, the ox has disappeared in the last four. In the seventh, the ox is forgotten, transcended, leaving the m a n alone. In the eighth, both ox and m a n are gone from sight; there is only emptiness. In the ninth, we have the return to the source where only " n a t u r e " is to be seen. T h e final picture shows the m a n back in the everyday world, yet transformed, joyful, ready and empowered to guide others to enlightenment. T h e question could arise as to why the ox, if it represents the true self or Buddha-nature, should have to be tamed. O n e can readily understand why it should have to be sought after, why it had been lost. But, once caught, why should it have to be tamed, why should it, the true self or Buddha-nature, wish to return to the grazing fields whence it came? W h y should the true self be wild and unbridled? T h e easiest, and perhaps the only, answer to this question probably lies in the direction of saying that this stage represents the as-yet-imperfect assimilation of m a n to the true self. T h u s the unwillingness and stubbornness of the ox point to a dimension of m a n himself, and not to the true self. Otherwise, as far as I can see, the necessity of t a m i n g the ox makes n o sense. T h e Buddha-nature itself does not need to be tamed or cultivated, except when regarded from the point of view of the m a n struggling to make it his own, as his Self. Ultimately, of course, ox a n d m a n are identical. Dogen's way of expressing the r e t u r n to everyday life is to state that all traces of enlightenment disappear. T h e r e is no trace or taint left to betray the fact that the person is conscious of—i.e., separate from—enlightenment. H e does not have enlightenment, he is not even enlightened, he is enlightenment. In the preceding pages we have at best staked out the parame-

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ters of the problem. To sum up, we are inquiring into Dogen's understanding of impermanence, Buddha-nature and their "relation." I m p e r m a n e n c e had generally been interpreted as samsara, Buddha-nature as some form of nirvana or enlightenment. W e saw that neither transcendence n o r immanence was adequate to characterize the " r e l a t i o n " between impermanence and Buddhanature. We also saw that difference (akin to transcendence) was inappropriate to characterize that relation, and that identity (akin to immanence, but by no means coincident with it) conceived in its traditional sense was not adequate either. We are now at a complete aporia.

2. Buddha-nature Traditional interpretations of the Absolute conceive of it as something that is always "there," statically persisting throughout all time. W e have, so to speak, two poles to our conceptualization of the world: there is G o d , or the Absolute, persisting throughout all time; and then there is sheer nothing, existing at no time. In between, there is man, 1 or, as Buddhism would say, there are sentient beings. O n e of the main presuppositions of this view is a certain conception of time—the conception that time is of such a nature that things can persist in it. T h e Buddhist idea of the instantaneity of time goes against any such persistence in time. T i m e is never extended, "there," such that anything could persist in it. D o g e n is aware of this (mis)conception of the nature of time, and also of its implications for an understanding of permanence and impermanence. " D o you know," said Hui-neng, "if the Buddha-nature were permanent, what would be the need on top of that to preach about all dharmas good and bad? Even in the elapse of an entire kalpa there would not be a single person who would ever raise the mind in quest of enlightenment. Therefore I preach impermanence, and just that is the way of true permanence preached by the Buddha. O n the other hand, if all dharmas were impermanent, then each and every thing would merely have a selfhood and would take part in birth and death, and there would be areas to which true permanency did not reach. Therefore I preach permanence, and it is just the same as the meaning of true impermanence preached by the Buddha. Because of the unenlightened non-Buddhists' attachment to illusory permanence and the calculations of followers of the Two Vehicles that take permanence and impermanence, which together make up the Eight Topsy-turvy views, the Buddha refutes these distorted, one-sided views in his complete and perfect teaching of nirvana, while making explicit the teaching of true permanence, true pleasure, true self,

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and true purity. By relying only on words, you now go against their inner meaning. By mistaking the perfect and subtle words the Buddha spoke just prior to his demise as indicating nihilistic impermanence or lifeless permanence, even though you read the Nirvana Sutra a thousand times over, what benefit could you get from it?" 2 This is a truly dialectical passage, dialectical not in the sense of nineteenth-century Hegelian or Marxian dialectic that strives for and culminates in a synthesis of opposites, but in a Heraclitian sense: one opposite is or becomes the other. But the matter is even more intricate than that. W e are dealing not only with opposite views of the world (the world or all dharmas or Buddha-nature is permanent or impermanent), but also with the opposition between what is being preached and what is the case. Not only that. Even the subject of these statements, what it is that is being talked about, turns into its opposite in the course of the passage. Initially, the subject is Buddha-nature, which then becomes all dharmas (things). In quoting Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Zen, Dogen is pointing to the absolutely fundamental Buddhist tenet that the extremes of nihilism (impermanence, uccheda) and eternalism (permanence, sasvata) are to be avoided at all costs. By bearing this relatively simple and familiar idea in mind, we can more easily penetrate the intricacies of Dogen's extremely subtle handling of this issue. T h u s , one must not say: 1. T h e Buddha-nature is permanent. 2. All dharmas are impermanent. (i) If one says the Buddha-nature is permanent, no one would bother to seek enlightenment; it would not be necessary and nothing would ever change. To counteract this view, Hui-neng teaches impermanence, whereby it is not made explicit whether he means the impermanence of all dharmas, which would certainly weaken his point, or the impermanence of Buddha-nature, which is more

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likely. Hui-neng only states that he teaches impermanence, and in this teaching of impermanence lies the way of true permanence. (2) If one says that all dharmas are impermanent, then all things would merely (simply?) have a selfhood. W h a t has selfhood, is born, begins in time and must therefore die. W h a t has a selfhood necessarily partakes of birth and death and is thus excluded from true permanency. Therefore Hui-neng teaches permanence, and this is the meaning of true impermanence. To sum up: to counteract the statement that the Buddha-nature is permanent, Hui-neng preaches impermanence; and this is the meaning of true permanence. To counteract the statement that all dharmas are impermanent, Hui-neng preaches permanence; and this is the meaning of true impermanence. Hui-neng (or Dogen) is not just being "pragmatic," trying to see which statement is most efficacious in the given situation. T h e traditional, logical alternatives of permanence/impermanence simply do not reach into the dimension from which he is speaking. H e has to rethink the meaning of these terms, and we have to try to follow him as best we can. Impermanence (nihilistic impermanence, nihilism) and permanence (lifeless permanence, eternalism) represent the two extremes to be avoided at all costs. T h e "middle w a y " lies somewhere between these two extremes, a realm that cannot be fully captured in language, and yet we "cannot go without making an utterance." 3 In contrast to the "topsy-turvy views," Dogen speaks of true permanence, true pleasure, true self and true purity. T h e unenlightened cling to a permanence that does not exist; they fabricate an idea of permanence. This supposed permanence is a mere mental construct. Equally unenlightened Buddhists take what for Dogen is true permanence to be mere impermanence. T h e y see only the aspect of time that is flying away, passing by; they fail to experience the "situational" aspect of time (juhoi). In either case, true permanence is lost. O u r conceptual thinking somehow inevitably gravitates toward the two inappropriate poles of nihilistic impermanence and lifeless

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permanence. Either there is something or there is nothing—alternatives epitomized by Leibniz's famous question, why is there something rather than nothing? A third possibility is inconceivable. Inconceivable, certainly, but perhaps not inexperienceable. W e must try to explore that third possibility, the middle way between eternalism and nihilism. Dogen tells us that Buddhanature is neither something that we always possess, n o r something that first appears u p o n enlightenment. " I t is not that sentient beings are from the first endowed with the B u d d h a - n a t u r e . Here, the essential point is: even though you seek the Buddha-nature hoping to endue yourself with it, Buddha-nature is not something to appear now for the first time." 4 If sentient beings were from the outset endowed with the Buddha-nature, there would be n o need for practice or any kind of sustained exertion; there would, so to speak, be nothing for us to " d o . " T h e passage just quoted continues: " I f sentient beings had the Buddha-nature originally, they would not be sentient beings. Since they are sentient beings, they are, after all, not Buddhanature."5 This was Dogen's own koan, the question that spurred him on in his quest for a resolution: if we already possess the Buddhanature, what need is there to practice? Part of the " a n s w e r " to this question is that we do not originally possess the Buddha-nature. T h e Buddha-nature is not the kind of thing that we can possess at all. Viewed temporally, this means that the B u d d h a - n a t u r e is not something that admits of being possessed in the mode of durational persistence. It does not persist; it has n o duration. O n the other h a n d , the Buddha-nature is not something previously unmanifested that appears for the first time u p o n enlightenment. As Dogen repeatedly emphasizes, the B u d d h a - n a t u r e is not something potential that can be actualized, akin to the growth in time of a seed. H e r e again, this is not possible due to the fact that there is no " t i m e " in which this could occur. T h e r e is no persisting, durational temporal substratum that could underlie such a development from potentiality to actuality.

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To understand how we have or do not have Buddha-nature, we must study the n a t u r e of m o v e m e n t . " E v e n though you m a y study enlightenment, enlightenment is not the wind and fire m o v e m e n t of the conscious mind. Even though you study movement, it is not what you think it is. If you can understand movement in its truth, then you can also understand t r u e enlightenment and awakening." 6 T h e movement we are to study is not the " w i n d and fire" movement of the conscious mind. T h e wind and fire movement of the conscious mind belongs to the m i n d that figures in " b o d y and mind drop off." It is to be studied only to be cast o f f — " t o learn the self is to forget the self." Interpreting a sutra passage, Dogen concludes: " B y way of illustration, if you wish to know the Buddha-nature's meaning might be read, you are directly knowing the Buddha-nature's meaning. You should watch for temporal conditions means you are directly knowing temporal conditions. If you wish to know the Buddha-nature, you should know that it is precisely temporal conditions themselves." 7 T h e B u d d h a - n a t u r e is precisely temporal conditions themselves. By temporal conditions, Dogen is referring to the question of how something occurs, happens, takes place. This is something most of us take for granted and never think to question. Only rarely do we do this; and most likely when we do, it is to question when or why something specific occurred, but not how it is that anything can occur. For example, if I find out that I have a serious disease, I am certainly going to ask myself why this happened and approximately when it started to bother me. O r when a close relationship goes sour, I am bound to ask the same sort of questions. But, interesting and important as these kinds of questions are, they are not what we are asking about. We are not asking why or when something occurred, but how anything can occur—change —at all. Given the common view of static, persisting entities, be they things or living beings, it is difficult to see how anything can happen. T h e solution to this difficulty lies in getting rid of the obstinate belief in persistence, duration and substance. A general

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trend in this direction can be found in late nineteenth and twentieth-century Western thinkers such as Nietzsche, Whitehead, Alexander, Bergson, Husserl a n d , most notably, Heidegger. A relatively simple, and by n o m e a n s profound or exhaustive, answer to Dogen's existential koan of why must we practice if we already inherently possess the Buddha-nature might r u n as follows: most people would agree that Wolfgang A m a d e u s Mozart was a prodigious musical genius who possessed a great musical gift. But even though he possessed such genius (whatever that m a y mean), had he spent his youth in other pursuits and perhaps become a merchant or a businessman, the " g e n i u s " would have been of n o use whatsoever. T h e gift would have lain d o r m a n t , undeveloped. H e r e Sartre would quip: if he d i d n ' t develop that so-called gift, then there is no sense in speaking of a gift. He did not do it. T h e m a i n difficulty with this example is that it stresses the notion of development, and Dogen would never say that the Buddha-nature is something to be developed. However, if we downplay the idea of development and instead emphasize practice, the example may still retain some validity. N o practice, no pianist; no composing, no Mozart; no practice, n o Buddha-nature.

3. Being-time

In discovering that the Buddha-nature is temporal conditions themselves, we are ready to examine Dogen's radical conception of uji, being-time. H e begins the fascicle Uji with a quotation consisting of eight lines. An ancient b u d d h a said: For the time being stand on top of the highest peak. For the time being proceed along the bottom of the deepest ocean. For the time being three heads and eight arms. For the time being an eight- or sixteen-foot body. For the time being a staff or whisk. For the time being a pillar or lantern. For the time being the sons of Zhang and Li. For the time being earth and sky. 1

It is as if someone has asked the question, what is uji? and each line were an answer to that question. In other words, uji is all (these) things. Each line begins with the word uji, 2 followed by diverse statements about what is the case. Dogen is saying that sometimes this happens, sometimes that; sometimes there is this, sometimes there is that. What happens and what there is encompasses everything we know of. Often what there is seems to occur as very disparate events or things: a fierce and wrathful deity (three heads and eight a r m s ) — B u d d h a (an eight- or sixteen-foot body); the top of the highest peak—down along the bottom of the deepest ocean; people practicing or teaching Buddhism (staff and whisk)—everyday life (pillar, lantern, sons of Zhang and Li); earth—sky. Whatever happens or is, is not in time, but is time. T h e idea that things are in time, almost ubiquitous in the common conception of time, has a long history that we need not go

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into here. With the rise of modern science in the seventeenth century it assumes a central philosophical importance, perhaps best epitomized in Newton. T h e idea that time is a kind of container in which events occur is curiously brought together with the conception of time as serial, sequential and irreversible. There seems to be some ambiguity as to whether time is the static container in which events occur or whether it is itself what occurs in a linear succession running from the future into the past. T h e n again, time in reference to an individual life is often conceived of as starting with birth and progressing forward inevitably to death, which can terminate the forward progression at any time and must do so eventually. All of these conceptions are not false; they are partial and derivative. T h e y are also not totally compatible with each other. Thus we have: 1. Static container-time, or time in which 2. T i m e that flows from the future into the past, taking everything along with it 3. T h e time of an individual life starting with birth and progressing toward eventual death Oversimplifying somewhat, we could say that (1) is preeminently suited to the seventeenth-century scientific conception, (2) is most intensely portrayed by the poets (as in Shakespeare's sonnets) and (3) provides a basis for the conception of historical time. What the three conceptions share is the idea that time is linear, sequential, irreversible and something separate from and independent of things or events in it. Buddhism had its own conceptions of time that were antithetical to Dogen's own experience and that he sought to overcome. H e contested the idea of Buddha-nature or nirvana as something beyond or outside time (the Senika heresy), and he never involved himself with the " o v e r l y speculative preoccupation with the issue of the duration of momentariness that had long haunted Buddhist scholasticism." 3

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What D5gen is interested in is not at what time or in what time or how long something took; rather, anything whatsoever that is happening is not in time, but is time itself. Time is the taking place (passage, kyoryaku) of all beings. It is the way they are—an "is" or an "are" in the sense of static persistence is impossible and senseless for Dogen. There is no such thing. All beings are impermanence. Impermanence is Buddha-nature. But we do not yet understand what Dogen means by "true impermanence." Dogen's true impermanence is not what we think it is. As long as we think we know what it is, we will never get anywhere; we will not even see the necessity of getting or going somewhere. Here belongs the wisdom of Socrates, who knew that he did not know. The true impermanence of Dogen must lie beyond the dualistic opposition of permanence/impermanence. As he states, true impermanence and true permanence are the same, a statement that makes no sense as long as we are stuck in the ordinary understanding of impermanence and permanence. Nor is this "identity" to be thought in a dialectical way, such that one factor processually turns into its opposite. To begin to understand true impermanence, one must first of all doubt—truly, unflinchingly, insistently doubt. This is not the doubt of a Descartes who decides one afternoon to sit down on his chair by the stove and "doubt." Descartes' doubt is not a real, existential doubt; it is a method. With the aid of his own reason he wishes to find an unshakable foundation, a jundamentum inconcussum, something that cannot be doubted. Descartes finds this foundation in the fact that he is thinking (doubting) and must, therefore, exist. Nietzsche's comment on this was that he should have said, "I think, therefore something is going on there." Quite in the spirit of Buddhism and Dogen, but independently of them, Nietzsche saw that the act of thinking does not entitle us to infer the existence of a substantial ego. Relating the question of doubt to time, Dogen says that most people are not capable of truly doubting time:

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Because the signs of time's coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. Although they do not doubt it, they do not understand it. Or when sentient beings doubt what they do not understand, their doubt is not firmly fixed. Because of that, their past doubts do not necessarily coincide with the present doubt. Yet doubt itself is nothing but time.4 T h e coming and going of time is so obvious that people believe this is evidence for what Dogen later in the Uji fascicle calls the "flying away" of time. They assume they know what the coming and going of time is, whereas in fact they don't. If they only had doubts, or even questions, they would be able to begin to penetrate the core of true time. As it is, they have scattered, fleeting doubts about all kinds of things that never coincide with each other long enough to constitute one genuine existential doubt. Their doubts are on the same level as " I doubt it will rain today" or " I doubt she will be on time." They simply function to keep the person from experiencing real doubt, and thus block out authentic experience of any kind. But even these scattered, inauthentic doubts are none other than uji. People who have these scattered doubts that lead nowhere are blind to uji, and yet they could not even be blind to them without uji. The workings of uji bring about everything that is or occurs, but only an enlightened person fully realizes this. Dogen had something like this in mind when in the Kangin fascicle he quotes the patriarch Eno (Hui-neng)—"If the mind is deluded, the Lotus Sutra turns us. If the mind is enlightened, we turn the Lotus Sutra"—and then comments: "Therefore, if the mind is deluded, the Lotus Sutra turns us; if the mind is enlightened, we turn it; and if we transcend illusion and enlightenment, then the Lotus Sutra turns the Lotus Sutra"5 The ultimate goal is of course to transcend all duality; but we do not start out that way. In the ensuing paragraph of Uji, Dogen characterizes the "relation" of self and the world: "We set the self out in array and make that the whole world."6 In this statement we can see the influence of

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Hua-yen philosophy, which Dogen has appropriated in his own way. In the course of the following pages, we shall draw upon a few Western sources, both philosophical and literary, for help in elucidation. The statement needs to be carefully scrutinized and pondered. It is not a statement of Idealism of any sort. Dogen is not saying that we "produce" the world. But when the (enlightened) self is "set out in a r r a y " in the proper way through sustained exertion (gyoji), the whole world presences there. We need to find some more or less ordinary examples for this, but first we must be aware that the self that is set out in array in sustained exertion is not the ego or a substantial, enduring " I . " T h e ego or I is the self that is forgotten in "To study the self is to forget the self." It is what is cast off in "body and mind drop off." T h e self set out in array in sustained exertion is a synonym for uji, and is, so to speak, a meeting-place or confluence for the presencing of all things in a total situation. Hee-jin Kim notes that whereas spiritual energy in Hua-yen moves centrifugally, in Dogen it moves centripetally. In Hua-yen, dharmas are diffused in the harmony of nonobstruction; in Dogen they are condensed into a single dharma. 7 It is a question of expansion or contraction—of whether, so to speak, the energy goes out to meet the world or the world condenses into energy. Again, both are spatial metaphors; neither alone is completely adequate. There is no explicit mention of sustained exertion, or ceaseless practice, in this passage or, for that matter, in the rest of the fascicle. Dogen's focus here is on one thing, uji, which does not depend upon sustained exertion. Sustained exertion realizes or authenticates uji, but uji presences whether or not there is realization or authentication. Without uji, nothing can be. However, we want to examine the notion of sustained exertion and find examples other than "sitting," which is the most obvious and important form of it. Without ever relinquishing his admonitions to "just sit" (shikan taza), Dogen understands sustained exertion in a very broad context. Anything done with total concentra-

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tion and dedication is a form of sustained exertion. Indeed, one of the formative experiences in Dogen's life occurred when he was visited by an old monk while living on a docked ship in China. Dogen wished to prolong the conversation, but the monk insisted on returning to his job as cook at the nearby monastery. When Dogen protested that someone else could easily perform such a menial task, the cook asserted that his monastic task was to practice the way—in his case, to perform his duties as a cook. 8 While the impact of this exchange on Dogen was to make him realize that every moment provided an opportunity for practice and realization of the way, it also stresses the fact that practice lies in doing one's "monastic d u t y " or what one is best suited to do, in this case cooking for the monks. Even the term "monastery" can have a broader significance for Dogen than the literal sense of a housing-place for monks: Once he [Jushin] said to the monks, "If you never leave the monastery all your life and do not speak a word for five or ten years, no one calls you deaf and dumb. What else can the Buddha do for you?" These are the golden words of ceaseless practice. We should know that even if we do not speak for five or ten years and we appear to be fools, continual practice without leaving the monastery keeps us from being called deaf and dumb. The Buddhist way is like this. If we do not hear the voice of the Buddhist way, then there is no principle of "not speaking does not mean deaf and dumb." However, the essence of ceaseless practice is not leaving the monastery; not leaving the monastery is to be liberated from words. 9

Here the term "monastery" refers less to a place than to a state of being, or perhaps better, a way of being. The essence of ceaseless practice is not leaving the monastery. This cannot mean that anybody remaining within the walls of the monastery is automatically guaranteed attainment of the essence of ceaseless practice. One who does not speak for five or ten years cannot be called deaf and

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d u m b . O n the contrary, continual practice without leaving the monastery keeps us from being deaf and d u m b . W e realize the principle of " n o t speaking does not m e a n deaf and d u m b . " Not leaving the monastery m e a n s to be liberated from words. T h e paragraph concludes: Study that ceaseless practice is contained in the briefest instant. Do not think that "not speaking is useless." In the monastery, out of the monastery, in a trackless monastery, and in the world monastery just practice like this!10

Ceaseless practice, perhaps in the trackless world monastery, liberates us from words, especially from the ordinary, unthinking, automatic use of words, and renders us truly the opposite of deaf and d u m b : listening and soundlessly "speaking," giving expression (dotoku), i.e., articulating suchness. O t h e r examples of sustained exertion might be found in an actor performing in a play, a musician playing in a concert or an athlete engaging in a competition. These activities d e m a n d the utmost effort, concentration and intensity of the part of the artist or athlete, for any u n d u e self-consciousness would render the performance ineffectual. Setting the self out in array—that is, " t h e configuration of my self" 1 1 or " m y self unfolds itself throughout the entire world" 1 2 — constitutes the mode of being of self-in-the-world. Dogen uses a parable of a boat to exemplify this mode of being. Life is, for example, like a man sailing in a boat. Although he sets sail, steers his course, and poles his boat along, the boat carries him, and he does not exist apart from the boat. By sailing in the boat, he makes it what the boat is. Study assiduously this very time. At such a time, there is nothing but the world of the boat. The heavens, the water, and the shore—till become the boat's time, and they are not the same as the time that is not the boat. Hence, I make life what it is; life makes me what I am. In riding the boat, one's body and mind, the self and the world are together the dynamic function of

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the boat. The entire earth and the whole empty sky are in company with the boat's vigorous exertion. Such is the I that is life, the life that is I. 13 This parable obviates the possible dichotomies of man and boat (subject and object), and active/passive (the m a n steers and poles the boat, but the boat carries him). The man makes the boat what it is; without him, it would just be a piece of wood floating downstream, without direction or course. But the main does not exist apart from the boat. In this situation, the boat is absolutely crucial to his existence. Not only are m a n and boat mutually interdependent; the heavens, the water and the shore sill belong inextricably to the total situation. If we study assiduously this very time, there is nothing but the world of the boat. T h e world of the boat is the boat's time, which is not the same as the time that is not the boat. Of course, this is not the only situation in the world; but in this situation the totality is present with nothing left out. To use Heideggerian language, the boat gathers man, earth, sky in a total situation. There is a strange affinity here with Heidegger's gathering of the fourfold of earth, heavens, divinities and man, except that the factor of the divinities is lacking. It is significant that Dogen speaks here of the boat's vigorous exertion. While the exertion of man is the most obvious and readily comprehensible one, exertion is by no means limited to the man, let alone subjectivistic. T h e boat exerts itself, the mountain exerts itself. As for the active/passive distinction, exertion or practice is not just active effort. If I exert myself totally, I am in some sense sustaining, enduring or perduring something going on in me that I did not and could not produce myself. M y " p a r t " in it is precisely to "stand it," to "stick it out," which is not active, not passive, but strenuous. Here again, Heideggerian ideas can prove fruitful as an aid to grasping what Dögen means—above all, Austrag (perdurance) and Inständigkeit (standing-within). Heidegger's discussion of perdurance and standing-within is sit-

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uated within his dialectic of unconcealment-concealment. T h e h u m a n being stands ecstatically within the opening (truth) of Being. T h e emphasis is on perduring that opening or clearing, so to speak—holding and keeping it free and open for Being to presence. Dogen does not have this unconcealment-concealment structure as a framework for his discussion of exertion or practice. His emphasis is consistently on the total and entire character of exertion. W h a t e v e r exerts itself, be it a person or a boat or a mountain, must do so completely and utterly, breaking through the confines of its separate, limited existence. W h e n someone or something exerts itself totally, the whole world presences in it. Note that whereas Heidegger's discussion can in n o way be called anthropological, still it centers on h u m a n being as he conceives of it; Dogen has n o such restricted focus. K i m sums u p the idea of exertion well at the end of his chapter on Buddha-nature: To use freely and exert totally birth-and-death is the only way to penetrate it thoroughly and radically. D o g e n says that there is no other way than grasping it by practice (gydshu) in the spirit of surrender. In short, to use and to surrender (or we might say, self-power and other-power) are one and the same. This is the "reason of surrender" (ninnin no dori) which enables man to grasp by practice "his own home" (jiko no kakyo)—the nirvana of birth-and-death. 1 4

Setting the self out in array allows each being and each thing to become manifest in the entire world as time's occurrence at every m o m e n t . Since everything is i m p e r m a n e n t , there is no substance whatsoever in any sense of that word. T h u s n o thing or being obstructs any other being, and every m o m e n t is a total manifestation of the entire world. To see p h e n o m e n a in this way is to see them in their suchness. Blake expressed something very close to this when he wrote: To see a world in a Grain of Sand A n d a Heaven in a Wild Flower

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Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. 15 Philosophically, L e i b n i z ' s m o n a d s are also an expression of this idea. T h e G r e e k l a n g u a g e has two words for " o n e " : hen and monos. Hen is the numerical " o n e " that precedes two, three, and so on; monos m e a n s one alone, u n i q u e , or the only one, as in the term " m o n o t h e i s m . " A m o n a d is a world or rather the w o r l d , each m o n a d in its o w n way. E a c h m o n a d represents or mirrors the entire world according to the degree of clarity it has achieved. T h u s a chair represents the entire world only in a very dull and confused w a y ; an Einstein represents the entire w o r l d in a m u c h more lucid and c o m p l e x way. A H a r v a r d chemistry m a j o r was once talking about the philosophy course he had taken in his first year of college. For the life of h i m , he could not r e m e m b e r the w o r d " m o n a d , " a l t h o u g h the p h e n o m e n o n itself was quite vivid in his mind. Finally, he blurted out: " L e i b n i z talked a b o u t — w o r l d l e t s ! " H e had found the perfect English word to express what L e i b n i z meant. E v e r y being that exists is a finite m o n a d , a little world. E v e r y thing contains or mirrors the whole world, but since the m o n a d s are finite, they d o so only in a partial and unclear way. O n l y G o d , the infinite m o n a d , contains all reality within himself in a clear and perfectly realized way. E a c h finite m o n a d is only able to represent the whole world in an imperfect and confused way. T h e term " r e p r e s e n t " here has the double entendre of (i) representation as in perception and (2) representation as in someone's b e i n g a representative of, or standing for, a country. T h e emphasis, h o w e v e r , is on the first m e a n i n g , on perception and degrees of clarity.

Since the monad is by its very nature representative, nothing can limit it to represent merely a part of things. It is nevertheless true that this representation is, as regards the details of the whole universe, only a confused representation, and is distinct only as regards a small part of them, that is to say, as regards those things which are nearest or

34 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature greatest in relation to each monad. If the representations were distinct as to the details of the entire universe, each monad would be a deity. It is not in the object represented that the monads are limited, but in the modifications of their knowledge of the object. In a confused way they reach out to infinity or to the whole, but are limited and differentiated in the degree of their distinct perceptions. In this respect, composites are like simple substances, for all space is filled up; therefore, all matter is connected. And in a plenum or filled space every movement has an effect upon bodies in proportion to this distance, so that not only is every body affected by those which are in contact with it and responds in some way to whatever happens to them, but also by means of them the body responds to those bodies adjoining them, and their intercommunication reaches to any distance whatever. Consequently every body responds to all that happens in the universe, so he who saw all could read in each one what is happening everywhere, and even what has happened and what will happen. He can discover in the present what is distant both as regards space and as regards time. 16 Each m o n a d or thing is a mirror of the entire universe, but since all monads with the exception of G o d are finite, things mirror the entire universe with varying degrees of clarity and perfection. But if one could know any one m o n a d completely, one could know the entire universe together with all the past and all the future. To know one thing totally is to know absolutely everything. In the next paragraph of the Uji fascicle, D o g e n goes o n to give us the average (unenlightened) man's view of uji. Just as the average man's doubts are scattered, inconsistent and unable to converge into one Great D o u b t , so his views on time, if he is compelled to think about it at all, focus on the specific things going on "in time." H e does not and cannot perceive the taking place of time itself. H e does not even think to question it. Yet an ordinary person who does not understand buddha-dharma may hear the words the time-being this way: "For a while I was three heads and eight arms. For a while I was an eight- or sixteen-foot body. This is like having crossed

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over rivers and climbed mountains. Even though the mountains and rivers still exist, I have already passed them and now reside in the jeweled palace and vermillion tower. Those mountains and rivers are as distant from me as heaven is from earth." 17

T h e average man believes that his self is permanent, at least relatively so "for now." Abstractly speaking, he does not believe that he is immortal; he knows that "everyone dies." But concretely, the thought that his very self right now is absolutely impermanent is totally foreign and incomprehensible to him. There is actually a basis for his feeling of permanence, but he misunderstands it as indefinite, durational continuance in linear time. Thus for him, uji is sometimes this, sometimes that. Different things and events occur in time, and this changing, coming and going of now this, now that, is what uji means to him. In trying to analyze his experience of crossing a river and climbing a mountain, he believes that his permanent self now crosses the river but has not yet reached the mountain. Reaching the mountain, the river is left far behind, and finally both mountain and river are left far behind as the permanent self comes to reside in a fine palace, a "place" as permanent as the self, free from change and coming and going—in other words, a place that does not and cannot exist. But the river and the mountain are not left behind; they are right there. T h e permanent self is a fabrication and the fine palace is an utter delusion. Not only is the self not permanent, but it never exists in isolation. To use Heidegger's terms, the self is always in a world; the pure, worldless self that Husserl sought to attain by bracketing the world does not exist in that way. Dogen does not completely deny the average man's view of time; it has a limited validity. But, far more importantly, he wishes to point out and throw light on a dimension of time that no one before him had written about in just this way. It is not that simple. At the time the mountains were climbed and the rivers were crossed, you were present. T i m e is not separate from you, and as you are present, time does not go away.

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As time is not marked by coming and going, the moment you climbed the mountain is the time-being right now. This is the meaning of the time-being. Does this time-being not swallow up the moment when you climbed the mountain and the moment when you resided in the jeweled palace and vermillion tower? Does it not spit them out? 18

If time is not the form of going and coming, then ascending the mountain (or crossing the river, or anything else) is the right-now of being-time. Whenever I am doing anything (or even doing nothing, if that were possible), I am, I am the right-now of beingtime in the transitive sense of the verb "to be." This transitive use of an intransitive verb was well expressed by Sartre when he said in Being and Nothingness: " I exist my body." Further interpreting the term "exist" in Heidegger's sense of standing-out (ek-sist) or perduring (Austrag), we have something extremely close to Dogen's sustained exertion (gyoji) and total exertion (gujin). Instead of a supposedly permanent ego anxiously watching time fly past or slip away, I am time. As long as I am time, it does not slip away. Any activity involving intense concentration and absorption bears witness to this. A musician performing a concert, a writer engaged in writing, an athlete playing on the sports field —none of these, if they are really doing what they are doing, is aware of the flying away of time. If asked, they would answer that they are not aware of time at all, and this answer shows that they are time. But even if time does maintain the form of going and coming, I am still the right-now of being-time, and this does not go and come. T h e illustrations we gave for people's experience of time when it does not go and come are still applicable when time does go and come. Experientially, it makes no difference whether time does or does not go and come as long as we do not separate ourselves from time, dichotomizing between a permanent ego and time flying away. There seems, however, to be some ambiguity as to the interpretation of the last sentence of Dogen's paragraph, an ambiguity

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that has its roots in the entire passage. T h e ambiguity or problem is this: are the three activities of ascending the mountain, crossing the river and dwelling in the fine palace all equally valid experiences of being-time; or is dwelling in the fine palace a kind of false refuge for the ego's desperate search for permanence? Heine adds a note to his translation: Dogen here considers two basic forms of time—not going and coming, and going and coming. In both cases uji manifests itself rightnow, which is altogether experientially more significant and ontologically more primordial than the supposed time of the ruby palace. Nikon, the "eternal now" is able to both encompass ("chew up") and to surpass ("spit out") the conventional misconception of time. 19

Within this note there is also a certain ambiguity as to whether there are two basic forms of time, or whether one of them is a misconception. But the ambiguity that concerns us here is whether all three activities—climbing the mountain, crossing the river, residing in the palace—are valid forms of being-time, or whether dwelling in the palace is an illusion. Waddell and Kim make no such emphasis on the palace as illusion, whereas Heine does. Waddell's note to this passage reads: Any time (= being) always contains a principle of self-affirmation (in which all other times are negated) and a principle of self-negation (in which other times are affirmed). The time on the mountain swallows (negates) the time of the fine palace and spits it out (affirms, manifests). The self-identity of this contradiction is always present in the being-time of the now. The present time swallows all past time and being and all future time and being and also spits it out. There is thus a constant merging of past and future in the present. 20

Waddell's focus is on the relation of any (three) times; on the selfaffirmation of one time, negating the others, and the self-negation of that time, affirming the others. Past and future continually

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merge in the present, which is to be distinguished from an Aristotelian, serial now-point. This is an essential ingredient in Dogen's interpretation of time. T h e question for us now is what the passage u n d e r consideration is addressing itself to: the exclusion of a falsely conceived time of permanence (the fine palace), or the relation between the times of different activities. H a v i n g discussed the first two instances of being-time in the verse at the beginning of Uji—standing on the m o u n t a i n top and walking deep down on the bottom of the sea—Dogen goes on to the next two, a three-headed, eight-armed d e m o n and a sixteenfoot or eight-foot Buddha. These could be taken as symbolic for ignorance and enlightenment; more importantly, they are widely disparate creatures of whatever sort. W h a t Dogen is doing in this whole verse is to state that everything without exception is beingtime. It is a matter of utter indifference whether things are good (Buddha) or bad (demon), grandiose or commonplace; without uji, nothing at all is, or can be. Since there is nothing p e r m a n e n t about self or world in Dogen's view, " t o b e " m e a n s to take place, to pass or make a passage (kyoryaku) right now (nikon). W e shall try to clarify the relation between these two factors of uji presently. But first, let us go back briefly to the initial verse and see what belongs to uji, and then consider what Dogen says not only about various things and activities, but also about various times—that is, past and future time. W i t h these two considerations, we shall be looking at the totality of all that is, has been and will be, all spatial and temporal being. T h e verse previously cited encompasses all existence and all time. T h e h u m a n activities of standing on the m o u n t a i n top and walking on the bottom of the sea (nature), the n o n h u m a n states of being a d e m o n or being a Buddha, a very special object (staff) and ordinary objects (pillar, lantern), h u m a n beings in general, and the expanse of n a t u r e (earth and sky)—all of these take place or come to pass as uji. T h e demon is yesterday's time; the B u d d h a is today's time. But

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the truth of yesterday and today lies in the present moment. The demon of yesterday does not lie somewhere "back there" forever past and gone, but takes place right here and now. It is interesting to note that Dogen emphasizes that today passes not as it may appear down yonder or over there, but right here and now, thus stressing the fact that most people do not even experience " t o d a y " as right here and now, but as somewhere else, just like past and future. The next sections of Uji delve into the very nature of time itself with the crucial t e r m s kyoryaku (passage), nikon (right n o w ) a n d

juhoi (dwelling in a dharma situation). To facilitate understanding of these terms, a Western thinker could be of some help, since he was one of the very few to see this problematic, without, however, being able to do much more than state it. T h a t thinker was Nietzsche. T h e problematic is the relation of one moment to every moment. My task is to prepare a moment of mankind's highest self-reflection, a great noon, where it looks back and forwards, where it emerges from the rule of chance and the priests and asks the question why? what for? for the first time as a whole.21 Goal: to attain the overman for one moment. For that I suffer everything! 22 The moment is immortal when I created return. For the sake of this moment I endure return. 23 The moment full of unified contradictions. 24 Becoming should be explained without taking refuge in such final intentions: becoming must appear justified in every moment (or inestimable, which amounts to the same thing), what is present must absolutely not be justified for the sake of something future or what is past for the sake of what is present. 25

40 Impermanerice Is Buddha-nature O u r task approaches us in every moment. 2 6 A god who overcomes the agony of Being only by constant transformation and change: Appearance as his momentary release attained in every moment. 2 7

In spite of the extraordinary insight embodied in these remarkable passages, Nietzsche was still caught in a partially substantializing view, not so much of the universe as of time. Time substantialized is continuous duration. In spite of his denial of substance as such (being) and his affirmation of the will to power and ubiquitous dynamism, Nietzsche was unable to arrive at a thoroughgoing denial of any kind of possible hidden substance, especially of temporal substance. Perhaps this was not his main concern. Thus, although he had experience of totality, of the whole world in a moment, he was yet constrained to try and relate that moment, which, after all, contained everything, to other moments subsisting outside it. But no moment subsists; there are no "substances." The moment embraces the whole world. But no one moment does this exclusively. That would mean a kind of idolatry of the moment. Again and again, each moment embraces the whole. The dilemma of the relation of one moment to all other moments surfaces rather dramatically in Nietzsche's struggle to interpret his thought of the eternal recurrence or return of the same. A passage from The Will to Power illustrates this dilemma very clearly. That this " i n v a i n " constitutes the character of present-day nihilism remains to be shown. The mistrust of our precious valuations grows until it becomes the question: " A r e not all values lures that draw out the comedy without bringing it closer to a solution? Duration " i n vain," without end or aim, is the most paralyzing idea. . . . Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale into nothingness: "eternal recurrence."

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This is the most extreme form of nihilism: the nothing (the "meaningless") eternally! European form of Buddhism. . . . So one understands that an antithesis to pantheism is attempted here: for "everything perfect, divine eternal" also compels a faith in "eternal return." Question: does morality make impossible this pantheistic affirmation of zdl things, too? At bottom, it is only the moral god that has been overcome. Does it make sense to conceive a god "beyond good and evil"? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? C a n we remove the idea of a goal from the process and then affirm the process in spite of this? This would be the case if something were attained at every moment within this process—and always the same. . . . Every basic character trait that is encountered at the bottom of every occurrence, that finds expression in every occurrence, would have to drive the individual who experienced it as his own basic character trait to affirm every moment of universal existence with a sense of triumph. 2 8

If eternal recurrence is thought within the framework of duration, that of an objectified Newtonian container-time, existence becomes a meaningless repetition without end into nothingness. This is nihilism, "the uncanny guest at the door," 2 9 the European form of Buddhism. Nietzsche's attempt to get "beyond good and evil," beyond morality and the moral god, here blinds him to his own fundamental experience. He insightfully wants to remove the idea of a goal from the process; but he was unable to go further and radically deny any kind of temporal substance or duration to the process itself when it came to eternal recurrence. In spite of his rejection of an "existing ground of the world," he still retains remnants of substantializing and objectifying tendencies in his thought. It is not possible to produce a glib statement of Dogen's solution to this question of the relation of one moment (nikon) to all the other moments (kyoryaku) of time. We must work our way through his text while letting go of traditional categories of thought that can only block our understanding. Formulated in a simple and

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preliminary way, the question at stake here is the relation of the right-now to the rest of time. There is not one right-now, once and for all, but the following right-now and the next one, and so on. This is the difficult question of the "movement" of time. Dogen cautions us not to understand time's movement or even time itself as merely flying away. Do not think that time merely flies away. Do not see flying away as the only function of time. If time merely flies away, you would be separated from time. 3ft

Again, the scholars commenting on this passage do not agree on the sort of separation that is involved here, the kind of gaps or intervals (kangeki or kengyaku). Heine and Waddell conceive of them as intervals within time itself, between t1 and t 2 . Kim, on the other hand, construes the separation as an interval "between time and the experiencing self." 31 The probability is that both views are correct, or at least neither is wrong. Let us examine briefly what each of these views entails. What does it mean to say that there are gaps or intervals in time? First of all, the idea of a gap involves primarily a spatial image, whereas that of an interval would appear to be exclusively temporal. One does not commonly speak of intervals on a material surface. In a note, Heine gives us an image for the conception of gaps within time itself: The conventional, ontologically misleading and existentially inauthentic view that "time flies" is reprehensible if taken as the exclusive understanding of time. It implies a gap between t1 and t 2 , which are thought to be connected in a series forever passing man by and able to sweep him away should he relinquish his grasp on the supposed constancy of the derivative now-point. 32

This conception sees time as a linear series of now-points isolated from each other by gaps that separate the past as something gone

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by and the future as something not yet arrived, from the present. The present shrinks and contracts to a dimensionless now-point having no connection with past and future. Past and future are absent; the now-point alone has a kind of calculative pseudo-presence. This is in a way a radicalization of the Aristotelian concept of time as a series of nows. The other interpretation sees the gaps, not within time itself, but between the self and time. In this view, the self is a would-be permanent entity, the substantial soul of traditional philosophy and religion in the West and of the Senika heresy and Brahmanism in the East. This self or soul is confronted by the rolling stream of time which threatens to carry it off, ultimately to extinction. In which of the views is the gap a result of limiting the function of time to flying by? If time only flies by, there is no true presence. This is certainly true of the series of now-points rushing by; it is also true in a less perspicuous way of the static self confronting time. Neither of these conceptions of time can account for presence. In order to have presence, something like Dogen's idea of dwelling in a dharma-situation (juhoi) is needed. T h e medieval thinkers called this the nunc stans and conceived of it as lifted out of time. Dogen, however, will describe it as right in the midst of time. In the next paragraph of Uji, Dogen introduces his notion of passage (kyoryaku), a term that describes the " m o v e m e n t " of time as he perceives it. This movement is not irreversible, as practically all other conceptions, West and East, would have it. The time-being has the quality of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow, today flows into yesterday, yesterday flows into today. And today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow. 33

Here we see one of Dogen's favorite devices. H e reverses subject and predicate, making the subject reflexive, acting upon itself, and the predicate reflexive, acting upon itself; and he traverses all

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possible permutations and combinations of the elements of the sentence. T h e reader is left with nothing to hold on to; all static elements of the sentence have been overturned, displaced and set in motion. Thus, Dogen starts out with the conventional view of time's movement (from today to tomorrow), reverses it (from today to yesterday), reverses that (from yesterday to today), then places the movement within today (from today to today) and, finally, removes movement from the only constant element maintained in his statements thus far, the today, leaving us with passage from tomorrow to tomorrow. This is not one-directional time, nor is it irreversible. Since it is not a static container or a rapid stream flowing inexorably by—since, more precisely, it is nothing by itself separable from being—it is to be found right in the middle of all beings. M y exertion is time, the mountain and the river are time. In saying throughout his writings that all things are time, Dogen is not submerging diversity in some abstract unity in a manner analogous to the metaphysical statement that "all things are one." What he is doing is to say, "Look at the incredible activity of the mountain, of the sea, a round pillar, Huang-po, myself. Look at what is going on here right now!" Instead of viewing the world as replete with dead, static objects and statistically classifiable living beings and people, we are to see uji at work in all things. We need to elucidate as far as we can what Dogen means by passage (kyoryaku), and that will involve seeing what it is not. " D o not think flowing is like wind and rain moving from east to west. T h e entire world is not unchangeable, is not immovable. It flows."34 When we look at a weather m a p on television, for example, we can see the region depicted there, and then a black mass (wind and rain) sitting in a particular spot that we are told will move in a certain direction. Again, this is like the average man crossing the river and climbing the mountain. Dogen is telling us that this is not the way the world moves, passes or takes place. It takes place

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all at once, all of it, every moment anew. This is the meaning of the constantly repeated and consistently piled up adjectives (as if one alone would not do it) such as total, totalistic, entire, and so on. O n e can read right past all of these adjectives and think they are simply redundant if one has not made or does not make the effort to get inside them. Aristotle wrote that there are four kinds of change: local motion (moving from place to place), quantitative change (growing taller), qualitative change (growing wiser), and the most radical change of all, generation and extinction (birth and death). Dogen has excluded local motion from the passage of time by admonishing us not to conceive of it as a storm passing from east to west. Quantitative change does not seem to make sense with regard to time; as Kant remarks, " T i m e yields no shape." 3 5 Qualitative change might be applicable, since we experience time very differently depending on whether we are bored or interested, but it does not take us very far. It is the most radical kind of change, generation and extinction, that comes closest to characterizing Ddgen's conception of the passage of time. Again, however, this is not generation in the sense of having a beginning in time (like the storm moving from east to west), but generation and extinction, birth and death at every moment. The movement of time, then, is not analogous to local motion. Time does not move in the conventional sense at all. The whole world moves, passes, takes place within itself, again and again. Since time is not separable from things taking place and events going on—but rather is, "is-es" these things and events—the conventional view of time as that within which events occur breaks down completely. Dogen gives us two fundamental statements regarding the relation of practice to dependent origination and birth and death. Here is the first: "It should be examined and understood thoroughly that dependent origination is gydji (sustained exertion), but gydji is not dependent origination." 3 6 Dependent origination cannot exist or be understood without sustained exertion, but sustained exertion neither depends on

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dependent origination nor does it take place within it. W e shall return to the notion of gyoji in a m o m e n t , after we have looked at Dogen's second statement. " T h e essential element is [to] resolve to practice the Way diligently. Study that within practice life and death can be seen, not that within life and death there is practice." 3 7 H e r e we again have a favorite device of Dogen's. U n d e r the guise of logical classification, as in the first statement, Dogen reverses the commonsense view that all events of a life, including gyoji, take place between the beginning of life, birth, and its end, death. T h a t is, the commonsense view takes birth as the inception of the stretch of linear time belonging to that particular life, and death as the cessation of that time. While this view retains some validity at a certain level of understanding, Dogen's interest is elsewhere. Within practice, and that m e a n s ultimately within each and every m o m e n t , life and death can be seen. Life does not extend from the beginning of a stretch of linear time to its enjl. Life is a stage of total time, and death is a stage of total time. We shall pursue this idea when we take u p the related question of dwelling in a dharma-situation (juhoi). To show how f u n d a m e n t a l and pervasive this problem is for Dogen, let us briefly return to the fascicle on Buddha-nature and see how it figures there. T h e issue at stake is the m e a n i n g of enlightenment or seeing Buddha-nature: is Buddha-nature something always there and p e r m a n e n t , something innate in us that we inherently possess, or is it something that we acquire only when we " b r e a k t h r o u g h " to enlightenment? These would appear to be the only two logical alternatives: either we always have it or we acquire it. Dogen accepts neither. T h e question what need is there to practice if we already possess the Buddha-nature precipitated Dogen's own search for enlightenm e n t . " A s for the truth of the Buddha-nature: the Buddha-nature is not incorporated prior to attaining Buddhahood; it is incorporated u p o n the attainment of Buddhahood. T h e Buddha-nature is always manifested simultaneously with the attainment of Buddha-

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hood." 3 8 That is, the Buddha-nature is neither (i) something always there outside us, which we attain or " b e c o m e , " nor (2) something always there within us. T h e common denominator of the two statements is the idea of "always there." T h e Buddhanature is not "always there"; it is neither outside us (other) nor within us (self). Since impermanence is Buddha-nature, there is no room for an "always there," no matter how or where it is conceived. Several times Dogen states that we cannot simply say that we, just as we are, are Buddha-nature. Otherwise we would not be sentient beings. O n the other hand, we do not " b e c o m e " or " a c q u i r e " the Buddha-nature through practice; one cannot speak of Buddha-nature in the future tense as something to be gained through practice, which is already itself enlightenment. N o r is the Buddha-nature a seed within us, a potentiality that we then actualize through practice and bring to maturity. That activity which realizes those activities—it is our activity now (wareraga imano gyoji nari). T h e n o w of activity (gyoji no ima) is n o t the

self's primordial being, eternal and immutable, nor is it something that enters and leaves the self. The Way, called now, does not precede activity; as activity is realized (gyoji genjo suru), it is called now. 39 All that we can say at this point without going off the mark is that there is no Buddha-nature apart from momentary realization or manifestation. T h e question of continuity in Dogen in highly complex. Continuity in the ordinary sense of duration does not exist for him. Yet he somehow has to do justice to the " o n g o i n g " character of experience, to some sort of relation between the different right-nows. Continuity has to do with the relation between the three tenses of time: past, present, and future. Since Dogen's conception of time is not linear, past, present, and future are " i n " the present, yet they are in a sense "outside" it, too. Heine expresses this in the following way:

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In Uji, Dogen analyzes the structure of the totalistic moment in terms of the interrelated notions of right-now (nikon), spontaneous presencing cut off from before and after, and passage (kyoryaku), the dynamic continuity possessed of before and after. 40 Presencing right now contains past and future within itself; past and future are not, so to speak, stretched out like planks over an abyss on which one can go forward or backward. They are not bridges to future or past moments. As Dogen says, "Moments of past and present do not overlap or line up side by side." 41 Everything, including past and future, is in the moment, which is not a now-point and whose measurement is irrelevant. Calculating the moment's duration has nothing to do with the moment, and even if one obtusely decides to try it, it cannot be done. And yet there is not just one right-now. Time does not stand still or stop like the medieval nunc stans (standing now). W h a t Dogen is attempting to convey about time's passage cannot be fitted completely into the categories of our grammar. Yet we must give it expression. Let us look more closely at passages where Dogen denies continuity, transition, or change to a different state. Once firewood turns to ash, the ash cannot turn back to being firewood. Still, one should not take the view that it is ashes afterward and firewood before. He should realize that although firewood is at the dharma-stage of firewood, and that this is possessed of before and after, the firewood is beyond before and after. Ashes are in the stage of ashes, and possess before and after. Just as firewood does not revert to firewood once it has turned to ashes, man does not return to life after his death. In light of this, it being an established teaching in Buddhism not to speak of life becoming death, Buddhism speaks of the unborn. It being a confirmed Buddhist teaching that death does not become life, it speaks of non-extinction. Life is a stage of time and death is a stage of time, like, for instance, winter and spring. We do not suppose that winter becomes spring, or say that spring becomes summer. 42

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Dumoulin has a note to his (German) translation of this passage from Genjokoan that m a y or may not go too far: The physical process of burning is not denied, but it does not affect the essence of reality. All dharmas exist from moment to moment, i.e., always only this moment, their way of existing is not in the flux of time. The temporal continuity with its before and after comes from our subjective way of looking (Anschauung) and does not touch the dharmas existing moment to moment (augenblicksweise). Firewood is firewood, and ashes are ashes, in every moment each a dharma and independent of the other.43

W h a t does it m e a n to say that past and f u t u r e are in the present moment? Does this not negate any intelligible m e a n i n g of past and future? T h e fact that past and f u t u r e are in the present m o m e n t means there is nowhere for the present m o m e n t to go. T h e passage of the present moment takes place within the present m o m e n t ; it does not make a transition into f u t u r e , for the future is not " a h e a d " of it. T h e r e is n o transition or continuity; nothing changes into anything else. Firewood does not become ashes; winter does not become spring; life does not become death. Because life does not become death, we can speak of being u n b o r n . Because being born is not the beginning of a continuous duration called "life" that terminates in death, we can speak of birth as being u n b o r n , as not being the beginning of anything. Because death does not become life, we can speak of nonextinction. T h a t is, because death is not the termination of a continuous duration called "life," we can speak of death as not being the extinction or termination of anything. Is the statement that past and future are in the present m o m e n t to be understood exclusively in the psychological sense that we remember our past and anticipate our future? St. Augustine said that we have a present m e m o r y of the past a n d a present anticipation of the future; he had the true intuition that our "access" is always the present m o m e n t . I cannot r e m e m b e r the past in the

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past, b u t only in the present m o m e n t . T h e same is true of the future. But Dogen does not only m e a n this. To take a simple example, my body-mind truly contains past and f u t u r e within itself. M y body-mind incorporates now how I was raised and nurtured as a child, how I have taken care of myself as an adult, how m y parents, grandparents and so on lived their lives, whether I have trained as an athlete or sat in an armchair all m y life. M y body-mind also contains now m y future health or disease, m y creative ideas and works or stagnation, m y death. It was Hegel who remarked that as soon as we are born, we are old enough to die. T h u s , Dogen intends the statement that past and f u t u r e are in the present to be understood in every sense, not just psychologically. T h e fact that the present m o m e n t is both possessed of past and future and also cut off from them is due to its dwelling in a dharma-situation (juhoi). This is Dogen's equivalent to the stans of the medieval nunc stans (standing now, eternal now). But unlike the medieval m o m e n t , DSgen's m o m e n t is not lifted out of time— it is thoroughly penetrated. Instead of providing a continuing " p l a c e " to which the present m o m e n t can make a transition, past and future, so to speak, form a barrier, thus ensuring the dwelling of a dharma-situation. Past and f u t u r e belong to that dharma-situation and hold it in place. At the same time, the dharma-situation is cut off from past and future, again making sure that a transition away f r o m the m o m e n t does not come about. T h e m o m e n t does not fly away. It moves, but within itself, or, as Dogen also says, u p and down. T h e imagery here shifts f r o m the conventional horizontal flow of time to that of a vertical vibrancy. The fact that horses and sheep are arrayed as they are throughout the world now is also due to the dwelling (of everything) like this in its own dharma-position, ascending up and down. Rats are time. So are tigers. Sentient beings are time, and buddhas are too. This time realizes the entire world by being a creature with three heads and eight arms, and realizes the entire world by being a sixteen-foot

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golden body. Thus, entirely worlding the entire world with the whole world is called penetrating exhaustively (ippd-gujin).**

In this passage, the animals' names are usually explained as representing hours of the day; Waddell notes that he understands them as referring primarily to zoological creatures while also representing the different horal animals. However that may be, the intention of this passage is quite clear. Dogen is reiterating the same thing in all possible ways, perhaps because the reader cannot really grasp the point the first time or even the third time. Other thinkers as well have done this when their efforts to get something across become more intense. 45 Dumoulin points out that Dogen's repetition of the same word, e.g., emptiness, frequently indicates a dimension of transcendence. 46 Horses, sheep, rats, tigers, all sentient beings and Buddhas are time. It is not the case that there is some universal "thing," form or substance called " t i m e " of which all sentient beings and buddhas are individuations. There is no universal form, time. There is no time without all beings. Time is simply the way these beings take place or presence; they are nothing over and above and beyond this taking place and presencing. There is no substance and no duration. Schopenhauer wrote that we h u m a n beings oscillate between the two poles of desire and boredom or ennui. H e believed we suffer when we desire, because we lack something; when we get it, we tire of it. According to Dogen's experience of time, we do not get bored with the thing we have "got"—it is gone, it is not there. There is no possessing of anything (or anyone) because there is no duration. It is all very well to say "there is no duration," but it takes a while for the radicality of that statement to penetrate. Every thing, including ourselves, is just its moment of taking place or presencing. The constant use of terms such as " d y n a m i c " and " d y n a m i s m " by the translators and interpreters is meant to indicate this. Impermanence is Buddha-nature, Buddha-nature is in its taking place in the moment. It is nowhere apart from that.

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"Therefore, the time being already arrived is in itself the immediate manifestation of the Buddha-nature. Or, 'This truth is clear all of itself.' There has never yet been a time not arrived. There can be no Buddha-nature that is not Buddha-nature manifested right here." 4 7 As for the truth of the Buddha-nature: the Buddha-nature is not incorporated prior to Buddhahood; it is incorporated upon the attainment of Buddhahood. The Buddha-nature is always manifested simultaneously with the attainment of Buddhahood. 4 8 This brings us back to the problematic expressed by D o g e n ' s original question: if we inherently possess the Buddha-nature, what need is there to practice? Here D o g e n tells us that the Buddha-nature is not incorporated prior to Buddhahood: we do not possess it; otherwise we would not be sentient beings. H e states that the Buddha-nature is manifested simultaneously with the attainment of Buddhahood. But this does not m e a n that the Buddhanature is a goal actualized through practice. For D o g e n , enlightenment and practice are the same: practice is never a means to enlightenment; practice is enlightenment. A n d enlightenment takes place, presences only in the m o m e n t of "practice." Waddell and A b e offer a helpful note on this point: This crucial passage on "the truth of the Buddha-nature" refutes the notion of Buddha-nature as something originally possessed, which would be a conceptualization of Buddha-nature devoid of actual commitment and attainment. It thus stresses the dynamic oneness, at the very moment of enlightenment, of Buddha-nature and its attainment, in which Buddha-nature is manifested simultaneously with attainment. This in turn also implies refutation of the idea of Buddha-nature as something that is not originally possessed and is actualized only through attainment, which would also conceptualize the Buddha-nature as a mere objective goal. The words manifesting simultaneously (dosan) are refutation of these two ways of conceptualizing Buddha-nature, and stress the actual manifestation of Buddha-nature at the very moment of attainment. 4 9

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Both alternatives—first, we always possess the Buddha-nature, and second, the Buddha-nature is attained only as the goal and result of practice—are inadequate, inappropriate conceptualizations. A few lines later in Uji, Dogen blocks any possibility of conceptualizing the taking place of the dwelling in a dharma-situation of being-time: " T h e sharp, vital quick itself of dharmas dwelling in their dharma positions, is being-time." 5 0 It is interesting to note here that Dogen chooses a sound to convey, not depict or portray, the dharmas dwelling in their dharma-situations. We do not have images or symbols, but instead an immediate, vibratory sound that defies classification, categorization and even visualization. T h e sound does not congeal into a picture; we come quite close to pure, unobjectifiable dynamics. Moreover, the "sharp, vital quick" of dharmas dwelling in their dharma-situations completely obviates the dichotomy of eternalism/nihilism that is to be avoided at all costs by any Buddhist. The lines following emphasize this point: "You mustn't by your own maneuvers make it a nothingness; you mustn't forcibly make it a being." 5 1 Sound is eminently suited to convey this idea of dharmas dwelling in their dharma-situations because it is not some thing or a thing, and yet it is by no means nothing. Sound does not persist of itself. Taking the example of musical instruments, a note played on a violin, piano or flute lasts just as long as the player exerts himself; he produces and determines the duration of the note(s) that have sense only in context. A single note by itself makes no (musical) sense. In spite of this lack of constancy (persistence of itself), the notes must maintain their pitch (dharma-position); otherwise we do not have sound, but noise or chaos. Dogen next discusses the difficulty for the average person in discerning the dwelling place of being-time and the ultimate unfathomability of that dwelling place. You may suppose that time is only passing away, and not understand that time never arrives. Although understanding itself is time, understanding does not depend on its own arrival.

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People only see time's coming and going, and do not thoroughly understand that the time-being abides in each moment. This being so, when can they penetrate the barrier? Even if people recognized the time-being in each moment, who could give expression to this recognition? Even if they could give expression to this recognition for a long time, who could stop looking for the realization of the original face? According to ordinary people's view of the timebeing, even enlightenment and nirvana as the time-being would be merely aspects of coming and going. 52

W h a t most people perceive is the passing-away aspect of time; they do not understand the aspect that has not yet come. This has multiple meanings. O n e of them seems to be that people cling to what they perceive as time slipping away from them. T h e alternative is not to think that there is a lot more time in the future, that there is "still time" to do this and that. T h e not-yet-arrived (mito) aspect of time does not mean that there is still a stretch of durational time belonging to m e that is not yet, but points to the "every" aspect of "each and every m o m e n t . " D o g e n is saying that w e do not understand the aspect of time that is not yet come. W h a t most people think is the future thoroughly belongs to the going and coming, flying-by aspect of time.

However, Vimalakirti said that (it) is a certain state where there is no idea of receivings/life' or attaining supreme enlightenment. This shows he did not understand the real form ofjuki and consequently did not understand the real form of enlightenment either. He also said the past has already gone, the future has not yet come, and the present is in a state of flux. But it is not necessary for the past to leave, the future to come, or the present to be in a state of flux (to gain understanding of juki). We may use past, future, and present to describe the destruction, potentiality, or fluidity of things but we must be awakened to the past, future, and present which have not yet arrived. This is the principle by which we can attain enlightenment in birth and death. 5 3

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T h e past, future, and present that have not yet arrived are again alluded to, but hardly explicated, in the fascicle on Buddhanature. Hence the Sixth Patriarch articulated that impermanence is the Buddha-nature. "Permanence" is prior to turning (into enlightenment. But) "prior to turning" (in its authentic sense) is never connected with the aftertraces of coming and going, even though (Buddha-nature) turns to severing Wisdom, or becomes the worldly passions being severed. Thus it is said to be permanent (in the sense of Buddha-nature as impermanence). 5 4

Translations and interpretations of this passage differ, especially as to the meaning of the "prior to turning" or "non-turning" (miten). But this much is clear. Dogen never accepts a fixed permanence beyond or outside impermanence. True permanence and true impermanence as Dogen conceives of them differ from previous conceptions, and are ultimately identical. In a sense linguistically difficult or nearly impossible to specify, they are beyond the aftertraces of coming and going. The "stubborn fool" perceives only coming and going; it is impossible for him to clearly perceive the dwelling place of being-time. But even someone who discerns that dwelling place cannot express how it is maintained or sustained, how one dwells there. And even if there were someone who has been able to express this for a long time, he too is groping in the darkness for his original face. Part of the difficulty with miten seems to hinge on whether it is to be understood as "prior to turning" or as "non-turning." AbeWaddell and Heine opt for the former whereas Kim in both of his works opts for the latter. I present all versions of both possibilities in the hope of staking out the problem and perhaps clarifying it. The Buddha-nature itself, however, is free from all vestiges of its activity, even when it is manifested as wisdom prajna that severs the worldly passions obscuring the Buddha-nature, etc. It is thus said to

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have "permanency," though only in the sense of "true permanency" in which permanence is at once impermanence. 5 5 Dogen acknowledges that there is an authentic meaning of "permanence" if it is understood in the sense of "prior-to-turning" (miten) (that) is beyond the trace of coming and going. 56 For "permanence," according to him, is the state of "non-turning" (miten) or dualism. "Non-turning" means that whether a person overcomes delusions or is conditioned by them, he is not necessarily attached to the traces of their coming and going. Hence this is called permanence. 5 7 K i m ' s translation of the passage from The Buddha-nature reads: It is for this reason that the sixth ancestor said: "Impermanencethe-Buddha-nature." "Permanence" is nonchanging. "Nonchanging" means that whether (the Buddha-nature) transforms into the (enlightened) one cutting off passions or turns into the (deluded) one being liberated from them, it has nothing whatever to do with the traces of going and coming. Therefore, it is "permanent." 5 8 In a note K i m explains: Nonchanging (miten) is that quality of being which overcomes and frees from the dualism of "the mind that discriminates" on the one hand and "good and bad as well as all dharmas" on the other. Thus, as is made clear, both permanence and impermanence are of the Buddha-nature. That is, permanence means that steadfast quality of the Buddha-nature which exerts itself totally and drops itself off completely in each and every situation. In this respect, the impermanent is permanent, the permanent is impermanent. 5 9 A n d in a further note to the fascicle Juki: The phrase "in t u r n " (gyu-tenji) denotes not the temporal sequence in which a series of predictions are given and received, so much as

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the event of the self s present (gakon), which transcends the self and the other, and is beyond past, present and future. Gakon in the original sentence is read as ware ima ("we now"). Elsewhere in this fascicle, Dogen analyzes "in t u r n " (tenji) as " t u r n i n g " (ten) and "one after another" (ji): " 'In turn' means that 'turning' exerts 'turning' totally, 'one after another' exerts 'one-after-another' totally." As a result, Dogen converts the conventional reading of "in t u r n " into an entirely different one, in a way very much analogous to the notion of passage (kyoryaku) expounded in S, Uji. Also in the present fascicle, Dogen says: " T h e past, present, and future exist within the assurance of enlightenment." Here the assurance of enlightenment is seen as that reality which at once transcends and embraces the three periods of time. 60 Entities of every manner and kind of being-time in the realms of darkness and light are all the immediate manifestation of my full exertion, all the passing career of my full exertion. One must learn in practice that unless it is one's self exerting itself right now, not a single dharma or a single thing can immediately manifest itself or make a passage either. 61

Since it is possible for a passage like this one to invite misunderstanding, let us pause to distance D o g e n from two positions quite foreign to his thought: Idealism and Philosophy of Will. To m y knowledge, no one has ever called D o g e n an Idealist, but someone reading the above passage could construe it in a Schopenhauerian way (the world is m y idea and m y will) or even as something akin to G e r m a n Idealism (the world is the manifestation of Absolute Spirit). For D o g e n , the world is not a manifestation of something else; it presences as it is. Truly showing that D o g e n has nothing to do with Idealism or a Philosophy of Will would require an exposition of what he has to say about thinking (shiryo), not-thinking (fushiryo), and nonthinking (hishiryo); and about sustained exertion (gydji). Although a detailed exposition is not our intent here, w e shall return to the question of thinking in the conclusion of this study. For now, we

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can note that intriguing parallels with Western thought can be found in Heidegger's question " w h a t calls for thinking?" (was heisst Denken?) and in Heidegger's and especially Meister Eckhart's Gelassenheit (releasement: body and mind dropped off). A m a j o r hindrance lies in our assumption that we know what m a n is, what thinking is, what will is. We assume that thinking and willing are " o u r s , " that they belong to us, that we do or produce them, that there isn't even any question here. If one can gain a little distance from oneself, however, there is something very uncanny about all the stuff going on in our heads, a great deal of it utter j u n k belonging to no one and having nothing to do with anything. As K i m puts it: "Dispersion" at the conscious level and "dark sinking" at the unconscious level must be avoided; common to both are confusion and chaos. In short, the confusion and chaos of differentiation and undifferentiation are redeemed, thereby man is liberated from the tyranny of the two for a new mode of thinking. 62

Perhaps even more crucial in this context t h a n the question of what thinking is, is the question of exertion versus will. T h e concept of will started to become central in philosophy when philosophy came together with Judeo-Christianity. Will became totally d o m i n a n t in the nineteenth century with such figures as Schelling (all primal being is will), Schopenhauer (the Will to Live) and Nietzsche (the Will to Power). Willing is undoubtedly connected with teleology, with positing certain goals and attempting to attain them. Dogen, however, most emphatically rejects any kind of teleology, especially the notion that practice is a m e a n s to enlightenment. Practice is not a means to the end of enlightenment; practice is enlightenment. T h u s one does not and cannot will to attain enlightenment. W h a t , then, is sustained exertion (gyoji, gujin) for Dogen? All thinking or willing that has its roots in the ego is detrimental. But this does not mean that we are supposed to become mind-

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less a n d stop d o i n g e v e r y t h i n g . For D o g e n , total e x e r t i o n is absolutely crucial, b u t it can n e v e r b e for the sake of a n y t h i n g . T h i s w o u l d entail a goal to b e a t t a i n e d in the f u t u r e , w h i c h is impossible f r o m t h e outset b e c a u s e the " f u t u r e " is n o t s o m e w h e r e out t h e r e a h e a d of us; it is right now. It m a k e s n o f u n d a m e n t a l differe n c e w h e t h e r w e attain w h a t w e think is a goal o r n o t . Does it make any sense to conceive of a god "beyond good and evil"? Would a pantheism in this sense be possible? Can we remove the idea of a goal from the process and still affirm the process? That would be the case if something within the process were attained in every moment—and always the same. 63 T h i s q u o t a t i o n is f r o m Nietzsche, w h o could n o t possibly h a v e h a d a n y conscious affinity with D o g e n . But h e w a s j u s t as a d a m a n t l y o p p o s e d to a n y kind of teleology o r living for t h e sake of the future. Possessing or not possessing—it is clear that we must be separated from both. Ceaseless practice means not to be attached to anything, abandon fame and fortune. Practice one thing ceaselessly, and the ceaseless practice of your Buddhist life will increase. Thus ceaseless practice enhances ceaseless practice by more ceaseless practice. 64 N o t b e i n g a t t a c h e d to a n y t h i n g h a s b e e n t h e t r a d i t i o n a l Weste r n denial of will, p e r h a p s best e x p o u n d e d b y M e i s t e r E c k h a r t : If you give something up . . . for the sake of eternal life, you have given up nothing; yes, if you give something up for the sake of a thousandfold reward, you have given up nothing. You must let go of yourself, completely let go, then you have rightly let go. Once a man came to me—not long ago—and said he had given away great things, land and possessions, in order to save his soul. I thought: O h , how litde and how insignificant is what you let go of! It is blindness and folly as long as you somehow look upon what you let go of. But if you have let go of yourself, you have really let go. 65

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Eckhart's discussion of releasement (Gelassenheit') culminates in the following statement: " T h e highest a n d utmost thing that m a n can do is to let go of G o d for G o d ' s sake." 6 6 All willing is necessarily directed toward the f u t u r e , toward some aim or goal. Letting go relinquishes this kind of behavior. But letting go is not passive; quite to the contrary, it is extremely strenuous. W e are not speaking here primarily of a. physical letting go, as when one lets go of a book or pencil. Moreover, this physical kind of letting go is quite rare. Normally, I put the book or pencil d o w n . Eckhart's letting go is a letting go with one's entire being. In contrast to willing, which is future-directed, sustained exertion takes place in the present. It is not directed forward or outward; nothing is outside it. Not only is sustained exertion or ceaseless practice not a f o r m of willing; it is not even restricted to h u m a n agency. " T h e present world of ' b l o o m i n g flowers a n d falling leaves' is actualization of ceaseless practice." 6 7 In fact, D o g e n does go as far as to say that ceaseless practice is m o r e f u n d a m e n t a l t h a n causation. H e employs his characteristic "logical" formulation of all x is y, but not a l l y is x. T h u s , y is m o r e inclusive a n d far-reaching than x. All terriers are dogs, b u t not all dogs are terriers. Causation is ceaseless practice; ceaseless practice is not causation— we must study this in detail. Ceaseless practice which manifests ceaseless practice is nothing other than ceaseless practice of the present. Ceaseless practice of the present is not the ceaseless practice of the original self, nor does it come and go, exit and enter. "In the present" does not mean "existing prior to ceaseless practice." It refers to the time ceaseless practice emerges. 68 W i t h the reason w h y ceaseless practice is not causation, we are back in the problematic of time. C a u s a t i o n itself requires a kind of continuous s u b s t r a t u m to g u a r a n t e e the connection between cause a n d effect. But it is precisely this continuous s u b s t r a t u m that

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Dogen is radically denying. The sentence "ceaseless practice which manifests ceaseless practice is nothing other than ceaseless practice of the present" is not tautological; it emphatically underscores the fact that practice is only as it emerges, is only in the moment. O n e is somehow reminded of Cusanus' statement that the non-other is none other than the non-other. Returning to the passage from Uji, everything is the spontaneous manifestation and the passage of the utmost exertion. Without the passage of my utmost exertion at this very moment, nothing could be manifested or take place. We cannot reiterate too emphatically that this is not a matter of my will; I do not produce the world. Dogen is not an Idealist. Obviously he does not fall neatly into either side of the controversy over self-power versus other-power, nor does he seem to concern himself with it. The common (Western) criticism directed at the supposed "passivity" of much of the Eastern attitude would appear to be based on an overestimation of willing and of goal-oriented activity. There is plenty of "activity" in Dogen; his whole universe abounds with it. But this activity is not willing. It is highly questionable whether such a thing as willing without a goal or purpose is feasible at all. Utmost exertion is not willing. When Dogen speaks of mountains and grasses exerting themselves, this might be difficult for many of us to imagine or understand concretely; but mountains willing something seems to make no sense at all. Exertion is by no means restricted to human activity, but human exertion or practice is the instance closest to us and thus may give us some immediate insight. DSgen says that utmost exertion or practice is enlightenment; he would never say that we can will enlightenment (I don't believe anyone has ever said that), let alone that willing is enlightenment. Utmost exertion or practice does not coincide with "activity" as most of us conceive it, as willing or "doing"; nor is it passive. The Taoist wu-wei—nondoing or, better, noninterference—-is not passive either. Again, as examples perhaps more accessible to us we can cite the artist and the athlete. The artist and the athlete are

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engaged in the most strenuous effort, but they are not "willing"; the artist often does not consciously know exactly what he is after. Something has to "occur" to him. Exertion leads to receptivity. Finally, the word "utmost" in the phrase "utmost exertion" expresses the human aspect of "entire," "total" or "whole." Mindless practice will not get us anywhere; neither will thinking about enlightenment and trying to find the conceptual "answer" to a logical puzzle. Priest Hoen once stated, "Practice cannot go beyond thought; thought cannot exceed practice." This expression is important. Think about it day and night; practice it morning and evening. Do not be blown about in all directions by the wind. 69

We return to the question of passage. We have already been cautioned not to think of it as something like the wind and rain moving from east to west. Flowing is like spring. Spring with all its numerous aspects is called flowing. When spring flows there is nothing outside of spring. Study this in detail. Spring invariably flows through spring. Although flowing itself is not spring, flowing occurs throughout spring. Thus, flowing is completed at just this moment of spring. Examine this thoroughly, coming and going. In your study of flowing, if you imagine the objective to be outside yourself and that you flow and move through hundreds and thousands of worlds, for hundreds, thousands, and myriads of eons, you have not devotedly studied the buddha way.70

Here Dogen is again rejecting the notion of time as separate from what occurs "in" it. In spring, the passage of time is nothing but spring. This does not mean that the passage of time is always exclusively spring; sometimes it is summer or fall or winter. But time does not pass from spring to summer. When it is spring, it is spring; when it is summer, it is summer. There is no transition because time does not pass "horizontally" from one season to the

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other. Nothing turns into anything else; everything dwells in its dharma-situation. T i m e is not going anywhere; it is not going by; it is going on right now. Someone unmindful of the Buddhist w a y will think there is an objective world separate from the subject of continuity (nokyoryaku no ho), which moves eastward (like the wind and rain moving from east to west) through a hundred thousand worlds and epochs. This view separates and isolates the subject from the objective world and construes the passage of that subject as moving horizontally from past to future. In this view, we are dealing with several (false) " p i c t u r e s " of time, and the situation, accordingly, is quite complex. Let us pause for a moment to become aware of the pictorial presuppositions underlying the conception of time. (1) In Dogen's example in the passage just cited, time is a static container within which, and separate from it, the subject moves horizontally from east to west. " T i m e " itself is always there. For some reason, which this picture is utterly unable to explain, " I " am moving in and through time, which was there before I existed and will be there after my death. Dogen tells us not to think of the passage of time in this way. (2) Abstracting from the idea of what is in time, time is conceived as moving from past to future. This view is cited, for example, by D a v i d E d w a r d Shaner in his study of K u k a i and Dogen. " T h e notion of linear time as flying from the past, through the present, towards the future thus appears to be abstracted from concrete experiences of being-time." 7 1 In his exposition of time, Dogen recommends that one study the common sense view that a day is divided and subdivided in some measurable units or quanta, a view which presupposes that time flows uniformly in an infinite series of homogeneous temporal units from the past through the present to the future. 72 This view would accord with Dogen's description of time moving from east (past) to west (future). It cannot account for time flying

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past or by (me). Although cited as a notion of time abstracted from concrete experiences of being-time, this notion appears to be rooted precisely in the conception of a concrete, individual subject moving forward in time from birth to childhood to adulthood to old age and death (as in Shakespeare's seven stages of man). T i m e itself does not move forward. Rather, it flows past us as we move forward. This brings us to the last conception of unilinear time. (3) T i m e itself flows from the future through the present to the past. This view is more widely held than 2. It is cited by both K i m and Heine. Heine's version of the misconception of time is a curious mixture of 1 and 3. Human understanding and activity tend to be fixated with the apparent stability and constancy of phenomena which are conceived in terms of serially connected instantaneous time units forever and irreversibly "passing us by," as if independent of existence. Time is viewed as a static substratum "in which" events transpire from the standpoint of a substantive and actual, yet fleeting, current moment linked in an endless series to past moments which have gone away and future moments which are yet to come. 73 Most people, including and especially the philosophers, concur that time is irreversible; but they cannot seem to agree on the direction of that irreversibility. Does time move from past to future or from future to past? Dogen's answer is that ultimately it does neither. But still we want to examine this question further. T h e existential and biological time belonging to an individual life, and the broader spectrum of a culture moving forward in history, advances from the past into the future. A n individual has a certain amount of time allotted to him—just how much he does not know. A s his life progresses, he "uses u p " this time, approaching maturity, old age and finally death, as long as disease or accident does not cut him down sooner. This view of time belongs to what the Buddha saw when as a young man he left his father's palace: sickness, old age and death. Without some kind of transcendence or

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liberation, this situation, just as it is, is intolerable. The Buddha sought and eventually found that liberation. The view that time rolls out of the future into the past sees time as something separate from and independent of me. For example, if I have a deadline or an appointment to meet, I exert every effort and rush to meet it; it is inexorably approaching, coming at me. I can also fit the stages of my life in this view as well as coordinating them with the view that time moves from past to future. My thirtieth or my ninetieth birthday approaches and comes at me the way a deadline or appointment does. This view is perhaps more tolerable but can be very anxiety-producing. The view that time is a static container in which things and events transpire belongs more to the philosophers than to everyday experience and finds its culmination and fullest expression in Newton. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own by another name is called duration: relative, apparent and common time is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year. . . . All motions may be accelerated or retarded, but the true or equable progress of absolute time is liable to no change. T h e duration or perseverance of things remains the same; whether the motions are swift or slow or none at all: and therefore it ought to be distinguished from what are only sensible measures thereof. As the order of the parts of time is immutable, so also is the order of the parts of space. Suppose those parts to be moved out of their places, and they will be moved (if the expression may be allowed) out of themselves. For times and spaces are, as it were, the places as well of themselves as of all other things. All things are placed in time as to order of succession; and in space as to order of situation. It is from their essence or nature that they are places; and that the primary places of things should be movable is absurd. 7 4

In contrast to the common, relative time that Newton considered to be primarily a function of measurement, true, absolute

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time flows equably without anything external. This time is truly " a b s o l u t e " in the sense that it is absolved and separated from anything in it. It is mathematical, i.e., u n i f o r m and calculable, and by another n a m e is called duration, which means that it persists and is continuous. Its duration or perseverance remains constant regardless of what happens in it. Like most thinkers before and most soon after h i m , Newton treats time as parallel to space; it is the order of succession, space the order of situation or position. In fact, he says that times (and spaces) are places. But there is a certain ambiguity in this description. Newton is concerned to show that the order of the parts of time is immutable. These parts are treated as things and they are the places as well of themselves as of all other things. H e r e we have a picture of time as the immovable place in which things occur, a container, and as something flowing equably. If we take the Heraclitian image of the river, the river banks (container) are stable whereas the river itself flows between those banks. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a flowing river without banks. Newton's absolute time is, so to speak, both the static banks and the flowing river; it is the place both of itself and of all other things. T h e remainder of what we wish to discuss in Uji has to do with the notions of getting there or reaching and obstructing or impeding. O n e might say that Dogen does his own "«/¿-version" of N a g a r j u n a ' s tetralemma. W h e r e a s N a g a r j u n a had exhausted the possibilities of assertion and denial by showing that all four were false (a, not a, both a and not a, neither a nor not a), Dogen gives us two versions of the tetralemma a n d then modifies t h e m . T h e first concerns raising the eyebrows and blinking the eyes; the second concerns intended meaning and expression. For the time being have him raise his eyebrows and wink. For the time being do not have him raise his eyebrows and wink. For the time being to have him raise his eyebrows a n d wink is right.

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the time being to have him raise his eyebrows and wink is right. the time being mind arrives, but words do not. the time being words arrive, but mind does not. the time being both mind and words arrive. the time being neither mind nor words arrive. 75

Instead of stating that all possibilities of assertion and detail are false, as does Nagarjuna, these statements indicate that sometimes this happens and that does not, running through all the permutations and combinations of these terms. Thus we are left not with a tetralemma or fourfold negation demonstrating the impossibility of making ontological assertions or denials about any entity whatsoever, but with diverse or conflicting statements about what is the case, each of which is uji. In other words, whatever is the case or is not the case, whatever happens or does not happen, it is all uji. Nagarjuna had stated that you cannot say anything; Dogen goes beyond this to make different statements, none of which is true to the exclusion of the others. They are all true (sometimes), which is another way of saying that everything is being-time. T h e statement that everything is being-time could sound like a "blanket" metaphysical statement that everyone understands in a vague, abstract way—but really does not understand at all. It is like the statement that till is one. Dogen is never guilty of making these kinds of abstract assertions; he is always specific and concrete. That is what makes him so difficult to understand at times. His concrete statements are not "examples" of some more abstract principle, nor are they symbols for something else. The concrete statements are "it," but none to the exclusion of the others. The words "for the time being" (uji) placed in front of the tetralemmic statements alter the whole character of what is being said. Instead of demonstrating that none of these oppositional statements can be true, Dogen is saying they are all true and they are all being-time. Whether they "get there" or not, both intended meaning and expression are being-time.

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At the conclusion of Uji, Dogen adds his own emphasis to the statements of Ma-tsu and Kuei-sheng by again saying that no matter what happens or does not happen, it is still being-time. The old masters have thus uttered these words, but is there nothing further to say? Mind and words arriving "part-way" are the time-being. Mind and words not arriving "part-way" are the time-being. In this manner, you should examine the time-being. To have him raise his eyebrows and wink is "half' the timebeing. To have him raise his eyebrows and wink is the time-being "missed." Not to have him raise the eyebrows and wink is "half" the timebeing. Not to have him raise the eyebrows and wink is the time-being "missed." 76

Apart from saying that everything, even when partial or wrong, is being-time, these statements are intended to drive home the point that each present moment of being-time is what there is and all there is. There is no future (or past) except in the present moment. To return to the epigraph for this study, eternity has nothing to do with duration. This statement is not from Dogen but from Spinoza. It states clearly and simply, though hardly exhaustively, what we are trying to understand in Dogen. Time—and ultimately eternity as its counterpart, as what "overcomes" time— has been almost exclusively conceived in quantitative terms such as how long, how many, how much, how fast, how slow. I have three more weeks until vacation, I have ten more minutes to sit in this meeting; time is passing slowly because I am bored, quickly because I am enjoying myself. Perhaps nowhere has calculation and calculative thinking wreaked havoc more devastatingly than in the understanding of time. If only we could realize " w h a t " it is that we are counting, mea-

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suring and calculating. The idea that there is no duration completely blocks us from this kind of calculation. If time takes place at each and every moment, there is no stretch of time available for measurement. The notion that time is to be conceived primarily in terms of measurement and counting has its roots in Aristotle, who was the first Western philosopher to offer a developed theory of time. For time is just this—number of motion in respect of "before" and "after." Clearly then " t o be in time" has the same meaning for other things also, namely, that their being should be measured by time. . . . Now, since time is number, the " n o w " and the "before" and the like are in time, just as " u n i t " and " o d d " and " e v e n " are in number, i.e. in the sense that the one set belongs to number, the other to time. But things are in time as they are in number. If this is so, they are contained in time as things in place are contained in place. . . . A thing, then, will be affected by time, just as we are accustomed to say that time wastes things away, and that all things grow old through time, and that there is oblivion owing to the lapse of time, but we do not say the same of getting to know or of becoming young or fair. For time is by its nature the cause rather of decay, since it is the number of change, and change removes what is. 77

In an almost uncanny way, Aristotle gives the classic formulation of a theory of time that is precisely what Dogen is determined to refute. This formulation can be summarized in three points. 1. Time is essentially calculation, calculating motion or change with respect to before and after. 2. Time is separate from the things in it; it contains those things in a way analogous to the way space contains the things in it. 3. Time is the instrument or cause of decay and destruction, eventually destroying what is in it.

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In terms of the first two points, Aristotle is unable to explain the origin of decay and destruction, nor does he attempt to do so. H e parallels the way things are contained in time with the way they are contained in space; yet space does not have a deleterious effect u p o n the things in it. It is also noteworthy that Aristotle, who is otherwise keenly interested in change, motion and growth, the development from dunamis to energeia, does not link time, which is indispensable to all of these, to any sort of teleological growth but rather to decay. Plato conceived of time differently. H e called it " t h e moving image of eternity." H e related time to movement, not to measurem e n t , and conceived of it in its relation to eternity. In this respect Plato was closer to the direction of Dogen and Spinoza than was Aristotle. All the Buddhas and Patriarchs surely emerge in a speck of dust; one speck of dust is nirvana. The entire world emerges, the entire world of nirvana. One instant emerges, endless time emerges. However, one speck of dust and one instant are without any lack of virtue. The entire world and endless time are not compensations for a lack of virtue or some other insufficiency. If you think one day lacks sufficient virtue, then even a life of eighty years is not enough (for you). An eighty-year life compared to ten or twenty kalpas is the same as one day compared to eighty years. . . . When we compare the virtue of an eighty-year life with one of endless time, there can be no doubt that there is no basic difference between them. 78

" V i r t u e , " of course, is to be understood not in a moralistic sense, but in its original m e a n i n g of power and potency—for example, by virtue of much studying he m a n a g e d to pass the examination. T h e r e is n o lack of " v i r t u e " in one speck of dust and one instant. Everything is there; more space and more time (quantity) would not improve u p o n the situation or even have any effect on it. Most of us do think in terms of duration, of more time. If only

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there were more time to do this or that, then this could be accomplished or that would happen. But this is the kind of teleological thinking that Dogen (and with him Nietzsche) rejects. It is not a matter of accomplishing this, or of that happening; "accomplishing" and "happening" are going on right now. W h a t is at stake is not whether we "get there" or do not "get there." As Dogen says, " W h e n the moment of arriving has not yet appeared, the moment of not-arriving is here." 7 9 In other words, when I think I have gotten there, attained my goal, everything is really unfinished; there is no finality, as I conceive of it, in time. And when I think I have not yet been able to accomplish what I wanted to do, I am "accomplishing" it right now. Whether or not a "goal" is attained is not important; ultimately, there is no goal. This is most forcefully expressed in Dogen's insistence upon the identity of practice and enlightenment.

4. Birth and death

T h e absolute lack of a temporal substratum, of any duration whatsoever, profoundly affects most of the philosophical and practiced issues that Dogen discusses. As an example (which is not really an example because it is the same problem), let us briefly take a look at what he has to say about birth and death. Birth and death, samsara, impermanence and uji are really the same problem for Dogen; none are instances of the other, conceived as more universal and encompassing them; the schema universal/particular, so basic to most Western thought, is lacking in Dogen. Fundamental to the common conception of birth and death is the idea of duration between them. 1 Birth is the inception of a life that extends over a period of time and terminates in death. This is also what most people would call impermanence: the limited life span between birth and death. " T h i n g s are i m p e r m a n e n t " means they only last for a limited time. Eventually they pass away. They are " i m p e r m a n e n t . " T h e r e is an intolerable aspect to this conception of impermanence which is everyman's existential realization of his own finitude creeping u p on him. T h e B u d d h a experienced it in its full import, unmitigated by evasive distractions, as the question of disease, old age and death; he faced it and " d e a l t " with it. But m a n y people do not come to grips with their own finitude except on a minimal or abstract l e v e l — " o n e " dies, but not me, and not now. Coupled with the idea of duration between birth and death, and inseparable from it, is the idea of a more or less p e r m a n e n t soul or self. W h a t is intolerable and actually unthinkable is that this self, which should be p e r m a n e n t , cannot be so, at least not in the form it is now. T h e body eventually grows older and finally wears out. T h u s m a n y religions and philosophies proclaim the eternity of the self or soul as constituting the true " p e r s o n . " Dogen, of course, would reject this dualistic conception of body and soul as he would any dualism. 72

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D o g e n combatted the version of the p e r m a n e n c e of the soul known as the S e n i k a heresy, whose roots go back to the Upanishads. In the West, the great philosophic instance of the p e r m a n e n c e of the soul is, of course, provided by Plato. For Plato, the b o d y is the prison of the soul; the senses are a hindrance to knowledge, able to convey knowledge of b e c o m i n g and change, but never of p u r e being. T h u s Plato could define philosophy as a preparation for dying a n d for death—the release of the soul from its prison. T h i s view of the p e r m a n e n c e of the soul appears to be ingrained in our religions and culture, if only as a wistful hope or even a fantastic dream. T h e Buddhists would call this view " e t e r n a l i s m " (sasvata); it is one of two extremes to be avoided at all costs. T h e other extreme is nihilism (uccheda), which is close to our present-day materialistic and scientistic view. What I can't s e e — a b o v e all, what I c a n ' t measure—doesn't exist. " D o e s the soul continue to exist after d e a t h ? " was one of the metaphysical questions that the B u d d h a refused to answer. H e would and could not answer because neither of the two extreme alternatives was an appropriate response to the question. Actually, the question itself is inappropriate and thus cannot find an appropriate response. O n e important way to gain access to the problem is to find the right question. F o r D o g e n , often the question is the answer. T h e question whether the soul continues to exist after death or not presupposes that birth is the beginning of a continuous process, life, and death is its end. If we do not accept this view of life as a durational stretch of time, we m u s t find a different way to question life and death. Let us take a look at s o m e p a s s a g e s f r o m D o g e n and see how they throw light on the question of life a n d death. Everyday mind opens its gates for each moment of existence—life and death, coming and going enter freely. Do not think of heaven and earth as this world or the next; know that they coexist eternally in each passing moment. Generally people never think about the

74 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature nature of heaven or earth unless something unexpected occurs. For me, a sudden and unexpected sneeze is like an echo that symbolizes the instantaneous coexistence of life and death, heaven and earth in each moment. T h e entire content and meaning of heaven and earth and its relationship to the mind reduces itself to one eternal moment. If we fail to understand this we will never grasp the significance of a sneeze or any seemingly minor occurrence. 2

Life is not the beginning of a process; death is not its end. To put it another way, the "process," what is going on, is conceived the wrong way. Actually, it is already sufficient to say it is conceived, that is, distorted by our conceptual overlay. Life is contained in death and death is contained in life, yet life is life and death is death. T h a t is, these elements are independent in themselves and stand alone without requiring any outside existence or reference. Ordinarily people think of life as something like an oak tree (a thing that begins with a seed, grows, then dies) and death as something that no longer moves. However, just as one's conception of an oak tree differs from the actual tree, ideas about life often conflict with the actuality of life. In true understanding, life is never an obstacle. Life is not the first activity and death the second; life is not relative to death, nor death to life. 3

Needless to say, this view of the relation of life and death does not coincide with the ordinary conception. Even our ordinary conception of an oak tree does not coincide with the actual tree. We think that an oak tree is planted, sprouts, grows into maturity and eventually withers and dies. We think that it is the same with the life and death of human beings as with the oak tree. After all, both are living beings. But Dogen tells us that even our conception of the oak tree differs from the actuality of the oak tree. To facilitate our understanding of life and death, it is better to leave the oak tree alone and concentrate on the phenomenon more immediately accessible to us, the human being. Dogen might remark that oak-tree-mind can best understand oak-tree-mind,

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fish-mind can best understand fish-mind, bird-mind can best understand bird-mind; if we are to understand any mind at all, initially it will be our own human mind. Life is contained in death and death is contained in life, yet both are independent of each other. Life does not come first with death following; there is no series, no serial relation. The relation (or non-relation) of life and death has to do with juhoi, with dwelling in a dharma-situation. We are still concerned with the same problematic, this time viewed from the perspective of life and death. In fact, when the understanding of life and death is stripped of its conceptual framework of durational time, we are dealing with none other than uji. Still, life and death and what Dogen specifically has to say about them do help to clarify things in a new light. It may help to extrapolate some seemingly contradictory statements about life and death and see where this leads us. We have already discussed the claim that life does not become death, or death become life; there is no transition between them. The reason why there is no transition lies in our understanding of juhoi, and this has to do with the question of before and after. 1. Life and death are cut off from before and after. Life and death are possessed of before and after. 2. Life emancipates life. Death emancipates death. Therefore there is: Deliverance from birth and death Immersion in birth and death Discarding of birth and death Crossing of birth and death (i) That life and death are without before and after, are cut off from them, means that before and after do not constitute a transition out of the present dwelling in a dharma-situation. The present moment does not become (the) past; it does not become it

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nor does it impede it. For Dogen, nothing impedes anything else, only itself. This self-impeding, then, is not any kind of hindrance, but rather penetration, realization. The present does not become the past, or impede it, or "touch" it. That life and death are possessed of before and after means that they are not dimensionless, knife-edge points, which are mere conceptual abstractions. It is a mistake to think you pass from birth to death. Being one stage of total time, birth is already possessed of before and after. For this reason, in the Buddha Dharma it is said that birth itself is no-birth. Being one stage of total time as well, cessation of life also is possessed of before and after. T h u s it is said, extinction itself is nonextinction. When one speaks of birth, there is nothing at all apart from birth. When one speaks of death, there is nothing at all apart from death. 4

If birth is already from the very beginning or, perhaps better, even before the very beginning possessed of before and after, birth is not the birth »/something to follow, thus it is no-birth. The same is true of cessation of life. Cessation of life is already possessed of before and after and thus is not the cessation of something preceding; thus it is nonextinction. When we speak of birth, there is nothing but birth or life. When we speak of death, there is nothing but death. Since the great W a y of buddhas is beyond all dualities, including the basic duality of birth and death, from life's point of view each thing, including death, is life's total realization; from death's point of view each thing, including life, is death's total realization. 5

(2) What is emancipation? In emancipation, life emancipates life and death emancipates death. This is basically identical with the statement: obstruction hinders obstruction, thereby obstruction realizes itself.6 When a thing obstructs, hinders or impedes

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itself, it realizes itself totally. Fundamentally, nothing obstructs or hinders anything else for Dogen. What is important is a thing's impeding or obstructing itself. How are we to think this selfobstruction? The idea of obstruction or impediment means that there is a block, a barrier, a limit beyond which one cannot continue. O n e is somehow reminded of the Greek peras, or limit. For the ancient Greeks, infinity was a purely negative concept. In contrast to the Judeo-Christian positive conception of infinity (God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent), infinity to the Greeks was a lack of boundary and form, and thus nonbeing. W h a t is has limits and presents a shape (eidos). The Greek conception is far less dynamic than what D5gen is discussing, but there seems to be some affinity. Interestingly enough, Kim's rendition of this same passage has transparency for todatsu, rendered earlier as "emancipation." This brings out even more forcefully the dialectic between obstruction and transparency. To obstruct is to block, to be transparent is to let through. When a thing blocks itself, it becomes transparent, lets itself through, releases itself. T h e result of all this is a further "dialectic." Becoming transparent or emancipated yields deliverance from birth and death and immersion in birth and death; it results in discarding birth and death and crossing birth and death. Thus we have: Self-impeding emancipation or self-transparency deliverance and discarding of birth and death, and at the same time, immersion in and crossing of birth and death.

The first two steps of this dialectic result in what Hegel would call a "synthesis," the synthesis of in itself and for itself. But we are not dealing with a Hegelian dialectic here. First of all, the fundamental element of positing (setzen) is totally absent. Dogen's dialectic is a dialectic of immediacy, not of mediation. This is highly paradoxical. We need to take a closer look at just what kind of dialectic is involved here.

5. Dialectic

Western philosophy has a long and varied history of dialectic—the relation of opposites. Opposites can be related to each other in a contrary, contradictory, or polar fashion—that is, as contraries (red and yellow), contradictories (A and -A), or polarities (north and south). Leaving aside contrary opposites, for our purposes we can say that contradictory opposites exclude each other whereas polar opposites demand each other. We shall briefly take a look at Heraclitus as an example of dialectic as the relation of polar opposites and then in somewhat more detail at Hegel as an example of a dialectic involving "contradictions." That which is in opposition is in concert, and from things that differ comes the most beautiful harmony, (fragment 8) In the same river we both step and do not step, we are and we are not. (fragment 49a) The way up and down is one and the same, (fragment 60) They do not understand how that which differs from itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre, (fragment 51) There are many more instances, but we shall confine ourselves to these four. Fragment 49a can be interpreted to mean that there is one aspect of the river that remains the same, possibly its banks and its name. Another aspect does not remain the same, the waters themselves ever flowing on. The concept of "aspects" softens the contradiction; it all depends on our perspective, on how we look at things. Fragment 60 could also be interpreted with the aid of the concept of aspects. The way up a mountain is in certain respects more

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strenuous than the w a y down, although the w a y down has its own kind of strenuousness. Certainly one has a very different view depending on whether one is ascending or descending (up toward the mountaintop, down toward the valley). Nevertheless, in both cases it is the same way. Fragments 8 and 51 get to the heart of what is characteristic of Heraclitus' brand of dialectic. T h e opposites involved here are truly polar—one could not exist without the other. In this sense they are constitutive. Instead of canceling each other out, as one might think contradictory opposites would (A + - A = o, 1 + -1 = o), polar opposites constitute, they create something. T h e lyre and especially the bow (also mentioned in fragment 48) are particularly apt examples for conveying a sense of constitutive, polar dialectic. Without the opposing directions in tensing a bow and arrow, no tensile force would be created enabling one to let the arrow fly. Let us move on to Hegel. A s with Heraclitus, Hegel's dialectic is constitutive of reality, but in a quite different way. Whereas Heraclitus' polar opposites are constitutive of reality by generating a creative tension, Hegel's opposites go forward in the progressive movement that he called Aujheben, superseding. This movement is generated by " t h e tremendous power of the negat i v e " (die ungeheuere Macht des Negativen). T h e negative for Hegel is by no means some kind of lack or privation, but is the moving power of the whole dialectical process. T h e power of the negative allows nothing to remain in one-sided fixity. It negates the thing in its limited one-sidedness, preserves it in its essential being and elevates it to a more comprehensive level of reality. We cannot go deeply into the intricacies of Hegelian dialectic here, but we shall examine at least the basic structure of that dialectic and try to compare it with that of Dogen. Nor are we concerned with the differences within G e r m a n Idealism, that is, with Fichte's and Schelling's versions of dialectic. We simply take Hegel as one of the most developed and influential representatives of that rich philosophical tradition.

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W h e n Hegel explicitly discusses the term Aufheben or even dialectic in general, he emphasizes the first two aspects, those of canceling and preserving—he was fascinated to discover a single word that could express diametrically opposing activities. T h e third aspect, that of elevating to a higher level of reality, is everywhere implied but seldom explicated. Supersession (das Aufheben) exhibits its true twofold meaning which we have seen in the negative: it is at once a negating and a. preserving. Our Nothing, as the Nothing of the This, preserves its immediacy and is itself sensuous, but it is a universal immediacy. 1

Negation, of course, is absolutely crucial to Hegel's whole philosophy. It is not merely logical, but dia-logical and onto-logical negation; it is what moves the entire world process. As the negation of A, -A stands in a contradictory relation to A. Merely logical contradiction or contradiction in its customary sense is static: A = -A. Each side of the equation cancels the other out and we are left with nothing at all. Hegel, however, wants to show that contradiction is not something that we logically construct or ascertain, but rather is contained in nuce in A itself. A, being a partial and one-sided reality and therefore u n t r u e , is intrinsically driven to go beyond itself and develop into a more comprehensive reality, ultimately into the totality of reality. " T h e T r u e is the Whole." 2 All that is negated of A is its one-sided and therefore false claim to be the whole of truth, together with its rigidity in making this claim. W h a t is essential about A is preserved in the negation; nothing essential or real is lost. To transcend (aufheben) and that which is transcended (the ideal) are a m o n g the most important concepts of philosophy. . . . What transcends itself does not thereby become Nothing. What is Nothing is immediate: what is transcended is mediated, though it is not, yet it has reached nonentity as a result approached from Being. It therefore retains the determinateness whence it started. 3

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Pure nothing is immediate and thus has no determination whatsoever. In this sense, it is identical with being. In fact, Being, indeterminate immediacy, is Nothing, neither more nor less. . . . Nothing, therefore, is the same determination (or rather lack of determination), and thus altogether the same thing, as pure Being. Pure Being and pure Nothing are, then, the same. 4 But the nothing that H e g e l is talking about in his discussion of aufheben is a mediated and thus a definite, determinate nothing. It is a relative nothing, a me on, not an absolute nothing, an ouk on. O n e of Hegel's main concerns in all of his m a n y discussions of aufheben is to stress that it is not mere negation, but rather preserves what is essential in what it negates. N o t h i n g is lost; all that is negated is the one-sided fixity of a partial element claiming to be the totality. To transcend (aufheben) has this double meaning, that it signifies to keep or to preserve and also to make to cease, to finish. To preserve includes this negative element, that something is removed from its immediacy and therefore from a Determinate Being (Dasein) exposed to external influence, in order that it may be preserved. —Thus, what is transcended is also preserved; it has only lost its immediacy and is not on that account annihilated.— In the dictionary the two determinations of transcending may be cited as two meanings of this word. But it should appear as remarkable that a language should have come to use one and the same word for two opposite determinations. It is a joy for speculative thought to find words which in themselves have a speculative meaning; the German language has several such. The double meaning of the Latin tollere (which has achieved fame through the ciceronian pun tollendum esse Octavium) does not go so far; the affirmative determination only goes so far as to mean elevation. 5 T h e third m e a n i n g of aufheben, everywhere implied but less explicitly stressed by H e g e l , is the most literal one: to pick up or

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lift up. Ich hebe das Taschentuch vom Boden auf means " I pick up the handkerchief from the floor." This element of being lifted up or elevated is responsible for the direction of Hegelian dialectic as progress. T h e process develops more and more inclusively and comprehensively until absolute Spirit is manifest in its totality. T h e true is the whole. T h e Absolute is result. In the absolute m e t h o d the C o n c e p t preserves itself in its otherness, and the universal in its particularization, in the J u d g m e n t and in reality; it raises to each next stage of determination the whole mass of its antecedent content, and b y its dialectical progress not only loses nothing and leaves nothing b e h i n d , but carries with it all that it has acquired, enriching and concentrating itself u p o n itself. 6

In the dialectical progress nothing is lost, nothing is left behind. A t the end of this development, and only at the end, the Absolute has totally manifested, mediated and accumulated itself. There are two fundamental dangers here, both unacceptable to Hegel, against which he vigorously tries to defend himself: (i) abstract formalism and (2) bad infinity. Under the banner of abstract, monochromatic formalism, Hegel attacks what he considers to be Schelling's version of the dialectic. B u t a closer inspection shows this expansion has not c o m e about through one a n d the same principle h a v i n g spontaneously assumed different shapes, b u t rather through the shapeless repetition of one a n d the same f o r m u l a , only externally applied to diverse materials, thereby obtaining merely a boring show of diversity. 7

According to Hegel, Schelling's dialectic doesn't really go anywhere. Form and content fall asunder so that the dialectical activity cannot mesh with its content and move it forward. T h e inert content lies there untransformed while the futile activity turns in the same circle. This futile activity could be compared to an auto-

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mobile running in neutral gear. Hegel claims by implication that this objection would not apply to his own version of the dialectic. But it remains open to question whether, in fact, it might not. The second danger is one that preoccupied Hegel a great deal and led him to coin the famous phrase "bad infinity," of which Kierkegaard made so much derisive fun. Bad infinity is a kind of temporal endlessness that is incapable of coming to fruition or even stopping. A most vivid illustration of this kind of infinity can be found in Goethe's poem about the sorcerer's apprentice. American readers may know the story as it was presented in Disney's film Fantasia, accompanied by the music written to Goethe's poem by Paul Dukas. T h e apprentice speaks the magic formula and gets the broom to fetch water for the bath by itself. T h e broom continues fetching and pouring buckets of water into the bath, accelerating its pace to an incredible rate and finally flooding the whole house. Frantically, the apprentice tries to stop the broom, even chopping it in two, whereupon both halves of the broom continue their frenzied activity. The mere formula is not equivalent to true magic power; the apprentice is powerless to control or stop the broom. This second danger or problem is inextricably bound up with the first. If the dialectic were a mere shapeless repetition accomplishing nothing, it would go on endlessly trying to achieve something. It would vainly attempt again and again to attain its goal. Hegel's claim is that the dialectic does achieve its aim, preserving everything and elevating it to a higher level of reality, thereby manifesting absolute Spirit more and more fully. At the completion of each triad (in itself, for itself, in and for itself), Spirit returns to itself out of its apparent alienation. Finally the process is completed, absolute Spirit is fully manifested and that is the end of the process. The process does not continue indefinitely in one linear direction, but bends back into its beginning. " T h e movement is the circle that returns into itself, the circle that presupposes its beginning and reaches it only at the end." 8 This is Hegel's claim. But, as one reads on and on, one begins

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to wonder why he is so preoccupied with this problem. Hegel feels that it is nature that repeats itself and doesn't go anywhere. A tree produces another tree, a dog another dog; there is no significant progress or difference between parent and offspring. It is otherwise with Spirit. The concept of Spirit is return to itself, to make itself an object. Thus the progression is not an indefinite one into infinity, but there is a goal, namely return into itself. Thus there is a kind of circular motion. Spirit seeks itself. 9 In a natural or material process, the beginning and the end fall asunder and never succeed in meeting. T h u s , this kind of process is repetitive in the sense that it starts the same m o v e m e n t over and over again, never m a n a g i n g to connect its end with its beginning. The tree perenniates, produces sprouts, leaves, blossoms, fruit and this begins ever again from the beginning. The annual plant does not survive its fruit; the tree lets decades pass it by, but it, too, dies. Revival in nature is only the repetition of one and the same thing; it is the boring history with ever the same circular motion. Nothing new happens under the sun. But with the sun of the Spirit it is otherwise. Its course and motion are not a self-repetition, but rather the changing appearance that the Spirit makes for itself in ever different formations is essential progressive motion. 10 T h e key word here is "progressive." In contrast to the process of nature that merely repeats itself, the process of Spirit goes beyond itself into its apparent other and returns from and with that other, enriched and fulfilled. T h e process of Spirit is progress, ultimately total, all-embracing progress. It has been shown many times that the infinite progress in general belongs to conceptless reflection: the absolute method, which has the concept for soul and content, cannot lead into it. 11

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These quotes could be multiplied indefinitely, as they are everywhere embodied in Hegel's writings, but the core of what they are saying is the same. Let us consider a final question before going on to Dogen's version of dialectic. What does the process of absolute Spirit end up with when it has completed its course? It cannot progress forever, for that would be bad infinity. But it doesn't "stop" either. What is the alternative? The process bends back upon itself; it becomes a circle. By reason of the nature of the method which has been demonstrated the science is seen to be a circle which returns upon itself, for mediation bends its end into its beginning or simple ground. Further, this is a circle of circles. . . . T h u s the Logic too in the Absolute Idea has returned to this simple unity which is its beginning. T h e pure immediacy of Being, in which at first all determination appears to be extinct or omitted by abstraction, is the Idea which has reached its adequate self-equality through mediation—that is, through the transcendence of mediation. The method is the pure Concept which is related only to itself; it is therefore the simple self-relation which is Being. 12

True or "good" infinity consists in the end of the process bending back to its beginning, thus constituting a circle, or, as Hegel says, a circle of circles. In this way, the process does not stray out into nothingness and disperse itself, but renews itself in closing itself. In so far as the pure Idea of Cognition is enclosed in subjectivity, and therefore is an impulse to transcend the latter; and, as last result, pure truth becomes the beginning of another sphere and science. This transition need here only be intimated. For the Idea posits itself as the absolute unity of the pure Concept and its Reality, and thus gathers itself into the immediacy of Being; and in doing so, as totality in this form, it is Nature.13

Just how the Idea releases itself into Nature is a problem that does not directly bear on a comparison with Dogen, so we shall leave

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the reader with this tantalizingly fascinating statement and go on to Dogen, who presents difficulties of a different order. To begin with, the entire framework or setting for Dogen is quite different from that of Hegel. Whereas for German Idealism the dialectic takes place within the context of a progressive historical process, Dogen makes no such claim but rather restricts his dialectic to each significant development, but not on a collective level. The Buddhist theory of history at Dogen's time was one of ongoing stages of decline: (i) Shobo, right dharma, for one thousand years after the death of Sakyamuni. This included teaching, practice and attainment. (2) Zobo, semblance of the dharma, for the next one thousand years. This included teaching and practice. (3) Mappo, lasting ten thousand years. Here there was only teaching; no practice, no attainment. Whereas Shinran of the Pure Land school and Nichiren of the Lotus school accepted the theory that their present age belonged to mappo and modified their teaching methods accordingly, Dogen denied this identification, asserting that the right dharma was always working, unhindered by the ethos of diverse periods of history. Dogen does not emphasize his use of dialectic, but it is very much present in the background. Its general formulation, which goes back to the Diamond Sutra, runs as follows: A is -A, therefore A is (thoroughly and really) A .

In C h ' a n / Z e n , the statement of identity is quite commonplace and frequently used in order to suggest the absolute nonduality of equality and differentiation, of emptiness and form, and so on. Underlying the statement of identity is the dialectical logic of identity and difference which appears in its classical form in the Diamond Sutra. Its paradigm can be stated as follows: " A is - A , therefore A is A . " T h u s " A " is at once negated and affirmed in dialectical fashion, through the mediation and authentication of absolute emptiness. Only then is " A " absolutely free, pure, and perfect: it attains its authenticity. 14

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As with any dialectic, the immediately given, or any kind of simple immediacy, is only a starting point, a point of departure, never what is "real." For Hegel, the immediate is simply the notyet-mediated, which he called "Being." Being goes over to its opposite, Nothing, and finally culminates in the synthesis of Being and Nothing, i.e., becoming. T h e goal of the whole dialectical process is the self-development of the Absolute (das Werden zu sich des Absoluten), the self-grasping of the absolute Concept (das Sichbegreifen des absoluten Begriffs). This dialectic is conceived in terms of legein and Logos; it is Logic, Dia-logic, and, ultimately, Onto-logic. Logic and Ontology coincide; both are conceived in terms of legein. The immediate is not a resting place for D5gen either, but it is not conceived as Being. For Dogen, what we begin with, the immediate, is not true immediacy, but rather a substantialization and objectification of whatever is being spoken of. This false immediacy must be negated; but this transition fundamentally moves from the position of eternalism (sasvata) to that of nihilism (uccheda). In other words, the negation of false, substantialized immediacy is in its turn another substantialization and objectification of reality, only this time conceived as nothing or the not. Paradoxical as it may sound, nothing can be substantialized, objectified and reified just as readily as Being. But because it is less easily recognized as such, the reification of nothing is more insidious.

This freedom, no-Buddha-nature itself, is the genuine realization of Buddha-nature. Hence Dogen emphasizes that both a preaching of having the Buddha-nature and a preaching of having no Buddhanature involve defamation of Buddhism. Dogen's idea of "no-Buddha-nature" clearly indicates the non-substantiality of the Buddhanature by rejecting both the "eternalist" view which substantializes and is attached to the idea of Buddha-nature, and the "nihilistic" view which also substantializes and is attached to the idea of no Buddha-nature. 15

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But the transition to a third stage does not land Dogen in a synthesis of the first two positions; rather, it drops the thinker or experiencer to a different level or dimension that leaves both positions, any possible "position" whatsoever, behind. It moves beyond and outside any duality whatsoever. T h e " n e g a t i o n " at work here is not merely logical, nor is it ontological negation in Hegel's sense; it is existential negation, the negation of emptiness. T h e " G r e a t D o u b t " and " G r e a t D e a t h " are not logical categories of negation. T h u s we see that the initial stage of " i m m e d i a c y " for Dogen is not a true immediacy. Paradoxically, in order to arrive at true immediacy, the first two objectified and substantialized stages must be negated. T r u e immediacy can only be arrived at by existential " m e d i a t i o n . " M a s a o Abe elucidates this dialectic with the following illustration: T h e following discourse given by the Chinese Zen master Ch'ingyuan Wei-hsin (Ja: Seigen Ishin) of the T ' a n g dynasty provides a key by which we may approach Zen philosophy. His discourse reads as follows: Thirty years ago, before I began the study of Zen, I said, "Mountains are mountains, waters are waters." After I got an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, I said, "Mountains are not mountains, waters are not waters." But now, having attained the abode of final rest (that is, Awakening), I say, "Mountains are really mountains, waters are really waters." 1 6

T h e truth expressed in this discourse is basically a foreshortened version of the truth embodied in the ox-herding pictures discussed in chapter i. Professor Abe comments as follows: Now, in the third and final stage, mountains are affirmed really as mountains, and waters are affirmed really as waters in their Reality. Emptiness empties itself, becoming non-emptiness, that is, true

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Fullness. Herein, all forms of anxiety and all forms of attachment, open or hidden, explicit and implicit, are completely overcome. With this great affirmation of mountains and waters, we have a realization of the true Self. The true Self is realized only through the total negation of no-self, which is in turn the total negation of egoself. Again, the total negation of total negation is necessary to attain the true Self as the great affirmation. One can objectify not only something positive but also something negative. O n e can conceptualize " n o - s e l f as well as "ego-self." To overcome all possible objectification and conceptualization in order to attain ultimate Reality and awaken to the true Self, the double negation of the "objectification approach" is necessary. 17 Perhaps the thinker who saw the futility of such an objectification approach most clearly was Kierkegaard, w h o distinguishes between an approximation-process (getting closer and closer to the truth through objectification and objective knowledge, but never getting there) and an appropriation-process (taking the leap of faith, making the truth subjectively and existentially one's own). 1 8 The existing individual who chooses to pursue the objective way enters upon the entire approximation-process by which it is proposed to bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible, because God is a subject, and therefore exists only for subjectivity in inwardness. 19

Since G o d can never be known or brought to light objectively, the process of approximation, of gradually getting to know more and getting closer to the "truth," is not only futile and irrelevant but betrays a fundamental misunderstanding. It is like a colorblind person searching everywhere for the color green. S o m e o n e w h o is colorblind (who objectifies) will never find the color green n o matter how l o n g and hard he searches. T h e very continuity of his searching blocks h i m from finding.

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O n l y in subjectivity is there decisiveness, to seek objectivity is to be in error. It is the passion of the infinite that is the decisive factor and not its content, for its content is precisely itself. In this manner subjectivity and the subjective "how" constitute the truth. 2 0

It was Kierkegaard's insight that existential truth lies not in any possible objective " w h a t " outside us, but in the " h o w " precipitated and intensified by the passion of the infinite. T h e objective truth of Christianity, the fact that the eternal entered time, that G o d became m a n , is logically absurd; it repels. T h u s the existing individual must a b a n d o n all searching outside himself, all approximating, and take the leap of faith and appropriate the truth in the how of his existence, make it his own. Kierkegaard zeroes in on the famous (or infamous) word aujheben, supersede, which forms the very crux of Hegel's dialectic. Kierkegaard's question, which was also Hegel's anxious concern, is whether anything actually occurs in the dialectical process, let alone progresses as was Hegel's claim. I am well aware that the German word aujheben has various and contradictory meanings; it has often enough been noted that it can m e a n both tollere and conservare. . . . Aujheben in the sense of tollere means to do away with, to remove; in the sense of conservare it means to preserve unaltered, not to do anything at all to that which is preserved. . . . Speculative philosophy removes every difficulty and then leaves me the difficulty of trying to determine what it really accomplishes by this so-called removal (aujheben).21

For Kierkegaard, if something is aufgehoben in the dialectical process, it is either simply removed or else it just stays as it is, unaltered, untransformed. Basically, nothing happens; there is no progress, no synthesis. For our purposes, what is important is Kierkegaard's insight into the utter futility of logic and objectivity (objectifying) where spiritual matters are concerned. W h a t is crucial is the most passionate inwardness that experiences the contra-

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diction of Christianity, the contradiction between time and eternity, breaks through all approximating objectification and takes the existential leap. T h e most basic illustration of Dogen's dialectic can be found in the fascicle on Buddha-nature, which we have already discussed to some extent in another context. We cite part of the story that Dogen subsequently comments on in considerable detail and depth. In a previous existence, the future fifth patriarch encountered the fourth patriarch, who tells him that he is too old to have the dharma transmitted to him, but promises to wait until he is reborn into this world again. When the future fifth patriarch is reborn, his mother first abandons him in a muddy creek but relents and retrieves him unharmed after seven days, and raises him. When the boy is seven years old, he again meets the fourth patriarch. The patriarch asked him, "What is your name?" The boy replied, "There is a name, but it is not an ordinary name." The master said, "What name is it?" "It is Buddha-nature," said the boy. The patriarch said, "You have no Buddha-nature." The boy replied, "You say no (Buddha-nature) because Buddha-nature is emptiness." 22

Later in the fascicle, Dogen picks another story to help make his point about no Buddha-nature: When the Sixth Chinese Patriarch Ta-chien Ch'an-shih of Ts'ao-hsi shan first went to practice under the Fifth Patriarch of Huang-mei shan, he was asked "Where do you come from?" He answered, "I am a man of Ling-nan." The Fifth Patriarch said, "What have you come for?" "I've come to become a Buddha," he replied. The Fifth Patriarch said, "People of Ling-nan have no Buddha-nature. How could you attain Buddhahood?" 23

T h e dialectical element is not spelled out for us here. Dogen simply states that "to have not yet experienced or articulated 'noBuddha-nature' is to have not yet attained Buddhahood." 2 4

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Finally Dogen employs one of his favorite devices and goes into linguistic somersaults, j u m b l i n g and confounding subject and predicate until the reader is left with a somewhat dizzy feeling. I must also ask Ta-kuei: "Even though you articulated that all sentient beings have no Buddha-nature, you did not say all Buddhanatures have no sentient being, or that all Buddha-natures have no Buddha-nature. Still less could you have seen, even in your dreams, that all Buddhas have no Buddha-nature. 25

T h e opposites in question here constitute a duality. Both Buddha-nature and no Buddha-nature are one-sided partialities blocking a realization of totality. T h e y are instances of the eternalism (Buddha-nature) and nihilism (no Buddha-nature) that are to be avoided at all costs. But the "middle w a y " between these two extremes does not lie " h a l f w a y " between them. We objectify and spatialize the middle way when we speak of it as lying halfway between two static extreme points. Since we are speaking of Buddha-nature here and Buddha-nature is impermanence, we must try to understand the middle way in a more appropriate, dynamic sense. The sharp vital quick itself of dharmas dwelling in their dharmapositions, is being-time. You musn't by your own maneuvers make it a nothingness; you musn't forcibly make it a being. 26

O u r inveterate, ingrained way of thinking makes us posit a being (Buddha-nature) with only the one alternative of negating that being (no Buddha-nature). But Dogen is telling us that we m u s n ' t forcibly make it (i.e., being-time) a being, nor by our own maneuvers make it a nothingness. " T h e sharp vital quick of dharmas dwelling in their dharma-situations" points to the fact that we are not confined to a continuous, horizontal plane here. T h e " m i d d l e " has simply dropped out of the whole opposition of Buddha-nature versus no Buddha-nature and landed in a different dimension.

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What is unique about this kind of dialectic? H o w does it differ from Hegel and from Heraclitus? Dogen's dialectic has no continuity; it is not a structure and it is not a process. Heraclitus' dialectic is primarily a structure; it does not move. In the statement " T h a t which differs from itself is in agreement," there is no movement or process, but rather simultaneous harmony. H a r m o n y (harmonia) is by its very nature simultaneous, in contrast to melody, which is discursive. Dogen's dialectic cannot constitute a structure because its elements don't persist. For the same reason, Dogen's dialectic does not constitute a process either. Far from running through a thesis (in itself) to an antithesis (for itself) to a synthesis (in and for itself) containing the first two terms, Dogen's dialectic simply gets rid of the first two terms. Thus, strictly speaking, it does not land in a third term at all but continuously leaps off into another dimension. But we must not objectify, reify and spatialize that dimension either. Rather, dimension is to be understood in its literal sense as a measuring through, as dynamic movement, not as a spatialized place-thing.

6. Time and eternity

To throw some light on Dogen's understanding of nikon (immediate now, right now, absolute present), we want to examine the Western medieval concept of the nunc stans, the standing now as articulated by St. Augustine and developed by Boethius in

The

Consolation of Philosophy (524) and by Petrus Damiani in On Divine Omnipotence (1067). T h e basic setting for speaking of the nunc stans has its roots in Plato's definition, in the Timaeus,

of time as the moving image of

eternity. In other words, time is moving, eternity is not. Augustine develops this laconic definition further. W h o shall hold it, and fix it, that it be settled awhile, and awhile catch the glory of that ever-fixed Eternity, and compare it with the times which are never fixed. . . . In the Eternal nothing passeth, but the whole is present. . . . W h o shall hold the heart of man, that it may stand still, and see how Eternity ever still-standing, neither past nor to come, uttereth the times past and to come? 1 T h u s , H e comprehends all that takes place in t i m e — t h e not-yetexisting future, the existing present, and the no-longer-existing past — i n an immutable and eternal present. 2 It remained for Boethius to fully explicate the concept of eternity and to distinguish it explicitly from that of perpetuity. Eternity is the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life. . . . Therefore, whatever is subject to the condition of time, even that w h i c h — a s Aristotle conceived the world to b e — h a s no beginning and will have no end in a life coextensive with the infinity of time, is such that it cannot rightly be thought eternal. For it does not comprehend and include the whole of infinite life all at once, since it does not embrace the future which is yet to come.

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Therefore, only that which comprehends and possesses the whole plenitude of endless life together, from which no future thing nor any past thing is absent, can justly be called eternal. Moreover, it is necessary that such a being be in full possession of itself, always present to itself, and hold the infinity of moving time present before itself. . . . It [the infinite motion of temporal things] binds itself to a kind of present in this short and transitory period which, because it has a certain likeness to that abiding, unchanging present, gives everything it touches a semblance of existence. But since this imitation cannot remain still, it hastens along the infinite road of time, and so it extends by movement the life whose completeness it could not achieve by standing still. Therefore, if we wish to call things by their proper names, we should follow Plato in saying that God indeed is eternal, but the world is perpetual. 3

Boethius formulated a definition of eternity that remained decisive for the whole period of Scholasticism: the whole, perfect and simultaneous possession of endless life. 4 Perhaps the greatest obstacle in our everyday way of conceiving things lies in our difficulty in reconciling the two factors of simultaneity and endlessness or limitlessness (interminabilis). To explicate this, Boethius employs the by-now-familiar image of divine knowledge surveying things from above. The person walking along on the ground can only see a limited stretch of the path before or behind him; a bird's eye or airplane view from above would be able to see the entire landscape. We shall come back to the problem of reconciling simultaneity with endlessness. 5 Suffice it for now to say that the whole problematic of eternity or the nunc stans in the medieval period is necessarily bound up with theological questions such as divine providence and free will that we do not wish to go into here. To sum up, eternity belongs to the life of God, and to God alone. In distinguishing between the eternity of God and the perpetuity of the world, Boethius succeeded in distancing the concept of eternity from the common, unfruitful conception of eternity as endless time.

96 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature In his work De Divina Omnipotentia, Petrus Damiani, or Peter Damian, continues in the direction of Boethius, adding a few insights and images of his own. God comprehends everything at once with complete clarity. The phrase "at once" (simul) recurs throughout the work almost with the emphasis of a Leitmotiv. Damian's image, comparable to Boethius' comprehensive view from above, is a comparison of a person in a theater who can see in front of or behind him, but not both at once, with someone who is not in but above the theater and can see at once the whole inner circumference of the theater. In this manner God sees all things at once in His presence. 6 Damian's expression for the nunc stans is a perpetual today (hodie sempiternum), but the description is basically the same. Nothing is added or taken away from this today, nothing changes in it. This today is an immutable eternity, indefectible (flawless, indefectible) and inaccessible. Everything in our lives that passes away from us or changes according to time stands in this today and persists immutably and immovably. 7 God's eternity is an immovable and immutable today without beginning or end. In it all times stand together all at once; future and past are always fixed and immobile just like the present. In the words of Thomas of Aquinas, the now (nunc, instans) that flows away in time (nunc fluens) stands in eternity (nunc stans). It is an eternal, not a temporal, present. It is a present that never ceases to be present. Although there are paradoxical aspects and difficulties in the medieval conception of the eternal now, the various thinkers are remarkably consistent among themselves. However we are to think it, the eternal now is immutable.

Nikon, the immediate now Turning now to Dogen, let us see what, if anything, his understanding of the immediate now has in common with the Western medieval eternal present. The following three points should be noted.

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(1) T h e most striking discrepancy between the two conceptions lies in the fact that the Western eternal present belongs exclusively to the life of God. In this sense, it is utterly transcendent to man. W e shall see that for D o g e n , particularly in the case of the immediate now, the categories of transcendence and immanence are applicable only in a very qualified sense. T h e immediate now is not transcendent to m a n in the sense that it belongs to the life of G o d and it is not immanent in the sense that m a n automatically realizes or possesses it. (2) W h a t the eternal present and the immediate now truly have in common is their strong emphasis on wholeness and entirety. Both encompass everything all at once, simultaneously.

Both

reject sheer endlessness of time as unworthy of the idea of eternity; endless time may well exist (as the perpetuity of the world for Western Scholasticism, as the beginninglessness and endlessness of time for Dogen), but to believe that this is eternity is to commit a grave error. Nothing can ever be together or entire or whole in an endless duration of time. Accordingly, wholeness and entirety are not to be understood quantitatively in the conventional sense. Therefore we find this verse (in the Lotus Sutra)-, "the duration of my life since I began practicing the Way of a Bodhisattva is even now not exhausted, and is of incalculable length." Know that the duration of a Bodhisattva's life is not bound to the present and not exhausted in the past. "Incalculable length" means "totally present." "Even now" means "complete duration of life." "Since I began practicing" covers every point in time and space. 8 W e are not going to experience "totality" b y existing for a long time or by traversing the breadth and length of the entire world. T h e totality of m y life and the expanse of the universe are not experienced at all in this way, let alone as a whole. A whole or a totality must be experienced all at once, and the only w a y to do this is to experience the totality of time or space in an instant or in a speck of dust.

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D o not think of heaven and earth as this world or the next; know that they co-exist eternally in each passing moment. Generally people never think about the nature of heaven and earth unless something unexpected occurs. For me, a sudden and unexpected sneeze is like an echo that symbolizes the instantaneous co-existence of life and death, heaven and earth in each moment. T h e entire content and meaning of heaven and earth and its relationship to the mind reduces itself to one eternal moment. 9 Not only past, present, and future but also heaven and earth exist together in each moment. This statement cannot be understood literally, nor can it be understood symbolically. It can only be experienced when,

as Dogen

says, something

unexpected

occurs. Students think that the expression "the universe" is some area of the cosmos, a certain world or even a specific country like C h i n a or Japan; or else they think that "great earth" contains thousands of worlds or is even just a single province or prefecture. In order to correctly study the phrases " u n i v e r s e " and "great earth," we must consider it over and over and not take them in a literal sense. Those expressions reveal the G r e a t Ultimate in the tiniest particle and the tiniest particle as the Great Ultimate—that is, attainment of the W a y transcends Buddhas and Patriarchs. It is not in the existence of great, not in the existence of small—it is the dignified activities of practicing Buddha. 1 0 To say that the duration of my life since I began practicing the way of the bodhisattva is of incalculable length does not mean that I have been existing for an immeasurable period of time, but rather that my life is completely present right now. T h e only possible time for anything to be present is the now. We do not experience a "length" of time called a life or even, say, a summer, at least not in the way we customarily think or speak of it. (3) T h e last point of comparison again shows a difference. It is perhaps the most basic and most difficult, and if we can throw

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some light on it, that will also enable us to understand the second point more concretely. In contrast to the Western medieval nunc stans, or standing now, Dogen's right-now does not stand, nor is it opposed to the nuncfluens,or flowing now, nor does it itself flow. It lacks the transitional continuity with past and present that would enable it to flow. Nor is it lifted up out of the flow of time, belonging to a transcendent being. T h e immediate now neither flows nor stands; it dwells. How can we think this dwelling? We must get beyond the conceptual alternatives of "standing" and "flowing." For this reason, "flowing" as a translation of kyoryaku could be misleading. We tend to think of flowing as the flowing of a river from one place to another or as "wind and rain moving from east to west." 1 1 We are less likely to have such an automatic pictorial association with an expression such as passage or, perhaps even better, taking place. In contrast to the common conception of time as flowing past, Dogen thinks the taking place of the concrete present in the selfobstruction of the thing. To explicate this difficult idea, we need to remember that one thing never obstructs another; it obstructs only itself. The vast sky does not obstruct the clouds nor do the clouds obstruct the vast sky. But what does it mean to say that a thing obstructs itself? This is language totally unfamiliar to the Western thinker. Kim has some helpful notes on the subject. Keige ("obstruction," "hindrance") does not imply, as its ordinary meaning would imply, a dualism of obstructor and obstructed. For Dogen, this word refers to "self-obstruction," which means perfect singularity and freedom. Hence, when reaching is said to be obstructed by itself, this means that reaching totally exerts itself and is radically singular and free. Ge wa ge o sae, ge o miru. Ge wa ge o gesuru nari. Ge is short for keige. Dogen gives the quintessential statement which is pivotal to the understanding of his thinking. In this expression, any word may replace "obstruction" (ge) thus yielding the logic of total exertion as applied to any dharma. For example: "A mountain mountain-s a mountain" (or: "A mountain obstructs a mountain"). This axiomatic statement epitomizes Dogen's an-

100 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature swer to the question of how to live responsibly and freely in a world of both duality and nonduality.12 W h e n a thing, in the broadest possible sense of that word, obstructs itself, it exerts itself totally and realizes itself fully. This is true whether we are speaking of a person or a m o u n t a i n . Of course, a person exerting and realizing himself is more readily comprehensible to us than a m o u n t a i n . But this is due to o u r conventional subject-object way of viewing things, which Dögen subverts. We think that an object, the m o u n t a i n , does not " d o " anything, is not capable of doing anything. But Dögen states that the m o u n t a i n flows, the river sits. T h e r e are no lifeless, static objects in the world unless we as subjects m a k e them so. To say that the mountain mountain-s is very close to what Heidegger is doing when he says that world worlds. W h a t do these kinds of statements accomplish that the more conventional statements " a m o u n t a i n is, there is a mountain; world is, there is a w o r l d " cannot? T h e conventional statements seem to be answering the tacit question of whether there is a mountain, whether there is a world or not. They assert bare, abstract existence, as opposed to nonexistence. T h e statement " t h e m o u n t a i n m o u n tains, world worlds" says what the mountain and the world do in their u n i q u e fashion. They do not just ascertain objective presence (Vorhandenheit) or nonpresence. T h e r e is a genuine link here between Dögen and Heidegger; neither accepts objective presence as adequate to characterize the reality of things. Heidegger polemicized throughout his life against the philosophical and the commonsense view of things as static, objectively present objects. Dögen's Zen experience gave him access to a dynamism at work in things that completely escapes the average person. In my opinion, the real affinities between Dögen and Heidegger lie not in their explicit conceptions of being and time, which are actually quite disparate despite the striking verbal similarity between Being and Time and uji (being-time), but in conceptions such as sustained exertion (gyöji, güjin) and perdurance (Austrag, Inständigkeit), think-

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ing, gathering and the Fourfold. By way of example, let us look at Dogen's version of the Fourfold. T h e Fourfold in Heidegger consists of the earth, the heavens, the godlike ones and mortals. These " d i m e n s i o n s " presence in the thing. Perhaps the best-known expression of this is in Heidegger's essay on " T h e T h i n g . " Instead of viewing the thing in the traditional philosophical way as an object stared at by a subject, as objective presence (Vorhandenheit), Heidegger describes the thing as the meeting place of the four dimensions' presencing. T h e thing —in this case, a j u g — " c o n t a i n s " the clay out of which it is made, the wine produced from grapes that have ripened on the earth u n d e r the heavens, and the suitability to be consumed by mortals offering a libation to the gods. The spring stays on in the water of the gift. In the spring the rock dwells, and in the rock dwells the dark slumber of the earth, which receives the rain and dew of the sky. In the water of the spring dwells the marriage of sky and earth. It stays in the wine given by the fruit of the vine, the fruit in which the earth's nourishment and the sky's sun are betrothed to one another. . . . In the gift of the outpouring that is drink, mortals stay in their own way. In the gift of the outpouring that is a libation, the divinities stay in their own way, they who receive back the gift of giving as-the-gift of the donation. In the gift of the outpouring, mortals and divinities each dwell in their different ways. Earth and sky dwell in the gift of the outpouring. In the gift of the outpouring earth and sky, divinities and mortals dwell together all at once.13

I by no means want to assert that Dogen has exactly the same Fourfold as Heidegger, nor do I want to stress the n u m b e r four. W h a t I do want to emphasize is the highly unusual idea in both thinkers of dimensions presencing in a thing. T h e word "dimensions" is not very apt either; one could also say " f a c t o r s " or "elem e n t s , " but those expressions tend to get represented as something substantial, and this distorts and obscures what is to be thought here.

102 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature Birth is like a person riding in a boat. Although the person prepares the sails, steers the course, and poles the boat along, it is the boat which carries him/her, and without which s/he cannot ride. By riding in a boat s/he makes this boat a boat. We must consider this moment. At such a moment, there is nothing but the boat's world. The heavens, the water, and the shore all become the boat's time, which is never the same as the time that is not the boat. By the same token, birth is what I give birth to, and I am what birth makes me. When one rides in a boat, one's body-mind and the dependent and proper rewards of karma are altogether the boat's dynamic working; the entire great earth and the entire empty sky are altogether the boat's dynamic working. Such is the I that is birth, the birth that is I. 1 4

The heavens, the water, the shore, one's body-mind and the dependent and proper rewards of karma all presence in the boat's dynamic working. The boat gathers these dimensions and lets them presence in itself. Conspicuously absent in Dögen's plurifold is the element or dimension of the divinities or the godlike. To understand why this is so, we need to examine briefly Dögen's version of "dharma realms," an idea that has its roots in Hua-yen Buddhism. Taking two opposing dimensions of the Fourfold, let us say that the godlike (die Göttlichen) corresponds roughly to the Absolute, the universal, whereas mortals are equivalent to the relative, the particular. The godlike, or the universal, constitutes one dharma realm (Skt. dharmadhätu, J p . hokkai) and mortals constitute another dharma realm. How are these two realms related? The history of Western philosophy and religion abounds with different versions of this relation, beginning with Plato's assertion of their separability and Aristotle's denial of it. For Plato, not only does absolute Beauty not need to be instantiated, but any instantiation distorts and mars it. For Aristotle, beauty exists only in the concretely existing individual. How do Hua-yen Buddhism and Dögen move beyond these formulations of the relation? By abolishing any possible kind of uni-

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versal, thereby freeing the particulars to interpenetrate each other totally without losing their unique individuality. That is a n abstract statement of something that needs to be experienced concretely. Buddhism formulates the relation between universal and particular as that between emptiness and form. Form does indeed correspond to the term particular, but emptiness does not correspond to the term universal. Emptiness is not any specific thing even in the most all-inclusive sense of the word thing. Absolute Beauty in Plato is the most universal Beauty of all, but it is still something "specific" in that is differs, for example, from absolute Justice or absolute Good. Emptiness is not a thing at all, not even the most universal thing. It is no-thing. Being itself no-thing, it can become a n y thing without ever being restricted to that thing. T h e r e is no hindrance at all between emptiness and a n y thing. And because of the dynamic working of emptiness, there is no hindrance between individual particular things or events. Although the truth that "birth is the presence of total dynamism" (zenki) has nothing to do with the beginning and end, and it fills the entire great earth and the entire empty sky, it does not obstruct (any other) "birth as the presence of total dynamism," nor does it obstruct (any) "death as the presence of total dynamism." Although "death is the presence of total dynamism" and it fills the entire great earth and the entire empty sky, it does not obstruct (any other) "death as the presence of total dynamism," nor does it obstruct (any) "birth as the presence of total dynamism." Therefore, birth does not obstruct death and death does not obstruct birth. 15 The passage in the fascicle Uji corresponding to this reads as follows: "Reaching" is obstructed by "reaching," not by "not-reaching"; "not-reaching" is obstructed by "not-reaching," not by "reaching." "Mind" obstructs "mind" and sees "mind." "Words" obstruct "words" and see "words." "Obstruction hinders obstruc-

104 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature tion and sees obstruction; obstruction obstructs obstruction": this is time. 16

Obstruction and impeding and their apparent opposites interpenetrating and interfusing are very fundamental concepts in Hua-yen thought and in Dogen. We need to take a final brief look at the Hua-yen conception of the universe, the expression of which seems deceptively spatial, and then we shall consider Dogen's more temporalized and dynamic version. We turn to D. T. Suzuki's little-known book The Essence of Buddhism for assistance in this task. Broadly stated, the gist of Kegon [i.e., Hua-yen] philosophy consists in viewing the world in a fourfold way: 1. A world of ji 2. A world of ri 3. A world of ri and ji perfectly interfused 4. A world of ji where each individual ji is seen as interfused with every other individual^' 17

Ji corresponds to the particular; in Sanskrit, the word is rupam, meaning form, what is sensuous, what takes up space and by nature resists replacement by another form. Viewed temporally, it has the meaning of "event." Ri corresponds to the universal, the principle; in Sanskrit, sunyata, commonly translated as "emptiness." These four "worlds" are actually four ways of viewing one and the same world which, however, effect a profound difference in the way that world looks. The first view, the world as ji or material particulars, corresponds roughly to our own commonsense materialistic view and needs little comment. The second view sees the world as governed by the workings of some principle, such as the law of cause and effect. 18 Hegel's dialectical process could also serve as an example of ri, or principle. The third view states the relation between universal and particular and is the last view

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105

accessible to ordinary logical thought. Plato could serve as a clearcut example of this view. T h e fourth view has no counterpart in Western thought, in H i n d u i s m , or, for that matter, in most other forms of Buddhism. T h e Western thinker who comes closest to the fourth view, Leibniz, fails to reach it because he retains a universal m o n a d — G o d as the monad of all monads. Most philosophers and religious thinkers may reach the stage of riji muge,19 but not that of the jiji muge. They may teach pantheism or "panentheism," a term used by some German philosophers; they may follow the mystic way, but they have not yet attained the Kegon interpretation of the world. To envisage the Kegon world, it is best to distinguish two forms of intuition: sensual-intellectual and spiritual, and it is the spiritual that opens up the new world-vista for us. Its characteristic may be said to consist in synthesizing spatial and temporal intuitions. Sensual-intellectual intuitions are conceptual, static and spatial, and are not qualified for grasping life as it moves on. The spiritual intuitions, on the contrary, dive straightforwardly into life itself; they are at once temporal and spatial; they move with time and abide with space; they are forever fleeing and flowing, yet they never depart from the spot where they are; they start from "here-now" and return to "here-now"; they seem to be always at the same place and eternally abiding with "now," and yet they are moving every minute of the hour, every second of the minute; " I am interviewing you this very moment and I have never seen you since time immemorial"; "I am here absorbed in meditation and coming out of it one thousand miles away." These are not logical conclusions derived from certain definable premises but direct statements of a highly trained mind. They transmit the state of affairs taking place in the juji muge world of Kegon. 2 0 As far as I know, Western philosophy does not have the category of spiritual intuition. In fact, even intellectual intuition is highly suspect to most rationalistic philosophers. T h e only kind of intuition universally acceptable is sense intuition. Intellectual intuition can be said to be a direct apprehension of something by the mind.

106 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature For example, some people can look at a column of figures and " s e e " the a m o u n t of the sum of those figures without going through the steps of adding individual n u m b e r s . In the auditory realm, absolute pitch might be an additional example of intellectual intuition. A person with absolute pitch can hear one note and say what it is without referring to any other notes. H e hears, for example, A-flat, absolutely. W h a t , then, can Suzuki m e a n by spiritual intuition? Spiritual intuitions are not static, conceptual or spatially objectifying. T h e y involve a different way of perceiving both space and time; they perceive the world differently from the way it is usually perceived. Suzuki's claim is that spiritual intuitions are not something cooked u p by the imagination; they perceive the world as it truly is, as it is accessible to the enlightened mind. H o w are these processes of interpénétration and interfusion in the Kegon or H u a - y e n world possible? We tend to think of things as separate, stable entities at best perhaps related to each other, but certainly not interfused with each other. A tree or any other object stands next to another tree, each firmly localized in space and time. Certainly, when we perceive the trees as objects. But the Buddhist will say that not only is the tree not necessarily an object, it is not even a thing in the ordinary sense of that word. It is more aptly described as an event than as an object or thing. T h e tree is not static; it is constantly changing. T h i n g s are going on in it; it is impermanent.

In view of Kegon's dynamic and temporal interpretation of the Dharmadhâtu or universe, it seems to be better now to retain the original meaning of ji as event. The Kegon philosophers, like all other Buddhists, do not believe in the reality of an individual existence, for there is nothing in our world of experience that keeps its identity even for a moment; it is subject to constant changes. The changes are, however, imperceptibly gradual as far as our human senses are concerned, and are not noticed until they pass through certain stages of modification. Human sensibility is bound up with

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the notion of time-divisions, it translates time into space, a succession of events is converted into a spatial system of individual realities, and the latter are regarded as monads remaining in being all the time, and independent, though not absolutely, of other monadic existences. Properly speaking, the Kegon idea of enyû muge, "perfectly unimpeded interpénétration," is attained only when our consciousness is thoroughly pervasive with a feeling for a never-ending process of occurrences. . . . When we gather up what commonly lies underneath these ideas, we can see that Buddhists have conceived an object as an event and not as a thing or substance. . . . The Buddhist conception of "things" as samskàra (or sankhâra), that is, as "deeds" or "events," makes it clear that Buddhists understand our experience in terms of time and movement, and therewith the Kegon conception oijiji muge becomes intelligible.21

An object can never become another object; in fact, it cannot become anything at all. Far from being equated with the lamentable fact of transience, Buddhist impermanence is what makes wholeness and the experience of wholeness or totality possible. To convey something of the "dynamicity" or dynamic working of Dogen's conception of the interpénétration and interfusion of all things, let us compare it with the Hua-yen version. Although the two views are fundamentally compatible, Dôgen's emphasis falls more on the actual taking place of this interpénétration; it is more temporal than spatial, although temporality and spatiality both have for him a significance quite different from that which they usually have in the West. Blake's poem about holding infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour is a good example of the Hua-yen view of the universe. If I am going to experience "infinity" at all, it will be in the palm of my hand. I am not going to experience it by wandering around the whole world because that kind of wandering, be it ever so extensive, can never yield any experience of wholeness or totality whatever. Similarly, if I am going to experience "eternity," it is going to be in an " h o u r " (better, a moment). I am not going to experience eternity by living a long, long life lasting as

108

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long as possible because, again, that would yield no experience of wholeness or totality. T h i s should make some sense to most of us. Now, Dôgen goes a step further and tries to convey what it is like to hold infinity in the palm of your h a n d and eternity in an hour. H e tries to express in language how that actually takes place. Suzuki states that the H u a - y e n idea of perfectly unimpeded interpénétration is attained only when our consciousness is thoroughly pervaded with a sense of never-ending occurrence. K i m ' s introductory essay to Flowers of Emptiness can further o u r understanding of what this might m e a n concretely. Dôgen 's view of total exertion, however, is far more dynamic than the H u a Yen approach. To illustrate with a few of Dôgen 's favorite expressions, one dharma is said to "leap out" of itself (choshutsu), and "leap into" itself (chônyu). By leaping out and leaping into, the single dharma at once transcends and embraces all dharmas. This dharmic dynamism is characterized by another expression, kappappat or kappat-supatchi, which refers to the movement of a fish out of water. The relationship of individual dharmas to each other in the universal context is also quite graphically depicted in that all dharmas are described as "crashing and smashing into each other" (chikujaku-katsujaku) in unity and freedom. When one dharma lives out its life, all dharmas become that dharma, and there is only this one dharma in the entire universe. A dharma is never juxtaposed with others; therefore, dharmas never oppose one another in dualistic fashion. A dharma is, by definition, that particularity which transcends all forms of dualism; it is both independent of and harmonious with all dharmas. 22

T h e movement of a fish out of water and the crashing and smashing of all things are both examples of movement that does not go anywhere. W e are accustomed to thinking of movement as local movement, as m o v e m e n t from one place to another. This is not the kind of movement that Dôgen wants to convey. W e might look to some sort of growth, some development from potentiality to actuality, but Dôgen, totally against common sense, rejects this

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kind of " m o v e m e n t " altogether. For him, everything is already " t h e r e , " presencing a n d expressing (dotaku) itself in its own u n i q u e way. T h e m o u n t a i n flows, the river sits. It is not important that the river flows f r o m one place to the other or that the m o u n tain appears to be motionless. Mountains do not lack the qualities of mountains. Therefore they always abide in ease and always walk. You should examine in detail this quality of the mountains' walking. Mountains' walking is just like human walking. Accordingly, do not doubt mountains' walking even though it does not look the same as human walking. . . . If you doubt mountains' walking, you do not know your own walking; it is not that you do not walk, but that you do not know or understand your own walking. 23

" W a l k i n g " is one way of describing what mountains, and also h u m a n s , do. " P r a c t i c e " and "total exertion" are others. Expressing this activity in terms of time, Dogen states: Because there is no other time than this very moment, "existencetime" is always the entire time. Existing things, existing phenomena are all times; all existence and the entire world are embraced within the time of every single moment. Ponder for a while whether there is any existence or world outside of this present moment. 24

Holding infinity in the palm of one's h a n d and eternity in an h o u r is an " o l d " idea, and yet Dogen's version gives it a new, radical twist. Basically, it is a variant of the old philosophical idea that all is O n e and the O n e is all. This has generally been understood to m e a n that the O n e subsumes all, the universal subsumes the particular. Any version of this idea that gets away from the subsumption indigenous to the schema universal-particular begins to move in a direction that is more bold, radical and interesting. T h e question then becomes: how is all O n e ? T h e schema universal-particular so basic to our thinking con-

110 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature ceives of the all quantitatively. Dogen speaks not of infinity, but of totality; and this totality is not to be thought quantitatively, but qualitatively. We turn once again to a passage from Uji in order to throw some light on how this is to be thought. We set the self out in array and make that the whole world.25

I myself am not a substantial thing (svabhava), n o r is anything else in the world. This m e a n s that fundamentally there is no obstruction between m e and anything else. I myself a m being-time and so is everything else in the world. If I can stop m y habit-energy from substantializing everything, including and especially myself, I will n o longer see things exclusively as dead, static objects and I can slip out of the subject-object structure of experiencing. T h e n , when I look at a m o u n t a i n , I become the m o u n t a i n and the mountain becomes me. This occurs most readily and appropriately with nature; it is less likely to occur, for example, with an oil refinery. I once tried to convey something like this to someone at an upstate resort hotel. H e asserted with firm conviction that all thinking was calculation. W e were sitting over coffee by a long window looking out onto a m o u n t a i n chain. I asked him to look at the mountain and tell m e if he was calculating. T h e r e was a long pause, and he answered no. T h e mountain had become for him, not an object of calculation, but a presence. A n d when things are not seen as objects, the person looking ceases to be a subject. T h e whole structure of experience alters, shifts. This is a form of "exertion," of "practice." This kind of "looking" is perhaps best explicated by Plotinus in the section of his Enneads entitled " T h e Good or the O n e . " For this reason one can "neither speak nor write" about it. Rather, we speak and write about it only in order to lead to it, to awaken from words and concepts to seeing (Schau) and to point the way, so to speak, for him who wants to see something (erschauen). For teaching helps only to find the way, the beginning of the journey; he who wants to see something must then enact the seeing himself. 2 6

Time and eternity

II I

When the one who sees (der Schauende) looks at himself when he is seeing, he will see himself as so sublime; or rather, he will be united with himself as such a sublime one and experience himself thus, for he has become simple and one (einfach). But the one who is seeing does not see what is seen in that moment—the expression is admittedly bold—(if one can call the one who is seeing and what is seen two-fold rather than calling them both one), does not distinguish it, does not represent it as dual. Rather, he has, so to speak, become another; no longer himself and not his own, he is drawn into the upper world and belongs to That, and is thus One in that, so to speak, center touches center.27 Plotinus "speaks and writes" about it (That, the One) only in order to guide someone along the way leading to it. We are to awaken from words and concepts, leaving them behind us, and attain to seeing. The mind, not just the physical eyes, sees reality directly without the mediation of words, concepts and discursive thinking. No kind of true seeing is discursive. It is immediate and all at once. This is the meaning of the word "insight." No one can do this seeing for someone else; you must do it yourself. In seeing, the one seeing and what is seen cease to be dual; they become one. The one seeing is no longer himself; center touches center and he belongs to the One. When you have arrived within this field of suchness, then it (the comings and goings of myriad phenomena and numberless grasses [things]) is a single grass and a single form. . . . As the time right now is all there ever is, each being-time is without exception the entire time. A being-grass and a being-form are both times. Entire being, the entire world, exists in the time of each and every now. Just reflect: right now, is there an entire being or an entire world missing from your present time, or not?28 The entire world is in the present time, the right-now, not in a numerical, quantitative sense, but in the sense that there is nothing outside the right-now.

I 12

Impermanence Is Buddha-nature

Thus the views of all beings are not the same. You should question this matter now. Are there many ways to see one thing, or is it a mistake to see many forms as one thing? You should pursue this beyond the limit of pursuit. Accordingly, endeavors in practice-realization of the way are not limited to one or two kinds. The ultimate realm has one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways. 29 A painter—for example, a C é z a n n e or a Van G o g h — s e e s a landscape differently from the rest of us. H e is not expressing himself or his feelings in the painting; he is painting what he sees. It is not only that there is water in the world, but there is a world in water. It is not just in water. There is also a world of sentient beings in clouds. There is a world of sentient beings in the air. There is a world of sentient beings in fire. There is a world of sentient beings in earth. There is a world of sentient beings in the phenomenal world. There is a world of sentient beings in a blade of grass. There is a world of sentient beings in one staff. Wherever there is a world of sentient beings, there is a world of Buddha ancestors. You should thoroughly examine the meaning of this. 30 D ô g e n is constantly exhorting us not to think in our habitual way. Again and again the phrase "do not think" or some similar phrase appears, followed by the everyday, commonsense, flat way of looking at things. By way of conclusion, w e shall take a brief look at what D ô g e n and Heidegger have to say about "thinking."

7. Thinking

O u r experience of the world seems to hinge upon the way we "think." Here the meaning of thinking is so broad that it can encompass totally different activities such as programming a computer, composing a symphony, writing an essay, or meditating. But, as we have stated repeatedly throughout this study, it is crucial to cultivate a kind of thinking that does not objectify, substantialize, reify, spatialize and conceptualize. Given the enormous force of stubborn, ingrained habit, this is no easy thing to do. O n e might be tempted to speculate on why it is that our thinking so universally distorts reality, but the only answer, short of a theodicy, would probably have to be the brute, given facticity of avidya, ignorance. It simply is so. There is no "why." Judeo-Christianity has the Fall of man. Plato has his cave. No one seems to start out under optimum conditions. Both Dogen and Heidegger, in somewhat different ways, of course, speak of a kind of thinking that does not distort the world. Dogen calls it "nonthinking," Heidegger calls it "thinkingtoward" (Andenken) and "sensing" (Besinnung). We shall take a look at Dogen first. After sitting, a monk asked Great Teacher Yueh-shan Hung-tao: "What are you thinking of in the immobile state of sitting?" The master replied: "I think of not-thinking." The monk asked: "How can one think of not-thinking?" The master replied: "By nonthinking." 1

Dogen's dialectic is implicitly at work here. We do not start out with "immediacy." We start out with objectification—all thinking (shiryo) objectifies. Then we negate thinking to arrive at not-thinking (fushiryo). But this is again an objectification and negation of

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the process of thinking itself. A final step is necessary, nonthinking (hishiryo), to attain the immediacy of things presencing as they are. K i m comments as follows: In this paragraph Dogen emphatically holds that zazen is thinking. More often than not, zazen is psychologized in a reductionistic way such that it is associated with pure experience or pure consciousness, as if there were no intellectual content. But without thinking, sitting is blind; without sitting, thinking is impotent. Thus singleminded sitting (shikan-taza) is not an idle sitting with blank mind, but the plenum of the How's thinking. 2 W h a t is this H o w to which thinking belongs? The monk said: "Not-thinking is the How's thinking." . . . The Great Teacher said: "By nonthinking." Although it is quite evident that we employ this nonthinking (in zazen), we always use nonthinking in order to think of not-thinking. In nonthinking there is the " W h o , " and this " W h o " upholds the "self." . . . The " H o w " (of zazen) and the "thusness" (of Buddha-actualization), therefore, appear simultaneously. 3 In nonthinking, our everyday busying consciousness is supplanted by a different kind of awareness. Subject, ego and self give way to the H o w or W h o . D o g e n is pointing to a dimension of uncanniness in our consciousness, to the experience of no-self and the realization of the H o w or W h o . One may falsely believe that it is oneself that hears the birds sing in the spring, and sees the leaves fall in autumn. This is not so. 4 Here D o g e n is remarkably close to Heidegger, w h o repeatedly and emphatically states that w e do not know w h o or what the h u m a n being is. Ironically, we all tend to read right past this statement, failing to realize that it is not adding something to our store

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of information, but really asking us to question a lifelong conviction that we know who we are. Most of us cannot even see that there is an existential question here. After all, if someone does not know who he is, he must be having an "identity crisis." There are generally considered to be three kinds of mind: citta, the discriminating mind; karit, the mind of grass and trees (the non-discriminating mind); and irita, the mind of truth. Of these minds it is the discriminating mind which causes one to awaken to the Buddhaseeking mind {Bodhi-mind). "Bodhi" and "citta" are both Sanskrit words. The former, "Bodhi," translates as "the Way"; the latter, "citta," as "discriminating mind." Although one cannot awaken the Buddha-seeking mind without a discriminating mind, these minds are not the same and should not be confused. The latter is only a means of attaining the former. Putting another's enlightenment before one's own is the way of those who have themselves awakened the Buddha-seeking mind.5 The mind of grass and trees, the nondiscriminating mind, the mind that has never discriminated, needs no further comment. At least in this fascicle, called "Awakening the Buddha-seeking Mind," Dogen does not develop the mind of truth any further. The fascicle centers on the discriminating mind and the Buddhaseeking mind. Dogen continues his discussion of the Buddha-seeking mind: This mind is not innate nor does it arise through recent experience, neither is it single nor plural, definable or indefinable, within ourselves or universal. It bears no relation to the future or past, and neither can we say it "is" or it "isn't" nor is it the essence of ourselves, others, or both, nor does it suddenly occur, but it arises as the gradual result of a spiritual link between ourselves and the Buddha. This mind cannot be transmitted by the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas nor can it be induced through our own efforts. Only a spiritual link between ourselves and the Buddha can awaken the Buddha-seeking mind. 6

I 16 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature Dogen nearly outdoes his illustrious predecessor, N a g a r j u n a , with these negations. T h e Buddha-seeking m i n d is not something that we are born with, nor is it something we acquire from experience. It is neither innate n o r empirical. T h u s the two extreme poles of Western (and most Eastern) thought are excluded. It is neither within ourselves and thus individual or particular, nor is it universal. It bears no relation to the f u t u r e or the past; it awakens only in the present. But Dogen does not leave us in a complete aporia. T h e Buddha-seeking mind awakens owing to a spiritual link between ourselves and the Buddha. The awoken Buddha-seeking mind is neither the consequence of our own nor of another's effort. When we awaken the Buddha-seeking mind, even if only for a moment, all things become conducive to its growth.7

W h e n the Buddha-seeking mind awakens, it transmutes the quality of all our thinking, o u r experiencing, and all things that we encounter serve to nourish and increase it. Things of the world are seen in a different light. In his short fascicle on rules for zazen, Dogen concludes with this statement: Sit solidly in samadhi and think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen. Zazen is not learning to do concentration. It is the dharma gate of great ease and joy. It is undefiled practice-enlightenment. 8

H e r e we learn that zazen is not concentration. I recall hearing Soen Roshi say on one occasion that Zen is not meditation. All our words for this kind of " t h i n k i n g " fall short of the mark. Perhaps a less inappropriate way of describing it would lie in the direction of transparency and openness. You figure there is self where there is no self. . . . You do not cut off worldly mind, which should be cut off. . . . You should know that

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arousing practice in the midst of delusion, you attain realization before you recognize it. At this time you first know that the raft of discourse is like yesterday's dream, and you finally cut off your old understanding bound up with the vines and serpents of words. 9

To cut off worldly mind and our old understanding means to cease regarding things in the world merely as categorized objects. The distinction that Dôgen makes between knowing and understanding is of some help. The Buddha-seeking mind has something to do with understanding; it has nothing to do with knowing. Yet the ancient Buddha's word cannot be mistaken. How should we understand this? Even if you do not understand it, you should not ignore it. So, be determined to understand it. Since this word is already expounded, you should listen to it. Listen until you understand. . . . Thus, understand that the way is not a matter of your knowing or not knowing. 10

Listen until you understand, says Dôgen. Here he brings understanding and thinking close to listening and receptivity, as opposed to knowing, which is at best related to facts and information and more frequently has to do with things we think we know, with preconceptions and fixed views about things. "Understanding" in this passage is very close to Plotinus' seeing. This dharma is such that it cannot be attained by grasping or searching about. In the realm of seeing, knowledge vanishes. 11

Understanding, seeing, Buddha-seeking mind "neither grasps nor rejects, is not concerned with self-views and does not stagnate in emotional feelings." 12 Finally we are told that brilliance is not primary, understanding is not primary, conscious endeavor is not primary, introspection is not primary. Without using any of these, harmonize body-and-mind and enter the Buddha way.13

I 18 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature Of course, " u n d e r s t a n d i n g " is being used in a different, more negative sense in this passage. As for the term "introspection," commonly associated with most forms of meditation, the glossary to the translation we have cited, Moon in a Dewdrop, tells us: Introspection (nensokan)—literally, memory, recollection (nen), thought, ideas (so), and observation or insight (kan). D o g e n indicates zazen is not visualization, insight, or analytical observation. 1 4

If all these remarks do nothing else, they ought at least to make us realize that we are not clear as to what all these terms designating mental activity precisely mean. W e now turn to two of the other names that Dogen gives to the Buddha-seeking mind: straightforward mind and being unstained. This will conclude our discussion of Dogen on thinking and lead into Heidegger. "Bits and pieces of straightforward mind" means all the bits and pieces moment after moment are straightforward mind. Not only one or two pieces, but all bits and pieces. T h e lotus leaf is perfectly round, round as a mirror. T h e tip of the water chestnut is extremely sharp, sharp as a gimlet. Although straightforward mind resembles a mirror, it is bits and pieces. Though it resembles a gimlet, it is bits and pieces. 1 5

Instead of just n a m i n g m i n d , the phrase "all bits and pieces m o m e n t after m o m e n t " attempts to capture the very dynamic working of mind. It is not a matter of one or two bits and pieces, but of all bits and pieces. Nothing is to be discarded or left out. M i n d is not an entity, but an activity. " S t r a i g h t f o r w a r d " means unswerving, undualistic. Straightforward mind resembles a mirror in that it reflects. It resembles a gimlet in that it penetrates. Yet mirror and gimlet, while seeming to embody functions of the mind, are still entities. T h u s , after each comparison Dogen adds

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"it is bits and pieces" to indicate the actual reflecting and penetrating of straightforward mind. O u r second passage discusses the meaning of "being unstained." To be unstained does not mean that you try forcefully to exclude intention or discrimination, or that you establish a state of nonintention. Being unstained cannot be intended or discriminated at all. Being unstained is like meeting a person and not considering what he looks like. Also it is like not wishing for more color or brightness when viewing flowers or the moon. 16

Here "unstained" replaces the more customary term "undefiled." Intention, purpose and goal-orientation are inimical to being unstained. Discrimination and any sort of duality are also detrimental to it. But we cannot forcefully try to exclude those attitudes, for that forcing is itself intentional and discriminatory. We cannot will not to will. W h a t kind of attitude or condition is "being unstained"? Meeting a person and not considering what he looks like is true, direct meeting. Considering what someone looks like is to stand back from him, looking at him not as a person, but as an object. In considering what he looks like, I notice what clothes he wears, his posture, color and general bearing, whether he has gained or lost weight, whether he looks older. This attitude has nothing to do with genuine concern for the person's welfare. Considering what he looks like might be said to be the diametric opposite of seeing. W h e n looking at flowers or the moon, we should not wish them to have more color or brightness. To do this is to have an idealized standard in mind which measures and ultimately condemns as inferior what we are looking at. We do not see the colored flowers or the bright moon present to us. We miss seeing them in their unique suchness. Here I sat waiting, waiting, but for nothing Beyond good and evil, sometimes enjoying light,

120 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature Sometimes shadow, completely only play, Completely lake, completely noon, completely time without goal.17

From the period of Being and Time, Heidegger consistently polemicized against a certain kind of thinking that is representational, viewing everything within its ken as "objectively p r e s e n t " (vorhanden). This kind of thinking does not see things in their usefulness and contextuality, but objectifies t h e m as Cartesian, isolated, static, lifeless, extended things. In later works this gets developed into calculative thinking, the thinking of technology, whose root is metaphysics. In the course of his later writings, Heidegger developed an alternative kind of thinking that he called Besinnung and Andenken, commonly translated as "meditative t h i n k i n g " or "reflection," and " r e m e m b r a n c e . " T h e r e is a remarkable affinity between Heidegger's representational and calculative thinking and Dogen's ordinary, discriminating mind (citta), and between Heidegger's meditative thinking and Dogen's B u d d h a - m i n d . Perhaps most remarkable of all is the fact that they both make such a distinction at all between two kinds of thinking. In general, with the possible exception of the poet Holderlin and two or three Pre-Socratics, Heidegger's rather bold claim is that we do not yet think. This means that the whole of Western thought beginning with Plato has been metaphysical. T h u s the only kind of thinking that has been actualized in the history of Western philosophy is the metaphysical, representational and calculative kind of thinking. W h a t are the general characteristics of thinking u p to now— that is, representational thinking—and how is it related to metaphysics? In What Calls for Thinking, Heidegger attempts to show the primordial Greek m e a n i n g of the terms legein and noein, a meaning that they retained u p through Aristotle. Heidegger translated legein as letting-lie-before-us, noein as taking-into-heed.

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T h e two are mutually interpenetrating. In order to "perceive" something, w e must let it lie before us. This letting is not simply passive behavior, but involves refraining from any kind of interference. W e do not grasp, order, categorize or distort in any way; w e simply let something lie before us. In so doing, however, we are already taking it into heed. T h e taking of taking-into-heed is not a grasping—which it will later become as capio, concept, and Griff, Begriff—but allows what lies before us to arrive, to come to presence. Meanwhile, the legein, which has not ceased its activity but steadily interacts with noein, gathers together and preserves what noein takes into heed. T h i s is Heidegger's bold attempt at something enormously difficult, if not altogether impossible: to describe the "simplest" thing in the world—preconceptual experience. In some ways it sounds strange; in other ways it sounds simplistic. In order to be able to understand what Heidegger is trying to get at, w e ourselves have to try in some way to arrive at that way of perceiving. Heidegger gives as an example, the sea. W e may perhaps be less likely to categorize and conceptualize the sea than most things. To some extent, most of us are capable of just listening to its rhythmic sound and looking at its incessant m o v e m e n t without injecting any logical categories or, worse yet, any subjective, "romantic" (again, a category) feelings and "interpretations" into it. To understand this primordial structure of legein and noein is to understand what thinking was for the Greeks. Heidegger says that for a brief time this structure brings about the revealing of truth, aletheuein: to unconceal and keep unconcealed what is unconcealed. T h e fact that Heidegger later retracts this attribution of truth to the Greeks and acknowledges it as his o w n need not overly concern us here. W e are more interested in the p h e n o m e n o n than in accurately placing it historically. But what happens to the structure of legein and noein, to thinking? T h i n k i n g becomes the legein of logos in the sense of the proposition and noein in the sense of perceiving through reason. Propositions and reason then become ratio for the R o m a n s . T h i n k i n g

122 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature becomes the rational and legein has become logic, propositions and j u d g m e n t ; noein has become reason. Heidegger claims that in the d a w n of the West thinking was not a grasping, a conceiving; thinking was not conceptual. 1 8 T h e first kind of thinking thus has the following characteristics that all belong together and are interconnected: it is representational, calculative, logical, rational, conceptual and one-track. W e can rephrase these characteristics as objectifying, reifying, substantializing and conceptualizing. Briefly stated, this kind of thinking distorts and manipulates what is. It perpetuates the activity of framing. O u r understanding of the world is metaphysical; everything is ordered and interpreted in the schema of cause and effect. T h e metaphysics of Christianity extends this schema and has it culminate in the idea of G o d as cause of the world. Predestination and fate are similarly thought to be a kind of " c a u s e . " O n l y the holy, this central element in Holderlin's poems, manages to escape this metaphysical schema of cause and effect; it is difficult to think of the holy as "cause." T u r n i n g to the second kind of thinking, we run into a rather serious problem of translation. Heidegger has two words to characterize this kind of thinking, neither of which has an exact equivalent in English. T h e words are Besinnung and Andenken, usually translated as "meditative thinking" and " r e m e m b r a n c e . " I a m critical of these translations but must confess that I do not have better alternatives. "Meditative thinking" is headed in the right direction, in that meditative thinking certainly stands in contrast to representational, calculative thinking. But the word " m e d i t a t i o n " will not do for what Heidegger has in mind. First of all, there are m a n y different forms of meditation. Some forms attempt to concentrate on one thing; others on nothing; still others on following the breath, and there are m a n y more. O n e dictionary, probably not a very good one, has as a first definition for meditation: " t o plan in the mind, think with a view to planning or acting." This sounds closer to calculative thinking than to Besinnung.

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M o s t forms of meditation involve some kind of "turning within." This is true of Eastern meditation as well as of the Western forms of Marcus Aurelius, Descartes and Husserl, although in very different ways. But Heidegger's Besinnung does not coincide with a "turning within." O n e might think that "contemplation" would do the trick. But in Wissenschaft und Besinnung Heidegger discusses the R o m a n translations of theorein and theoria, which read contemplan and contemplatio. Heidegger states that this translation obliterates the m e a n i n g of the Greek words. Contemplan means to put something into one section and fence it in there. Templum is the Greek temenos that comes from a completely different experience from theorein. Temnein means to cut, to divide. The indivisible is the atmeton, a-tomon, atom. 19 So w e see that this will not do either. "Reflective thinking" might be somewhat better if we could distance the word from its meaning in the G e r m a n tradition from Kant to Hegel. Heidegger himself, however, is quite firm in stating that he is not talking about Reflexion. We are not talking about thinking. We remain outside mere reflection that makes thinking its object. Great thinkers, first Kant and then Hegel, recognized what is unfruitful about this reflection. Thus they had to attempt to reflect themselves out of this reflection. 20 T h e s e are not merely problems of translation; they are questions of meaning. T h e term Besinnung is not a technical philosophical term out of, say, G e r m a n Idealism. It is a c o m m o n , everyday term with a rich variety of possible meanings. It has its roots in both the mental and the physical sphere. T h e root noun Sinn has both signification, of " m e a n i n g " and of "sense," as in the senses (die Sinne). T h u s

124 Impermanence Is Buddha-nature Besinnung is really a kind of "sensing" that includes the whole being, body and mind. Pursuing the primordial meaning of the word noein, Heidegger states: Noein implies a perceiving which never was nor is a mere receiving of something. The noein perceives beforehand by taking to mind and heart. The heart is the wardship guarding what lies before us, though this wardship itself needs that guarding which is accomplished in the legein as gathering. Noos and nous, therefore, do not originally signify what later develops into reason; noos signifies the minding that has something in mind and takes it to heart. Thus noein also means what we understand by scenting—though we use the word mostly of animals, in nature. Man's scenting is divination (Ahnen). But since by now we understand all knowledge and all skill in terms of the thinking of logic, we measure "divination" by the same yardstick. But the word means more. Authentic divination is the mode in which essentials come to us and so come to mind, in order that we may keep them in mind. This kind of divination is not the outer court before the gates of knowledge. It is the great hall where everything that can be known is kept, concealed. 21 The preposition an as the root of Ahnen establishes the connection with Andenken. W e shall return to this point in a moment. Human Wittern (scenting) is Ahnen (divination). It is not introspective. Rather, it is directed toward what comes toward us, to the "future" in Heidegger's sense of that word. Wild animals wittern (scent); they sense something coming, usually possible danger. They do not meditate, contemplate or reflect. With till senses alert, they "know" something is coming. W e humans have almost totally lost our ability to sense. W e do not sense that a storm is coming; the weather report has already informed (or misinformed) us of that. As far as our sense organs go, we rely almost entirely on our sense of sight in orienting ourselves to the world. If we live in large cities, we have lost much of our senses of hearing

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and smell simply out of sheer self-defense. W e still might just be able to sense how another person who is close to us feels. Not only do we not have a "sixth" sense, we do not even use the five that we have. To take a direction that a matter has already taken of itself is called in our language sinnan, sinnen. To enter into meaning (Sinn) is the essence of Besinnung. This means more than simply making oneself conscious of something. We are not yet in Besinnung when we are in consciousness, Besinnung is more. It is the releasement to what is worthy of question. 22

Besinnung is not ordinary consciousness. It is the releasement from representational, calculative thinking. W h a t it releases for is less easy to n a m e or even anticipate. Anticipation, after all, is only another form of calculation. W h e n I say that I have anticipated an emergency, this means that I am prepared and have planned for it, taking certain measures to ensure safety. Let us go back to what was said about Ahnen in What Calls for Thinking. Its root is the preposition an, to, toward. O n e might think of the song of Beethoven, An die Feme Geliebte, to the beloved. T h e song expresses an intense turning toward the beloved who is far away—one might say a kind of Andenken. Andenken for Heidegger is not to be confused with the tourist's use of the word when he buys, for example, a Black Forest cuckoo clock as a souvenir, an Andenken that he can look at in his home in New Jersey and thus recall his s u m m e r vacation. For Heidegger, Andenken is not even primarily related to the past at all, at least not in the ordinary sense of that word. Appealing to the older, impersonal use of ahnen, as in the constructions es anet mir, es anet mich, Heidegger distances the idea that I think toward something by reversing the direction: it comes to me, comes over me. Any "subjective" element—which, after all, is a feature of representational thinking—is excluded. Any time I think of a past event and r e m e m b e r it, I a m repre-

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senting it. This is not what H e i d e g g e r means by Andenken. At the end of the book on Hölderlin with that title, he states: What is poetized in the poem "Andenken" is the presencing and the essential time-space of a thinking that must remain unknown to all traditional doctrines of thought. Recollecting (andenkend) thinking thinks of the festival that has been by thinking ahead to what is coming. But this re-collection backward and forward thinks before both (the festival and what is coming) toward destining (das Schickliche). Thinking toward destining belongs to destiny. Such "thinking" belonging-to (Angehören) is the originating coming-to-presence of recollection (des Andenkens).23 This is one of the fullest, most complex (and virtually untranslatable into non-barbaric English) statements about Andenken. But there are other, simpler, more perspicuous ones. The conversation itself is the thinking of destining. And because the conversation is remembrance (Erinnerung), this thinking is an Andenken. Because this thinking thinks recollectingly (andenkend) and never only represents what is objectively present, it must at the same time think toward what is coming. 24 Although what Heidegger has to say about Andenken is most at h o m e and embedded in Hölderlin, w e want to stay out of that complex and rich context as m u c h as possible in order to concentrate on elucidating the two kinds of thinking. W e take leave of the book Andenken with one last quotation. But that is one of the mysteries of An-denken that we otherwise call "remembrance." This thinking-toward (Hindenken) what has been comes at the same time in the opposite direction toward the one who is thinking-toward (den Hindenkenden). But not just to stand still as a kind of present, as the present of what is represented. If we totally allow to what is remembered its presencing and nowhere disturb its prevailing, we experience how what is remembered does not at all

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stop in the present when it returns, as something re-presented, in order to be only an ersatz for the past. What is remembered swings past our present and suddenly stands in the future. It comes toward us. . . . But this thinking of (Darandenken) and thinking-toward (Andenken) does not get lost in something past. Thinking-toward is more mysterious in its thinking. Perhaps "thinking" is really always "thinking-toward." Perhaps thinking is something completely different from that formation about which "logic" as the "rules of thinking" reports.25 But one crucial point needs to be made here. Re-presenting places an image, object or concept before us that stands for (represents) what is not present. In contrast, Heidegger's thinkingtoward or thinking-back literally reaches into (measures through, durch-misst) the dimensions of "future" and "past" and allows them to arrive in the present, not as images, objects or concepts standing for what is not present, but as constituting the full dimensionality and presence of the present. Heidegger brings in the old word for thought—Gedanc, an earlier form of Gedanke—and relates thinking (Denken) to thanking (Danken). "The root or originary word says: the gathered, allgathering thinking that recalls." 26 Heidegger is using the word Gedächtnis in a way almost synonymous with Gemüt. Far from relating exclusively or even primarily to the past, memory encompasses everything essential that we "keep in mind," which certainly includes the present and also the future. But the word "the thane" does not mean only what we call a man's disposition or heart, and whose essential nature we can hardly fathom. Both memory and thanks move and have their being in the thane. "Memory" initially did not at all mean the power to recall. The word designates the whole disposition in the sense of a steadfast intimate concentration upon the things that essentially speak to us in every thoughtful meditation. Originally, "memory" means as much as devotion: a constant concentrated abiding with something

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—not just with something that has passed, but in the same way with what is present and with what may come. What is past, present and to come appears in the oneness of its own present being. 27 J u s t as Andenken is not at all restricted to the past, neither is m e m o r y (Gedächtnis). T h e English word " m e m o r y " comes f r o m the Latin memor, to be mindful. T h u s , even the English term does not have the exclusive emphasis on the past that it has come to have in c o m m o n parlance. In speaking about the danger of the essence of technology, which is the way Being is present to us now, Heidegger states that we need to cultivate two things: releasement toward things and openness for the mystery. In our present situation, it is these two nonmanipulative attitudes that m a y be conducive to transforming o u r thinking. It is precisely in the task of thinking that Heidegger sees a possible way out of the danger of technology. In m a n y of his different writings h e comes back again and again to the lines of Hölderlin: But where there is danger, there grows also what saves. Finally we must mention one large and important difference between Dogen and Heidegger. Heidegger's whole philosophizing is thoroughly informed by his concern with the history of Being, which, of course, does not coincide with history in the traditional sense of events occurring in time. Still, his concern is history, and this is totally absent in Dogen. Even where he might have shown some concern with the period of history in which he lived, considered to be the least conducive (mappö) to gaining enlightenment, Dogen simply rejected the view that the historical period was unfavorable, saying that anyone who practices will ultimately attain the way. As a kind of corollary to his concern with history, Heidegger puts a tremendous emphasis on language as the sedimented " p r e s e r v a t i o n " of that history. Although Dögen empha-

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sizes "expression" (dotoku), he lacks such an overwhelming concern with language. Perhaps the Westerner closest to Dogen's understanding of temporality was the poet William Blake. He who to himself binds a joy Doth the winged life destroy But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in Eternity's sun rise. 28

Epilogue O u r discussion of thinking in the last chapter touched upon a matter that is so important and has such far-reaching implications that it might have appeared to lead away from or even usurp our main concern—temporality. But both Dogen and Heidegger conceive of thinking so broadly that it becomes almost another word for temporality. Temporality is, so to speak, the occurrence, the taking place of thinking. If for Dogen everything is being-time, the appropriate kind of thinking is what realizes this being-time. When Dogen says that a thing obstructs or impedes itself, he is describing the thing not as inert or static, but as an occurrence— or better, an occurring. This occurring, this "movement," transcends the dichotomy of stasis and flowing. It neither stays still nor does it flow past. It is inconceivable for ordinary experience. As stated earlier, it is not a " m o v e m e n t " that goes from one place to another. It does not go anywhere but gathers itself into a dharmasituation. To say that a thing obstructs itself is to say what it "does," how it presences. When something obstructs itself, we can also say that it exerts itself. Most translators of Dogen have favored "exertion" or "sustained exertion" as a rendering ofgujin. A brief look at the etymology of the word "exertion" might prove at least suggestive in an attempt to gain some concrete, fresh understanding. Admittedly it can do no more than that. Sometimes etymology is helpful, sometimes not. The Indo-European root of "exert" is the Latin serere, to attach one after the other, tie together, arrange, fasten together. 1 This is perhaps most clearly seen in the noun "series." Now a series of any kind, a linked continuity, is precisely what Dogen emphatically denies. Exserere means to pull from (ex, from, and serere, a place of attachment) 2 and has the "eased" variant exertus. Accordingly, to exert oneself could mean to pull oneself free from any

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attachment that causes a spurious continuity to build up, linking itself in a series. To exert oneself is to pull free of attachment, to collect oneself into a simultaneous totality. W h a t is important here is not so much the element of strain and effort, although some of that must often be involved, but the experience of penetration, totality and ultimacy. Ultimacy is, so to speak, the temporal dimension of totality. Searching for examples—which, again, are always woefully inadequate and at best suggestive, since there is no universal or genus here of which examples could be the exemplars—one might take spring or fall as the seasons in which nature "exerts itself' most intensely. In the budding and blooming of spring and in the blazing splendor of fall, nature exerts itself to the utmost. Spring and fall are also seasons of transition; they lack the relative stasis of summer and winter. Here nature's presencing is overwhelming in the most striking way. To say this, however, is not to diminish the less striking presencing of a muted rainy November day, as it might be depicted in a Chinese landscape painting. That is a different, more subtle way of self-exertion. When I look at a flower, I see it completely; the flower is exerting itself and I am exerting myself. That I exert myself does not mean in this case that I make an effort, but that I let the flower presence as it is. I pull myself—better, I let myself be pulled by the presencing of the flower, pulled from the spurious continuity whose static persistence stubbornly precludes any presencing. In that spurious continuity no wholeness, no ultimacy is possible. Spurious continuity just persists on and on; nothing can truly occur, or presence, in it. Oddly enough, this spurious continuity is what many people imagine "eternity" to be. The experience of presencing pulled free of spurious continuity may well be very "strenuous," but when it actually happens I am not making an effort.

Notes Chapter I. Impermanence 1. Mulamadhyamikakarika, in Kenneth K . Inada, Nagarjuna, p. 158. 2. Cf. Masao Abe, "Dogen on Buddha-Nature," pp. 30-31. 3. Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 123. 4. Masao Abe, "Dogen on Buddha-Nature," p. 43. 5. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, p. 263. 6. Heidegger, Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, p. 86. 7. See also Heidegger, Identity and Difference. 8. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Shobogenzo Genjokoan," p. 133. Heinrich Dumoulin translates: "Practicing from the self, to enlighten the ten thousand dharmas (things) is illusion. From the ten thousand dharmas, to let the self enlighten in practice is enlightenment" ("Das Buch Genjokoan," p. 225). 9. Waddell and Abe, trans., "Shobogenzo Genjokoan," pp. 134-35. Dumoulin has: "To learn the Buddha Way is to learn the self. To learn the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all dharmas. To be enlightened by all dharmas is to make the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of the other fall away [ausfallen, datsuraku\. It means extinguish the trace of enlightenment and broaden the state following enlightenment" ("Das Buch Genjokoan," p. 226). 10. Quoted in Dumoulin, "Das Buch Genjokoan," p. 226. 11. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, p. 186, 6.521. 12. Masao Abe, "Dogen on Buddha-Nature," p. 40. 13. Waddell and Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 3, pp. 75-76. See also Sakamoto Hiroshi, trans., "Dogen's Shobogenzo Dotoku," pp. 90-105. 14. Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, p. 273, predigt 26. 15. Dumoulin has "to forget the self is to be enlightened by all dharmas." 16. Dumoulin, "Das Buch Genjokoan," p. 230. 17. Mumonkan, case 46. 18. Cf. Chapter 3 below. 19. Cf. D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism, p. 128, and Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, pp. 136-55.

133

134

Notes

Chapter 2. Buddha-nature 1. Pascal, Pensées, no. 43. " M a n sees himself suspended in the material form given him by Nature between the two abysses of Infinity and Nothingness." 2. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 2, p. 104. 3. Ibid.,pt. 3, p. 75. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., pt. i, p. 101. 7. Ibid., p. 104.

Chapter 3. Being-time 1. "Being-time" (Uji), trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, in Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop, p. 76. 2. Alternate translations of uji read: "sometimes" (Heine), "there is a time" (Kim), "at a time of being" (Cleary). 3. Steven Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen, p. 89. 4. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, pp. 76-77. 5. "Reading of the Sutras" (Kangin), in Kôsen Nishiyama and John Stevens, trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. 2, p. 9. 6. Norman Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 117, emphasis added. 7. Hee-Jin Kim,. "Existence/Time," p. 43. 8. Cf. Heine., Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 26. 9. "Ceaseless Practice" (Gyöji), in Nishiyama and Stevens, trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. 3, p. 7. 10. Ibid. 11. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 155. 12. Hee-Jin Kim, Dögen Kigen, p. 195. 13. Zenki (Total activity), quoted in ibid., p. 223. 14. Ibid., p. 227. 15. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence." 16. Leibniz, Monadology, paragraphs 60, 61.

Notes

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17. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 77. 18. Ibid., pp. 77-78. 19. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 180 n. 15; but cf. Kim: swallowing up/spitting out refers to the total exertion of one dharma at work (Flowers of Emptiness, p. 231). 20. Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 119 n. 17. 21. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Dawn of Day," p. 2. 22. Werke, vol. 14, p. 306. 23. Ibid., vol. 12, p. 371. 24. Ibid., p. 395. 25. The Will to Power, sec. 708. 26. Werke, vol. 12, p. 67. 27. Ibid., vol. 14, p. 365. Cf. Joan Stambaugh, The Problem of Time in Nietzsche, pp. 181-84. 28. The Will to Power, sec. 55 (with minor alterations). 29. Ibid., sec. 1. 30. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 78. 31. Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 192. He maintains this position in Flowers of Emptiness, p. 231. 32. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 180. 33. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 78. 34. Ibid., p. 80. 35. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, p. 77. 36. Quoted in Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 137. Cf. also "Ceaseless Practice," p. 2. 37. "Ceaseless Practice," p. 4. Cf. Joan Stambaugh, The Real Is Not the Rational, pp. 108-20. 38. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 2, p. 88. Cf. ibid., pt. 3, p. 75. 39. Gyoji (Ceaseless practice), quoted in Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 212. 40. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. in. 41. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 78. 42. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Shöbögenzö Genjököan," p. 136. 43. Heinrich Dumoulin, "Das Buch Genjököan," p. 227. 44. Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," pp. 121-22. 45. Cf. Plato's Phaedo: "Through the Beautiful the beautiful is beautiful."

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Notes

46. Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Enlightenment, p. 117. 47. Waddell and Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 1, pp. 104-5. 48. Ibid., pt. 2, p. 88. 49. Ibid., note 5. 50. Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 122. The note to this passage explains: "Sharp, vital, quick: kappat supatchi. An onomatopoetic description of the lively slapping of a landed fish. Here, it includes the suggestion of something utterly ungraspable and unclassifiable into distinctions such as nothingness and being, impermanence and permanence." 51. Ibid., pp. 122-23. 52. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, pp. 79-80. 53. "Prediction of Buddhahood" (Juki), in Nishiyama and Stevens, trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. 1, p. 79. 54. Waddell and Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 2, p. 92. Cf. Nishiyama and Stevens, trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. 4, p. 128; and Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 91. 55. Waddell and Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 2, p. 92. 56. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 91. 57. Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 181. 58. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, pp. 77-78. 59. Ibid., p. 91. 60. Ibid., pp. 240-41. 61. Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 124. 62. Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 76. 63. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, sec. 55. 64. "Ceaseless Practice," p. 11. 65. Deutsche Predigten und Traktate, p. 300. Ego elegi vos de mundo. 66. Ibid., p. 214. Qui audit me. 67. "Ceaseless Practice," p. 2. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., p. 10. 70. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 80. 71. David E. Shaner, The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism, p. 150. 72. Kim, Dogen Kigen, p. 190. 73. Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions, p. 1. Note that Shaner, Kim and Heine are all talking about the misconception of time.

Notes

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74. Newton, Principles, vol. 1, p. 6. 75. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 81. 76. Ibid., pp. 82-83. 77. Aristotle, Physics IV, 219b, 22ia-b. 78. "The Buddhist teaching" (Bukkyo), in Nishiyama and Stevens, trans., Shobogenzo, vol. 2, p. 21. 79. "Being-time," trans. Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi, p. 82.

Chapter 4. Birth and death 1. Cf. Hee-Jin Kim: "To Dogen the continuity of becoming between birth and death obscures the reeil issue of the problem" (Dogen Kigen, P- 225). 2. "Learning Through the Body and Mind" (Shinjingakudo), in Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, trans., Shobogenzo, vol. 1, p. 13. 3. Ibid., pp. 15-16. 4. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Birth and Death" (Shoji), p. 79. 5. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Total Activity" (Zenki), p. 74. 6. Obstruction, impeding, overwhelming. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 229.

Chapter 5. Dialectic 1. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 68. 2. Ibid., p. n. 3. Hegel, Science of Logic, vol. 1, p. 119. 4. Ibid., pp. 94-95. 5. Ibid., pp. 119-20. 6. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 482-83. 7. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 9. 8. Ibid., p. 488. 9. Hegel, Reason in History, p. 181. 10. Ibid., p. 70. 11. Hegel, Science of Logic, vol. 2, p. 481.

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Notes

12. Ibid., pp. 484-85. 13. Ibid., p. 485. 14. Hee-Jin Kim, "The Reason of Words and Letters," p. 68. 15. Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, p. 45. 16. Ibid., p. 4. 17. Ibid., p. 10. 18. Cf. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, especially pp. 178-82. 19. Ibid., p. 178. 20. Ibid., p. 181. 21. Ibid., p. 199. 22. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., "Buddha-nature," pt. 1, p.108. 23. Ibid., pt. 2, p. 87. 24. Ibid., p. 89. 25. Ibid., pt. 3, p. 76. 26. Norman Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 122.

Chapter 6. Time and eternity 1. Augustine, Confessions, book n. 2. Augustine, City of God, book 11, chap. 21. 3. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, book 5, poem 6. 4. aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tola simul et perfecta possessio. 5. One suggestion is to think this as atemporal duration, i.e., duration that does not persist through time. Cf. Eleanor Stump and Norman Kretzmann, "Eternity," 444-46. 6. Ita omnipotens Deus . . . omnia simul suis subiecte conspectibus praesentialiter uidet. 7. apud illud hodie stant et immobiliter perseuerant. 8. "The Dignified Activities of Practising Buddha" (Gydbutsu Iigi), in Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, trans., Shobogenzo, vol. 4, p. 142. 9. "Learning Through the Body and Mind" (Shinjingakudo), in Nishiyama and Stevens, trans., Shobogenzo, vol. 1, p. 13. 10. "The Dignified Activities of Practising Buddha," p. 144. 11. Cf. p. 44-5. 12. Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, pp. 233-34.

Notes

139

13. Heidegger, Poetry, Language and Thought, pp. 172-73. 14. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 243. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., p. 229. 17. D. T. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism, p. 63. Cf. Garma C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality, and Thomas Cleary, Entry Into the Inconceivable. 18. I am not here going into the question of how the ri (Chinese li), reason, principle, relates to its Sanskrit equivalent sunyatä. For my purposes suffice it to say that both are on the side of the universal in this context. 19. Stage 3: nonhindrance of universal and particular. 20. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism, pp. 63-64. ai. Ibid., pp. 54-55. 22. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 9. 23. "Mountain and Waters Sutra" (Sansui-kyö), in Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon inaDewdrop, pp. 97-98. 24. "Existence-time" (Uji), in Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 225. 25. Norman Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 117, emphasis added. 26. Plotins Schriften, p. 183. 27. Ibid., p. 203. 28. Waddell, trans., "Being-Time," p. 118. 29. "Mountain and Waters Sutra," p. 102. 30. Ibid., pp. 106-7.

Chapter 7. Thinking 1. "Admonitions for Zazen" (Zazenshin), in Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 157. 2. Ibid., p. 162. 3. Ibid., pp. 157-61. 4. "Only a Buddha Can Transmit to a Buddha" (Yuibutsu Yobutsu), in Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. 3, p. 130. 5. "Awakening the Buddha-seeking Mind" (Hotsu Bodai-shin), ibid., p. 89. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid., p. 91.

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8. "Rules for Zazen" (Zazen-gi), in Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop, p. 30. 9. Ibid., pp. 33-34. 10. "Only Buddha and Buddha" (Yuibutsu Yobutsu), in ibid., p. 165. 11. "Guidelines for Studying the Way" (Gakudö Yöjin-shü), in ibid., p. 41. 12. Ibid., pp. 34-36. 13. Ibid., p. 38. 14. Ibid., p. 296. 15. "Body-and-Mind Study of the Way" (Shinjingakudö), in ibid., p. 90. 16. "Only Buddha and Buddha," p. 162. 17. Nietzsche, "Sils-Maria," in "Songs of Prince Vogelfrei." 18. Das Denken ist kein Begreifen. In der hohen Frühe seiner Wesensentfaltung kennt das Denken nicht den Begriff. Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken, p. 128. 19. Heidegger, Wissenschaft und Besinnung, in Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 54. 20. Heidegger, Was Heisst Denken, p. 9. 21. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking?, p. 207. 22. Heidegger, Wissenschaft und Besinnung, p. 68. 23. Heidegger, Hölderlins Hymne "Andenken," p. 194. 24. Ibid., p. 165. 25. Ibid., pp. 54-55. 26. Heidegger, What Calls for Thinking?, p. 139. Das anfängliche Wort der "Gedanc" sagt das gesammelte, alles versammelnde Gedenken. "Der Gedanc" sagt soviel wie das Gemüt, der muot, das Herz. 27. Ibid., p. 140. 28. William Blake, "Several Questions Answered."

Epilogue 1. Eric Partridge, Origins, p. 608. 2. Ibid.

References

Abe, Masao. "Dogen on Buddha-Nature." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 4, no. 1 (1971). . Zen and Western Thought. Edited by William R . LaFleur. Honolulu, 1985. Aristotle. Physics. In Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon. New York, 1941. Augustine. City of God. Edited by Vernon J . Burke. New York, 1958. . Confessions. Translated by Edward B. Pusey. New York, 1961. Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by Richard Green. Indianapolis, 1962. Chang, Garma C . C . The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism. University Park, Penn., 1971. Cleary, Thomas. Entry Into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism. Honolulu, 1983. , trans. Shöbögenzö: Zen Essays by Dogen. Honolulu, 1986. Dumoulin, Heinrich. " D a s Buch Genjököan aus dem Shöbögenzö des Zen Meister Dogen." Monumenta Nipponica 15, nos. 3-4 (1959-60). . Zen Enlightenment. New York, 1979. Eckhart, Meister. Deutsche Predigten und Traktate. München, 1955. Hegel, G . W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford, 1977. . Reason in History. Translated by Robert S. Hartman. New York, '953. Science of Logic. Translated by W. H. Johnston and L. G. Struthers. Vols. 1-2. London, 1966. Heidegger, M . Hölderlins Hymne "Andenken." Frankfurt am Main, 1982. . Identity and Difference. Translated by J o a n Stambaugh. New York, 1969. . Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Athens, Ohio, 1985. . Poetry, Language and Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York, 1971. . Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfullingen, 1954.

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. Was Heisst Denken. Tübingen, 1954. . What Calls for Thinking? Translated by Fred D. Wieck and J . Glenn Gray. New York, 1968. Heine, Steven. Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen. Albany, N.Y., 1985. Heraclitus. In The Presocratic Philosophers. Translated by G . S. Kirk and J . E. Raven. New York, 1964. Inada, Kenneth K . Nägärjuna: A Translation of His Mülamadhyamakakärikä with an Introductory Essay. Tokyo, 1970. Kant, I. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. Kierkegaard, S. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Translated by David Swenson. Princeton, 1971. Kim, Hee-Jin. "Existence/Time as the Way of Ascesis." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 11, no. 2(1978). . Dogen Kigen: Mystical Realist. Tucson, 1975. . Flowers of Emptiness: SelectionsfromDögen's Shöbögenzö. Lewiston, N. Y . , 1985. . " T h e Reason of Words and Letters: Dôgen and Köan Language." In Dogen Studies, ed. William R . LaFleur. LaFleur, William R . , ed. Dogen Studies. Studies in East Asian Buddhism, no. 2. Honolulu, 1985. Leibniz, G . W. Monadology. In Basic Writings. Translated by George R . Montgomery. La Salle, 1962. Mumonkan. Translated by Sumiko Kudo. New York, 1974. Newton, I. Principles. Vol. 1. Berkeley, 1962. Nietzsche, F. Ecce Homo. In The Philosophy of Nietzsche. Translated by Clifton P. Fadiman. New York, 1954. . Werke. Vol. 12. Leipzig, 1919. . The Will to Power. Translated by William Kaufmann. New York, 1967. Nishiyama, Kosen, and John Stevens, trans. Shöbögenzö. Vols. 1-4. Tokyo, 1977. Partridge, Eric. Origins. New York, 1966. Pascal, B. Pensées. Translated by H. F. Stewart. New York, 1947. Plotinus. Plotins Schriften. Hamburg, 1856. Reps, Paul. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. New York, 1961. Sakamoto Hiroshi, trans. "Dögen's Shöbögenzö Dötoku." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 16, no. i (1983).

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Shaner, David E. The Bodymind Experience in Japanese Buddhism. Albany, N.Y., 1985. Stambaugh, Joan. The Problem of Time in Nietzsche. Lewisburg, 1987. . The Real Is Not the Rational. Albany, N.Y., 1986. Stump, Eleanor, and Norman Kretzmann. "Eternity." The Journal of Philosophy 78, no. 8 (1981). Suzuki, D. T. The Essence of Buddhism. Kyoto, 1948. . Manual of Zen Buddhism. New York, i960. Tanahashi, Kazuaki, ed. Moon in a Dewdrop. San Francisco, 1986. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago, 1951. Waddell, Norman, trans. "Being-Time." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 12, no. 1(1979). Waddell, Norman, and Masao Abe, trans. "Birth and Death." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 5, no. 1 (1972). . "Buddha-nature." Parts 1-3. The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 8, no. 2 (1975); n.s. 9, nos. 1-2 (1976). . "Shöbögenzö Genjököan." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 5, no. 2 . "Total Activity." The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 5, no. 1(1972). Wittgenstein, L. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London, 1958.

Index Abe, Masao, ix, 7, 52, 55, 58 Alexander, Samuel, 23 Appropriation (Ereignis), 9 Aquinas, 96 Aristotle, 43, 45, 69, 70, 94, 102,120 Atman, 10 Augustine, 49, 94 Aurelius, 123

God, 1, 4, 5, 7-9,18, 33, 34, 60, 77, 89,

Beethoven, 125 Bergson, 23 Blake, William, 32,107,12g Bodhisattva, 4, 97 Boethius, 94, 96 Brahmanism, 10

Hegel, 19, 50, 77-90, 93,104, 123 Heidegger, 8, 9, 23, 31, 32, 35, 36, 58, 100,101,112,114,118, 120-128,130 Heine, Steven, 37-42, 47, 55, 64 Heraclitus, 19, 66, 78, 79, 93 Hinduism, 10,105 Hisamatsu, Shin'ichi, ix Hölderlin, 120,121,126-128 Hua-yen, 6, 28,102,104,106-108 Hui-neng, 18-20, 27 Husserl, 10, 23, 35,123

Cézanne, 112 Cusa, Nicholas of (Cusanus), 4, 61 Damiani, Petrus, 94, 96 Dependent origination, 45 Descartes, 10, 26,120,123 Dharma realm (dharmadhätu, hokkai), 102,106 Diamond Sutra, 86 Dumoulin, Heinrich, 13, 49, 51 Eckhart, Meister, 12, 58-60 Einstein, 33 Emancipation (todätsu), 76, 77 Emerson, 5 Emptiness, 88,103 Eternalism (säsvata), 19, 20, 53, 73, 87 Expression (dötoku), 30,109,129 Fourfold, 31,101,102 Framing, 122 Genjö, Genjököan (presencing), 2, 9,10,

95-97 Great Doubt, Great Death, 34, 88 Güjin (total exertion), 2, 31, 32, 36, 61, 62,109, 130, 131 Gyöji (sustained exertion, continuous practice), 2, 28-31, 36, 45, 46, 47, 60, 61,109

Idealism (German Idealism), 28, 57, 61, 79, 86,123 Immanence, 5-7,17 Impeding, self-impeding (obstruction), 76, 77, 99,103,104, 107 Instantaneity, 18 Ju-ching, 13 Jühöi (dwelling in a dharma situation), 2, 39. 43. 46, 50, 53. 75 Juki (receiving precepts), 54, 56 Kant, 45,123 Kierkegaard, 4,16, 83, 89, 90 K i m , Hee-Jin, 6, 28, 32, 37, 42, 55, 56, 5 s . 64> 77. 9 9 . I o 8 . " 4 Koan, 21 Kyöryaku (taking place), 2, 26, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 62, 63, 99

145

146 Lahkävatära Sutra, 10 Leibniz, 21, 33, 105 Lotus Sutra, 27, 97

Index Prior to turning, non-turning (miten), 55-57 Releasement (Gelassenheit), 58, 60

Mahäparanirväna Sutra, 6 M a r x , 19 Metaphysics, ix Middle Way, 20 M o n a d , 33, 34,105 Monastery, 29, 30 Mozart, 23 Nägärjuna, 1, 66, 67,116 Newton, 25, 41, 65, 66 Nichiren, 86 Nietzsche, 23, 26, 39, 40, 58, 59, 71 Nihilism (uccheda), 19, 20, 53, 73, 87 Nikon (right now, absolute now), 2, 37, 39, 48, 71, 96-98 Nirvana, 1-5,17,18, 70 Nirvana Sutra, 19 Objective presence (Vorhandenheit), 100, 101,120 Ox-herding pictures, 15,16 Pantheism, 5, 7, 8, 41 Parmenides, 9 Penetrating exhaustively (ippö-güjin), 51 Perdurance (Austrag, Inständigkeit), 31, 32, 36,100 Plato, 16, 70, 73, 94, 95,102,103,105, 113,120 Plotinus, BO, m, 117 Potentiality-actuality, 21

Samsara, 1, 2, 4, 5,17 Sartre, 23, 26 Satori, 13 Schelling, 4, 8, 9, 58, 79, 82 Schopenhauer, 51, 57, 58 Senika heresy, 25, 73 Shakespeare, 25 Shaner, David Edward, 63 Shikan taza (just sitting), 28 Shinran, 86 Socrates, 26 Soen Roshi, 116 Spinoza, 5, 7, 68 Stein, Gertrude, 11 Suchness, thusness, 3, 30, 32,114,119 Suzuki, D . T . , 104, 106 Tanabe, Hajime, 119 Taoism, 14, 61 Theodicy, 8 Tillich, Paul, ix, 7-9 Transcendence, ix, 5-7, 9,17, 51, 64 Van Gogh, 112 Vimalakirti, 54 Waddell, Norman, 37, 42, 51, 52, 55 Whitehead, 20 Will, 57, 60, 61 Wittgenstein, 11

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