With some books, I feel comfortable stating their message in my own words. With other books, I don’t. Zen titles often fall into that category, because they tend toward subtlety, paradox, indirectness, metaphor.
In that spirit, here’s some quotations from Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. I resonate with each of them, even though I may not agree fully with some of them. (Zazen is Zen meditation.)
It is the momentary structure of time that makes you talk to yourself that way. Impermanence creates a gap that makes your mind blink, so you want to escape. When you find it difficult to practice zazen, you’re blinking. But don’t escape! You can’t escape the cruelty of impermanence, which is always cutting off your life, so watch yourself carefully when you realize that you’re blinking.
Try to face impermanence directly, with a way-seeking mind. I don’t mean you shouldn’t blink your eyes in zazen, that’s okay. But, as much as possible, try to go ahead. Take one step without blinking your mind. Turn your mind away from the gap you sense from impermanence, and turn towards true impermanence. Stare at reality face-to-face, without blinking, and become yourself with open eyes. This is Buddha’s practice.
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How do you face a moment that is beyond your control? Imagine you are confronted with some event that happens suddenly. How are you going to face it? It is very difficult to face a sudden event. You may say, “Yes, I will face it with tranquility and a calm mind.” But I won’t believe you, because a sudden event compels you to take an unexpected direction, beyond your intellectual ideas.
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The monks and Zen masters are not substantial; they are transient. But according to our usual sense, we believe that something substantial does exist — Zen master. Then our usual sense starts to judge: He is a good Zen master because he was calm, or He is not so good because he ran away. If you praise or criticize the Zen master, you have already made him substantial, but actually it was just conditioned elements running toward the trees. It is not necessary to judge the Zen master as good or bad.
Conditions came together around him, and the vivid moment compelled him to do something. This reality is called kiya. When kiya arises, a moment of existence appears. Existence arises in the reality that the time has come. And the reality that the time has come arises as the function of conditions.
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Taking care of right now is coping with an emergency case. So when a moment comes, whatever happens, just face your life as it really is, giving away any idea of good or bad, and try your best to carry out what you have to do. You can do this; you can face your life with a calm mind and burn the flame of your life in whatever you do. This is Buddha’s practice.
That’s why teachers always tell you to practice, devote yourself to doing something, and forget yourself. When you forget yourself and put your wholehearted effort into facing every moment, you can do something, and simultaneously you can rest in the continuous flow of life energy. They you really enjoy your life.
You can enjoy your practice, but practice just for yourself is not good enough. If you practice just for yourself, you attach to the idea of getting something from practice. Then your expectations are endless, and you will never find peace. So your practice must be for everyone: you, other people, birds, trees, and all beings. Just plunge in and take care of what you have to do right now, before you think of yourself.
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We feel dissatisfied in daily life because there is time. In the stream of time our desires and experiences constantly appear and disappear from moment to moment, so there can be no permanent satisfaction. The functioning of time is something that is beyond human perceptual recognition, but even so it is something we have to understand through and through at any cost.
Buddhism tells us that if we misunderstand time, life doesn’t work: we don’t feel happy; we don’t feel comfortable. So we want to know what time is. But time is very strange. Time is not the long hand of the clock going around. Time is change.
In daily life you experience time because something is always changing. Even when you are alone in a room that is completely separated from the changing world outside, you feel time because your body changes. Time passes and your stomach feels hungry. If you could completely shut yourself off from physiological change, you would still feel time, because you have a constantly changing stream of consciousness.
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Whether we like it or not, suffering is present in our life, because human beings have a consciousness that makes us reflect upon ourselves. Self-reflection makes you think who you are.
How does suffering come from reflection? From the point of view of impermanence, to reflect is to rebound. It means to arise from the source of existence and appear as a human being. Moment after moment we reflect when we rebound from the pure, clear basis of existence and appear as particular beings in the phenomenal world. Because of constant reflection we feel that we exist as separate beings, and then we want to know the source of our being.
We want to know it, but the source cannot be grasped by our human consciousness, so we are dissatisfied and we suffer. This deep aspect of dukkha is not exactly the same as the suffering you can see in everyday life; it comes from an unconscious effort to investigate the root of consciousness itself.
Human beings reflect constantly, so there is always suffering. You cannot get rid of human consciousness. As long as you find an idea of yourself, you find this function of human consciousness. This is why we say that human life is characterized by suffering. But on the other hand, reflection deepens or enhances your life because it lets you go beyond the reality of your daily life.
What causes reflection to constantly deepen your life? It is truth, the original nature of existence, which is called dharma. Dharma creates reflection, and reflection creates suffering and pain. But that suffering gives you many chances to investigate the root of your life and deepen your life in the dharma. That’s why the Buddha said that suffering is truth.
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