By Night or Day is a phrase comprised of the last four words of the last line of the Buddhist philosophical poem, Identity of Relative and Absolute, known in Japan as the Sandokai. After just one reading of this poem you will have an appreciation of the meaning of the “by night or day” that concludes the Sandokai. Here is the complete poem.

Identity of Relative and Absolute

The mind of the Great Sage of India was intimately conveyed from west to east.
Among human beings are wise men and fools, but in the Way there is no northern or southern Patriarch.

The subtle source is clear and bright; the tributary streams flow through the darkness.
To be attached to things is illusion.
To encounter the absolute is not yet enlightenment.
Each and all, the subjective and objective spheres are related and at the same time independent.
Related, yet working differently, though each keeps it own place.

Form makes the character and appearance different.
Sounds distinguish comfort and discomfort.
The dark makes all words one.
The brightness distinguishes good and bad phases.

The four elements return to their nature as a child to its mother.
Fire is hot, wind moves, water is wet, earth hard.
Eyes see, ears hear, nose smells, tongue tastes the salt and sour.
Each is independent of the other.
Cause and effect must return to the great reality.

The words high and low are used relatively.
Within light there is darkness, but do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light, but do not look for that light.
Light and darkness are a pair, like the foot before and the foot behind in walking.
Each thing has its own intrinsic value and is related to everything else in function and position.
Ordinary life fits the absolute as a box and its lid.
The absolute works together with the relative like two arrows meeting in mid-air.

Reading words you should grasp the great reality.
Do not judge by any standards.
If you do not see the Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it.
When you walk the Way, it is not near, it is not far.
If you are deluded, you are mountains and rivers away from it.

I respectfully say to those who wish to be enlightened:
Do not waste your time by night or day.

The Great Sage of India is Shakyamuni Buddha himself, whose teachings, or mind, Bodhidharma, the first Zen Buddhist patriarch, brought from India to China in the 5th century C.E. Once established in China, Buddhism evolved into two main schools of practice and interpretation, the Northern and the Southern schools. The Identity of Relative and Absolute indicates that truth transcends any specific culture or religion, or any simple formulation according to relative or absolutist terminology. In the realm of truth “there is no Northern or Southern,” that is, truth is essentially one, dynamic, lived.

Whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, or Bright, each of us � consciously or unconsciously, willingly or unwillingly � works out our individual destiny. Traditions will differ according to whether self-power (Japanese, joriki) or other-power (Japanese, tariki) is emphasized. In Christianity this distinction is formulated as being saved by grace (other-power) or works (self-power). But however we proceed, with the help of texts like the Identity of Relative and Absolute and Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians � and the support of the communities that preserve such texts � we don’t have to go it alone or reinvent the scriptural wheel of revealed truths.

The Identity of Relative and Absolute is chanted daily in Zen Buddhist centers around the world.¹ Whatever faith, practice, beliefs, or philosophy guides you on your path, there is a lot to figure out and do in just the few years we have to live and enjoy our lives. Since life is short (even a hundred years is short in the grand scheme of the cosmos), there is no time to lose. The brevity and consequent preciousness of life is what the final two lines of the Identity of Relative and Absolute point to:

I respectfully say to those who wish to be enlightened:
Do not waste your time by night or day.

¹ The Identity of the Relative and Absolute (Sandokai in Japanese) was written by Shitou Xiqian, 700-790, known in Japan as Sekito Kisen. There is an excellent book on the Sandokai by Shunryu Suzuki, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai.

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