Apologies for employing weird terms such as
“temporalogy” and “spaceology” but I do need some terms to express the ideas of
“study/theory of time” and “study/theory of space.” But nowadays, one looks up
for any conceivable word in the world-wide-web and lo, you find that someone
somewhere in some context has already employed the term. If we remind ourselves
that terms are like the proverbial finger that points to the moon, I am sure we
can be quite relaxed about using any term that helps us to best express an
idea.
To
begin with, Buddhist philosophy does not seem to deny the ideas of time and
space. Time in the sense of duration (i.e. span of time including moments,
days, weeks, months, seasons, years, decades, centuries, and eons, all of which
can be subsumed under the so-called dus mtha’i skad cig
ma and bya rdzogs kyi skad
cig ma), time in the sense of past, present, and future, even of a fourth
dimension of time called the dus bzhi mnyam pa
nyid (mostly popular in rNying-ma philosophy). The expression phyogs
bcu dus bzhi is quite common. Space here is more in the sense of
“spatial direction” (not necessary in the sense used, for example, in
astrophysics). And there is also the notion of good time and bad time, good
space and bad space.
What
interests me and provokes me to write this entry is the question of the nature
of time and space as understood by Tibetan Buddhist thinkers. Many years ago, I
recall sitting under the Bodhi tree (i.e. on the spot the Buddha became a buddha), not
because I was at the brink of getting awakened myself but because I was there
trying to make aspirational wishes with thousands of fellow Tibetan Buddhist
monks. One day, as is common, we received donations of copies of certain
Buddhist texts. Among them was the Thub chog byin rlabs
gter mdzod, that is, a buddha-sādhana,
by Mi-pham. During one break, I was reading through it, particularly the text
printed in small letters, which is meant as a kind of theoretical explanation
of the text one is supposed to recite. As a typical Buddhist logician and
epistemologist, Mi-pham offered a syllogism, which I paraphrase approximately
as follows: “If one thinks that the Buddha is in front of you, he would by all
means be there in front of you, because the Body of the Buddha, being a Body of
Gnosis, has no limitation/discrimination (nye ring) with
regard to space and time.” He then goes on to cite some authoritative
scriptures. What he means that we cannot say that the Buddha was there and then
and not here and now. This idea is linked with the Buddhist idea of the notion
of self. To begin with, notion of self according to Buddhism is a mistaken
notion because there is no corresponding content of that notion. But
interestingly, notion of self is the center of one’s identity and existence. It
is the center of one’s universe. It is the point of reference for everything.
It is particularly a point of reference for the notion of space and time. This
notion of self allows us to make an existential distinction between “myself”
and “others,” a (temporal) distinction between “now” and “then,” and a
(spatial) distinction between “here” and “there.” Without the notion of self
and when it disintegrates, all these distinctions seem no longer possible. And
indeed for the Buddha or a buddha, who has
eliminated the notion of self, what would time and space mean?
Rong-zom-pa, my Tibetan intellectual mentor, also offers an interesting idea on time and space. He, in his commentary of the *Guhyagarbhatntra (p. 173) states that time is sems kyi snang ba (“appearance/projection/representation of [one’s] mind,” and as long as one does not obtain complete command over one’s mind, time and space would “appear to be fixed/definite” (nges par snang) but once one attains complete command over one’s mind, time and space would “appear as one wishes (i.e. arbitrarily)” (ci dgar snang).
Just like some
spots or points in space are considered sacred so are points in time (i.e.
hours, day, month, and year) are considered special, sacred, and suitable
for certain activity. In the Sarvabuddhasamayogatantra (RZ2:
527), 8th, 14th, and 15th are considered “special times” (khyad par gyi dus).
