Sensei Michael Brunner explores Eihei Dōgen’s Uji (Being-Time) and the subtle ways we postpone our lives by waiting for better conditions, a quieter mind, a finished project, or some imagined future moment when practice will finally become possible. Drawing on Dōgen, Søren Kierkegaard’s image of the chess piece that “cannot be moved,” and the very real experience of building a new zendo, Brunner shows how longing, aversion, and karmic conjecture keep us negotiating with reality instead of inhabiting it. The talk turns Uji from abstract philosophy into a direct practice imperative: witness what is here, include what is here, take responsibility for what is being created, and allow compassionate activity to arise from the actual circumstances of this moment. The unfinished zendo, fear, anger, uncertainty, work, and relationship are not obstacles to practice. They are the Dharma positions through which practice is already alive
In this episode of Awakening Streams, Sensei Michael Brunner takes up Eihei Dōgen’s Uji (“Being-Time”) and asks what the teaching actually demands of us in practice. Rather than treating Uji as an abstract philosophy of time, Brunner turns toward one of the habits that most often separates us from our lives: waiting for better conditions before we fully participate.
Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s image of a chess piece that “cannot be moved,” the talk explores the way longing, aversion, and karmic conjecture convince us that something else must change first. We wait for another person to change, for fear to disappear, for money to arrive, for the mind to become quiet, or for life to finally take the shape we think it should have. In the meantime, we stop practicing with what is here and begin negotiating with it.
The construction of One River Zen’s new zendo becomes a concrete expression of Dōgen’s teaching. The unfinished walls, exposed electrical boxes, drywall dust, frustration, uncertainty, and work itself are not interruptions to practice. They are the Dharma position in which practice is occurring. “The wires are Uji. The drywall dust is Uji.” If we cannot practice here, a finished room will simply become a more attractive place in which to postpone our lives.
Brunner then connects Uji with the practical work of meeting anger, fear, uncertainty, and resistance directly. What has appeared is the field of practice. The task is not to indulge what arises or pretend that every state is wise or desirable, but to witness what is present, include it, take responsibility for what is being created through it, and ask what compassionate activity is possible now.
The talk also develops One River Zen’s Three Transformative Touchstones: Maintain Wonder, Include Everything, and Allow Compassion to Flow. These are presented not as abstract principles, but as ways of resisting the impulse to crystallize experience, exclude unwanted conditions, and postpone compassionate engagement until circumstances become more favorable.
Ultimately, the question is not whether some outside force will move us to a better square on the chessboard. The question is whether we can fully inhabit the square on which we already stand. The whole board is moving as Uji. This body, this work, this fear, this unfinished room, and this life are the Dharma positions through which practice becomes alive.
In this episode:
Read Sensei Michael Brunner’s complete 25-part commentary on Dōgen’s Uji:
https://oneriverzen.org/uji-dogen
Learn more about One River Zen:
https://oneriverzen.org
For the past few months, I’ve been working my way, or reworking my way, through Eihei Dōgen’s fascicle in the Shōbōgenzō called Uji, which is generally translated as “Being-Time.” There is actually a full twenty-five-part commentary for anyone who wants to take up the fascicle as a whole. You can see it online at oneriverzen.org/uji.
Uji is a difficult text, but it’s not difficult just because Dōgen is offering us some obscure philosophical theory about time. It’s difficult because he’s undermining one of the most fundamental assumptions through which we construct our lives: that we exist here, that time exists somehow around us, and that we’re moving through it toward some other moment in which things will finally be full or complete.
Ultimately, Dōgen is pointing to this notion that seems, at first, counterintuitive. Mountains are time. Oceans are time. Buddhas are time, and ordinary people are time as well. Practice is time. What I want to look at this morning is what that means for how we actually practice when we take this view, because it’s not subtle.
It’s kind of earth-shattering, because we spend a lot of our lives waiting for a good time to practice. We may not call it that, and we may not recognize it as that, but that’s what it is. We tell ourselves that when this problem is solved, then we can settle down, or when this relationship improves, or when the anxiety passes, or when you fill in the blank. Then we’ll be ready to sit and understand the teaching better and really practice.
We can watch ourselves doing it all the time, even when we sit on the cushion. This arises sometimes too, right? We sit down carrying some idea of the state we should eventually arrive at, and then we measure this actual sitting against the experience we thought we ought to have. We’re judging ourselves. We’ve barely taken our seat before we’ve divided the world into the meditation we’re having and the meditation we think we should be having.
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, once described the experience this way. He said, “I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess when my opponent says of it: that piece cannot be moved.”
You’ve played chess. You’ve experienced this feeling. No matter which way I move, it’s not going to work. We find ourselves in some configuration of circumstances and become convinced that nothing can happen until something else moves first. I can’t move until this person changes. I can’t move until the money comes through. I can’t move until I know what’s going to happen. I can’t move until my fear disappears.
Basically, I can’t move until conditions become favorable.
And so we sit on the chessboard waiting for someone or something to release us. But that’s checkmate. It’s the end of the match if we find ourselves intellectually positing that as the truth of our lived experience.
Notice that mechanism. Longing tells us that something necessary is missing. Aversion tells us that something present shouldn’t be here. Then karmic conjecture takes those two movements and constructs an alternate reality in which the conditions are finally right. But those three never seem to actually meet.
When we’ve done that, we’ve removed ourselves from the stream of our actual lived experience. We’re no longer practicing with what’s here. We’re negotiating with what’s here. We’ve decided that some other Dharma position would be preferable to the Dharma position in which we find ourselves, and so then we begin waiting for life, or some magic invisible hand, to take us there.
We have palpable and tangible examples of that in our own group sometimes when this comes up, right? We’re in the middle of constructing the zendo. The walls are being built, drywall is being cut and put up, wires are being run, things are unfinished everywhere you look.
And there’s a very seductive thought available to us that arises in the midst of all of this: when the zendo is finished, then we’ll really have the place in which we practice.
Once the walls are up and the lighting is right, once everything is painted and cleaned and the cushions are arranged and the room finally looks like the image we’ve been carrying around in our heads, then the real thing can begin.
But this is the exact illusion that Dōgen is trying to expose for us.
The unfinished zendo is not the thing standing between us and practice. The unfinished zendo is the Dharma position in which we find ourselves and through which we must practice.
The wires are Uji. The drywall dust is Uji. The electrical box sticking out of the unfinished wall is Uji. Even our frustration and our fear and apprehension about the project are Uji. And it’s not my Uji alone. This kōan is our entire sangha’s kōan.
If we can’t practice here, there’s no reason to believe that a beautifully finished room is somehow going to save us. We will simply have found a more attractive place in which to postpone our lives.
In Part Fifteen of the commentary I did on Uji, called “Ungraspable Uji,” Dōgen writes:
“The ever-present time-being of which I am speaking cannot be snared by some bird or by net or by cage. It is what’s manifesting before us. It’s a time when heavenly lords and the other celestial inhabitants are now manifesting left and right of us and are making every effort to do so, even at this very moment. In addition, it’s a time when beings of water and land are making every effort to manifest. Beings of all sorts, who are visible or invisible, for the time being, are making every effort to manifest, making every effort to flow on.”
Even if we don’t completely understand it, there’s this inspirational, volitional feeling there. Everything is making every effort to manifest.
And that’s not simply some platitude or interesting statement about the nature of reality. It places a demand on us. We have to practice with what is manifested, not what we hope would manifest, not what would have manifested if somebody else had behaved differently or done the right thing, not what we intend to manifest tomorrow.
What has actually appeared?
That’s where practice begins.
If anger has appeared, then anger is our field of practice. This doesn’t mean indulging in anger, and it certainly doesn’t mean that anger is automatically wise or morally correct. It means that pretending anger shouldn’t be here does nothing to transform it.
First, we witness what’s here. We include it. We take responsibility for the world we’re constructing through it. Then we ask what compassionate activity is possible in this moment.
If fear has appeared, fear is the field of practice. We don’t have to become fearless before courage becomes possible. We just have to accept the fear, breathe it in, take it in, and engage. We have to become intimate enough with fear that it no longer determines the entirety of the world we construct around it.
If we accept fear as a boundary, then we’re reshaping reality, recreating reality around that fear.
This is where a text that can seem pretty ephemeral becomes enormously practical. Every Dharma position completely manifests its own being-time. We don’t get to dismiss the position we’re in simply because we prefer another one.
We practice this one.
We’re also approaching Ango. Ango is a period of intensified practice, and there’s another trap waiting for us here. Ango can very easily become another future moment in which we imagine practice will become serious. When Ango begins, I’ll sit more consistently. When Ango begins, I’ll pay closer attention, and so on and so forth.
There’s nothing wrong with establishing a period of intensified training because the container in which we protect practice matters. Commitment matters, and sangha matters. But if Ango becomes a place where we intend to someday begin practicing, then we’ve misunderstood it.
Ango is already here.
It’s here in this moment. It’s here when we get up and put our cushions where they belong and bow and leave the room.
What I’m trying to tell you to do is not wait politely outside the door for Ango to begin. Step into it by bringing the whole stream of activity with you. Preparation means beginning now to notice where we’re holding or withdrawing ourselves from our own lives.
An important way of doing this is to look for, or catch, the “if only.”
If only this person had behaved differently. If only I had more time. If only my mind would quiet down.
Every “if only” is worth investigating because it reveals the place where we’ve decided that practice cannot proceed until the chessboard changes.
When Dōgen goes on to tell us that beings of water and land are making every effort to manifest, he’s pointing toward full exertion. Suzuki Daiōshō would call it burning oneself up in practice.
And we look at that and say, “But I don’t want to burn myself up, right? I want to maintain this container of my hopes and dreams and expectations.” We look at all the positive things it brings, but we don’t look at the ways in which this mental attitude of scarcity and lack and wanting and waiting is actively creating the world we’re in.
It’s not a minor thing, because we wind up holding ourselves in reserve constantly, refusing to give ourselves completely to what is here because we’re waiting to see whether it turns into what we want.
We offer conditional participation.
“I’ll open myself up to this person if they change.”
“I’ll accept this loss when I can fully understand why.”
“I’ll inhabit this life when I’m convinced that this life is the life I should have.”
This is bargaining, and reality doesn’t bargain with us.
Reality demands our full attention and our full exertion.
This is why the Three Transformative Touchstones, as we teach them here, matter beyond some abstract philosophy. When we talk about Maintaining Wonder, we mean that maintaining wonder resists the impulse to crystallize this moment before it’s had an opportunity to show us what it is.
Including Everything means that we don’t begin by selecting which conditions deserve admission into our lives and which ones have to be expelled before we can proceed.
When we do these two things, Allowing Compassion to Flow means that we’ve actually met the full field with practical engagement, that we allow the activity in this moment to arise responsibly in response to what is actually here.
This can mean picking up a paintbrush. It can mean sitting zazen. It can mean taking shoken, making commitments. It can mean establishing a boundary. Sometimes it can mean remaining silent rather than adding another layer of dissonance and karmic conjecture to an already difficult situation.
As a matter of fact, it means all of them.
The outward forms are different, but the imperative is the same. Stop waiting for the Dharma position in which you can act and step in and join the dance that is already going on right before you.
Sometimes when we sit in zazen, we sit down and notice almost immediately that the mind begins making demands.
This thought should not be here.
That pain should stop.
I should be calmer by now.
I’ve been doing this for years. I should be able to concentrate.
And then we turn the entire sitting into an argument, an argument with reality, and then we wonder why we’re suffering.
Zazen keeps returning us to a much more demanding simplicity. We sit with the body that’s here. We sit with the mind that’s here. We sit with the sounds that are here.
Not because every state is equally desirable, but because every state that has arisen is the actual Dharma position from which practice must proceed.
Here’s the practice I’m asking you to take up, because we don’t study sutras, we don’t read Dōgen, and we don’t sit zazen so that we can become smarter or more philosophically adept.
God forbid.
We sit so that we can join the practice of this very life, the life that is beckoning us.
Catch the moment over the coming days when you begin postponing your life. Catch the demand that this moment become another moment before you consent to inhabit it fully.
Don’t immediately try to fix what’s happening. Don’t begin by deciding whether it belongs. Just maintain wonder. Look at what’s here with a sense of curiosity, and then include it.
Allow the discomfort to belong. Allow the resistance to belong.
Nothing needs to be hidden from the field before practice can begin.
Now, I’m not saying inclusion means passivity, right? Sometimes we think we can take on this passive-aggressive stance: “I’ll let you stay, but I’m not going to talk to you. I’ll engage with what’s present, but not politely. I’m going to go kicking and screaming.”
It doesn’t mean approving everything from the position of the small self. It doesn’t mean the small self’s wish list fades into oblivion. We can see the wish list. We can see what we don’t want there, and we can still just wonder about it.
But what’s important is that we actually have to step into the circumstances. We cannot continue to take on these tantrums where we try to cut things out by refusing to engage with them.
Step into the suffering.
That’s the only way it can be transformed.
When we exclude what’s part of what is happening because it threatens the story of what we prefer, we lose our ability to respond clearly. Inclusion means refusing to falsify the field of experience in order to keep the small self afloat.
In this environment, compassion flows because we can actually and truly ask: What does the situation require?
That’s the practice imperative.
It’s not, “How can I get somewhere else?” or “How do I make this feeling disappear?” or even “What would an awakened person do?”
What does this situation require?
Kierkegaard’s chess piece feels powerless because it feels it can’t be moved. It’s already made that decision.
This practice turns that whole situation around. The question is not whether the external hand will finally move us to a better square.
The question is whether we can fully inhabit this square, the square in which we already stand.
The whole board is moving as Uji. This position is not outside the game.
The zendo under construction is not waiting to become the zendo. It’s actively manifesting that way. Ango isn’t waiting somewhere in the future for our practice to begin. The artist doesn’t need to wait for inspiration before creating.
We don’t need another life before we can fully take up this one.
This life, this anger, this body, this work, this half-finished room: these are the Dharma positions through which practice becomes alive.
So this week, when you discover that you’ve once again constructed some imaginary future in which everything will finally be right, recognize that conjecture and return.
Practice is always as close as your next breath, as your next step, as the next screw that you put through the drywall.
Witness what’s here. Include what’s here. Take responsibility for what’s being created here.
Then don’t just ask what compassionate activity is possible here.
Manifest that compassion.
You’ve probably seen Avalokiteśvara depicted with hundreds of arms, and in some cases thousands of arms. You look at that and say, “Ooh, it’s almost a freakish creation.”
There’s lore around Avalokiteśvara having so many arms, that she wills herself to have more arms and hands in order to address all the suffering she encounters. Out of this sheer volition she becomes this creature of compassion.
In our Zen Buddhist practice, we don’t look at these beings as something outside. We’re looking at a mirror, at something that is already present within us.
When we address our lives, when we step into our lives fully this way, we’ll find all the arms and all the hands that we need to address the suffering manifesting in the circumstances of our lives.
But we actually have to stop waiting to practice.
We have to recognize that this is the Dharma position we’ve been given.
So step into that and fully inhabit it.
Sometimes, if we just open to a sound so completely that it is no longer at dissonance with our expectation, then we recognize that it ceases to be the sound we had made it before. If you pull it in so closely that it’s no longer something outside, it’s no longer a problem.