Firewood and Ash: Independent and Interdependent

In Genjokoan, Dogen expresses an image of firewood turning to ash and how the ash cannot revert to a prior state of firewood. For the unenlightened, the confused notion is linking firewood and ash in a linear temporal connection, calling firewood a preceding state of ash and ash succeeding state of firewood. But for the enlightened, firewood and ash have independent essences in being various dharma stages and merely phenomenally appear as firewood becoming ash. And yet, firewood and ash are still related to each other, how is this so? Dogen’s Uji (Being-Time), presents a possible explanation for this.

Dogen claims that we clearly do not doubt the existence of time if we are demarcating it in segments and taking them as given, but this doesn’t mean we understand its essence. And we shouldn’t take time’s essence to be something that merely “flies past”. For Dogen, all being is time and all time is being. This statement acts as an overarching representation of the totality of interconnection of all time and all being. Dogen showcases this total interconnection in a couple of ways.

“Since such is its fundamental reason, we must study and learn that myriad phenomena and numberless grasses [things] exist over the entire earth, and each of the grasses and each of the forms exists as the entire earth. These comings and goings are the commencement of Buddhist practice.”

Here, Dogen is getting at a couple of things: Firstly, even the smallest grass has the whole world in its essence, since it draws its being from being part of a larger interconnected network. And secondly, what is that to say about the self? If a blade of grass has the world in its entirety, then surely the self should as well. Therefore, practice should be directed toward seeing the self as the world in its interconnectedness.

“As the time right now is all there ever is, each being-time is without exception entire time. A grass-being and a form-being are both times. Entire being, the entire world, exists in the time of each and every now. Just reflect: right now, is there an entire being or an entire world missing from your present time, or not?”

What only exists is immediate moments, immediate moments are Being-Time’s primary form of expression. And all of being exists in each “now”, there is nothing in being that is unactualized in each and every moment. This is by virtue of again, being and time being one and the same. But how does “past being” become incorporated in “present being”? Dogen talks about this when he brings up the example of a “past time crossing a mountain or river” and a “present time residing in a splendid vermilion palace.” He says that the crossing of the mountain or river swallows up time of the splendid vermilion palace and spits it out. Here, Dogen is pointing out that the present is simultaneously taken up by the past as well as being affirmed and ushered into immediate moments. Again, immediate moments are the frame of all time and being. And when a form comes and passes through, that present isn't rid of but becomes past compounded and contained in each present.

Now that we’ve looked at Being-Time from a granular standpoint, how does the interconnected totality function and move? Dogen returns to the idea of manifestation of being in time, but in terms of total exertion. He says that without total exertion, nothing can become manifested. Exertion here may imply the use of will, but instead I think Dogen is getting at a particular being fully expressing its existence. And because its existence is inseparably connected to the existence of all being and all time, the same goes for other things that are. If they do not reciprocally express their existence, I cannot become manifest.

So how is the firewood and ash relationship depicted under this framework? Firewood and ash are both expressions of Being-Time in particular moments, but ash’s essence is not entirely determined by the negation of “being firewood”. Firewood and ash are equally Being-Time and have independent essences. But they are connected by virtue of the totality of interconnection, rather than having a direct causal relationship. Here, rather than conceiving of firewood and ash on a linear line of before and after, firewood and ash are conceived as individual loci on a plane of Being-Time, where each individual essence is maintained, yet each essence is connected to all other individualities, and take part in all other individualities. This is also where all being and time gets expressed in all of its modalities which reveal themselves to us as moments in time. And individual essence is that kind of momentary modality of Being-Time. Dogen speaks to this again in describing Being-Time as having the virtue of “seriatim passage”, which is being manifesting itself in a continuous arrangement of immediate moments, yet these moments do not overlap with each other just as the firewood and ash do not. Yet again they are still related through the totality of interconnection.

And finally, Dogen’s example in Genjokoan regarding the relationship between the moon being reflected in the water encompasses the point of Uji well. He discusses the fact that the moon and the water have a relation of total interdependence, and yet the moon does not get wet nor does the moon disturb the water. And still the smallest drop of water contains the entire light of the moon. This metaphor encompasses this relation of preserved individuation and interdependence, just as the firewood and ash are both individual and related through interdependence.

Works Cited
Dōgen, Norman Waddell, and Masao Abe. The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbogenzō. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2002.