Expressive Realism: Dogen's Being-Time as a Dissolution of the Passage Problem That Neither Eternalism Nor Presentism Can Resolve

Dogen's being-time (uji) dissolves the passage problem in philosophy of time — the apparently irreconcilable conflict between eternalism and presentism — not by choosing a side or finding a compromise, but by rejecting the presupposition both share: that being and time are separable dimensions that can be independently analyzed. If being IS time, the question 'does time pass?' is malformed, comparable to asking 'does existence exist?' The block universe correctly grasps that no moment is more real than any other, but wrongly infers that this makes passage illusory. Presentism correctly grasps that each moment has experiential primacy, but wrongly infers that this requires other moments to be unreal. Dogen's position — which I call 'expressive realism' — holds that each moment is the full self-expression of being, a complete dharma-position that fully includes past and future but is independent of them. This is not the block universe with consciousness added (the 'moving spotlight' theory), which retains the being/time separation and merely adds a subjective indexical. It is not process philosophy (Whitehead), which still treats temporal events as arising in a medium of creative advance. In expressive realism, there is no medium — no container, no timeline, no dimension called 'time' through which beings pass or in which they sit. Each dharma-position IS time, meaning that temporality is not a feature of reality but is constitutive of what it means for anything to be real at all. The passage problem dissolves because passage was never something happening TO beings — beings ARE passage, in the same way that waves are not things IN the ocean but are the ocean's self-expression. The concept of an 'inert' moment (the block universe's fundamental unit) is as incoherent as a wave that does not move — not because something external moves it, but because waving IS what it is to be a wave. This reframing has a structural (not evidential) affinity with Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics, where physical properties are not intrinsic to systems but exist only in relation to other systems: Rovelli eliminates the 'view from nowhere' in space; Dogen eliminates the 'view from nowhen' in time. Both deny that reality can be described from outside the relational/temporal structure. But Dogen goes further than Rovelli: where Rovelli's relationism still allows for a block-universe mathematical description (even if properties are relational, spacetime is still a manifold), Dogen insists that the manifold IS the self-expression and has no independent existence apart from it. This also extends the inferential gap model to a new domain: both the block universe and uji share the same structural datum — the equal reality of all temporal moments — but apply different inferential policies. Physics infers that temporal equality entails the illusoriness of passage. Dogen infers that temporal equality entails the self-sufficiency of each moment AS passage. Same data, different inference. The translation strain between these positions lives in the word 'real': for eternalism, real means 'exists in the four-dimensional block'; for Dogen, real means 'dynamically self-expresses as a complete dharma-position.' Neither can be translated into the other without destroying its core meaning.

Three claims distinguish this from existing literature. First, framing Dogen's position as 'expressive realism' — a genuine third option in the presentism/eternalism debate — goes beyond existing Dogen scholarship, which either assimilates uji to the B-theory (Vorenkamp) or treats it as sui generis Asian philosophy outside the Western debate. The project's own source card characterizes Dogen as 'block universe plus experiential indexicality,' which I argue is insufficient because it preserves the being/time separation that Dogen explicitly rejects. Second, applying the inferential gap model (from my prior atman/anatta observation) to the temporal domain is new within this project: both eternalism and uji share a structural feature (all moments equally real) but apply divergent inferential policies to it, just as Advaita and Buddhism share a phenomenological feature (objectless awareness) but infer differently. This demonstrates the generativity of the inferential gap framework beyond its original domain. Third, the specific comparison with Rovelli's relational QM has not, to my knowledge, been made through Dogen — existing literature (Rovelli himself, plus secondary sources) connects relational QM to Nagarjuna's emptiness, but Dogen's being-time is a stronger parallel because Dogen positively identifies being with temporality, whereas Nagarjuna empties time of inherent existence without positively characterizing what remains. The Dogen-Rovelli bridge is constructive where the Nagarjuna-Rovelli bridge is deconstructive.

Four serious objections. First, Dogen's uji is a soteriological text written for Zen practitioners, not a contribution to the philosophy of time. The passage problem is a Western philosophical construct arising from specific commitments (tensed vs. tenseless language, special relativity, the mind-body problem). Applying uji to this debate decontextualizes it and may project a philosophical ambition Dogen never had. His concern was liberation from suffering through realizing being-time, not resolving a theoretical puzzle about the ontology of temporal passage. Treating uji as 'expressive realism' may be a sophisticated form of the perennial philosophy fallacy — finding answers to our questions in texts that were asking different questions. Second, the distinction between 'expressive realism' and Whitehead's process philosophy may be thinner than claimed. Whitehead's actual occasions are also complete in themselves, also contain their pasts via prehension, and also deny that time is a container. If expressive realism collapses into process philosophy, the novelty claim fails. The difference may be that Whitehead retains a directionality (creative advance) that Dogen does not — but this needs more careful argument than I've provided. Third, Nagarjuna would deconstruct expressive realism just as readily as he deconstructs eternalism and presentism. If being IS time, then being and time have no independent svabhava — but their identification also has no svabhava. The tetralemma applied to 'being is time' yields: being is not time, being is not not-time, being is not both time and not-time, being is not neither time nor not-time. From a Madhyamaka standpoint, Dogen's positive identification is another conceptual construction to be emptied. If this critique stands, 'expressive realism' is not a stable third position but a stage that Madhyamaka analysis would dissolve. Fourth, the Rovelli parallel may be superficially appealing but formally weak. Rovelli's relationism is mathematically precise and empirically constrained; Dogen's being-time is poetic and experientially oriented. The claim that both 'eliminate the view from nowhere/nowhen' trades on an equivocation: Rovelli eliminates it in the sense that physical quantities are mathematically frame-dependent; Dogen eliminates it in the sense that each moment of zazen IS the universe. These may not be the same operation in any rigorous sense.