of Buddhism not to speak of life becoming death, Buddhism speaks of the unborn. It being a confirmed Buddhist teaching that death does not become life, it speaks of non-extinction. Life is a stage of time and death is a stage of time, like, for example, winter and spring. We do not suppose that winter becomes spring, or say that spring becomes summer." Subjectively from within, "the process of our living-dying [is] being without beginning and without end." For Buddhists, there is no beginning of the universe (no creation), and there is no end (no last judgment). "We must realize the beginninglessness and endlessness of samsara, that is, the transmigration of living-dying." Prof. Abe mentions several experiences: "[E]ach and every moment can be a beginning and an end in itself: time begins and ends with each moment. Accordingly, time is not understood to be a unidirectional movement but is seen as a sheer series of moments that can move reciprocally. Here a sort of reversibility of time is realized." "[I]f we clearly realize the beginninglessness and endlessness of living-dying at this particular moment, the whole process of living-dying is concentrated within this moment. In other words, each moment embraces the whole process of beginningless and endless time within itself. Thus, one can in fact transcend time at this very moment." "The Buddhist view, based on full immersion in the depth of the moment, is that there is no difference between past and future. The temporal distinction belongs to the observer's perspective on the horizontal and historical plane. In the vertical or depth dimension, Buddhists insist, time is overcome." "Although karma works deterministically on the horizontal dimension of time, once the vertical, or transtemporal, dimension is opened up as one awakens to the truth of no-self, that person is no longer a slave to karma but becomes its master. This means that on the basis of the realization of the true self as no-self at the bottomless depth of the vertical dimension of time, the present act can emancipate one's self from past karma and create new karma that will affect the future as, for instance, in the form of a vow." Selected bibliography Author Zen and Western Thought (London: Macmillan; Univ.of Hawaii 1985), edited by William R. LaFleur, with foreword by John Hick. A Study of Dōgen. His Philosophy and Religion (SUNY 1992), a collection of his articles edited by