This post attempts to unpack a Zen Buddhist concept uji that is the heart of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. A few readings of the book are not enough to fully grapple this concept, so this post at best pieces together several relevant interpretations and manifestations of uji in the text.
“Uji” is the title of the eleventh chapter of Shōbōgenzō by Japanese Zen master Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253); it is also a concept central to his teaching. Written in kanji character as 有時, it signifies “being” and “time”. Here is an interpretation of the word uji by Hee-Jin Kim, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon:
“Dōgen … transforms such an everyday phrase as arutoki (‘at a certain time,’ ‘sometimes,’ ‘there is a time,’ ‘once’) into one of the most important notions in his Zen – uji (‘existence-time’). This metamorphosis is executed by way of changing its two components – the aru and the toki – into u (‘existence,’ ‘being’) and ji (‘time,’ ‘occasion’), respectively, and recombining them into uji so that it unmistakably signals the nondual intimacy of existence and time.”
A Tale for the Time Being opens with Ozeki’s translation of the text of “Uji”:
“An ancient Buddha once said:
For the time being, standing on the tallest mountaintop,
For the time being, moving on the deepest ocean floor,
For the time being, a demon with three heads and eight arms,
For the time being, a golden sixteen-foot body of a Buddha,
For the time being, a monk's staff or a master's fly swatter,
For the time being, a pillar or a lantern,
For the time being, any Dick or Jane,
For the time being, the entire earth and the boundless sky." (Ozeki 1)
Shinshu Roberts, author of Being Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Uji, offers coexisting interpretations of the first line, which consists of “a particular time-being stands on the highest mountain peak,” “the time when one stands on the highest mountain peak,” “all being(s)-time(s) stand on the highest peak,” or “all time’s being and/or all beings’ time is now standing on the highest peak.” She claims that “[n]o single thing and no moment of time is left out of this very moment of being-time” (38). All the things, existence, and time evoked in the verse are not mutually exclusive; they are interconnected and interdependent.
This elaborated effort in attaining an understanding of uji would grant readers an access to how the characters in the book are timebeings that are interconnected in a specific sense. This post will focus on three female characters – Nao, the author of the diary, Jiko, Nao’s greatgrandgrandma, and Ruth, the reader who chanced upon Nao’s diary and her other artifacts in the same parcel washed ashore a beach on a remote island on the BC Coast.
What uji means to Nao
Nao begins her diary with this explanation of timebeing:
“Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present, writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you’re reading this, then maybe by now you’re wondering about me, too.” (Ozeki 3)
In the voice of Nao, a sixteen year-old returnee finding a hard time to fit into the life in Japan, she is surprisingly eloquent about the concept of uji; it even seems a move of genius to approach the topic through writing a diary directly addressed to an unknown reader. She manages to evoke her immediate surrounding, and by doing so, draws us beyond our own timebeing. Philosophical concepts aside, there is also the very act of immersive reading to suspend disbelief; as readers like us are drawn into the story, it seems that we are not only identifying with the characters, we can even take the role of the reader cast in the story. Through the voice and perspective of Ruth, readers are guided to become aware of one’s own surrounding and circumstances, too. It is clumsily expressed here, but the experience of reading the book really draws readers in.
Ozeki plays on the pun of naming “Nao” – now, which is another word for “the time being”. Ozeki also gives a nod to the many layers of the book title that can be read as A Tale for (or about) Nao, but as well that for many other timebeings. Here is an episode of Nao grappling the pun on her name, by saying “Nao” out loud and catching the exact moment when she said it matched the moment when she heard it to prove the present-ness of now:
“But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then. Then is the opposite of now. So saying now obliterates its meaning, turning it into exactly what it isn’t.” (Ozeki 99)
Perhaps Nao demonstrates an early awareness of the present moment, but she was yet lacking the tools to be present. Fast forward to teenage Nao when she spent a summer with greatgrandma Jiko at the temple. There she would learn many lessons, among which, she would be explained and shown the concept of the non-duality of timebeing. One such memorable instance happened during Obon, the festival when the passed on spirits returned from the land of the dead to visit the earthly realm. At the osegaki ceremony marking the end of Obon, Nao was delegated to play the drum. The experience gave her a profound awareness of the timebeing.
“When you are beating a drum, you can hear when the BOOM comes the teeniest bit too late or the teeniest bit too early, because your whole attention is focused on the razor edge between silence and noise. Finally, I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that’s what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you’re breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder.” (Ozeki 238)
The previous week showcased Jiko’s various lessons imparting Zen Buddhist practices, such as gratitude and meditation, whereas a moment of enlightenment such as this, in the specific context of the temple, can be profound. This lesson is lived, not learnt.
What uji means to Jiko
Jiko embodies an enlightened being whose Zen Buddhist practice grants her comprehension and appreciation for the intricate meaning of the timebeing. She lives every moment with intent. To Nao’s amazement, this simple act gives old Jiko a superpower of seemingly being able to slow time.
“Old Jiko is supercareful with her time. She does everything really really slowly, even when she’s just sitting on the veranda, looking out at the dragonflies spinning lazily around the garden pond. She says that she does everything really really slowly in order to spread time out so that she’ll have more of it and live longer, and then she laughs so you know she is telling you a joke.” (Ozeki 24)
It seems to be Jiko’s approach to stay present at every moment and to be aware of all beings and time. As Nao shares more, there is a particular example demonstrating Jiko’s enlightenment about timebeing. When Jiko took Nao to have a picnic on the beach, they shared a conversation about surfers in sight, to which Jiko commented: “Surfer, wave, same thing” (194). This typically riddle-like comment annoyed and intrigued Nao, who pressed for clarification, to which Jiko presented her understanding of timebeing.
“Jiko looked out across the ocean to where the water met the sky. ‘A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean,’ she said. ‘A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.’ She pointed to the steep cliffs along the shoreline. ‘Jiko, mountain, same thing. The mountain is tall and will live a long time. Jiko is small and will not live much longer. That’s all.'” (Ozeki 194)
This vivid example demonstrates Jiko’s worldview firmly grounded on non-duality, interconnectedness, and impermanence.
What uji means to Ruth
Since Ruth chanced upon Nao’s diary, she became increasingly absorbed in the life story of Nao and her family. At one point, she lost her sense of bearing with her own work. She felt that the obsession was unsustainable, and she also felt that rushing through the pages would not give her an authentic understanding of Nao’s experience. So then she devised a plan:
”Perhaps if Ruth paced herself by slowing down and not reading faster than the girl had written, she could more closely replicate Nao's experience. Of course, the entries were undated, so there was no way of really knowing how slow or fast that might have been, but there were clues: the changing hues of ink, as well as shifts in the density or angle of the handwriting, which seemed to indicate breaks in time or mood. If she studied these, she might be able to break up the diary into hypothetical intervals, and even assign numbers to them, and then pace herself to read further and more quickly, but if it felt like the pace of the writing was slowing down, then she would slow her reading down, too, or stop altogether. This way she wouldn't end up with an overly compressed or accelerated sense of the girl's life and its unfolding, nor would she run the risk of wasting too much time." (Ozeki 38)
This may not be much of an innovation, but Ruth’s humble act of pacing through the immediate experience of her own, and simultaneously getting a feel of Nao’s seems to be a practical example of gaining insight into the existence-time.
A Tale for the Time Being, in my opinion, can stand the test of many readings, as it is a very readerly text. By this I mean that it is opposed to the writerly genius of books in which the writers would showcase their craft and clever ideas but somewhat impose a distance from the reader. Instead, this is a text that facilitates readers to immerse into the experience of reading. At times cheeky, at times dark, this novel is overall an accessible introduction to the concept of uji – timebeing, existence-time, and being-time. Words fall short, the experience itself is well worth the effort.