Philosophy, Travel, and Place by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319982250
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

In the present, the past is fully taken up, and yet it is simultaneously negated in its emptiness so that there is always and only the present. This is the case also with futurity. As being-time fills out the moment the future is actualized but being empty of form it immediately recedes into the past so that it no longer remains the future. In this way, past, present, and future flow together, eternally recurring in the here and now of life. To grasp this flow is not to measure it but rather to experience it in the present or right now (nikon). But since the here and now is never present in any lasting sense, it is a continual dying. This is why, for Dōgen, living and dying is one and the same. To grasp this with one’s entire being is to awaken to the great matter of birth-and-death. The “great death” (daishi 大死) of ego-selfhood is both the releasement from and the total immersion in the ever-flowing transient impermanence of being-time. The great death is the actualization of the standpoint of absolute nothingness, which is possible only from the standpoint of neither/nor—neither death nor life—because only thus is the absolute nothingness of the self and of existence in general able to avoid being grounded as a self-identity. In Buddhism, enlightenment or awakening is affirming that the ground of being is bottomless, in other words, empty of form and endless in being-time. All moments are the flow itself, which is to say, impermanent Buddha-nature eternally recurring. 38

The intertwining, or chiasm, 39 to draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s rich term, of living and dying as a non-dual whole is expressed in Dōgen’s concept of uji. Time permeates being and being permeates time. Dōgen writes, “For the time being here means time itself is being, and all being is time.” 40 This is analogous to Heidegger’s proposition in On Time and Being that “Being means the same as presencing [Anwesen]. … the present, together with past and future, forms the character of time. Being is determined as presence by time.” 41 Dōgen differs from Heidegger, however, in not asserting the priority of time over being. Time and being form a complete and fundamental interpermeation. From the Buddhist perspective of the non-substantiality, impermanence, and interconnectedness of all things, there is no distinct identity given to either time or being. This is why uji is alternately translated as meaning both “being-time” and “time-being.” So, although they come from very different times and contexts, Dōgen and Heidegger arrive at the same standpoint: being and time are inseparable and time constitutes the essence of what it means to exist. This is why Dōgen states, “Time is not separate from you, and as you are present, time does not go away.” 42

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