Beyond Isolation: The Zen Way of Interdependence

Interdependence — What Is Zenki (Total Function)?

In today’s society, where fragmentation, anxiety, and isolation are widespread, how deeply do we truly understand “connection”?

Zen offers a path to living interdependence not merely as an intellectual concept, but as a direct, embodied experience. At the heart of this teaching lies Zenki, or Total Function, as taught by Dōgen.

We often forget the reality of interdependence.

We frequently experience ourselves as separate “individuals,” cut off from the world, living as if we are observing life from the outside. Zen gently unravels this perspective and invites us to look more deeply.

Nearly 800 years ago, Dōgen introduced a formal Zen monastic culture to Japan. He was not only a profound practitioner but also a subtle thinker, a gifted writer, and a poet.

One of his teachings explores the relationship between sound and perception. Dōgen once asked his disciples:

“Where does sound come from?

Does the wind make the sound?

Does the bell make the sound?

Or does the mind create the sound?”

The disciples replied, “The mind creates the sound.”

However, Dōgen rejected this view and showed them that the bell, the wind, and the mind are all making the sound together. He taught that sound does not arise from a single source. Rather, the entire universe functions together to manifest it.

This is Zenki (全機） — Total Function — the fundamental way the universe operates.

What Is Total Function?

Zenki refers to a state in which all existence — including life and death — fully expresses its available capacity and function in that exact time and place, without remainder.

In other words, nothing exists in isolation, and nothing functions alone. Every moment of experience is born from the integrated activity of countless conditions: wind, bell, air, ears, body, awareness, space, and time. All of these operate simultaneously as a single living event.

Sound is not something created “over there” and received “over here.”

It is the manifestation of the whole of reality — including life and death — functioning exactly as it is, right here, right now.

In this view, there is no separate “listener” and no separate “object” called sound. What we experience is Total Function itself: interconnected reality expressing itself through this moment, this body, this existence. Sound does not “reach” us. It is the world appearing right here.

Participating in the World

This reflects the Mahayana Buddhist understanding of interdependence. Subject and object are not separate entities; they arise together as one living process. When we begin to see this directly, the sense of separation softens. We no longer live as distant observers of the world, but as participants in its ceaseless unfolding.

And so, we simply continue to sit.

We continue to practice Zen.

We remain exactly as we are — with as-it-isness.

Within this quiet simplicity, Total Function is already at work.

Awareness ripens naturally, in its own time.

Words and photo by K E I K O