Buddhist Philosophy in India and Ceylon c15.s2.5

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.