All Reality is Temporary Hypothesis
These words of Gautama Buddha resonate with the profound truth of all being ephemeral. The continual dynamic essence of everything that is, is a reality that if understood and imbibed solves most of the dilemmas of existence.
This points further to the absence of absolutes and the presence of relatives. The propensity of everything being temporary almost totally wipes out the possibility of ‘absolutism’. Nothing is more indicative of this idea than the fickle nature of ‘time’ per se. So every minute is like an hour in a boring class, every hour is like a second with your loved one and every second is like a decade in a situation of physical discomfort.
The chain of thought gets more intriguing when you move geographically. So if I start on 15th July at 2 am from India, traverse a 24 hour distance, reach the US again at about 4 pm on 15th July and never decide to retrace back my journey to India, where did those 10 hours of my life go? The idea gets further interesting on exploring what the Americans call as the ‘Day Light Saving’. This means that at about 12 pm on 26th October, all clocks are shifted back by an hour, so what was 9 am yesterday is 8 am today. In addition to the reinforcement of the power and individualism of the country this act reinforces the idea that there is nothing that is absolute.
The capricious character of time is elaborated beautifully by Fritjof Capra in his book ‘The Tao of Physics’ when he talks of the relativity theory’s ‘space-time diagrams’. These are used to picture interactions between various particles and their anti-particles like electron and positron. In a nut shell, what is most unusual about these diagrams are that they can be interpreted, based on the arrowheads depicting movement, as positrons moving forward in time or as electrons moving backwards in time. The interpretations are mathematically identical, same expression describing an anti-particle moving from past to future or a particle moving from future to past, implying the lack of an absolute measure or direction of time.
Gautama Buddha took this whole wisdom of continual change and used it to explain the strategy of understanding and making the most of your being. This has been experientially taught in the form of “Vipassana” that helps one understand the vacillating nature of emotions, called as ‘Anichya’ or impermanent, by experiencing the rise and fall of sensations in the body. Especially it brings home the wisdom that “this too shall pass”.
That leaves the present moment as the only anchor to what can be the nearest semblance to reality. The art lies in developing and strengthening that anchor. D.T. Suzuki, an accomplished Buddhist scholar says these words that are a true delight to read and understand because they are so obvious:
“In this spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense….The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on”
These words of Gautama Buddha resonate with the profound truth of all being ephemeral. The continual dynamic essence of everything that is, is a reality that if understood and imbibed solves most of the dilemmas of existence.
This points further to the absence of absolutes and the presence of relatives. The propensity of everything being temporary almost totally wipes out the possibility of ‘absolutism’. Nothing is more indicative of this idea than the fickle nature of ‘time’ per se. So every minute is like an hour in a boring class, every hour is like a second with your loved one and every second is like a decade in a situation of physical discomfort.
The chain of thought gets more intriguing when you move geographically. So if I start on 15th July at 2 am from India, traverse a 24 hour distance, reach the US again at about 4 pm on 15th July and never decide to retrace back my journey to India, where did those 10 hours of my life go? The idea gets further interesting on exploring what the Americans call as the ‘Day Light Saving’. This means that at about 12 pm on 26th October, all clocks are shifted back by an hour, so what was 9 am yesterday is 8 am today. In addition to the reinforcement of the power and individualism of the country this act reinforces the idea that there is nothing that is absolute.
The capricious character of time is elaborated beautifully by Fritjof Capra in his book ‘The Tao of Physics’ when he talks of the relativity theory’s ‘space-time diagrams’. These are used to picture interactions between various particles and their anti-particles like electron and positron. In a nut shell, what is most unusual about these diagrams are that they can be interpreted, based on the arrowheads depicting movement, as positrons moving forward in time or as electrons moving backwards in time. The interpretations are mathematically identical, same expression describing an anti-particle moving from past to future or a particle moving from future to past, implying the lack of an absolute measure or direction of time.
Gautama Buddha took this whole wisdom of continual change and used it to explain the strategy of understanding and making the most of your being. This has been experientially taught in the form of “Vipassana” that helps one understand the vacillating nature of emotions, called as ‘Anichya’ or impermanent, by experiencing the rise and fall of sensations in the body. Especially it brings home the wisdom that “this too shall pass”.
That leaves the present moment as the only anchor to what can be the nearest semblance to reality. The art lies in developing and strengthening that anchor. D.T. Suzuki, an accomplished Buddhist scholar says these words that are a true delight to read and understand because they are so obvious:
“In this spiritual world there are no time divisions such as the past, present and future; for they have contracted themselves into a single moment of the present where life quivers in its true sense….The past and the future are both rolled up in this present moment of illumination, and this present moment is not something standing still with all its contents, for it ceaselessly moves on”
posted by Garima at 12:02 PM
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