Zen Buddhism and Dōgen’s Uji in the Field of Social Work
By Marissa Wong | She/Her/Hers | Seattle Betsuin Youth Minister's Assistant
Originally published: February 24th, 2020
Social work as a profession aims to enable all individuals, families, and communities to function, participate, and develop in society, maximizing the development of human potential and ensuring the fulfillment of human needs. The field of social work focuses on interactions between people and the societal institutions that impact a person's ability to accomplish essential life tasks and realize goals.[1] While social work is an important profession and most people agree that it is better to have social workers than not, just like every other profession, it has its pitfalls. Examining the values behind social work through the lens of Dōgen’s Uji can help bring insights to the social work profession and how it can be improved. In today’s world, it is urgent that social work, along with all other professions, grow and adapt and incorporate concepts from Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Uji.
Social work is deeply rooted in and committed to the concept of social justice. Social justice, like ethics, is reactionary. Social work tends to attack the problems of social injustice in our society without first looking at the most basic question; Why do we need social justice?
Rather than asking if we should be committed to social justice, social workers should look past the reactionary stage and question the root cause of social injustice in our society. When we do not attend to the root cause of our need to be ethical, we have an extremely limited sense of uji, or being-time.
I argue that Dukkha is the root cause of our need to be ethical and our need for social justice. Due to the inherent inequality in society, at every moment and for all time, some people in our societies have experienced Dukkha. We must question why this is a necessary truth of society. Why are our societies inherently unequal, and why is it necessary for some people to experience Dukkha in society? Furthermore, Shinshu Roberts clarifies Dōgen’s statement that, “The ‘time-being’ means time, just as it is, is being, and being is all time”[2] by saying, “our person is not separate from what we perceive as the other, while simultaneously we and all beings are unique.”[3] While it is true that the Dukkha experienced by the individual is unique to each individual, it is simultaneously true that our being-time is all being-time, and so the Dukkha experienced by an individual Dharma position is true for all, since a Dharma position holds all being-time.[4]
The couplet from the beginning of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Uji is, “For the time being, I’m Mr. Chang or Mr. Li. For the time being, I’m the great earth and heavens above.”[5] Roberts explains that this couplet “encompass reality as both particular and universal”[6] and that the “true nature of our life is that we are not separate, we inter-are.”[7] This is why addressing the root cause of social injustice is so important. While social workers work to fix individual’s or small groups’ Dukkha, ignoring the larger root cause will only ensure that Dukkha continues on indefinitely, expressed through individual suffering. Roberts has another phrasing of our inter-are; “Our being time’s moment must include all being(s)-time(s). When this inclusivity is actualized, we are fully present with whatever is happening in its totality and we respond.
This response is unobstructed. It alleviates suffering.”[8] While we each have our own-being time, we simultaneously exist as one being-time because each person does not exist or function outside of the being-time of every other being.[9] Therefore, social work must focus on eliminating the root cause of people’s suffering, or the suffering will persist indefinitely.
One aspect of social work that can be critiqued through Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Ujiis the emphasis on humans. As previously stated, social work focuses on interactions between people, maximizing the development of human potential and ensuring the fulfillment of human needs.
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. When you have arrived within this field of suchness, it is a single grass, a single form. The forms are understood and not understood, the grasses are grasped and not grasped.[10]
To know one blade of grass is to know the universe. Dōgen, as Roberts says, “extols us to study and learn that everything (the one hundred grasses) is the entire world as it manifests as particularity.”[11] It is a narrow way of thinking to think that social work should care only about humans, when we know that even a lowly piece of dust is the entire universe. To separate humans from the rest of the universe is to reject the ideas of mutual identity and mutual penetration brought forth by the seventh-century Chinese Huayan School in understanding that each grass or form is the entire earth.[12] Roberts describes mutual identity as “the observation that all things share the qualities or processes of (1) having no inherent existence separate from all being, (2) being subject to and the result of causal relationships, and (3) being impermanent.”[13] He goes on to say that “If you know the truth of grasses’ impermanence, you will know the truth of your own impermanence, interconnection, and interpenetrating intimacy with all beings.”[14] In this way humans have mutual identity with all other forms or being-times existing within the universe.
The second Huayan concept is mutual penetration. Mutual penetration “posits that if all beings share mutual identity they also physically penetrate or co-mingle with each other. Taking the idea further, it can be said that seen from a being’s independent aspect, that being cannot be isolated and is embedded in a codependent relationship of function and existence.”[15] Because of the truth of mutual penetration, every myriad thing is interdependent with every other myriad thing and it is impossible to isolate one from the rest. Therefore it is impossible to isolate humans from the rest of the forms in the universe that mutually penetrate us. Through the ideas of mutual identity and mutual penetration, we can see that grass, as do humans and all other forms exist as the entire earth.[16] The truth of mutual identity and mutual interpenetration is the dharma gate of compassion and wisdom.[17] Social work needs to take into consideration the larger systems in which humans exist in order to understand the source of their Dukkha. Human beings exist in a series of causal relationships which connects us to unobstructed being-time. The image of Indra’s Net is used to illustrate the teaching of mutual identity and mutual penetration.
Indra’s Net is described as:
... a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions ... the artificer has hung a single glittering jewels in each 'eye' of the net...If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring ... it symbolizes a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the members of the cosmos ... of simultaneous mutuality and mutual inter-causality.[18]
In Indra’s Net, causal relationships between beings are viewed as multidimensional and holistic, where each being shares mutual identity and mutual penetration with all other beings. Human beings are a part of Indra’s net, but so are blades of grass, dogs, mountains, rivers, and every other myriad of beings within the universe, past, present, and future. To view humans as somehow separate from this karmic fabric is unfortunate and not holistic. While we are not separate from all being-times, we are still unique individuals, singular independent identities which are also interpenetrating with all being-time.[19] Social workers must realize that human beings exist both as particular beings and simultaneously as the entire earth, just as each blade of grass does exists as a particular being and as the entire earth.[20]
Through this process of interpreting and understanding Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Uji in a way that critiques but also reconciles with the social work profession, a couple understandings have come to light. The first is that although the social work profession is not perfect and many improvements could be made upon it, it is a necessary profession. It is up to each of us to do the best that we can, and for some people that is becoming a social worker. Social workers choose to devote themselves to helping those who suffer the most from poverty, war, illness, environmental racism, and trauma, or to a more macro approach to social work in lobbying, running non-profits and supporting grassroots organization efforts. For others, it is to devote oneself to being a mother, a father, a journalist, a chef, a doctor, a religious or spiritual leader. As long as each person is doing their best in the way that they can be their best, Indra’s net will glisten with the reflection of infinite interrelationships between each being.
In understanding the infinite and intercausal relationships between humans and every other being, we understand that while we are individual being-times and are each doing our best, we are all simultaneously one being-time. Dōgen’s essential point is thus, “every entire being in the entire world is each time an independent time, even while it makes a continuous series. Inasmuch as they are being-time, they are my being-time.”[21] For social workers, recognizing the central importance of human relationships[22], which is outlined in the NASW code of ethics, means recognizing the central importance of the myriad of beings in the universe, of which humans are included.
Through an understanding of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Uji, social work can be critically analyzed both as a profession and for its underlying values and ethics. Once we realize that we are simultaneously singular independent identities and one Dharma position which holds all being-time, we see the importance of the infinite number of intercausal relationships between each being-time with all other being-times. Social work often focuses on human connection and growth, neglecting the countless other causal relationships that exist between humans and every other being in the universe. Social workers should always be mindful of Dōgen’s concept of being-time when advocating for social justice, being mindful of its root causes and critically analyzing current approaches to “solving” issues like racism, sexism, classicism, and other forms of social inequality.
[1] BASW, https://www.basw.co.uk/resources/become-social-worker/what-do-social-workers-do [2]Roberts, Being-time, 50. [3]Roberts, 50. [4]Roberts, 40. [5]Roberts, 36. [6]Roberts, 37. [7]Roberts, 48. [8]Roberts, 49. [9]Roberts, 50. [10]Roberts, 72. [11]Roberts, 73. [12]Roberts, 73. [13]Roberts, 74. [14]Roberts, 74. [15]Roberts, 74. [16]Roberts, 74. [17]Roberts, 78. [18] Seeker’s Glossary of Buddhism (1998), 300. [19]Roberts, Being-Time, 115. [20]Roberts, 75. [21]Roberts, 114. [22] NASW Code of Ethics, https://www.socialworkers.org/about/ethics/code-of-ethics/code-of-ethics-english
References
Ethical Principles. National Association of Social Workers. www.socialworkers.org/about/ethics/code-of-ethics/code-of-ethics-english
Roberts, Shinshu. Being-Time: a Practitioner's Guide to Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō Uji. Wisdom Publications, 2018.
Seeker's Glossary of Buddhism. New York: Sutra Translation Committee of the U.S. & Canada, 1998.
“What Do Social Workers Do?” BASW, 15 Oct. 2018, www.basw.co.uk/resources/become-social-worker/what-do-social-workers-do.
