Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s2: 2. The Nature of Time and Space

Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s2

Language
English

2. The Nature of Time and Space

c15.s2.1

Though the Canon recognizes the impermanent character of existence it is devoid of any serious consideration of the meaning of impermanency. Any effective handling of the question of time is certainly missing from the Upaniṣads; the indivisible non-time of the *Maitrāyaṇi Upaniṣad* is merely a time before the actual normal time, and in the *Atharvaveda* and the *Mahābhārata*, where time appears in the light of a creator, we have nothing seriously philosophical. The explanation of the doctrine is simple enough; in the Brāhmaṇa speculation Prajāpati, the creator, is also regarded as the year; creation in time leads to the simple conception of creation by time, and there is certainly no trace even in the more advanced speculation of the *Mahābhārata* of any distinction between time as real or transcendent and time as subjective. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that early Buddhism with its clear dislike for problems not immediately tending to salvation should have left the issue severely alone; the eternity or other condition of the world is expressly included among the indeterminates.¹

c15.s2.2

¹ Walleser, PGAB., pp. 123 ff. ; Schrader, *Über den Stand der ind. Phil.*, pp. 19 f. ; AV. xix. 53, 54; MBh. xii. 227. 29.

c15.s2.3

The *Milindapañha*² shows us a clear advance of interest in the question of time. Milinda questions Nāgasena in detail on this point, and is informed that there is past, present, and future time; time which exists and time which does not exist. This is explained in the sense that there are dispositions (*saṃkhāra*), which are past in the sense of having ceased to be, or having been dissolved, or altogether changed; to them time is not. But there are also conditions which are now producing their effect, or have in them the potentiality of producing effect, or which will otherwise lead to re-individualization; to them time is. When there with three different views of the nature of the perception of an object. (1) All its characteristics are represented in thought form and so apprehended; (2) thought form is of the total actual presentation only, e. g. of variegated colour as such; (3) all aspects of the object are presented in thought, but it synthesizes them in one view, e. g. the different colours are made one; Wassilieff, *Bouddhisme*, pp. 275 f.

c15.s2.4

² pp. 50 ff. Cf. KV. i. 8, doctrine of Kassapikas.

c15.s2.5

are beings who when dead will be reborn, there is time; when there are beings who when dead will not be reborn, there is no time; and, when beings have been altogether set free by the attainment of Nirvāṇa and bodily death, there time is essentially not. The king inquires also as to the root of past, present, and future time, and is informed that it is in ignorance; the meaning of the reply is clear when the answer proceeds to enumerate the chain of causation beginning with the dispositions, for we have seen that the idea of time is illustrated by the condition of the dispositions. Were it not for ignorance, there would be no dispositions, and therefore no time; the enlightened one is exempt from connexion with time. Further, it is made clear that there is no possibility of finding a beginning to time, or ultimate point in the past; the position is made clear by the analogy of the seed, fruit, seed; egg, hen, egg; and the circle of eye, colours, sight, contact, feeling, longing, action, and, as the outcome of action, an eye in a future birth. Finally, the sage insists as against the suggestion of the king that there may be discontinuity between the present and the past and the future that there is constant continuity. That which has not been becomes, that which has begun to become vanishes away; past, that is to say, passes over to the present, and the present passes over to the future.

c15.s2.6

Prof. Walleser has deduced from these passages the conclusion that, while the existence of transcendent time is not denied, it is made clear that time is reduced to the momentary present, and that time is an ideal phenomenon, a result which follows necessarily from the reduction of time to the momentary present; past and future time, if not real, must either be absolutely nothing or phenomenal, and the latter decision is the natural one to adopt to accord with the facts. These conclusions, however, seem rather to over-estimate the degree of philosophical competence of the composer of the *Milindapañha*. There is, it must be added, no clear or probable understanding in the text of a true momentary present; indeed the true version rather emphasizes the continuity of time; the idea that the present is sharply cut off from the past and future, which appeals to the king, is rebuked by Nāgasena. A distinction between phenomenal and transcendental time is not present to the composer; his point is different, but quite clear and satisfactory; time is essentially a thing of the world of experience alone; the world exists in it, and the time is ever in motion; but in true enlightenment there is as little room for time as for anything else empirical. Of time as a mental creation of any sort there is no suggestion; the text takes it as it is found in experience, and makes no effort to analyse or explain its nature.

c15.s2.7

The ideas of the *Milindapañha* appear in a varied form in the *Abhidharmakoça*.¹ The Sarvāstivādins are there credited with maintaining the existence of everything past, present or future, while the Vibhajyavādins distinguish in their usual mode between (1) the present elements and those among the past which have not yet produced their fruition, which are existent and (2) future elements and those among the past which have produced their fruition, which are non-existent. Of the first view there are variant aspects. Dharmatrāta maintained that the essence of an element remains unchanged throughout various times, its existence alone altering, an idea made intelligible by the change of milk into curds or the breaking of a vessel of gold. The view is obviously closely akin to the Sāmkhya in which all change is merely alteration of an existent without fundamental change of substance, and is rejected by the Vaibhāṣikas on that account, for it implies a permanent substance. In Ghoṣaka's view, when an element appears at different times, the past element retains its past aspects without being severed from its present and future aspects, and the present retains its present aspect without completely losing its past and future aspects, a view which the Vaibhāṣikas very sensibly reject on the ground that it simply destroys distinctions of time, since all the aspects are to coexist. Buddhadeva adopts the view that, just as a woman can be regarded as mother, wife, or daughter, so the same entity may be described as present, future, or past in accordance with its relation to the preceding or succeeding moment; this view also the Vaibhāṣikas reject on the ground that it treats all three times as found together in one.

c15.s2.8

¹ Cf. Poussin, TDC., pp. 57 f.; AK. v. 24 ff.; Stcherbatskoi in Dasgupta, *Ind. Phil.* i. 115 f. For Sāmkhya views, see SS., p. 73.

c15.s2.9

The view of Vasumitra, on the other hand, is accepted by the Vaibhāṣika school. It holds that difference in time is dependent on difference in efficiency; when an entity has performed its function and has ceased to act, it is past; when it is producing it, it is present; when it has not yet produced it, it is future. In all three cases there is real existence; this is obvious as regards present and future, and can be proved as regards the past by the considerations that, if the past were not real, i. e. did not exercise efficiency—this being the crucial test of reality—it could not be the object of knowledge nor could deeds done in the past produce effects in the present.

c15.s2.10

The Vaibhāṣika position is not approved by the Sautrāntika on the decidedly legitimate ground that all forms of this view really involve belief in the existence of a permanent substance persisting throughout time, the time distinctions appearing in it. If, it is pointed out, the past exercises efficiency at present, it clearly cannot be distinguished from the present, an objection which no attempt to distinguish between efficiencies will enable us to remove. Secondly, we can as experience shows know non-existing entities just as well as we can know existing entities; now non-existing entities have *ex hypothesi* no efficiency, so that it is not necessary that the past should have efficiency to be known. Again, if a distinction is drawn between an efficiency and an entity, there is immediately raised the insoluble problem why the efficiency started at any particular time and stopped at another. The true doctrine is that there is no distinction between the entity, the efficiency, and the time of its appearance;¹ entities appear from non-existence;² they exist for a moment; then they cease to exist. Their existence activity and action are all one. This harmonizes with the fact that, when we remember a thing as the past we do not and cannot know it as existing in the past; we know it in the same way as we knew it when it was present;

c15.s2.11

¹ Cf. the verse in BCAP. ix. 6; TV., p. 170; *Bhāmatī*, p. 361; *Upadeçasāhasrī*, p. 369; *Vedāntakalpataru*, p. 278; and see Çañkara, BS. ii. 2. 20 : Poussin, JA. 1903, ii. 377 : *Kṣaṇikāḥ sarvasaṃskārā; asthirāṇāṃ kutaḥ kriyā? bhūtir yaisāṃ kriyā saiva kārakam saiva cocyate*.

c15.s2.12

² cf. Vācaspati on SK. 9. Past and future time are mere names, TRD., p. 46; MKV., p. 389; all are mere 'void; MK. xix; Ui, VP., p. 46. So as regards space; ibid., pp. 46 f.

c15.s2.13

similarly it is not true, as on the Vaibhāṣika theory, that our past passions exercise causal efficiency upon us; in point of fact they have left residues impressed which become the antecedents of the passion of the present.

c15.s2.14

The Vaibhāṣikas in their doctrine of time made a distinct change on the canonical simplicity, which recognizes merely origin and passing away¹ or the three stages of coming into being, decay, and annihilation;² it interpolates the moment of existence (sthiti), which, it asserts, was suppressed by the Buddha because of the danger which it involved to the doctrine of impermanence, but which is implicitly included in the last stage (sthityanyathātva).³ What is more obvious is that the discrimination is hardly exact. These four moments of existence were evidently taken by the school as four kinds of forces, which by coming into combination with the essence of an entity produced its impermanent manifestations in life. The idea is curious and interesting; it shows how deeply rooted was the realism which converted time into a potency possessing causative force of its own.

c15.s2.15

¹ Defended in KV. ii. 7 which denies duration of consciousness. That the Buddha accepted some duration is possible; cf. MKV., p. 283, n. 1, MK. vii. discusses origination (utpāda), existence (sthiti) and destruction (bhaṅga).

c15.s2.16

² Defended in KV. xxii. 8 against the momentary doctrine of Pubba-and Apara-seliyas. Continuity appears also in xv. 3. See AN. i. 152; KV. i, p. 61; Compendium, pp. 25 f., 125; the attempt to explain it away in Points of Discourse, pp. 374 f. is absurd. See MKV., pp. 145, 545 f., BSB. I. xvii. 15 (the characters apply to each moment; to the series, acc. AKV.) Momentariness is true of consciousness, however; KV. ii. 7; x. 1 (against the Andhakas). The Vaibhāṣikas (acc. to Wassilieff, Bouddhisme, p. 277) divide things as eternal and non-eternal, and ascribe all compounds to the latter category, but do not make them momentary. The Sautrāntikas reduce all to a series of moments of coming to be.

c15.s2.17

³ The four are given in TRD., p. 46 as jāti, sthiti, jarā, vināça. Cf. DS., § 596.

c15.s2.18

In the Kathāvatthu⁴ we find an elaborate, but as usual not very profitable, refutation of the Sarvāstivādin view that everything exists, understood in the sense that past, present, and future equally exist; the passages of the Suttas in favour of the former view are refuted effectively enough by other passages, without anything more than dialectical ingenuity. The conclusion arrived at is that the present alone exists, and the same doctrine is stoutly maintained against the Kassapikas, who are credited with asserting that some of the past, i. e. that which is to bear fruition exists, as well as some of the future, i. e. that which is inevitably to be, as distinct from that which is only contingent. The fact is extremely interesting and raises an obvious difficulty in the face of the doctrine which is attributed elsewhere to the Vibhajyavādins¹ and which certainly appears in the *Milindapañha*; that text certainly admits the existence of past potentialities of future action, though it denies the existence of the future and the past that has performed its activity. We have in fact in this point a suggestion that the *Kathāvatthu* as we have it cannot be regarded as representing always Vibhajyavādin views, and with this concurs the obvious consideration that in not a few cases the argument is very obviously much the better in the case of the opponent than of the Vibhajyavādin, and, for example in the case of the discussion of time itself, we find in the work two distinct doctrines. The true momentariness of all consciousness is on the one hand asserted, while on the other hand it is denounced as a heresy to hold that all existence is to be reduced to conscious moments, the case of the elements, trees, &c., being adduced against such an idea, and stress is laid on the fact that the Canon assumes the more or less permanent existence of external sense matter, of the sense organs as material, and objects to any attempt to identify either with actual consciousness.² We may derive from these views the conception that for the *Kathāvatthu* consciousness was momentary—this is asserted even of the consciousness of a god—but that material things had some endurance, though they were not permanent, and this view is in accord with the relative permanence of body admitted in the Canon. But the *Kathāvatthu* certainly does not make explicit the doctrine.

c15.s2.19

⁴ i 6 ff.

c15.s2.20

¹ AK. v. 25.

c15.s2.21

² KV. ii. 7; xxii. 8; MN. i. 190.

c15.s2.22

Of space we have in the *Milindapañha*³ two interesting notes. In the first place it is classified with Nirvāṇa as being uncaused by any of the three causes, action, seed-cause, or season-cause; apparently also, like Nirvāṇa, it is to be deemed unproduced, out of time, and imperceptible by any sense organ, except the mind. In the second passage, also late, it is described as impossible to be grasped; the resort of seers, ascetics, gods, and birds; infinite, boundless, immeasurable; not stopped by anything; and resting upon nothing. This is certainly a more philosophic view than is found in the *Dhammasaṅgaṇi* of the *Abhidhamma Piṭaka* where it is classified as a material derivative. The contrast between this view and that of the Sautrāntikas which treats ether or space as unconditioned and therefore on a parallel with Nirvāṇa itself is explained by the discussions in the *Kathāvatthu*. To the identity of the infinity of space, attained in meditation, with Nirvāṇa, it is objected that there is birth and death in that sphere, but not in Nirvāṇa. The more general view, of the Uttarāpathakas and Mahīṃsāsakas, that space is unconditioned, is met in a similar way; if so, it must be Nirvāṇa, since two unconditioned things must be identical; again, when a well is dug, there is creation of space, which is absurd if it is unconditioned, and similarly it is destroyed when a pitcher is filled, equally absurdly. The last word here is given to the heretics with some reason; Buddhaghosa helps out orthodoxy by distinguishing occupied space as conditioned, and empty space or space abstracted from objects as mere abstract ideas, which cannot be styled unconditioned. Finally, the *Kathāvatthu* rejects the Andhaka doctrine that void space is visible, because then it must be coloured matter, and visual consciousness according to scripture is not produced by the eye and space. The argument again leaves the last statement to the heretic; Buddhaghosa supplies the answer by asserting the mental comprehension of space, the doctrine probably intended in the *Milinda*.

c15.s2.23

³ pp. 271, 388; DS., § 638; KV. vi. 4, 6, 7. That space is a mental construction without objective reality (Points of Controversy, p. 394) is clearly not meant; it is real and perceived by mind; so ADS. vi. 6. 4, contradicting the assertion in Compendium, p. 16. It is a mere name acc. TRD., p. 46.

Linked texts (17)