Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s2.14

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.