How you can understand it (this is not just answer in the back
of a book, because it explains clearly the process to understand
it):
Much of our difficulty in
understanding time is due to the unwise use of spatial metaphors --
in fact, the objectification of time requires such spatial
metaphors -- but in this case another spatial metaphor is helpful.
We normally understand objects such as cups to be "in" space, which
(as explained above in relation to time) implies that in themselves
they must have a self-existence distinct from space. However, not
much reflection is necessary to realize that the cup itself is
irremediably spatial. All its parts must have a certain thickness,
and without the various spatial relations among the bottom, sides,
and handle, the cup could not be a cup. Perhaps one way to express
this is to say that the cup is not "in" space but itself is space:
the cup is "what space is doing in that place," so to speak. The
same is true for the temporality of the cup. The cup is not an
atemporal, self-existing object that just happens to be "in" time,
for its being is irremediably temporal. The point of this is to
destroy the thought-constructed dualism between things and time.
When we wish to express this, we must describe one in terms of the
other, by saying either that objects are temporal (in which case
they are not "objects" as we usually conceive of them) or,
conversely, that time is objects -- that is, that time expresses
itself in the manifestations that we call objects. Probably the
clearest expression of this way is given by Dogen: "The time we
call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers. The
flowers, in turn, express the time called spring. This is not
existence within time; existence itself is time."[20] This is the
meaning of his "being-time" (uji):
"Being-time" means that time is being; that is, "Time is existence,
existence is time." The shape of a Buddha-statue is time.... Every
thing, every being in this entire world is time.... Do not think of
time as merely flying by; do not only study the fleeting aspect of
time. If time is really flying away, there would be a separation
between time and ourselves. If you think that time is just a
passing phenomenon, you will never understand being-time.[21]
Time "flies away" when we experience it dualistically, with the
sense of a self that is outside and looking at it. Then time
becomes something that I have (or do not have), objectified and
quantified in a succession of "now-moments" that cannot be held but
incessantly fall away. In contrast, the "being-times" that we
usually reify into objects cannot be said to occur in time, for
they are time. As Nagarjuna would put it, that things (or rather
"thingings"Wink are time means that there is no second, external
time that they are "within."
This brings us to the second prong of the dialectic. To use the
interdependence of objects and time to deny only the reality
(svabhava) of objects is incomplete, because their relativity also
implies the unreality of time. Just as with the other dualities
analyzed earlier in section II, to say that there is only time
turns out to be equivalent to saying that there is no time. Having
used temporality to deconstruct things, we must reverse the
analysis and use the lack of a thing "in" time to negate the
objectivity of time also: when there is no "contained," there can
be no "container." If there are no nouns, then there can be no
temporal predicates because they have no referent. When there are
no things which have an existence apart from time, then it makes no
sense to speak of" them" as being young or old: "so the young man
does not grow old nor does the old man grow old" (Nagarjuna).[22]
Dogen expressed this in terms of firewood and ashes:
... we should not take the view that what is latterly ashes was
formerly firewood. What we should understand is that, according to
the doctrine of Buddhism, firewood stays at the position of
firewood.... There are former and later stages, but these stages
are clearly cut.[23]
Firewood does not become ashes; rather, there is the "being-time"
of firewood, then the "being-time" of ashes. But how does such
"being-time" free us from time?
Similarly, when human beings die, they cannot return to life; but
in Buddhist teaching we never say life changes into death....
Likewise, death cannot change into life.... Life and death have
absolute existence, like the relationship of winter and spring. But
do not think of winter changing into spring or spring into
summer.[24]
Because life and death, like spring and summer, are not in time,
they are in themselves timeless. If there is nobody who lives and
dies, then there is no life and death -- or, alternatively, we may
say that there is life-and-death in every moment, with the arising
and disappearance of each thought, perception, and act. Perhaps
this is what Heraclitus meant when he said that "both life
and
death are in both our living and dying."[25] Certainly it is what
Dogen meant when he wrote that we must realize that nirvana is
nothing other than life-and-death, for only then can we escape from
life and death.
In terms of time, this paradox can be expressed in either of two
contradictory ways. We may say that there is only the present: not,
of course, the present as usually understood -- a series of
fleeting moments which incessantly fall away to become the past --
but a very different present which incorporates the past and the
future because it always stays the same.
We cannot be separated from time. This means that because, in
reality, there is no coming or going in time, when we cross the
river or climb the mountain we exist in the eternal present of
time; this time includes all past and present time.... Most people
think time is passing and do not realize that there is an aspect
that is not passing. (Dogen)[26]
Dogen's "eternal present of time" -- the "standing now" (nunc
stans) of medieval Western philosophy -- is eternal because there
is indeed something which does not change: it is always now.
Alternatively, this nondual way of experiencing time may be
described as living in eternity: of course, not eternity in the
usually sense, an infinite persistence in time which presupposes
the usual duality between things and time. There is an "eternity on
this side of the grave" if the present is not devalued:
For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in
life. It is not a fact of the world. If by eternity is understood
not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be
said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the
present.[27]
