Dogen: Being in Time – Commentary

I published the text Ser no Tempo in Dogen with the aim of commenting with you on some questions regarding time (the way we understand time) and being (the way we are).

We can’t think of anything outside of time or space, it seems.

Time: before and after, one thing after another, one thing before another, cause-effect, one event as the cause of the next…etc

Space: inside and outside, one thing inside the other, one thing outside the other, two groups in relation: one thing opposite to the other, one thing similar to the other, one thing depending on the other…

There are also several ways in which we can understand time. There is linear time (from the Cartesian plane or from a chronology), associated or dissociated time and circular time. If you want to know more, read this text: Changing the weather?

In our Western conception of the world, we have the following formula:

That is, the world is out there with its objects and other people. I see the world. But I see the world from my thoughts, feelings and sensations.

We may not even see that the world is NOT what I think it is… we may see that the world is different from what I expect only in the disappointments…

The conception of Dogen, a famous Buddhist master – the first to bring Zen from China to Japan in the 11th century (AD 1200) – is different:

As Dogen says:

“Being in time” means that time is being. Every thing that exists is time. It is a totally different understanding from ours. How to understand this?

You are reading this text now: it (the text) and you are being-in-time. This time that is for you now, along with reading these words, is part of your being-in-time.

You are no different than the time you are now. The function of time, Dogen tells us, is not just to pass… from yesterday to today and from today to tomorrow… but time is to be!

It is not possible to separate the two dimensions, nor is it possible to separate the self from the self-in-the-world.

This snippet is also interesting:

“Human beings are changeable, one time they question what they understand and another time they no longer question the same thing, so that their first questions do not always coincide with the current ones. But the question, because of its duration, is time”.

The question you ask is time. By questioning your being, at that moment, is the questioning, it is the time of this questioning.

Only by having this vision of the world can we understand the I Ching – this ancient Chinese way of thinking, the oracle that answers everything that CG Jung talks about.

When thinking about a question and throwing the sticks (or playing online at Uol), the question asked is the being-time-of-the-oracle-answer. It is not that the question causes the answer. The question and the answer are both being.

In the text Being in Time, Dogen continues next:

“You must recognize that everything, everything in this whole world, is time. No thing stands in the way of another, just as no time stands in the way of another.”

And further:

“Since there is no other time than this one, every being in time is the totality of time: a blade of grass, every object in itself is time. Each unit of time includes each being and each world”.

There is no other time but this one: the Now. Future tense and past tense can only exist in expectation (future) or remembrance (past) in the present. The present time is the time that exists, it is the totality of time.

And the objects of this time: The car passing by your street now… the cold or the heat… the position you are…each object is in-itself-time.
About the past, explains Dogen:

“When I climbed the Mountain or crossed the river, I was (time). Time needs to be with me. I always was: time cannot abandon me. When time is not seen as a phenomenon that ebbs and flows, the time when I climbed the mountain is the present time of being in time”.

All the past comes back as a memory, it is part of the present time, it is part of being-present. (If you want to know more about this issue click here: Agora

And Dogen concludes:

“Because you imagine that time just passes, you don’t learn the truth of being in time. In a word, every being in the entire world is a separate time in continuous succession. And since being is time, I am my being in time. Time has the quality of passing, so to speak, from today to tomorrow, from today to yesterday, from yesterday to today, from today to today, from tomorrow to tomorrow. Because this passing is a characteristic of time, present time, past time do not overlap or collide with each other. But Master Seigen is time, Obaku is time, Sekito is time. Since you and I are time, practice and enlightenment are time.”

That is, because you have the understanding of the first image I posted (the separation between you – your thoughts, feelings and sensations – and the world) you do not learn the truth of being in time.

“And since being is time, I am my being in time”. The second-by-second time that is happening around (to you) is the you in your being-in-time.

And since you are this being-in-time the realization of ultimate reality (which Buddhists call enlightenment) is time.

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