Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Tale for the Time Being, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Impermanence, and the Present
The Difficulty of Communication
Life vs. Death
Coincidences and Connections
Sexual Perversion and Violence
Summary
Analysis
In a quote from Zen Master Dogen’s Shōbōgenzō or The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Dogen writes that the “time being” can be “standing on the tallest mountaintop” or “moving on the deepest ocean floor.” The “time being” can be “a demon with three heads and eight arms” or “the golden sixteen foot body of the buddha.”
Dogen uses opposites to describe what a “time being” is. Later, the reader learns that a “time being” is a being that exists in time—and the fleeting and constantly changing natural of time means that a time being is impermanent. In this excerpt, Dogen says that everything—whether a god or a demon, a mountain or an ocean floor—is fleeting.
Themes
