A Question of Existence and Time

 

  Time and existence are as important for Buddhists as for anyone else. But the Buddhist idea about time and existence is different to most other ways of thinking about them. In general, we tend to think of time and existence as two separate things. I know I do anyway. Time is one thing, and existence or reality or whatever you like to call it is something else. The Buddhist idea isn’t like that though. Buddhism says that time and existence are two ways of talking about the same thing, they’re not separate from each other.

A while back, before he entered hospital, Gudo Nishijima sent me a copy of an email he wrote to someone who asked him about this.

The question was:

I read the chapter Uji (Existence and Time) in Master Dogen’s book Shobogenzo. In the chapter Master Dogen said:

''It is a complete realization that the whole of time is what the whole of existence is, and that there is nothing more than this''.

When he writes that, is he talking about the existence of a human being or about the existence of the Universe? If he’s referring to the whole existence of the Universe in that statement, it means that even the Universe is not limitless and consequently is dependent on time?

Gudo Nishijima’s answer was:

Master Dogen doesn’t say anything about the existence of a human being or the existence of the Universe in that statement. He says that existence and time are absolutely related with each other.

Master Dogen insists that without existence, time can not exist, and without time, existence can not exist at all. In other words, he insists that without existence, time never exists, and without time, existence never exists.

Therefore we should think that existence and time are very much related with each other. So it’s impossible to think about existence without thinking about time, and it’s impossible to think about time without thinking about existence.

Existence and time should be considered together, and it might not make sense to consider the question of existence and time without thinking about them like that.

Master Dogen clearly insists such opinion.

Gudo Wafu Nishijima

It’s only a small point in some ways, but that’s the Buddhist idea about existence and time. That’s why you sometimes hear people talking about “being here and now”. “Here” is the existence side, and “now” is the time side. And even though people use that phrase to describe feeling really present in the moment and focused on what’s happening right now and nothing else, actually the phrase “being here and now” applies to everyone. To you and me and all the folks in the neighborhood. And it’s like that right throughout our lives. There’s no other way. The only place we can ever be is where we are at each moment. So in a way it’s not a big deal. It’s the same for everyone.

What happens to most of us, though, is that our thoughts distract us from where we are and what we’re doing. So instead of focusing on slicing the veggies, we’re thinking about what happened a couple of weeks back when we saw those dancing elephants in Iceland. Or maybe we think about how great things would be if we could manage to get a nice job in London… We all know how it goes. We’re doing something that we’re not too excited about and our mind is drifting off somewhere else.

This is something you’ll notice if you do meditation. You’ll be sitting there on the cushion, and your mind will be going all over the place. That’s what happens to me anyway. When I do meditation, very little is happening outwardly, I’m literally just sitting there. But my mind can get really active imagining all sorts of different scenarios about different things or dreaming about all kinds of experiences that are never going to happen. But if you sit there for a while, gradually your mind starts to settle down all by itself, and during the meditation you can notice that, hey, you’re just sitting on the cushion doing your meditation. That’s basically “being here and now”. It’s not a big deal, and in a way it’s very simple, but it’s kind of a nice thing to notice too.

And when you get up off the cushion, that “being here and now” might stay with you for a while, and you might notice that being here and now isn’t so bad after all. The only thing about it is that even though people can write and talk about it, “being here and now” isn’t really something we can leave to our imagination. It’s something we have to experience for ourselves. That might sound difficult, because sometimes when we hear words like “being here and now”, it sounds like it must be something really intense that’s very faraway from where we are at the particular time. But actually it’s not like that. You’re already experiencing it. It’s just a matter of noticing, or maybe not noticing, it.

When I used to talk to Gudo Nishijima about this kind of thing, he used to say something like “we are enjoying the present moment”. It sounds really simple, and in many ways it is, but a lot of times we get dragged away by our thoughts of somewhere else or some other time and miss out on the things that are happening right in front of us. Doing meditation helps us to notice that.

So if you’re looking for a way to enjoy the present moment a bit more, you know what to do. And figuring out where and when to do it is easy too, right?

 

Gudo Nishijima Roshi, 91

Gudo Nishijima turned 91 last Monday. To mark his birthday, we asked him to give a talk last Saturday at our zazen meeting at the Young Buddhists Association in Tokyo. We also invited him to a small birthday lunch afterwards at a nearby Indian restaurant. 


I arranged to pick him up at his apartment on Saturday, and then take a taxi together to the place (called “Hongo-sanchome”) where we hold our zazen meeting. I called for him at about 11.30 am. He was still getting himself ready, and he asked me to wait for a few minutes while he finished getting ready. He offered me some fruit while I was waiting. He recommended the persimmons. He told me they that were really ripe and tasty now. He gave me one and a knife to cut it up with. He was right. The persimmon did taste great. When he saw I’d eaten it quickly, he offered me another one. I didn’t want to eat all his persimmons, so I said I was okay. I was hoping we’d have the chance to eat some lunch together before we went to the zazen meeting, but it was getting a bit late and Nishijima was worried about keeping the people at the meeting waiting. So we decided to skip lunch. Instead Nishijima brought a few bananas with us to eat in the taxi.


It took us a while to get a taxi after we left his apartment. Nishijima doesn’t walk so quickly nowadays, and I didn’t want to hurry him either. There were a lot of autumn leaves on the road as we were walking along. Nishijima told me the particular leaves that were on the path we were walking along are used as the symbol for Tokyo. The tree they’re from is called “ichou” in Japanese. In English it’s called the “ginkgo” tree.



When we reached the main road, we stood at the kerb and eventually hailed a passing taxi. Nishijima told the driver where we were going and a good way to get there. We chatted for a few minutes, and then he decided to eat some of the bananas. I was wondering if the taxi driver would object to us eating, but he didn’t seem to mind. Nishijima told me that a former prime minister of Japan, named Nakasone, used to keep some bananas in his office desk and whenever he was too busy to eat lunch, he’d eat the bananas instead. So Nishijima and myself were following prime minister Nakasone’s example with the bananas. Anyway, it was fun eating the bananas together in the back of the taxi. I think Nishijima enjoyed doing it like that.


We were late arriving at the meeting, and Nishijima felt bad that everyone had been waiting. But I think the people understood that Nishijima had made a big effort to get there, and they were happy to see him. The room we hold the talks in is on the second floor, and there’s a steep flight of steps to get there. Nishijima did his best to walk up, and me and Saito-san helped him along. He managed to climb the steps without too much trouble. Then he went into the room and started his talk.


He hadn’t given a talk in English for about a year, and he was a bit rusty at the start. But after a while he got into his stride, and spoke about how he got interested in Buddhism and Master Dogen. He also told us how he began giving lectures in the same building we were in about 50 years ago. He told us he first came across Master Dogen’s book Shobogenzo when he was 16 years old. He had a read a lot of books before then, and felt he could understand all the books that he had read. But when he read the Shobogenzo he couldn’t understand it all. Even though it was written in Japanese and he could understand the words, he just couldn’t understand the meaning of what Master Dogen had written in the Shobogenzo. He was very surprised that there was a book written in Japanese that he couldn’t understand. So he decided to try to find out what the meaning of the Shobogenzo was. He said he used to have a pocket edition of the Shobogenzo, which he carried around with him all the time. He said he read it on the train on his way to school and work and whenever else he had the chance. He read it over and over many times, and he eventually realized that the Shobogenzo was a very valuable and special book. He said he found that the Shobogenzo contained a real treasure. He said that what Master Dogen had written in the Shobogenzo was the “truth” itself. He said that even though he had read lots of books, he had never found one that he believed contained the truth. But after he’d read Shobogenzo over and over, he realized that he’d found a very special  book. So he decided to devote his life to reading the Shobogenzo, and eventually he began translating it and giving lectures on it.


Nishijima told us that when he was 40 years old he asked the then head of the Young Buddhists Association at Tokyo University (the same place we were having the talk last Saturday) to allow him to hold a Buddhist meeting there. Nishijima’s idea was to hold a zazen class and afterwards give talks on the Shobogenzo. The head of the Young Buddhists Association agreed to Nishijima’s proposal, but told Nishijima that the Association wouldn’t be able to pay him any money for holding his lectures. Nishijima said he didn’t mind that, and he was happy to hold his classes for free. So he began to hold meetings there. Two Tokyo University students helped him organize the first few meetings and came to the zazen practice and his talk too. But then the students became busy with their other studies and couldn’t come to his class. The next time Nishijima held a class after that, no-one came to the zazen practice. But he decided to do zazen in the room by himself anyway. Just as he was finishing zazen, two people came in and asked him where the library was. He chatted to them for a few minutes and said that they could come and listen to his talk that day if they wanted, so he ended up giving a talk to the two people who came looking for the library. After that the number of people attending his talks started to increase. The following week he said five people came, and after that seven people attended. After a while 30 or 40 people were coming to his talks. Later on he started giving talks in English at the same place (which is how I met him). He told us he felt very happy that he was able to give a talk on the Shobogenzo to so many people there. He said he was really happy to see that the meetings (in Japanese and English) he started all those years ago were still continuing even now.


After he finished talking, we presented him with some flowers and a birthday card that everyone at the meeting had signed. His students in Finland had also sent him birthday greetings which they had all written. Some of his other students outside Japan had sent him a card or a gift as well. 


After the meeting we took some photos with Nishijima Roshi, and then we went to a nearby Indian restaurant. The restaurant wasn’t that far away, and some people went by foot. But it was too far for Nishijima to walk to, so we went by taxi. While we were in the taxi Nishijima told me that he was very, very happy to be able to give a talk there that day. He said it was the happiest day of his life. He said he felt really happy that he had been able to give talks on Buddhism to people at the Young Buddhists Association.


It was around 3 pm when we reached the restaurant. There was 13 of us, and the restaurant put a few tables together to accommodate us. Nishijima sat in the middle and told us about the time he visited India and some other stories. He also answered some questions we had about Buddhism. At the end of the meal, we all stood up and sang “Happy Birthday”. Just about everyone who was in the restaurant joined in. I even heard the cooks joining in in the kitchen. After we finished singing, Nishijima said it was the happiest day of his life.


It was a real pleasure for me to spend time with Gudo Nishijima that day. It’s a day I’ll always remember.

Looking at a Picture

Shobogenzo is the title of a well-known book by a Japanese monk named Master Dogen. Dogen wrote many texts on Buddhism, but Shobogenzo is regarded as his most important. It’s a collection of lectures Dogen gave during his life. It can be a difficult book to read, though, because in Shobogenzo Dogen is trying to describe reality with words. It’s not an easy thing to do, so some parts are hard to understand because he doesn’t write things the way we’re used to. If you read Shobogenzo you’ll find places where you don’t have a clue what Dogen is trying to say –at least, I don’t anyway. When that happens though I just keep reading through the passage, and after a while there’s usually a bit that’s not too hard to understand.


One interesting thing about Shobogenzo is that it was kept more or less secret for several hundred years after Dogen died. One reason for this was that Dogen's ideas were very ahead of his time, so the priests who followed Dogen figured it best to keep the book hidden away in Dogen's old temple called Eihei-ji. The first time it was published was the start of the 19th century, which was about 600 years after Dogen had died. That's a long time. Even then it took another hundred years or so before it began to attract attention from anyone other than a small number of priests in Japan. I think one reason it took so long for Shobogenzo to be published was that some of the stuff Dogen wrote must have seemed pretty strange, even to Buddhists. There are also parts where he criticizes people that he felt were misrepresenting Buddhism, which was probably a dangerous thing to do in medieval Japan.


I used to wonder about the point of reading the Shobogenzo when it was hard to understand a lot of what was written. I asked Gudo Nishijima about whether he thought it was important to understand everything in the Shobogenzo when you read it. He said “No, no. Reading Shobogenzo is like looking at a picture. When we’re reading a particular chapter or paragraph some parts stick out and make an impression, while other parts don’t. But it’s good to just read it anyway.” I stopped worrying about how well I understood the Shobogenzo after that.


Not all the chapters in Shobogenzo are difficult to understand, but some of them definitely are. That's maybe one reason people might buy a copy of Shobogenzo Book 1 (the first 21 chapters), but then won’t bother to read Books 2, 3, or 4. It takes a bit of effort to read some of those chapters. I can understand that. At the same time, though, if you're interested in Buddhism it's a pity not to try to read the rest of it. Some of the later chapters are shorter and easier to understand.


My own way of reading Shobogenzo is to pretty simple. I just start at Chapter 1 in Book 1 and read the chapters one after the other. Sometimes I hit a chapter that I get bogged down in and it can take me few weeks to finish it. That happened me recently with a chapter titled “Bussho” (The Buddha Nature). Bussho is the first chapter of Book 2 in the Nishijima/Cross translation, and it’s a hard one to understand. But I decided to just stick with reading it and eventually managed to finish it, even though a lot of it went right over my head.


As well as reading Shobogenzo cover to cover like that, sometimes I just pick out a chapter at random and read it through. That’s kind of a hit and miss way I suppose, but it can be easier to read some chapters like that.


The Shobogenzo translation I read is by Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross. It's made up of four volumes. Each volume has about 25 chapters. You can download volume 1 and 2 from the Numata Center website. It sounds like they’ll eventually have volumes 3 and 4 on there for downloading as well. There are other English translations of the Shobogenzo out there too, but the Nishijima/Cross version is the only one I’m familiar with.


The best known chapters in Shobogenzo are probably Bendowa (chapter 1) and Genjo Koan (ch. 3). Bussho (chapter 22), the chapter I was stuck on for a while, is also considered an “important” chapter. For me though, just about any of the chapters in Shobogenzo are worth reading, because you can pick up some point or idea Dogen had about Buddhism from any chapter. That’s why I think it’s a good idea to read the whole 95 chapters if you can. That way you get a better understanding of what Dogen was about. It’s also something you can brag about to your friends or mention down at your local zen group. It’ll be sure to increase your street cred (at least a little).


Having said all that, here are just a few chapters in Shobogenzo that aren't among the best known ones, but which are worth a bit of a read:


1. Raihai-Tokuzui [Prostrating to Attainment of the Marrow] -- Chapter 8 (Book 1)
In this one, Dogen gives us his take on the equality of men, women, and children in Buddhism. He says we should respect anyone who has got the Buddhist truth, regardless of whether that person is a man, a woman or a child. Nowadays Dogen’s idea doesn’t seem so strange, but it probably would’ve sounded pretty radical at many Buddhist temples in medieval Japan. Here’s an excerpt (from the Nishijima/Cross translation):

Again in Japan, there is one particularly laughable institution. This is either called a ‘sanctuary’ or called a “place for practicing the truth of the Great Vehicle” where bhiksunis (nuns) and other women are not allowed to enter.


2. Gyoji [Pure Conduct and Observance] -- Chapter 30 (Book 2)
Buddhism is based on action. In this chapter Dogen quotes lots of examples of the action of Buddhist masters down through the centuries. It’s a fairly straightforward chapter to read. It’s an encouraging one for anyone practicing zazen on a regular basis. Nishijima told me it’s one of his favorites:

Master Chokei Eryo was a venerable patriarch in the order of Seppo. Going back and forth between Seppo and Gensa, he learned in practice for a small matter of twenty-nine years, In those years and months he sat through twenty round cushions. People today who love Zazen cite Chokei as an excellent example of an adorable ancient – many adore him, but few equal him.


3. Butsudo [The Buddhist Truth] – Chapter 49 (Book 3)
In this chapter Dogen says that there is only one Buddhism – the Buddhism established by Gautama Buddha in India. Dogen disapproved of using words like “Zen” Buddhism, or of describing different sects like the “Rinzai sect” or “Soto sect.” Nowadays, some people make a big deal about differences between various types of Buddhism. But as far as Dogen was concerned true Buddhism is just the Buddhism of Gautama Buddha:

Do not concede that the Buddha-Dharma might even exist among people who claim to be the “Zen Sect”. Who has invented the name “Zen Sect”? None of the buddhas and ancestral masters has ever used the name “Zen Sect”. Remember, the name “Zen Sect” has been devised by devils and demons.


4. Zanmai-o-zanmai [The Samadhi That is King of Samadhis] – Chapter 72 (Book 3)
The word "samadhi" means the "balanced state of body and mind". In daily life, there are lots of times when we might feel "balanced", like after a long walk or a jog or doing some activity. But in this one, Dogen says the balanced state we feel when we do zazen is the best one. So Dogen described zazen as the king of the samadhis:

My late Master, the eternal Buddha, says, ‘To practice Zazen is to get free of body and mind. Just to sit is to have attainment from the beginning. It is not necessary to burn incense, to do prostrations, to recite the Buddha’s name, to confess, or to read sutras.’


Regards,

Peter