Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time

by Dainin Katagiri

All of us experience a gap between our minds and the reality of time—that’s why we suffer. Then, instead of accepting the transient nature of life and facing impermanence with a way-seeking mind, we want to escape and find something that will satisfy us so that we can feel relief.

you already exist in the domain of impermanence, together with everyone and everything in the cosmic universe. As a human being, you inherently have a great capability that enables you to realize this truth and to experience your life with deep joy. To know this joy we practice looking at ourselves with a calm mind. That is Zen meditation called zazen. Through the practice of tranquillity in zazen, we can catch up with the quick tempo of time and, with a way-seeking mind, see deeply into what it is to be human.

Open your mind again and again to see what impermanence means.

When you practice zazen, no matter how you feel, just concentrate on breathing, without thinking, “My concentration is good” or “My concentration is poor.” Whatever you feel, don’t worry about it. Please just sit. Take care of your breathing with wholeheartedness. That’s enough. Just to follow this practice is to live a significant life. Maybe you don’t think so, but it’s true.

If you plunge into zazen and experience something unexpected, don’t attach yourself to what you feel from that experience. All you have to do is take care of your posture and breathing with a kind, considerate, and thoughtful spirit. If you practice hard, and one by one remove the layers that cover you, finally there is nothing left to take off and nothing that separates you from other beings.

When a moment appears, there is only one thing that controls you: the capability that comes from your spiritual practice, your ability to face impermanence and deal calmly with the conditions of every moment. So, before the earthquake happens, before your mind starts to work and you want to run away, accept every moment as an opportunity presented to you to practice facing reality as it really is.

But no matter how long we seek interesting experiences, expecting they will give us happiness, our desires are still not satisfied. This is true even when we have good experiences, because we want to keep our good feelings around. We want to hang on to wholesome states of being because we know there are also unwholesome states of being, and we don’t want to face them. So, whatever we do, there is always dissatisfaction.

Change is the basis of human life, so don’t attach yourself to birth or death, continuation or discontinuation. Just live right in the middle of the flow of change, where there is nothing to hold on to. How do you do this? Just be present and devote yourself to doing something. This is the simple practice of Zen.

Most people misunderstand the Buddhist teaching of emptiness, thinking it means to destroy or ignore your existence. This is a big mistake! Emptiness is not negative; emptiness is letting go of fixed ideas in order to go beyond them.

You cannot find any peace by escaping from human pain and suffering; you have to find peace and harmony right in the midst of human pain. That is the purpose of spiritual life.

don’t react quickly to pain and suffering with hatred or anger, because that is the cause of human troubles. Deal with demons immediately, but try to deal with them with a calm and peaceful mind, not with hatred or anger. If you become angry, as soon as possible make your mind calm. Be kind. Be compassionate. That is the practice of patience. If you do that, very naturally demons subdue themselves.

You may practice zazen for ten years, twenty years, and attain enlightenment. Does that guarantee that you are free from ego? Watch out! You don’t know how strong the ego sense is. At any cost, we have to deepen our understanding of time and turn the egoistic sense of time into no-time. If we continue to practice, very naturally we reach the bottom of time.

Time gives us questions; time gives us answers to our questions.

Usually we set ourselves out in a small territory of life, understand it, and then we feel good. So we want to hang on to that small territory.

For example, when you use the toilet, you don’t believe it’s a provisional picture in an imaginary world, because you can see the toilet right in front of you. But the toilet you see is a toilet fabricated by your consciousness. The real toilet is just like time—every moment it goes away. All you have to do is just use it, just handle the toilet as Buddha, and live with the toilet in peace and harmony. This is everyday practice.

Maturity is an endless process. The time will never come when you reach your idea of maturity. So when people say you should be abbot, whether you feel qualified or not, all you have to do is accept it and do your best with wholeheartedness. Make every possible effort to meet this position with modesty and humility and just do it without being proud of yourself.

When you are eternal time, you are not the ordinary you that you usually believe yourself to be, you are the big you that exists in the entire world. You have to depend on the big you. If you do that, you have spiritual security. If you ignore this, you are always depending on something else. You may live peacefully for a certain period of time, but you never know how long you can depend on other things. Maybe there will be a flood or a chemical bomb that destroys what you are depending on. So whatever happens, you have to depend on the big you. You can depend on your self because eternal time is always with you. And because eternal time is always with you, when you practice, it will come up and you can realize it.

Dogen has another interesting way of presenting the nature of suffering. He says, “The past swallows up the present and spits it out.”

Don’t judge your life just by seeing yourself in your own small territory; accept your life as understood by others, too.

your life is changing from moment to moment, together with everything in the universe. When you see the dynamic activity that connects your life with everything that exists you are present in peace and harmony, and very naturally you feel a warm relationship with all beings.