Time-Being: Scientific, Philosophical, and Mystical Perspectives

“Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that firewood is before and ash after. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes past and future, and is independent of them.  Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.”

- Zen master Eihei Dōgen (13th century Japan)

This exhibition invites the viewer to perceive the featured artworks in light of certain scientific, philosophical, and mystical views on the nature of time-being.

The scientific account of time, which views time as an empty receptacle of discrete nows, is inadequate in its explanation of how consciousness perceives entities across time.  For instance, Newtonian time explains the separation of successive moments but not their continuity.  In other words, each moment is not only independent of every other but also of the perceiver’s mind.

Since temporal events, like listening to a melody or watching someone in motion, are characterized by and experienced as a unified succession, a phenomenological account can give a more integral explanation of time.  This explanation is less concerned with the content of an entity and more with how it manifests as a unity of temporal flux.  It demonstrates how consciousness apprehends and unifies successive moments, giving rise to the perception of the becoming of entities.  A flow of successive moments is more than a collection of discrete nows; the moments are synthesized into a unity while their distinctions in the order are maintained.

The issue of time is intertwined with the nature of being.  Time and the self are understood to be inseparable: The self is not simply in time; the self is time and time is the self.  Subjective temporal life arises through the apprehension and unification of successive states of mind and body.  It is an ongoing construct that is actualized and disclosed by the structures of consciousness.  This phenomenology of time together with ontology give an account of the structures of consciousness that constitute time-being, or rather time-becoming.

Finally, Eihei Dogen views time-being to be more than the coming and going, before and after, of moments.  When the view of succession is broken through, time-being is recognized to be a spacious field of abidance, which is at once inclusive of momentary consciousness and independent of it.  Moreover, disclosed as an immediate wholeness, time-being exceeds any momentary becoming toward consummation in the future.