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What's the time Mr Wolfy?
I'd like to hear some perspectives on 'Time' - both Buddhist and perspectives that anyone has found helpful.
Time fascinates me but puzzles me. I've read different ideas about it, but I'm still quite puzzled.
I just read an article that suggested that from a Buddhist perspective that there is no 'time' called winter. All that exists are the things that we describe as winter. However, surely a combination of things represent a pattern. And a pattern that reoccurs after a hiatus is indicative of time. Or would the buddhist say that no pattern is ever precisely repeated? Yet aren't we then talking about levels of reality. And if so, is one more real than the others and if so, what is the most real reality?
If Buddhism believes everything comes out of 'nothing' or 'potentiality', does Buddhism believe this 'nothing' has certain characteristics or truth? Or does it believe it is meaningless and completely random itself. Quantum phycisists talk of the unified field and I have heard it suggested that this could be spiritual truth in terms of true spiritual good values. Could the Buddhist 'nothing' be the unified field and does Buddhism claim to know what the essential nature of 'nothing' is?
Time fascinates me but puzzles me. I've read different ideas about it, but I'm still quite puzzled.
I just read an article that suggested that from a Buddhist perspective that there is no 'time' called winter. All that exists are the things that we describe as winter. However, surely a combination of things represent a pattern. And a pattern that reoccurs after a hiatus is indicative of time. Or would the buddhist say that no pattern is ever precisely repeated? Yet aren't we then talking about levels of reality. And if so, is one more real than the others and if so, what is the most real reality?
If Buddhism believes everything comes out of 'nothing' or 'potentiality', does Buddhism believe this 'nothing' has certain characteristics or truth? Or does it believe it is meaningless and completely random itself. Quantum phycisists talk of the unified field and I have heard it suggested that this could be spiritual truth in terms of true spiritual good values. Could the Buddhist 'nothing' be the unified field and does Buddhism claim to know what the essential nature of 'nothing' is?
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Comments
"Relatively real" or "conventionally real" is the reality we have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. There is in some parts of the world a "time" that we call "winter" which has certain characteristics. Yes, it represents a pattern, but that pattern is in our perception and reaction to it as much as it is in "external reality". For instance, where I am, it's going to get very cold, it's going to snow a lot, and it's something I have to be ready for both in terms of its extreme inconvenience and its beauty. And of course a pattern that repeats itself is part of what we experience as time, although of course no pattern ever repeats itself precisely. But it would be stupid of me to not have proper clothes and a proper place to live when "winter comes". The last winter in the Midwestern United States su**ed big-time and I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm probably going to have to stay here rather than go to Florida. So there is the conventionally real and the "ultimately real" (my terminology for now), and we go back and forth between the two.
In my own experience in Vajrayana, it's only recently with scholars like Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Pema Chodron that there's much discussion of the "positive characteristics" (my terminology again, not Vajrayana) of the ultimate reality, although there is mention of it throughout Vajrayana, and that's that it is "of the nature of clear light" "primordial wisdom" or "the primordial space in which all other phenomena take place". Historically, this is how Vajrayana has described the "ultimate" nature of reality, and they have not put enough emphasis on this description for me personally until modern scholars have described it in this way in order to help Westerners avoid the extreme of nihilism. My reading of this is that indeed the "primordial wisdom" could indeed be somehow compared with the unified field, depending on how one describes the unified field and whether or not one attributes consciousness to the unified field in some way. I myself believe it entirely possible that consciousness could be expressed by way of the unified field. We also find hints of this in books like HHDL's The Universe in a Single Atom.
Buddhism does not, in Vajrayana, present ultimate reality in a nihilistic way, because of course that would be getting involved in the extreme of nihilism. It's my understanding that in Vajrayana it is the Primordial Wisdom that is ultimately real. But beyond that I find that in Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism is extremely reluctant to attribute much more than "clear light" and "luminosity" to ultimate reality because it leads to silly phenomenological arguments about the attributes of the primordial wisdom.
I think what you're examining here is the notion of subjective reality. For instance, if you ask me when the qualities of winter arise, I might say from December through February. If you ask someone from Australia, they would indicate the opposite. If you asked someone on an island near the equator, they might just blink at you. Therefore, there is no real 'time' that winter occurs, rather we notice that winter is happening from clues that might relate to the month, but are actually quite independent from it, and based off the position of the person on the earth in relationship to the angle and position of the earth to the sun. It has nothing to do with time.
This does not mean that there isn't a real-reality... it simply means that in order to understand what real-reality might be, we need to strip away labels and understand that observations are a complex set of relationships between moving and ever changing phenomena. So using the label "winter time" isn't wrong or even inaccurate, but ultimately it is directly subjective in nature, and describes nothing beyond the observations of the labeler. Keeping that in mind, in my opinion, helps to transcend the attachment to views.
As far as its relationship to quantum physics and field theory, I consider it unhelpful to deconstruct the winter-time notion in terms of mathematics. However, there is a fantastic book I've read called "The Quantum and the Lotus", which examines many of the similarities between Buddhism and the observations of physicists. It basically examines a scientific theory or teaching, then breaks it down in terms of both sides.
With warmth,
Matt
Would this be because Buddhism puts the emphasis on experience rather than knowledge? Is this approach a way of trying to avoid the snare of dogma? It seems to me though, despite my very limited knowledge of Buddhism that has accumulated its fair share of dogma along the way. Am I right?
I'm also interested that Buddhism uses metaphor like "clear light" and "luminosity" for the 'source' as Jesus used similar terms to describe himself and God, etc. I suppose as light is such a handy image it is not surprising that different religious traditions use it, as indeed it is also used in every day secular life in no doubt all languages and cultures. However, the more I learn about Buddhisma and the more i learn about what were probably the true sayings of jesus as opposed to dogma later ascribed to jesus by a non-jesus-led dogmatic new testament church, the more similarities i see between the two 'ideas'. Deepak Chorpa's book 'Third Jesus' was one of the peices of writing that helped me see this.
Not necessarily. There is a place in Buddhism for knowledge. In the Gelugpa Vajrayana there is strong emphasis on knowledge of epistemology and phenomenology. It's just that knowledge has its limitations and there is reluctance to try to ascribe any attributes to that which is beyond attributes. See the short version of the Heart Sutra.
I guess it could be said that some forms of Buddhism have accumulated dogma, but in real Mahayana and Vajrayana careful and well-thought-out philosophical study is allowed. Actually, Buddhism is very anti-dogma and we are instructed to take nothing on faith. There is the "gold test" in which we are instructed to treat teachings as a goldsmith would treat gold, refining and refining until the pure form is found. But if it's found to be fool's gold, then it is.
Yup.