Masao Abe - A Zen View of Time

A Zen View of Time

By realization through Zen practice of the Buddhist teaching of the impermanence of all things (Skt: anitya) (Jpn: mujō), we come to experience that we are living-dying at each and every moment. "If we grasp our lives not objectively from without but subjectively from within, we are not moving from life to death but are in the midst of this process of living-dying." By a careful reading of Dōgen (1200–1253) and a watchful understanding of the inner sense of time, Abe learns and teaches how the objectification of time can alienate us from our own experience of its impermanence.

Dōgen puzzled over a seeming contradiction in Buddhism. All sentient beings are originally enlightened, yet Buddhist teachings "arouse the longing for enlightenment" in those who hear it. If we do religious practice we may become enlightened due to an "acquired awakening" yet "original awakening" is ours "before our parents were born". Dōgen rejects as naturalistic fallacy a theory of "original awakening" that would equate a given human self-consciousness with genuine enlightenment. Also Dōgen rejects the idea that practice is a means to the goal of enlightenment. The epistemological process of enlightenment is undertaken by zen practice, but the process itself becomes enlightenment, i.e., the path is the way of awakening. Abe quotes Dōgen: "In the Buddha Dharma, practice and realization are identical. ne's initial negotiating of the Way in itself is the whole of original realization. Thus, even while directed to practice, one is told not to anticipate a realization apart from practice, because practice points directly to original realization."

Instead of waiting for the time of awakening while sitting in meditation, one is "directly knowing temporal conditions" for the "time has already arrived". "There is no time that is not the right time." "Dōgen denies continuity of time and emphasizes the independence of each point of time... ." Abe then quotes Dōgen to illustrate:

"t being an established teaching of 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 example, winter and spring. We do not suppose that winter becomes spring, or say that spring becomes summer."

Subjectively from within, "the process of our living-dying being without beginning and without end." For Buddhists, there is no beginning of the universe (no creation), and there is no end (no last judgment). "We must realize the beginninglessness and endlessness of samsara, that is, the transmigration of living-dying." Abe mentions several experiences:

• "ach and every moment can be a beginning and an end in itself: time begins and ends with each moment. Accordingly, time is not understood to be a unidirectional movement but is seen as a sheer series of moments that can move reciprocally. Here a sort of reversibility of time is realized."

• "f we clearly realize the beginninglessness and endlessness of living-dying at this particular moment, the whole process of living-dying is concentrated within this moment. In other words, each moment embraces the whole process of beginningless and endless time within itself. Thus, one can in fact transcend time at this very moment."

• "The Buddhist view, based on full immersion in the depth of the moment, is that there is no difference between past and future. The temporal distinction belongs to the observer's perspective on the horizontal and historical plane. In the vertical or depth dimension, Buddhists insist, time is overcome."

• "Although karma works deterministically on the horizontal dimension of time, once the vertical, or transtemporal, dimension is opened up as one awakens to the truth of no-self, that person is no longer a slave to karma but becomes its master. This means that on the basis of the realization of the true self as no-self at the bottomless depth of the vertical dimension of time, the present act can emancipate one's self from past karma and create new karma that will affect the future as, for instance, in the form of a vow."