About Time - What Does Buddhism Teach About Time?
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About Time
What Does Buddhism Teach About Time?
We all know what time is. Or do we? Read some explanations of time from the perspective of physics, and you may wonder. Well, Buddhist teaching about time can be a bit daunting, also.
This essay will look at time in two ways. First is an explanation of measurements of time in Buddhist scriptures. Second is a basic explanation of how time is understood from the perspective of enlightenment.
Measures of Time
There are two Sanskrit words for measurements of time found in Buddhist scripture, ksana and kalpa.
A ksana is a tiny unit of time, approximately one seventy-fifth of a second. I understand this is a generous amount of time compared to a nanosecond. But for purposes of understanding the sutras, it probably isn't necessary to measure ksana precisely.
Basically, a ksana is an imperceptibly small amount of time, and all kinds of things happen within the space of a ksana that elude our conscious awareness. For example, it is said there are 900 arisings and ceasings within each ksana. I suspect the number 900 is not meant to be precise but rather is a poetic way of saying "a lot."
A kalpa is an aeon. There are small, medium, great, and uncountable (asamhyeya) kalpas. Over the centuries various scholars have attempted to quantify kalpas in various ways. Usually, when a sutra mentions kalpas, it means a really, really, really long time.
The Buddha described a mountain even bigger than Mount Everest. Once every hundred years, someone wipes the mountain with a small piece of silk. The mountain will be worn away before the kalpa ends, the Buddha said.
The Three Times and Three Time Periods
Along with ksanas and kalpas, you may run into mention of "the three times" or "the three periods of time." These can mean one of two things. Sometimes it just means past, present, and future. But sometimes the three time periods or three ages are something else entirely.
Sometimes "three periods of time" refers to the Former Day, Middle Day, and Latter Day of the Law (or Dharma). The Former Day is the thousand-year period after the life of the Buddha in which dharma is taught and practiced correctly. The Middle Day is the next thousand years (or so), in which dharma is practiced and understood superficially. The Latter Day lasts for 10,000 years, and in this time the dharma completely degenerates.
You might notice that, chronologically speaking, we are now into the Latter Day. Is this important? It depends. In some schools the three periods of time are considered important and discussed quite a bit. In others they are pretty much ignored.
But What Is Time, Anyway?
These measurements may seem irrelevant in light of the way Buddhism explains the nature of time. Very basically, in most schools of Buddhism it is understood that the way we experience time -- as flowing from past to present to future -- is an illusion. Further, it could be said that the liberation of Nirvana is liberation from time and space.
Beyond that, teachings on the nature of time tend to be on an advanced level, and in this brief essay we can do no more than stick a tip of the toe into very deep water.
For example, in Dzogchen -- the central practice of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism -- teachers speak of four dimensions of time. These are past, present, future, and timeless time. This is sometimes expressed as the "three times and timeless time."
Not being a student of Dzogchen I can only take a stab at what this doctrine is saying. The Dzogchen texts I have read hint that time is empty of self-nature, as are all phenomena, and manifests according to causes and conditions. In the absolute reality (dharmakaya) time disappears, as do all other distinctions.
Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche is a prominent teacher in another Tibetan school, Kagyu. He said, "Until concepts are exhausted, there is time and you make preparations; however, you should not grasp onto time as truly existent, and you should know that within the essential nature of mahamudra, time does not exist:" Mahamudra, or "great symbol," refers to the central teaching and practices of Kagyu.
Dogen's Being and Time
Zen master Dogen composed a fascicle of Shobogenzo called "Uji," which usually is translated as "Being Time" or "The Time-Being." This is a difficult text, but the central teaching in it is that being itself is time.
"Time is not separate from you, and as you are present, time does not go away. As time is not marked by coming and going, the moment you climbed the mountains is the time-being right now. If time keeps coming and going, you are the time-being right now."
You are time, the tiger is time, bamboo is time, Dogen wrote. "If time is annihilated, mountains and oceans are annihilated. As time is not annihilated, mountains and oceans are not annihilated."
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Nice.
I wrote in 2012:Being-Time
August 2, 2012 at 11:48am
Time is just a construct like self. The notion that it takes time for me to walk from point A to B, which implies distance, space and time, deconstructs when we realize there is no atemporal abiding entity or self that is the traveller (this implies I am a truly existing atemporal self that is separate from time/the stream of transient phenomenality, which is not the case). In fact there is not even 'traveling' or 'movement' when Point A is only point A or being-time-A, point B is only point B being-time-B, each instant is whole and complete - there is nothing subjective or objective that is separate from each time-instant that abides and travels from A to B. Where time is being and being is time (things do not occur 'in' or 'pass through' time - they ARE time, as everything is irremediably temporal), there is Only being-time which is the sun and the moon and the stars, wherein there is neither an atemporal object passing through time nor an atemporal subject witnessing or passing through the passage of time and space from one point to another, and neither is it the case of one thing becoming another thing (winter is winter, spring is spring, winter does not turn into spring). Each instance of sight, sound, etc, is an entire and whole being-time independent of past and future (it occupies or IS a unique manifestation-position), yet inclusive of all causes and conditions spanning all time-space in a single moment that transcends the structures of time-object-self dichotomy. Each instant is a happening without movement. Time stops in the midst of temporality but Not by transcending to some unmoved backdrop.
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Thanks man. Something I was looking for a long time.
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If time is an illusion, why are there past, current and future life. And why unwholesome karma lead to suffering and vice versa? Are there any Pali recording on such info of time?
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The pali canon do talk about past present and future time, but I have yet to come across Pali recording on the subject of ‘Time’ as a subject in itself. The Theravada School of thoughts is pluralistic Realism. Every dhamma by itself is real and exist.
It is only in the Mahayanist schools you will find logical explanation why all phenomena are unreal and an illusion. The Idealistic Yogacara schools of Dignaga and Dhamakirti give an explanation in their theory of ‘Instantaneous Being’ why time and space are not real. Firstly, they do not possess a separate efficiency of their own. It comes into being only with the things that exist in them. It is only due to our productive imagination that we can take different views of the same object and distinguish between the thing and its receptacle.
If you are interested in Buddhist Logic, try reading up on this subject by Th. Stcherbatsky.
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can't help but to butt in: How about Warp Drive? What does Buddhism has to say of Warp Drive?
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No wonder I asked the pple in my society group they dun seem tobe able to give me more info on buddhism explanation on time.
If every experience is based on the five aggregates, everything is an illusion cos they are not permanent, and they are dependant on causes and conditions. In w rahula book, what Buddha has taught, when it comes to the question of if there is no self, who recieve karma? He attribute the answer to causes and conditions.
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Originally posted by libido:
No wonder I asked the pple in my society group they dun seem tobe able to give me more info on buddhism explanation on time.
If every experience is based on the five aggregates, everything is an illusion cos they are not permanent, and they are dependant on causes and conditions. In w rahula book, what Buddha has taught, when it comes to the question of if there is no self, who recieve karma? He attribute the answer to causes and conditions.
"Who" does not apply. Karma ripens to no one. It simply ripens. In every experience there is merely the experience, no experiencer. Just like right now, when you are seeing these words, there is in fact no seer, seeing is merely the sight, the colours, the shapes.
Your qn is similar to the question 'if there is no self, who is reborn'?
Ven Dhammanando answered it well:
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QUOTE(Darkknight @ Jan 8 2007, 06:17 AM)
Q. So there is no self (Atman). so what exactly is it that is reborn, and how does what is reborn pass from one body to another?
Thanks in advance for any answers received. bow.gif
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Ven Dhammanando wrote:
The question is wrongly put and the Buddha's reponse when asked such a question was to reject it as an improper question. Having rejected the question he would then inform the questioner of what he ought to have asked: "With what as condition is there birth?"
The reason that it is an improper question is that rebirth is taught as the continuation of a process, and not as the passing on of any sort of entity. For a more complete exposition of the subject see Mahasi Sayadaw's Discourse on Paticcasamuppada.
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Another reply by Dhammanando:
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QUOTE(Avalokiteshvara @ Jan 8 2007, 09:11 AM)
Wrongly put or not the answer is still the same.
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Ven Dhammanando wrote:
The "what?" in the question takes for granted the very thing that the Buddha rejects — that there is some real entity in this life that is transferred to the being in the next life. Since this assumption is wrong, the question as phrased has no answer and must be rejected.
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
(See: http://awakeningtoreality.blogspot.sg/2 ... gguna.html)
In the //Milindapanha// the King asks Nagasena:
"What is it, Venerable Sir, that will be reborn?"
"A psycho-physical combination [nama-rupa], O King."
"But how, Venerable Sir? Is it the same psycho-physical
combination as this present one?"
"No, O King. But the present psycho-physical combination produces kammically wholesome and unwholesome volitional activities, and through such kamma a new psycho-physical combination will be born."
and...
xabir wrote:
Malcolm's reply to this same question (lengthier):
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QUOTE(Avalokiteshvara @ Jan 7 2007, 11:02 PM) I understand what you are saying but the "what" doesnt necessarily have to mean one thing like some real entity it could also mean many things. I dont think any assumptions were being made it is just a question anyway nothing right or wrong about it. * *
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Malcolm wrote:
The point is that the question is phrased wrong requiring at best an ambigious answer that will confuse more than edify.
Buddha in fact discussed this with Sharputra saying that if he answers the question "yes there is something that undergoes birth" people will become confused and assume there is a permanent self that undergoes retribution of action and so on. Likewise, if he answers the question "no, there is nothing which undergoes rebirth" likewise there are those who will assume there are no consequences of action and so on and will therefore feel no compelling need observe the principles of karma and so on.
Therefore when asked the question "what takes rebirth" he points out that question itself is flawed.
The question should be "Why is there birth?" The answer to that question is easy. There is birth, i.e. suffering, because of affliction and action.
As long as the aggregates are afflicted, afflicted aggregates will continue to be appropriated.
In Madhyamaka it is explained there is birth because of the innate self-grasping "I am" appearing to the afflicted mind. It is asserted that what appropriates birth in a new series of aggregates is the mental habit "I am." That "I am" is baseless, has no correspondence in the aggregates or seperate from them or in any one of them, just as a car is not found in its parts, seperate from them, or in any one of the parts. Nevertheless, the imputation "car" allows us to use cars effectively. Likewise, the mental habit "I am" is proper as both the agent of action and the object upon which it ripens even though it is basically unreal and has no basis in the aggregates, outside the aggregates, or in any one of them, but allows us to treat the aggreates as a nominally designated "person". -
Check out this article on time: http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew26578.htm
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No self. Meaning dependant origination explanation on past, present, future life interpretation is in correct? Then what is the right way to interpret based on no succession life? Still the physical body follow time right?
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Past, present and future are conventional statements. It is valid on the conventional level.
Ultimately moments are non-arising.
I wrote:
In deep contemplation, it can become apparent in direct experience and insight that all appearances are merely appearances, nothing arising or staying or ceasing... there is no actual birth of anything. Just like no matter what images appear on the movie or in a dream it will never amount to anything more than an appearance, without anything that truly come into existence. This is different from resolving non-arising through being-time. Lastly it is not that things are mental projections but that they are dependent arising.. what dependently originates is empty and nonarising appearance... momentary suchness, but still as vivid.
It is with some reluctance that I'm sharing this... I'm afraid that writing this might be a disservice to readers. I shall refrain from posting and discussing further about this. I do not wish this to become merely something to talk about, it has to be seen in direct taste and insight... so that one knows what the experience is like and what the realization is. Spouting big words or philosophizing about this do not mean anything.
...I'm talking about is more about the non-arising, non-abiding, and non-ceasing nature of appearance. This requires first deep penetration of anatta by realizing that there is no background observer or agent behind the appearance (be it sense perceptions or thoughts). At this point, even without a thinker or seer behind appearance, there can still be a sense that thoughts or perceptions arise, abide and ceases. But when we investigate further, the non-arising, indestructible and illusory nature of appearance becomes apparent. It is an inseparability of lucidity and emptiness. This aspect is not to be intellectually understood... trying to grasp it intellectually only serves as a hindrance later, and this is what I worry. So there is not much use for me discussing this indepth... -
hmmm, seems like Buddhism could shed light on quantum physics.....hope we will be able to unlock and master quantum physics.
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there were actually a conference: The Dalai Lama and Quantum Physics 1/6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjd26JSaq64 /\
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Can someone try to explain to us the Buddhist concept of time?
Or should we just stop as taking it is like a dream, dream is like life and...... phenomenons come and go?
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Is dependant origination based on time? In other words, is it really a three lives model as commonly explain as, or......
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Three lives and one life are both valid. No time is not a denial of time.
See http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew26578.htmMuch of our difficulty in understanding time is due to the unwise use of spatial metaphors -- in fact, the objectification of time requires such spatial metaphors -- but in this case another spatial metaphor is helpful. We normally understand objects such as cups to be "in" space, which (as explained above in relation to time) implies that in themselves they must have a self-existence distinct from space. However, not much reflection is necessary to realize that the cup itself is irremediably spatial. All its parts must have a certain thickness, and without the various spatial relations among the bottom, sides, and handle, the cup could not be a cup. Perhaps one way to express this is to say that the cup is not "in" space but itself is space: the cup is "what space is doing in that place," so to speak. The same is true for the temporality of the cup. The cup is not an atemporal, self-existing object that just happens to be "in" time, for its being is irremediably temporal. The point of this is to destroy the thought-constructed dualism between things and time. When we wish to express this, we must describe one in terms of the other, by saying either that objects are temporal (in which case they are not "objects" as we usually conceive of them) or, conversely, that time is objects -- that is, that time expresses itself in the manifestations that we call objects. Probably the clearest expression of this way is given by D�gen: "The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers. The flowers, in turn, express the time called spring. This is not existence within time; existence
p. 19The Mah�y�na Deconstruction of Timeitself is time."[20] This is the meaning of his "being-time" (uji):
"Being-time" means that time is being; that is, "Time is existence, existence is time." The shape of a Buddha-statue is time.... Every thing, every being in this entire world is time.... Do not think of time as merely flying by; do not only study the fleeting aspect of time. If time is really flying away, there would be a separation between time and ourselves. If you think that time is just a passing phenomenon, you will never understand being-time.[21]
Time "flies away" when we experience it dualistically, with the sense of a self that is outside and looking at it. Then time becomes something that I have (or do not have), objectified and quantified in a succession of "now-moments" that cannot be held but incessantly fall away. In contrast, the "being-times" that we usually reify into objects cannot be said to occur in time, for they are time. As N�g�rjuna would put it, that things (or rather "thingings") are time means that there is no second, external time that they are "within."
This brings us to the second prong of the dialectic. To use the interdependence of objects and time to deny only the reality (svabh�va) of objects is incomplete, because their relativity also implies the unreality of time. Just as with the other dualities analyzed earlier in section II, to say that there is only time turns out to be equivalent to saying that there is no time. Having used temporality to deconstruct things, we must reverse the analysis and use the lack of a thing "in" time to negate the objectivity of time also: when there is no "contained," there can be no "container." If there are no nouns, then there can be no temporal predicates because they have no referent. When there are no things which have an existence apart from time, then it makes no sense to speak of" them" as being young or old: "so the young man does not grow old nor does the old man grow old" (N�g�rjuna).[22] D�gen expressed this in terms of firewood and ashes:
... we should not take the view that what is latterly ashes was formerly firewood. What we should understand is that, according to the doctrine of Buddhism, firewood stays at the position of firewood.... There are former and later stages, but these stages are clearly cut.[23]
Firewood does not become ashes; rather, there is the "being-time" of firewood, then the "being-time" of ashes. But how does such "being-time" free us from time?
Similarly, when human beings die, they cannot return to life; but in Buddhist teaching we never say life changes into death.... Likewise, death cannot change into life.... Life and death have absolute existence, like the relationship of winter and spring. But do not think of winter changing into spring or spring into summer.[24]
Because life and death, like spring and summer, are not in time, they are in themselves timeless. If there is nobody who lives and dies, then there is no life and death -- or, alternatively, we may say that there is life-and-death in every moment, with the arising and disappearance of each thought, perception, and act. Perhaps this is what Heraclitus meant when he said that "both life and
p. 20LOYdeath are in both our living and dying."[25] Certainly it is what D�gen meant when he wrote that we must realize that nirv�ṇa is nothing other than life-and-death, for only then can we escape from life and death.
In terms of time, this paradox can be expressed in either of two contradictory ways. We may say that there is only the present: not, of course, the present as usually understood -- a series of fleeting moments which incessantly fall away to become the past -- but a very different present which incorporates the past and the future because it always stays the same.
We cannot be separated from time. This means that because, in reality, there is no coming or going in time, when we cross the river or climb the mountain we exist in the eternal present of time; this time includes all past and present time.... Most people think time is passing and do not realize that there is an aspect that is not passing. (D�gen)[26]
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I don't understand much of this.
If everything is now and there is no past,present and future, why does it appear to us in this way?
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What is Dependant origination one life model? Kindly explain. I have only read three life model before.
In the view of no time, I would think this way. Only the form, I.e. body is bounded by time. The consciousness is interlinked like a spider web. And one karma generated can have more than one target.
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Originally posted by Bio-Hawk:
I don't understand much of this.
If everything is now and there is no past,present and future, why does it appear to us in this way?
In the Buddhist theory of Instantaneous Being, subtle time, the moment of the point instant of efficiency of reality is asserted. The point instant itself, the ultimate reality cut loose from all imagination is timeless, indivisible and without any quality.
Substantial time and space is a priori intuitions, its imperial origin is impossible to conceive. It is dialectically denied because to the Buddhist, duration and extension as we know it in common life contain contradictions and cannot be accepted as objective reality. That is where the doctrines of dependent origination, emptiness and impermanence are so central in the Buddhist teaching.
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Originally posted by Bio-Hawk:
I don't understand much of this.
If everything is now and there is no past,present and future, why does it appear to us in this way?
The point is not exactly 'everything is now'. Buddhism is not a now teaching. My sgforums name is misleading (account not created by me).
The point is that the dichotomy of self, things and times are arbitrary. You are time, time is you, time is mountains, rivers, events, activity. You are not 'happening in time', 'arising and passing away in time', things are not happening and passing away in time. Things ARE time. Time IS things. And so there is no time. -
Originally posted by libido:
What is Dependant origination one life model? Kindly explain. I have only read three life model before.
In the view of no time, I would think this way. Only the form, I.e. body is bounded by time. The consciousness is interlinked like a spider web. And one karma generated can have more than one target.
In a single instance, your ignorance manifest all twelve links. And in a single moment where ignorance ceases, all projection and objectification of twelve links ceases. That's how I understand it its a long time since I read those article you can find it out
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Instance and moment is suggestive of time?
The concept of rebirth is also limited to the law of time isn't it? For example what we are not is due to past karma?
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What we are now is due to past karma.
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Time is also an interdependently arisen conventional designation empty of substance.
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Can u pls give an example?