That is a good one. :)
Are you able to elaborate what people meant by time doesn't
exist?
You can refer to our thread on this topic 4 years ago, Time doesn't
exist
and also the article I posted partially there: http://web.archive.org/web/20070811122343/http://www.buddhistinformation.com/buddhism_and_the_illusion_of_time.htm
<< I've just read 'The end of time' by Julian Barbour
which presents a fairly convincing theory that time is just an
illusion and really the universe is just made up of infinite
seperate 'instants', or different configurations of the Universe.
Has anyone else read it and if so what do you think the
implications are on Buddhism and the mind. The theory has got me
quite depressed and so I would appreciate any replies.
Remmy>>
I haven't read it, but I just saw an ad for it in the new issue
of Science News and decided to browse the web for more
info. As for time being illusory and the universe being nothing but
a series of separate "instants," like frames in a movie, that's
basically correct. Everything we call "the past" is, literally,
nothing but present memories. Likewise, everything we call
"the future" is nothing but present memories
inverted, or rearranged, to form a prediction or
expectation. The appearance of "time" is little more than a trick
of memory, as the Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Ornament
Scripture) says. You can easily discern this for yourself: simply
figure out what it is you consider "the past" and "the future." You
will discover that it is nothing but thoughts--nothing but
memories, nothing but expectations, nothing but mental commentary.
It's "all in your head," so to speak. There's really no such thing
as time. There is really only Now--an eternally present
Present with no beginning and no ending. Everything is completely
new, distinct, and original every instant, with no real "change" or
"motion" at all. The mystic-philosopher Heraclitus, explaining this
point, said, "A man cannot step in the same river twice."
Zen Buddhism, in particular, stresses this very significant
insight. Here's the Sixth Patriarch, Ch'an Master Hui-neng:
"In this moment there is nothing that comes to be. In this
moment there is nothing that ceases to be. Thus there is no
birth-and-death to be brought to an end. Thus the absolute peace in
this present moment. Though it is at this moment, there is no limit
to this moment, and herein lies eternal delight."
Zen Master Seung Sahn elaborated on this topic in his excellent
book The Compass of Zen (p. 143):
"Everyone thinks that this is extremely difficult teaching,
something beyond their reach or experience. How can things appear
and disappear, and yet there is, originally, even in this
constantly moving world, no appearing and disappearing? A student
once asked me, 'The Mahaparinirvana-sutra seems very
confusing. Everything is always moving. And yet everything is not
moving? I don't understand this Buddhism . . .' But there is a very
easy way to understand this: Sometime you go to a movie. You see an
action movie about a good man and a bad man--lots of fighting, cars
moving very fast, and explosions all over the place. Everything is
always moving very quickly. Our daily lives have this quality:
everything is constantly moving, coming and going, nonstop. It
seems like there is no stillness-place. But this movie is really
only a very long strip of film. In one second, there are something
like fourteen frames. Each frame is a separate piece of action. But
in each frame, nothing is moving. Everything is completely still.
Each frame, one by one, is a complete picture. In each frame,
nothing ever comes or goes, or appears or disappears. Each frame is
complete stillness. The film projector moves the frames very
quickly, and all of these frames run past the lens very fast, so
the action on-screen seems to happen nonstop. There is no break in
the movement of things. But actually when you take this strip of
film and hold it up to the light with your hands, there is nothing
moving at all. Each frame is complete. Each moment is completely
not-moving action.
"Our minds and the whole universe are like that. This world is
impermanent. Everything is always changing, changing, changing,
moving, moving, moving, nonstop. Even one second of our lives seems
full of so much movement and change in this world that we see. But
your mind--right now--is like a lens whose shutter speed
is one divided by infinite time. We call that moment-mind. If you
attain that mind, then this whole world's movement stops. From
moment to moment you can see this world completely stop. Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop. Like the film, you perceive every
frame--this moment--which is infinitely still and
complete. In the frame, nothing is moving. There is no time, and
nothing appears or disappears in that box. But this movie
projector--your thinking mind--is always moving, around
and around and around, so you experience this world as constantly
moving and you constantly experience change, which is impermanence.
You lose moment-mind by following your conceptual thinking,
believing that it is real."
When you transcend your thinking mind in the realization of your
own pure, timeless, ever-present Awareness, then the illusion of
time completely collapses, and you become utterly Free of the
samsaric cycle of time, change, impermanence, and suffering. This,
my friend, is nothing at all to be "depressed" about! Rather, the
fact that your own Buddha Mind exists beyond time, in THIS
very moment, is itself the key to your permanent and
eternal (timeless) Liberation.
Hope that helps!
--Tom Huston
[email protected]
"To no longer resist the present is to see that there is nothing
but the present--no beginning, no end, nothing behind it, nothing
in front of it. When the past of memory and the future of
anticipation are both seen to be present facts, then the slats to
this present collapse. The boundaries around this moment
fall into this moment, and then there is nothing but this
moment, with nowhere else to go."
--Ken Wilber, No Boundary, pp. 158-159
<< Thanks for all that info Soulplex, I found it very
helpful. There's just a couple of things I'm not too clear on. If
I've missed the point somewhere please tell me. When you used the
movie analogy, do you mean we see the whole of our lives at once
which is 'played as a movie' to us so that the impression of
impermenance and change appears, so that in effect impermenance
does exist for someone who hasn't attained Nirvana? Or am I frozen
in time? The latter scares me quite a bit - is there still a ten
year old version of me in frozen agony after falling out of a tree?
Or are only fully enlightened people 'frozen' contentedly in
time?
Remmy >>
Okay, that's a good question, and I'll try to answer it as
clearly as possible. First, impermanence does indeed exist for
someone still trapped in Samsara (as well as suffering, attachment,
death, etc.--all just names for the same condition), but it doesn't
exist in Nirvana (and neither does its opposite, "permanence").
Nirvana is beyond the duality of motion and stillness, and the way
that's experienced is that you feel that you (Buddha Mind) are
absolutely still in the midst of a world of absolute
motion, but the two don't feel different or separate. That's
the nondual, Mahayana Nirvana, in which the relative dualities of
nirvana-and-samsara, life-and-death, subject-and-object,
matter-and-consciousness, form-and-spirit are seen to be nondual or
"one," an inseparable unity. (In the dualistic, Theravadin,
relative nirvana, the two--Buddha Mind and the world of form--are
felt to be different and separate, which is why the Mahayana
criticizes the Theravadin view as limited and incomplete.)
Let me break that down a bit: The whole world of form (samsara)
is totally full of various degrees of motion and movement, so that
even its "stillness" isn't absolutely still. It's only
relatively still--relative to other movements, like the "stillness"
you feel now sitting on a chair, even though you're zipping through
space on a planetary body at thousands of miles per hour. The world
of formlessness (nirvana), on the contrary, is absolutely
still and tranquil, with no relative movement or relative
stillness at all. So you have the relative world of relative
stillness-and-motion (samsara), on the one hand, and the absolute
world of absolute Stillness (nirvana), on the other. In the
realization of nondual, Mahayana Enlightenment, these two worlds
(relative samsara and relative nirvana, or relative form and
relative emptiness) merge into a perfect Unity of Absolute
Emptiness or Absolute Nirvana, and then there is neither
motion nor stillness, or you can say that there is both of
them together (as I explained in the first paragraph), or you can
say neither of those and give the logically precise answer:
silence. The Madhyamika Shastra (XV.3) put it best:
"It cannot be called void or not void,
Or both or neither;
But in order to point it out,
It is called �the Void.� "
As for the filmstrip analogy . . . Yes, you do experience the
whole of your life as "played at once," but all that really means
is that your life only happens right now, always in this
single, eternal context called Now (which is really just another
name for the Absolute or Buddha Mind). The "now" when the Big Bang
happened, the "now" when Gautama Buddha died, the "now" when you
were born into this life, and the "now" when you'll be reading
these words--these are one and the same moment, the same
motionless Now.
You can picture this "Now"--which is your own Buddha Mind, your
own natural Awareness--as a vast blue sky, and the world of time
and change is just a little tiny cloud passing within it. The "Now"
is eternal and still; it never changes or moves, since it is the
infinite clearing or space in which all change and movement
happens. The cloud arises, the cloud stays a bit, and the cloud
goes, but the vast empty sky remains untouched by it.
This is exactly how your present experience is: you are the vast
empty sky and this whole universe is a tiny cloud within you.
Through the blinding power of innate ignorance, however, you have
forgotten your true nature as the motionless sky and mistakenly
identified yourself as the ever-changing cloud (or a small part of
the cloud). A Theravadin-level enlightenment will reverse this
mistake by showing you that you are really the empty sky, and a
Mahayanin, nondual Enlightenment will show you that the sky and the
cloud are not separate or different. The cloud arises out of, and
within, the sky, and is ultimately made of "sky essence," so to
speak. (It's the same as the old "mirror" analogy: your mind is
perfectly clear mirror, and the world is reflected in it. You first
must discover that you are the mirror and become free of the
reflections; then you must discover that the reflections are not
separate from the mirror. At that point you become Free as
the Absolute Unity of mirror-and-reflections together.)
Now, to use the movie analogy, imagine that Awareness is a movie
screen and this world of form is a projected display of light that
appears on the screen. The frames appear on the screen, one at a
time, in rapid succession, and the screen contains each of them as
they appear. One frame of light appears on the screen, stays a
fraction of a second, and disappears--and the screen only reflects
one frame at a time.
Now here's where the analogy gets complicated (and where you got
confused): The movie screen and filmstrip reel all occur in
time; Awareness and the appearance of the world, however, are
the genesis of time. There's really no "reel" or "strip" of film
appearing on the screen all at once, but rather a single frame
every instant, with each instantly replacing the previous one--even
though its the same motionless screen they all appear on. So when
you become identified with the screen (Awareness), you don't
experience every single frame that ever appeared on the
screen--they've all long since disappeared back into the
nothingness from which they sprang. No, what you experience is the
realization that this very screen is the same screen that
has been reflecting frames of movie light since the beginning of
the movie itself (and that the screen, naturally, also exists
before and after the movie). You become identified with
Awareness--which is completely beyond time--and you realize that it
is eternal, that it is ever-present, that it has no beginning and
no end, that it is the same "Now" in which all experiences
have previously come and gone, presently come and go, and will in
the future come and go, eternally so.
And then, if you break through to complete, nondual
Enlightenment, you discover that the frames of movie light ARE the
screen--that the two aren't separate, or even essentially different
in any way--and then you see that there is only Now, only
the screen-and-present-frame Unity, and so whatever frame happens
to be present is the only frame there is. "Past" and
"future" are revealed to be mental fantasies--present
mental fantasies--and the only reality is always the present
reality, with no real "frames" existing anyway before or after it.
So there's no frame somewhere of a ten-year-old version of you
falling out of a tree; that's only a memory now, and that's
all it is. It exists nowhere but in your mind. (For this
analogy we've done away with the projection booth, the projector,
the reel of film, the viewer of the movie, etc.) That's what Zen
Master Seung Sahn meant by his "you see the whole world stop. Stop.
Stop. Stop. Stop. . . ." When there is really ONLY the present
moment, the present frame, then that's all you can see. And the
present frame is always completely motionless, even though the
frames give an illusion of sequential continuity (and your
conceptual mind superimposes an illusion of movement and change).
Enlightened people don't live "'frozen' contentedly in time," as
you suggested, but rather fluid and alive beyond
the illusion of time altogether!
There's nothing extraordinary about this. In fact, whether you
feel you're Enlightened or not, you're experiencing it right now
(when else could you experience it? when else could you experience
anything?). Right now, as you sit here reading these
words, the whole world is completely motionless, completely new,
and completely silent. Nothing is changing. Nothing is moving.
Nothing is happening at all. In fact, nothing has EVER
happened! Not now, and therefore not ever. The world is
totally silent, and everything is at peace.
And yet--how can this be? It seems absurd, doesn't it? You can
move your hands and arms around, perhaps you can crank up some loud
rock music to drown out the supposed "silence," and it all seems
perfectly obvious that things are happening, things are changing.
But look a little closer. Hold your hand in front of you. Now
clench your hand into a fist. Now release the fist and move your
fingers around. It certainly appeared as though the hand
were moving, didn't it? But we're not interested in appearances,
here; we want the reality. And the reality of your hand-moving
experiment is that it was a completely different hand every
instant, even when "you" weren't moving it!
On the surface, maybe this seems obvious: electrons in the hand
were spinning at the speed of light; blood was flowing through the
veins and capillaries; neurotransmitters were zipping instructions
across the synapses, thereby engaging muscles to move. Lots of
things about your supposedly static "hand" were changing. Of
course, people can brush this off and say, "Yeah, okay, but it's
still the same hand, even if it changes constantly." But take it
even further: Were electrons really spinning, causing that
subtle change in your "hand" every fraction of a nanosecond?
Weren't the electrons themselves also changing, with
quarks spinning and such, so that, going all the way down, to the
level of universal gravitational influences or quantum nonlocality,
everything even remotely related to your hand was
changing? This leads to a rather shaky image of your outwardly
static "hand," but perhaps we can solidify it somewhat if we
analyze exactly what we mean by "change."
Basically, change means a transformation of some kind, of a
single phenomenon transforming into a different arrangement of that
same phenomenon. But are there any single phenomena? Didn't we just
show, with the example of the quantum hand, that everything is
interconnected, somehow affecting everything else in some manner,
no matter how subtly? And, even if there are distinct and separate
phenomena, do any of them actually change?
Take that same hand, for example. If we didn't have the mental
concept "hand," how would we describe it? If we could see that the
phenomenon is actually completely new and
distinct every instant, with no static mental symbol (to
say nothing of memories) to hold the distinct appearances together,
would we perceive these new and distinct appearances as a changing
phenomenon? With no concepts and no memories superimposed on the
world, does anything really change? Are there even any separate
"things" that could change? Isn't it all really just one
seamless display--like, say, a movie frame--of a completely new and
distinct universe, arising and disappearing in an
infinitely rapid succession? (With a shutter speed of "one
divided by infinite time," as Zen Master Seung Sahn says.)
"A man cannot step in the same river twice," said the Greek
mystic Heraclitus, and the secret of life, the universe, and
everything is contained in that simple statement.
--tom
p.s. Here are some quotes that may clear up any lingering
confusion:
"This is not unchanging, yet it is not moving. It has never been
void; there is no question of inside or outside, no separation of
absolute and relative. Realize that this is your own original face:
even if it appears as ordinary or holy, even if it divides into
objective and subjective experiences, all comes and goes completely
within it, all arises and vanishes herein. It is like the water of
the ocean making waves; though they rise again and again, never is
any water added. It is also like waves dying away; though they die
out and vanish, not a drop is lost."
--Zen Master Keizan, Transmission of Light
"The life of a sentient being is a long dream. Existence only
appears to be real. When one finally awakens, or attains
Buddhahood, existence is seen for what it is--a sequence of
illusions. Until that time, people will remain obsessed by the
body, mind, and external phenomena, not realizing that they are
illusory. You will live in a dream, thinking that it is reality. .
. .
"Sentient beings mistakenly view their moment-to-moment illusory
existence as a continuous, connected lifetime. Because they are
unaware that their life is unreal, they do not attempt to wake
up."
--Ch�an Master Sheng-yen, Complete Enlightenment, pp.
108-109
"If you are attached to your thinking, then everything has name
and form. This is the world of opposites. But name and form are
always changing, changing, changing. Because of this, everything is
impermanent. Everything is like a dream, is like dew, is like a
bubble or a flash of lightning. Nothing stays but is always in a
process of change. Rather than being some constant, fixed reality,
this whole universe constantly appears and disappears. But there is
a way to experience the true nature of this constantly changing
universe. Simply do not become attached to any outside world. Don�t
become attached to names and forms. If you keep that point, then
your mind is not moving. You attain that names and forms are
fundamentally empty. This whole universe is completely empty. You
are completely empty. Nothing ever comes or goes. Nothing ever
appears or disappears. When you keep this mind, you soon attain
your true self."
--Zen Master Seung Sahn, The Compass of Zen, pp.
127-129
"It is like a cinema-show. There is the light on the screen and
the shadows flitting across it impress the audience as the
enactment of some piece. If in the same play an audience also is
shown on the screen as part of the performance, the seer and the
seen will then both be on the screen. Apply it to yourself. You are
the screen, the Self has created the ego, the ego has its
accretions of thoughts which are displayed as the world, the trees
and the plants. . . . In reality, all these are nothing but the
Self. If you see the Self, the same will be found to be all,
everywhere and always. Nothing but the Self exists."
--Sri Ramana Maharshi
"To talk about the world as being made by God tomorrow or
yesterday, would be talking nonsense. God makes the world and all
things in this present now."
--Meister Eckhart
"Waking up from the dream means realizing that nothing ever
happened. With Enlightenment there is no history. It has been
burned out of existence. Time itself has been destroyed."
--Andrew Cohen
"It is like an image reflected in a mirror, it is seen but it is
not real; the One Mind is seen as a duality by the ignorant when it
is reflected in the mirror constructed by their memory. . . . The
existence of the entire universe is due to memory that has been
accumulated since the beginningless past but wrongly
interpreted."
--The Lankavatara Sutra
"Just understand that things do not originate of themselves. All
of them come into existence from your own single mental impulse of
imagination mistakenly clinging to appearances.
"If you know that mind and objects fundamentally do not contact
each other, you will be set free on the spot. Everything is in a
state of quiescence right where it is; this very place is the site
of enlightenment."
--Zen Master Pai-chang
"There is nothing to overcome and nothing to prepare for�you
cannot prepare for where you already are.
"If you believe that some process in time will gradually release
you from the illusion of samsara, then you are in a very secure
position. But if you realize that the idea of time is the
illusion of samsara then the whole business is finished up very
quickly. As long as there is any investment in the future, you are
a hundred billion miles away from home."
--Andrew Cohen, Enlightenment is a Secret
"There is only now. Everything we call the �past� is absolutely
nothing but present memory. Everything we call the �future� is
absolutely nothing but fantasy and commentary, that is, present
memory rearranged. If we continue to pretend that there is
some other time or place to be, besides right here, right now, we
are cruelly and pathologically deluding ourselves."
--Scott Morrison, There Is Only Now
"Beginningless time and the present moment are the same. . . .
You have only to understand that time has no real existence."
--Zen Master Huang Po
"Eternity is not, and cannot, be found tomorrow--it is not found
in five minutes--it is not found in two seconds. It is always
already Now. The present is the only reality. There is no
other."
--Ken Wilber, No Boundary
"All temporal succession coincides in one and the same Eternal
Now. So there is nothing past or future."
--Nicolas de Cusa
"If you want to know what eternity means, it is no further than
this very moment. If you fail to catch it in this present moment,
you will not get it, however many times you are reborn in hundreds
of thousands of eons."
--Zen Master Seppo
"You examine the face of heaven and earth, but you have not come
to know the one who is in your presence, and you do not know how to
examine the present moment."
--Jesus Christ, The Gospel of Thomas, saying 91
"The idea of time is only in your mind. It is not in the Self.
There is no time for the Self. Time arises as an idea after the ego
arises. But you are the Self beyond time and space; you exist even
in the absence of time and space."
--Sri Ramana Maharshi
>Thanks, I think I understand now.
- Remmy