This is a draft version from an upcoming book by John Tan. Will continued to be updated before final release.
Dogen Total Exertion -- totality beyond whole and parts
Total Exertion: The Whole in Every Part
Introduction: Seeing Dependent Arising in Action
In much of contemporary Buddhist discourse — especially within Tibetan traditions — pratītyasamutpāda, or dependent arising, is often approached primarily as a deconstructive view. It is skillfully wielded to dissolve the mistaken belief in intrinsic existence, pointing the mind toward emptiness. Its purpose is to clarify the non-arising nature of phenomena, to refine our understanding of śūnyatā, and to sever clinging to appearances as real.
While this analytical orientation is invaluable for dismantling substantialist assumptions, it also tends to leave dependent arising as something abstract or theoretical — a view to adopt, a logic to follow, a doctrine to internalize.
But what is rarely emphasized is how dependent arising is not merely a framework of negation, but also the very language and function of the world in action. In East Asian traditions such as Huayan and Dōgen's Zen, dependent arising is not only what deconstructs solidity, but what constructs the living immediacy of things. It is the formative, expressive, and radiant unfolding of reality in its full responsiveness.
Here, dependent arising is not something we merely analyze — it is something we witness, taste, and embody. Each moment, each phenomenon, each gesture is seen as the complete exertion of all conditions — not metaphorically, but functionally and luminously.
This chapter explores this dimension through the lens of Dōgen’s “Total Exertion” — a view where nothing exists on its own, and yet everything exists with utter immediacy and power. In this vision, the insight of emptiness does not erase the world, but reveals it to be seamlessly active, boundlessly intimate, and fully alive.
What follows is not a metaphysical theory, but an invitation to see and feel the radical interdependence of all things — not from the distance of conceptual analysis, but from the inside of living experience.
The Unfolding of the Whole in Each Thing
A bell rings — and in that single sound, the sky, the earth, the trees, and the listener all resound. It is not that the bell causes the world to respond. Rather, the world itself rings as the bell.
This is the meaning of total exertion: that in each moment, each phenomenon, each arising — the whole of interdependent existence is fully present, exerting itself as that appearance.
A grain of sand is not just part of a desert. It is the entire cosmos exerting itself in the form of a grain. A passing breeze is not merely moving air — it is the totality expressing itself as motion, temperature, sound, and touch. It is not that the breeze has meaning because of the sky or because of weather patterns. It has meaning because it cannot be anything apart from all that is.
This is not poetic exaggeration. It is a radical intimacy that becomes clear when the illusion of independently existing parts dissolves. When we no longer see the world as made of discrete, self-standing pieces, we realize: each thing is not merely in relation to the whole — it is a totality that transcends both whole and parts, in its current expression.
Just as in the previous example of left and right — where neither can be without the other, and both arise in a single conceptual movement — so too does each appearance arise not from itself, but from the exertion of all things.
This is not the unity of substance. It is the inseparability of display. It is not that all things collapse into one, but that all things arise as the living pattern of all others. Each part, therefore, is a holographic flash that presents infinity and totality — nothing excluded, nothing needing to be added.
To realize this is to live in suchness without leaving behind ordinary life. Walking is total exertion. Drinking tea is total exertion. Responding to a stranger’s gaze is total exertion. There is no center from which actions arise — they are the universe acting through and as you, yet without a ‘you’ apart from it.
Beyond Parts and Wholes
To speak of “parts” and “wholes” is already to enter the realm of conceptual division. We imagine a whole composed of smaller elements — a sum greater than its pieces — or we think of parts as fragments waiting to rejoin some unified source. But this thinking already presupposes something broken, something divided and in need of mending.
Total exertion cuts through this paradigm entirely.
It is not that the part belongs to a whole, nor that the whole contains the part. Rather, in the moment of its appearance, each so-called part is fully exerting the whole — not symbolically, but functionally and vividly.
When you raise a hand, this is not your hand acting alone. It is time, gravity, earth, breath, and sky — all exerting themselves as this gesture. There is no “hand” apart from all these. Nor is there a “whole” somewhere outside coordinating it. There is only this: the arising of this gesture as the complete manifestation of infinite conditions.
This is why Dōgen never said “wholeness is in everything,” but that each dharma-position is the total manifestation of the entire dharma realm. He was not pointing to a collective container but to the immediacy of a flower blooming as the exertion of ten thousand things.
The trap of substantialism lies in believing that parts must build up to a whole, or that wholes must somehow transcend parts. But both views assume that something real stands behind what appears.
Total exertion shows otherwise: there is no base behind what appears — appearance is the function of the base being absent. Emptiness is not a lack but a release from the need for any foundation. It is this very freedom that allows each phenomenon to shine fully, responsively, and luminously — without reduction, without residue.
When one sees through this, there is no longer any need to gather parts or preserve a whole. The sound of the bell, the opening of a door, the stillness between breaths — all are complete as they are, because they are everything, appearing just so.
The Time-Being of Total Function
Time is often mistaken as a backdrop — a neutral flow in which events occur, ticking forward moment by moment like beads on a string. But this is the view of time as a container, as something separate from what happens within it.
Dōgen overturns this with a startling insight: each thing is time, and each time is being. This is uji — the Time-Being. A mountain is not in time; the mountain is time. Your breath is not happening in a moment — it is that moment. A single thought, a bird in flight, the opening of a hand — each one is the full exertion of time as that event.
What appears as sequence — past, present, future — is not a movement across a line. It is the dynamic presence of all interdependencies exerting themselves now, as this appearance. The past exerts itself not from behind, but through this moment. The future does not lie ahead, but opens right here, as readiness. The present is not a dot between two unknowns, but the entire functioning of the ten directions as immediacy.
This insight liberates time from linearity and self from continuity. You do not persist through time — you are the total function of conditions arising now. There is no fixed self moving through changing time. There is only time-being, expressing as this movement, this thought, this silence.
Even what appears as delay, stagnation, or waiting is total function.
A still pond is not outside of time — it is time appearing as stillness.
A long pause in a conversation is not absence — it is the full flowering of mutual responsiveness without words.
When time is no longer seen as background but as full participation, each moment becomes infinitely alive, never repeated, never partial. Nothing is just “happening” — everything is acting. And this action is not your own, yet nothing can exclude you from it. You are time, just as the bell is time, the sky is time, and even this sentence is time fully being itself.
The Language of Dependent Arising in Action
When the Buddha spoke of dependent arising, he was not offering a theory of causation. He was revealing the nature of experience itself — fluid, co-arising, ungraspable — where nothing comes into being by itself, and nothing stands alone. In the light of total exertion, dependent arising is no longer seen as a passive structure of interrelation, but as the very voice of reality in motion.
Each thing appears because everything else exerts itself as that thing. A bell rings, not because of a sequence of isolated causes, but because the world is configured to ring now, as that moment. The hand does not reach because a mind commands it, but because the sky, gravity, flesh, memory, and breath all converge as reaching.
This is dependent arising as action — not the metaphysics of how things come to be, but the expressive nature of being itself. Every appearance is a functional articulation of the whole, not static or symbolic, but alive. Each word spoken, each leaf that falls, is not just caused — it is spoken by the whole web of reality.
This is why in the experience of total exertion, function and meaning arise simultaneously. You do not reflect and then act. You act, and in that movement, reflection is already present. You do not observe and then understand. You respond, and understanding dawns within that responsiveness.
The clarity of this is not found in abstraction, but in presence. When you listen deeply to the world — to a tone, a movement, a pause — you hear dependent arising not as a doctrine, but as the immediacy of luminous function. It is the bell ringing as your hearing. It is the path unfolding as your step. Nothing causes anything from outside. All is the self-exertion of interdependence appearing in real time.
This is the language of the world — not grammar or concept, but the way everything speaks everything else.
Total Responsiveness Without Self
In total exertion, there is action, there is clarity, there is seamless responsiveness — but there is no self behind any of it. There is no agent orchestrating the unfolding, no observer watching from behind the eyes. The world moves, and that movement includes you, but not as a fixed center — as a participatory openness.
The reflex to claim “I am doing” is strong. It arises from the habit of placing a self at the hub of experience. But in the lived insight of total exertion, there is only the doing, the arising, the manifesting — no one apart from it.
You speak, and speech comes from conditions far beyond your control: breath, language, context, emotion, and the sound of the other’s voice. You act, and action flows from hunger, wind, footsteps, memory, and mood. And yet, there is full presence, full clarity — not because you are controlling it, but because there is no separation to interfere.
This is not a loss of agency, but the liberation of responsiveness.
When the fiction of the independent self falls away, what remains is not passivity but intelligent, vivid response — unfiltered, unburdened, and natural. Like a mirror reflecting without effort, like a valley echoing a sound — the world expresses itself through your body-mind, yet nothing inside claims ownership.
This is why Dōgen said: “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things.” When the self is forgotten, all things shine — not as objects over there, but as this very intimacy of expression.
And so, when you bow, it is not you who bows. The entire world bows. When you listen, the whole sky listens. When you breathe, it is not your breath, but the breath of the universe exhaling just so.
This is the freedom of selfless function. It is the pathless path where walking, speaking, silence, and stillness are all acts of total exertion — complete, intimate, and without residue.
Interlude: Total Exertion in Science and Phenomenology
To appreciate the depth of Dōgen’s view, we may look across traditions. In physics, Ernst Mach famously proposed that inertia—the resistance of objects to acceleration—is not due to some intrinsic essence, but arises from the entire mass-energy configuration of the universe. This became known as Mach’s Principle: that every local event reflects the total relational structure of the cosmos. The spinning of a star or the swing of a pendulum cannot be isolated from the whole.
Likewise, Dōgen’s “Total Exertion” declares: there is no such thing as an isolated event. Each thing is all things functioning in concert. When you lift a spoon, the whole universe lifts with you—not poetically, but functionally, relationally, and intimately.
In philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty argued that perception is not the reception of pre-given data by a separate subject, but a lived intertwining of body and world. His notion of “flesh” (la chair)—neither mind nor matter—describes a shared medium where perceiver and perceived co-emerge. There is no gap between world and awareness; they are always already folded into one another.
This echoes Dōgen’s insight that the world and the practitioner are not two. To see, hear, and feel is not to stand apart from things but to participate in their arising. Each moment of perception is total exertion: the eye, light, object, intention, and conditions all functioning as one.
In both science and phenomenology, as in Dōgen’s Zen, we find a powerful overturning of the myth of isolation. Nothing arises alone. No action is autonomous. And no moment lacks the fullness of the all.
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