The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [62]
Man’s identification with his idea of himself gives him a specious and precarious sense of permanence. For this idea is relatively fixed, being based upon carefully selected memories of his past, memories which have a preserved and fixed character. Social convention encourages the fixity of the idea because the very usefulness of symbols depends upon their stability. Convention therefore encourages him to associate his idea of himself with equally abstract and symbolic roles and stereotypes, since these will help him to form an idea of himself which will be definite and intelligible. But to the degree that he identifies himself with the fixed idea, he becomes aware of “life” as something which flows past him–faster and faster as he grows older, as his idea becomes more rigid, more bolstered with memories. The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a process in motion.
On one occasion Ma-tsu and Po-chang were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.
“What are they?” asked Ma-tsu.
“They’re wild geese,” said Po-chang.
“Where are they going?” demanded Ma-tsu.
Po-chang replied, “They’ve already flown away.”
Suddenly Ma-tsu grabbed Po-chang by the nose and twisted it so that he cried out in pain.
“How,” shouted Ma-tsu, “could they ever have flown away?”
This was the moment of Po-chang’s awakening.8
The relativity of time and motion is one of the principal themes of Dogen’s Shobogenzo, where he writes:
If we watch the shore while we are sailing in a boat, we feel that the shore is moving. But if we look nearer to the boat itself, we know then that it is the boat which moves. When we regard the universe in confusion of body and mind, we often get the mistaken belief that our mind is constant. But if we actually practice (Zen) and come back to ourselves, we see that this was wrong.
When firewood becomes ashes, it never returns to being firewood. But 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.
It is the same with life and death. Thus we say in Buddhism that the Un-born is also the Un-dying. Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time. They are like winter and spring, and in Buddhism we do not consider that winter becomes spring, or that spring becomes summer.9
Dogen is here trying to express the strange sense of timeless moments which arises when one is no longer trying to resist the flow of events, the peculiar stillness and self-sufficiency of the succeeding instants when the mind is, as it were, going along with them and not trying to arrest them. A similar view is expressed thus by Ma-tsu:
A sutra says, “It is only a group of elements which come together to make this body.” When it arises, only these elements arise. When it ceases, only these elements cease. But when these elements arise, do not say, “I am arising,” and when they cease, do not say, “I am ceasing.” So, too, with our former thoughts, later thoughts, and intervening thoughts (or, experiences): the thoughts follow one another without being linked together. Each one is absolutely tranquil.10 h
Buddhism has frequently compared the course of time to the apparent motion of a wave, wherein the actual water only moves up and down, creating the illusion of a “piece” of water moving