The term “time being” refers to the present, and A Tale for the Time Being aptly examines the importance of the present moment. Nao, a Japanese teenager who records her experiences in her diary, explains that all creatures are “time beings,” meaning that everything and everyone is impermanent. This pun in the title hints that the novel will explore these two notions of time that are influenced by Zen Buddhist philosophy: the importance of the present moment and the short-lived nature of all things. Nao and Ruth (the novelist who discovers Nao’s diary washed up on a beach and becomes engrossed in it) struggle to reconcile themselves with change, and they both seem stuck in their pasts. Ozeki suggests that for these characters to move forward, they must learn to accept the impermanence of all things, and that they must see every moment they have—the “now”—as an opportunity to improve themselves.
Right from its title, A Tale for the Time Being—in other words, a story for the present moment—emphasizes the importance of “now.” Yet the novel’s characters struggle to move on from their pasts and make the present count. For instance, Nao (whose very name is pronounced “now”) points out that as soon as one even says the word “now,” that moment is already in the past—it is “like a slippery fish” that is impossible to catch. Nao’s present is full of troubles, like her father’s suicide attempts and the cruel bullying she experiences at school. As a result of her difficulties, Nao often reminisces about her past, which seems more “real” to her than the present since she was happier back then. However, she acknowledges that her past happy self no longer exists and that memory is often faulty. Therefore, the past is unreal—all that anyone has is the elusive, ungraspable “now.” Ruth, too, feels the burden of her past, as she struggles with the memoir she has been trying to write for a decade. Memoirs are, of course, based on the writer’s memories, and Ruth finds this project weighty and tiresome. The subject of the memoir is Ruth’s mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s, and this stokes Ruth’s own fear that she is losing her memory and will get Alzheimer’s herself. Despite the fact that the memoir is deeply unpleasant to Ruth, she lacks the courage to abandon it—it becomes a physical manifestation of her complicated, painful past. As a result, like Nao, Ruth becomes preoccupied with her memories and is unable to make constructive use of her present.
As Ruth and Nao struggle to stay focused on the present, they are also forced to reckon with change as a difficult but necessary part of life. Change can be a cataclysmic force that wreaks havoc and upends thousands of lives, as represented by the earthquake and tsunami that hits Japan in 2011. In the news stories that Ruth watches about this event, she observes that the wave is immense and rapid—the “tiny people” in its path have no chance of escape. The formidable tsunami is a striking image of change, and “tiny people” are powerless victims to it. Yet change is also necessary, as exemplified by the ancient Japanese belief that earthquakes are caused by a gigantic catfish under the islands that violently shakes the land. Importantly, Japanese people don’t see the catfish as malevolent—they even call it “The World-Rectifying Catfish,” since they believe that old orders and established codes need to be shaken up every now and then in order to ensure fairness and justice. For instance, earthquakes force the rich to pay builders and workers to clear debris and rebuild what was destroyed, and in this way, ensure that the rich have to distribute their money to the labor class. Even a traumatic upheaval like a nature disaster, then, can bring about necessary and beneficial change.
Yet change can also lead to personal suffering, as exemplified by Ruth’s and Nao’s stories. Ruth moved from New York City to an isolated Canadian island—and even though the move was voluntary, she feels stuck and unhappy in her new environment. Nao was forced to move from Sunnyvale, California back to her home country of Japan after her father lost his job. She has moved from affluence and acceptance to social ostracization in Japan, which causes her a great deal of anguish. But Ruth and Nao grow to have a deeper appreciation for life’s happy moments and for human relationships because of these changes. By the end of the novel, they have grown in self-awareness and are more resilient people.
Along with Nao and Ruth’s growing awareness that change is inevitable, Nao’s great-grandmother Jiko’s Buddhist teachings help Nao and Ruth learn to live in the present moment. To help Nao, who is being horribly bullied in school, Jiko teaches her to “sit zazen,” or meditate. While meditating, Nao clears her mind of all thoughts and simply focuses on her breathing, and she is therefore able to focus solely on her present—according to Jiko, to practice zazen is “to enter time completely.” Nao calls this her “superpower,” and she uses this to overcome the terrible bullying she experiences at school. Ruth, too, embraces this technique when she reads about it in Nao’s diary. Jiko tells Nao that an ancient Zen teacher, Master Dogen, preached that each moment in time gives a person an opportunity “to wake up and choose actions that will produce beneficial karma.” He exhorts his disciples to “Wake up now!/ And now!/ And now!” Influenced by Jiko’s Zen Buddhist ideas, Ruth and Nao realize that every moment is an opportunity to make a good choice. While they previously viewed themselves as victims of life’s circumstances, they now see that they are empowered and can choose how to live.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Time, Impermanence, and the Present ThemeTracker
Time, Impermanence, and the Present Quotes in A Tale for the Time Being
Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. As for me, right now I am sitting in a French maid café in Akiba Electricity Town, listening to a sad chanson that is playing sometime in your past, which is also my present,
writing this and wondering about you, somewhere in my future. And if you’re reading this, then maybe by now you’re wondering about me, too.
But since these are my last days on earth, I want to write something important. […] I want to leave something real behind.
But what can I write about that’s real? Sure, I can write about all the bad shit that’s happened to me, and my feelings about my dad and my mom and my so-called friends, but I don’t particularly want to.
What if you never even found this book, because somebody chucked it in the trash or recycled it before it got to you? Then old Jiko’s stories truly will be lost forever, and I’m just sitting here wasting time talking to the inside of a dumpster. […]
Okay, here’s what I’ve decided. I don’t mind the risk, because the risk makes it more interesting. And I don’t think old Jiko will mind, either, because being
a Buddhist, she really understands impermanence and that everything changes and nothing lasts forever.
But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the thinnest veneer. Engulfed by the thorny roses and massing
bamboo, she stared out the window and felt like she’d stepped into a malevolent fairy tale. She’d been bewitched. She’d pricked her finger and
had fallen into a deep, comalike sleep. The years had passed, and she was not
getting any younger. […] Now that her mother was dead, Ruth felt that her own life was passing her by. Maybe it was time to leave this place she’d hoped would be home forever. Maybe it was time to break the spell.
When I was a little kid in Sunnyvale, I became obsessed with the word
now. […] The word now always felt especially strange and unreal to me because it was me, at least the sound of it was. Nao was now and had this whole other meaning.
[..] [N]ow felt like a slippery fish, a slick fat tuna with a big belly and a smallish head and tail […].
NOW felt like a big fish swallowing a little fish, and I wanted to catch it and make it stop. I was just a kid, and I thought if I could truly grasp the meaning of the big fish NOW I would be able to save little fish Naoko, but the word always slipped away from me.
Every few hours, another horrifying piece of footage would break, and she would play it over and over, studying the wave as it surged over the tops of the seawalls, carrying ships down city streets, picking up cars and trucks and depositing them on the roofs of buildings. She watched whole towns get crushed and swept away in a matter of moments, and she was aware that while these moments were captured online, so many other moments simply vanished. […]
But always, from the vantage point of the camera, you could see how fast the wave was traveling and how immense it was.
It’s the cold fish dying in your stomach feeling. You try to forget about it, but as soon as you do, the fish starts flopping around under your heart and reminds you that something truly horrible is happening.
Jiko felt like that when she learned that her only son was going to be killed in the war. […] In fact, she said she had lots of fishes, […] but the biggest fish of all belonged to Haruki #1, and it was more like the size of a whale. She also said that after she became a nun and renounced the world, she learned how to open up her heart so that the whale could swim away. I'm trying to learn how to do that, too.
Over and over, I ran at the sea, beating it until I was so tired I could barely stand. And then the next time I fell down, I just lay there and let the waves wash over me, and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get
back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones
would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets.
The Earthquake Catfish is not solely a malevolent fish, despite the havoc and calamity it can wreak. It has benevolent aspects as well. A subspecies of the
Earthquake catfish is […] World-Rectifying Catfish,
which is able to heal the political and economic corruption in society by shaking things up. […]
The World-Rectifying Catfish targeted the business class, the 1 percent […].
The angry catfish would cause an earthquake, wreaking havoc and destruction, and in order to rebuild, the wealthy would have to let go of their assets, which would create jobs […] for the working classes.
Choosing this death has various benefits associated with it. First, and most important, it guarantees a posthumous promotion of two ranks, which of course is meaningless, but it comes with a substantial increase in the pension paid to you upon my death. […]
So that is one benefit, and it is practical. The other benefit is perhaps more philosophical. By volunteering to sortie, I have now regained a modicum of agency over the time remaining in my life. Death in a ground offensive or bombing attack seems random and imprecise. This death is not. It is pure, clean, and purposeful. I will be able to control and therefore appreciate, intimately and exactly, the moments leading up to my death.
[…] I climbed up on [my chair] and then onto my desk, and I stood there, tall and straight. Then, when everybody was looking, I flipped back my hoodie.
A gasp went around the room that sent shivers up my spine. The supapawa of my bald and shining head radiated through the classroom and out into the world, a bright bulb, a beacon, beaming light into every crack of darkness on the earth and blinding all my enemies. I put my fists on my hips and watched them tremble, holding up their arms to shield their eyes from my unbearable brightness. I opened my mouth and a piercing cry broke from my throat like an eagle, shaking the earth and penetrating into every corner of the universe. I watched my classmates press their hands over their ears, and saw the blood run through their fingers as their eardrums shattered.
I have written to you of my decision to die. Here is what I did not tell you. […] [T]he ticking of the clock is the only sound I am able to hear now. Second by second, minute by minute…tick, tick, tick…the small, dry sounds fill every crevice of silence. […] [M]y being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time, marching toward my death.
If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! […] I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But no, there is no […] way of stopping time, and so I lie here, paralyzed, listening to the last moments of my life tick by.
I don’t want to die, Maman! I don’t want to die!
Making the decision to end my life really helped me lighten up, and suddenly
all the stuff my old Jiko had told me about the time being really kicked into
focus. There’s nothing like realizing that you don’t have much time left to
stimulate your appreciation for the moments of your life. I mean it sounds
corny, but I started to really experience stuff for the first time, like the beauty
of the plum and cherry blossoms […]. I spent whole days […] wandering up and down these long, soft tunnels of pink clouds and gazing overhead at the fluffy blossoms […]. Everything was perfect. When a breeze blew, petals rained down on my upturned face, and I stopped and gasped, stunned by the beauty and sadness.
But the fact is, you’re a lie. You’re just another stupid story I made up out of
thin air because I was lonely and needed someone to spill my guts to. I wasn’t
ready to die yet and needed a raison d’etre. I shouldn’t be mad at you but I am! Because now you’re letting me down, too.
The fact is, I’m all alone.
[…] Everyone I believed in is dying. My old Jiko is dying, my dad is probably already dead by now, and I don’t even believe in myself anymore.
“[M]y theory is that this crow from Nao’s world came here to lead you into the dream so you could change the end of her story. Her story was about to end one way, and you intervened, which set up the conditions for a different outcome. […] .”
[…]
“I see. So what’s your second theory?”
“[…] That it’s your doing. It’s not about Nao’s now. It’s about yours. You haven’t caught up with yourself yet, the now of your story, and you can’t reach her ending until you do.”
Ruth thought about this. “You're right,” she said. “I don’t like it. I don’t like having that much agency over someone else’s narrative.”
Muriel laughed. “That’s a fine way for a novelist to talk!”
To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.
[…]
Had Dogen figured all this out? He’d written these words many centuries before quantum mechanics [.]
