The Mahāyāna Deconstruction of Time by David Loy

Philosophy East and West Vol 36 No 1 (January 1986)

pp 13-23

Copyright 1986 by University of Hawaii Press Hawaii US

David Loy is currently engaged in research in Kamakura Japan

All beings are impermanent which means that there is neither impermanence nor permanence

Nāgārjuna[1]

I

One of the more interesting parallels between Eastern and Western philosophy is the same disagreement within each regarding the nature of time More precisely it is an ontological disagreement expressed in terms of how time is to be understood is ceaseless change the ultimate fact or is there an immutable Reality behind or within such impermanence The importance of this issue can hardly be exaggerated In the former case nothing escapes from the ravages of time but with the latter time itself is in some sense illusory and unreal

For both East and West the answers given to this question have been fundamental to the subsequent development of philosophy and hence of civilization itself In ancient Greece this disagreement found its sharpest expression in the pre-Socratic difference between Heraclitus and Parmenides[2] Heraclitus claimed that the cosmos is in ceaseless flux which he further identified as ever-living fire Because of this we cannot step into the same river twice -- a view amended by his disciple Cratylus who argued that we cannot step into the same river once since it is changing even as we dip our foot into it[3] In contrast and perhaps in response Parmenides argued that what is is whole immovable unborn and imperishable -- hence nontemporal -- in sharp distinction to what is not which is literally unthinkable[4] This implied another

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distinction between reason and the senses one should not depend on the latter which present the illusion of change but should judge by the former

Platos synthesis was to combine these two alternatives into a hierarchical dualism favoring Parmenides For example the Timaeus distinguishes the visible world of changing and hence delusive appearances from the invisible and timeless world of mental forms which can be immediately apprehended by the purified intellect His nod to Heraclitus is that the sensory world is granted a derivative reality -- things are the shifting shadows as it were of forms -- thus setting up a two truths doctrine which would have been anathema to Parmenides How mystical Plato was -- what he meant by the purified intellect and its immediate apprehension -- is a controversy which will probably never be settled[5] but Western thought has yet to escape from the intellect-versus-senses duality that he reified Few still accept the reality of such immaterial forms but in a sense all the subsequent history of Western philosophy has been until very recently a search for the Being hidden within the world of Becoming[6] Even science is a footnote to Plato for the same dualism can be observed in its enterprise of extracting atemporal (for example mathematical) truths from

changing phenomena In many ways contemporary Western culture has reversed Platos hierarchy but we nonetheless remain largely determined by it

The Eastern parallel to this is seen most clearly in the classical Indian opposition between the anitya (impermanence) of early Buddhism and the immutable Brahman of the Upaniṣads as later systematized by the various Vedantic schools most notably the Advaita Vedānta of Śaṅkara T R V Murti has summarized their contrasting standpoints

There are two main currents of Indian philosophy -- one having its source in the ātma-doctrine of the Upaniṣads and the other in the anātma doctrine of Buddha They conceive reality on two distinct and exclusive patterns The Upaniṣads and the systems following the Brāhmanical tradition conceive reality on the pattern of an inner core or soul (ātman) immutable and identical amidst an outer region of impermanence and change to which it is unrelated or but loosely related This may be termed the Substance-view of reality (ātmavāda) The other tradition is represented by the Buddhist denial of substance (ātman)and all that it implies There is no inner and immutable core in things everything is in flux Existence for the Buddhist is momentary (kṣaṇika) unique (svalakṣaṇa) and unitary (dharmamātra) The substance (the universal and the identical) was rejected as illusory

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it was but a thought-construction made under the influence of wrong belief (avidyā) This may be taken as the Modal-view of reality[7]

When we look for a resolution of these two extreme positions however we find a solution very different from Platos a middle way radically different because it denies not only the dualism of Platos synthesis but also the two original alternatives Rather than accepting the reality of both permanence and change by combining them in a hierarchy Mādhyamika criticizes and dismisses them both by revealing their interdependence We are confronted with a paradox denying the very dualism that the problem takes for granted One way to express this paradox is to say that yes there is nothing outside the flux but yes also there is indeed that which does not change Rather than being a contradiction the first alternative implies the second as well as we are able to understand once we realize the nonduality of time and things[8] The purpose of this article is to explain that paradox

II

This article is the third in a series which analyzes the opposition between Advaita Vedānta and early Buddhism and concludes that their diametrically opposed positions are phenomenologically equivalent[9] The contrast between the Brahmanical substance view and the Buddhist modal view has been approached through four sets of categories self versus no-self substance versus modes no-causality versus all-conditionality and now permanence versus impermanence Both views are extreme positions trying to resolve these problematic relations by conflating one set of terms into the other so it is not surprising that the two turn out to be mirror images of each other

The anātman doctrine of Buddhism is often contrasted with the Upaniṣadic identification of ātman with Brahman (for example tat tvam asi that thou art in the Chāndogya[10]) but these two extremes turn out to be identical the Buddhist no-self is indistinguishable from the all-Self of Vedānta for to shrink to nothing is to become everything[11] Later Dōgen expressed the point succinctly To learn the Buddhist way is to learn about yourself To learn about yourself is to forget yourself To forget yourself is to perceive yourself as all things[12] This is consistent with the meditative practices of both traditions in which students learn not to be attached to (identify with) any physical or mental phenomenon but to let go of everything -- especially the dualistic

p 15 The Mahāyāna Deconstruction of Time

sense of a subjective self (Jīva) confronting an external and objective world Since the resulting experience is nondual neither description is better or worse than the other

Substance versus mode the second set of categories is also interdependent with the consequence that both extremes -- the only-Substance of Advaita and the complete denial of svabhāva in Buddhism -- converge in precisely the same way Śaṅkara is reduced to defining the substratum so narrowly that nothing can be predicated of Nirguṇa Brahman which is approachable only through the via negativa of neti neti Brahman ends up as a completely empty ground unchanging only because it is a Nothing from which all phenomena arise as ever-changing and hence deceptive appearances From the perspective of Buddhism this is śūnyatā reified into an attributeless substance which since it has no characteristics of its own cannot really be said to be at all But from the perspective of Vedānta Buddhism ignored the fact that such a ground is necessary for as Parmenides pointed out nothing can arise from nothing and it is meaningless to deny all substance something must be real More important than the difference is that for both the emptiness of this ground -- however otherwise understood -- is also fullness and limitless richness for it is the lack of any fixed characteristics that makes possible the infinite diversity of the phenomena which arise from it[13]

The third issue is a controversy over the nature of causality The pratītyasamutpāda of early Buddhism might be labeled all-conditionality because it explains all phenomena by locating them within a cause-and-effect relationship when X exists then Y arises Conversely Advaitic vivartavāda denies any real conditionality since all effect-phenomena are merely illusory name-and-form superimpositions upon the immutable Brahman In this case however the sharpest expression of the disagreement is found within Mādhyamika itself which paradoxically both asserts and denies causality pratītyasamutpāda is used to refute svabhāva and is identified with śūnyatā itself yet the causal relation is also shown to be incomprehensible and is dismissed as māyā The solution again is that complete conditionality is phenomenologically equivalent to a denial of all causal conditions We use the category of causality to explain the relationships among things which means that the concepts of objects and causal relations

are interdependent Hence they stand or fall together Once pratītyasamutpāda is used to dissolve svabhāva then the lack of thingness in things implies a nondual way of experiencing in which there is no awareness of cause-and-effect because one is the causeeffect Again each pole deconstructs the other and what remains is inexpressible in the dualistic categories of language

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III

The arguments above are dialectical to absolutize either term by eliminating the other does not work because each half of the duality is dependent upon the other If one is negated so must the other be This shows the convergence of the Mahāyāna and Advaitic descriptions which together provide us with the most detailed and satisfactory accounts of the nondual experience[14] The question now is whether permanence and change are susceptible to the same approach Are they also interdependent so that neither is comprehensible without the other And since the answer will obviously be yes what does this imply about the possibility of another way of experiencing time

Consider a solitary rock out in the middle of an ocean current protruding above the surface of the sea Whether one is on the rock or floating by it it is the relation between the two that makes both movement and rest possible Obviously the current will be measured by the rate of movement past the rock but the rock can be said to be at rest only if there is something else defined as moving in relation to it -- a point modern physics makes by emphasizing the relativity of perspective Analogous to this the concept of impermanence -- time changing -- also required some fixed standard against which time is measured although such temporal juxtaposition is very different I am able to determine that precisely one hour has passed only because in looking at a clock I compare the hand positions now with my memory of where they were before Conversely the concept of permanence is dependent upon impermanence because permanence implies that which persists unchanged through time -- that is while other things change But what is the phenomenological significance of this interdependence

In Indian philosophy the rock represents more than permanence and unchanging substance it also symbolizes the self For both Vedānta and Buddhism the self is that which does not change although they disagree about whether this concept corresponds to anything existent What is most important of all is that they agree in denying any duality between rock and current although of course they negate this duality in different ways Buddhism denies that there is a rock asserting that there is only a flux The rock is a thought construction and the sense of self might be compared to a bubble which flows like the water because it is part of the water In contrast Advaita denies that there is anything flowing Change cannot be ignored but ultimately it is subrated as illusory in the realization of immutable Brahman But neither Buddhism nor Vedānta affirms the rock in relation to the current both deny the rock as jīva an ego-self counterposed to

p 17 The Mahāyāna Deconstruction of Time

something objective Vedānta absolutizes the rock it negates the flux by expanding to incorporate it -- phenomena are māyā because they are only transient name-and-form manifestations of Brahman -- but the rock can only do this by simultaneously emptying itself of all particular characteristics

In terms of the analogy then Advaita and Buddhism end up with much the same thing Whether the rock disappears or expands to encompass everything by becoming nothing all that can be experienced in either case is the water flowing although devalued to a greater (māyā) or lesser (śūnya) degree But -- and here we reverse the dialectic -- if there is no rock (permanence) what awareness can there be of any current (change) If everything is carried along together in the current then in effect there is no current at all This is the crucial point to which we return in a moment

Despite its claim of anitya Buddhism does not merely accept time and change as we usually experience them For all schools saṁsāra is literally the temporal cycle of birth-and-death which is in some sense negated in nirvāṇa For both Advaita and Buddhism as in illuminative traditions everywhere time is a problem not an abstract problem but a very personal and immediate one In fact the basic anxiety (duḥkha) of our lives can be expressed in terms of the contradiction between permanence and impermanence on the other hand we somehow feel that we are immortal and timeless yet we are also all too aware of our inescapable temporality illness old age death

What is the genesis of this problem It is the mind or more precisely the ways in which our minds usually work time is generated by the minds restlessness its stretching out to the future its projects and its negation of the present state[15] But there is no future without a past expectations and intentions are determined by previous experiences -- more precisely by the seeds (vāsanās and saṁskāras) -- that remain from them So Vedānta and Buddhism also emphasize the role of memory wrongly interpreted identifying with such memories provides the illusion of continuity -- a life history -- necessary to sustain a reified sense-of-self[16] Thus past and future originate and work together to obscure the present usually negating it so successfully that we can hardly be said to experience it -- which is extremely ironic of course since from another perspective all experience can only be in the present my action may be determined by a saṁskāra and I may anticipate some coming event but both saṁskāra and expectation can only be experienced now The ceaseless stream of intentionality devalues the present into simply one more moment in the sequence of causal relations as an effect of past causes and a cause of future effects For example thinking usually consists of linking-thoughts-in-a-series thus missing something about the origin and nature of this thought because it is understood only in logical (which in effect is also temporal) relation to other thoughts[17]

The effect of this devaluation of the present is that time becomes objectified through a reversal taking place Instead of past and future being understood as a function of present memories and expectations the present becomes reduced to a

moment within a time-stream which is understood to exist out there - a container as it were like space within which things exist and events occur But in order for time to be a container there must be a contained -- something that is in it -- which must be objects And in order for objects to be in time they must in themselves be atemporal -- that is self-existing In this way a delusive bifurcation occurs between time and things generally as a result of which each gains a spurious reality[18] The first reified object and the most important thing to be hypostatized as atemporal is the I the sense of self as something permanent and unchanging So the objectification of time is also the objectification of self which discovers itself in the anxious position of being an (apparently) atemporal entity nonetheless inextricably trapped in time

The best philosophical expression of this intuitive notion of objective time is found in Newtons conception of an absolute linear time which flows smoothly regardless of what events occur and which is infinitely divisible[19] This goes beyond the devaluation of the present and eliminates it completely the present becomes a durationless instant -- or rather a mere dividing line -- between the infinities of past and future from which it is rescued (but only psychologically) by the specious present (an ironic term indeed) of E R Clay and William James

IV

If we are thus trapped in time how can we escape The paradoxical nondual solution is to eliminate the dichotomy dialectically by realizing that I am not in time because I am time which therefore means that I am free from time

Much of our difficulty in understanding time is due to the unwise use of spatial metaphors -- in fact the objectification of time requires such spatial metaphors -- but in this case another spatial metaphor is helpful We normally understand objects such as cups to be in space which (as explained above in relation to time) implies that in themselves they must have a self-existence distinct from space However not much reflection is necessary to realize that the cup itself is irremediably spatial All its parts must have a certain thickness and without the various spatial relations among the bottom sides and handle the cup could not be a cup Perhaps one way to express this is to say that the cup is not in space but itself is space the cup is what space is doing in that place so to speak The same is true for the temporality of the cup The cup is not an atemporal self-existing object that just happens to be in time for its being is irremediably temporal The point of this is to destroy the thought-constructed dualism between things and time When we wish to express this we must describe one in terms of the other by saying either that objects are temporal (in which case they are not

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objects as we usually conceive of them) or conversely that time is objects -- that is that time expresses itself in the manifestations that we call objects Probably the clearest expression of this way is given by Dōgen The time we call spring blossoms directly as an existence called flowers The flowers in turn express the time called spring This is not existence within time existence

itself is time[20] This is the meaning of his being-time (uji)

Being-time means that time is being that is Time is existence existence is time The shape of a Buddha-statue is time Every thing every being in this entire world is time Do not think of time as merely flying by do not only study the fleeting aspect of time If time is really flying away there would be a separation between time and ourselves If you think that time is just a passing phenomenon you will never understand being-time[21]

Time flies away when we experience it dualistically with the sense of a self that is outside and looking at it Then time becomes something that I have (or do not have) objectified and quantified in a succession of now-moments that cannot be held but incessantly fall away In contrast the being-times that we usually reify into objects cannot be said to occur in time for they are time As Nāgārjuna would put it that things (or rather thingings) are time means that there is no second external time that they are within

This brings us to the second prong of the dialectic To use the interdependence of objects and time to deny only the reality (svabhāva) of objects is incomplete because their relativity also implies the unreality of time Just as with the other dualities analyzed earlier in section II to say that there is only time turns out to be equivalent to saying that there is no time Having used temporality to deconstruct things we must reverse the analysis and use the lack of a thing in time to negate the objectivity of time also when there is no contained there can be no container If there are no nouns then there can be no temporal predicates because they have no referent When there are no things which have an existence apart from time then it makes no sense to speak of them as being young or old so the young man does not grow old nor does the old man grow old (Nāgārjuna)[22] Dōgen expressed this in terms of firewood and ashes

we should not take the view that what is latterly ashes was formerly firewood What we should understand is that according to the doctrine of Buddhism firewood stays at the position of firewood There are former and later stages but these stages are clearly cut[23]

p 19 The Mahāyāna Deconstruction of Time

Firewood does not become ashes rather there is the being-time of firewood then the being-time of ashes But how does such being-time free us from time

Similarly when human beings die they cannot return to life but in Buddhist teaching we never say life changes into death Likewise death cannot change into life Life and death have absolute existence like the relationship of winter and spring But do not think of winter changing into spring or spring into summer[24]

Because life and death like spring and summer are not in time they are in themselves timeless If there is nobody who lives and dies then there is no life and death -- or alternatively we may say that there is life-and-death in every moment with the arising and disappearance of each thought perception and act Perhaps this is what Heraclitus meant when he said that both life and

death are in both our living and dying[25] Certainly it is what Dōgen meant when he wrote that we must realize that nirvāṇa is nothing other than life-and-death for only then can we escape from life and death

In terms of time this paradox can be expressed in either of two contradictory ways We may say that there is only the present not of course the present as usually understood -- a series of fleeting moments which incessantly fall away to become the past -- but a very different present which incorporates the past and the future because it always stays the same

We cannot be separated from time This means that because in reality there is no coming or going in time when we cross the river or climb the mountain we exist in the eternal present of time this time includes all past and present time Most people think time is passing and do not realize that there is an aspect that is not passing (Dōgen)[26]

Dōgens eternal present of time -- the standing now (nunc stans) of medieval Western philosophy -- is eternal because there is indeed something which does not change it is always now Alternatively this nondual way of experiencing time may be described as living in eternity of course not eternity in the usually sense an infinite persistence in time which presupposes the usual duality between things and time There is an eternity on this side of the grave if the present is not devalued

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For life in the present there is no death Death is not an event in life It is not a fact of the world If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present[27]

V

So the eternity we seek has always been with us -- closer to us than we are to ourselves to paraphrase Eckhart -- for all we need to do is forget ourselves and realize that which we have always been But because of the habitual restlessness of our minds we are not able to experience the present -- to be the present -- and so we over look something about it Due to anxious thought construction and thought projection our kangaroo minds seize on one thing and then jump to another In this state of attachment we experience the true nature neither of that thing reified by our fixation nor of the mind which fixates nor of the eternal now within which all these fixations must occur -- for if we did experience their true nature we would realize these three to be the same thing

What would such a nondual experience be like Not the static block universe which has been unfairly attributed to Parmenides for there would still be transformation although experienced differently since one is the transformation rather than an oberserver of it In fact such change would be a smoother more continuous flux since the mind would not be jumping staccato-fashion from one perch to another in order to fixate itself In one way nothing would be different I still get up in the morning eat breakfast go to work and so forth But there

would be something timeless about all these activities in changing it is at rest (Heraclitus fragment 84a) In place of the apparently solid I that does them there would be an empty and immovably serene quality to them[28] The experience would not be of a succession of events (spring does not turn into summer) but of just this one thing (tathatā) which effortlessly transforms itself into another just-this-one-thing[29] To live (in) the Now-which-does-not-fall-away is freedom for in the eternal present there is nothing to gain or lose Gain and loss are the external projections of hope and fear which hindrances in the mind (Heart sutra) depend on negating the Now

So HeraclitusBuddhism and ParmenidesVedānta are both right there is nothing outside the incessant flux yet there is also something which does not change at all the standing now That which transcends time turns out to be time itself This breathes

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new life into Platos definition (one of the oldest) in the Timaeus time is indeed the moving image of eternity provided that we do not read into this any duality between the moving image and the immovable eternity In Buddhist terms life-and-death are the moving image of nirvāṇa This paradox is possible because as with all other instances of subject-object nonduality to forget oneself and become something is at the same time to realize its emptiness and transcend it[30]

The problem with this conclusion from a Mādhyamika point of view is that it leaves us with something both and however paradoxical and anti-hierarchical is still a solution And as long as we identify any view as correct our attachment to such ideas keeps us from the nondual experience to which it points Therefore it seems better to turn each half of the assertion against the other in order to negate any attempt at a successful description no there is nothing permanent for everything is in flux and no also there can be no flux if there is nothing to be in it Each alternative deconstructs the other leaving no residue of lower truth to interfere with the inexpressible higher truth In classical Mādhyamika fashion the analysis is parasitic upon the problematic duality and ends in a silence which reveals a different way of experiencing In this way the philosophical problem of time -- fundamentally the relation between things and time -- is not answered but it is ended

NOTES

1 Nāgārjuna Śūnyatāsaptati verse 58

2 Such at least is the traditional interpretation of their views which has recently been questioned -- notably by Heidegger who claims there is no such disagreement This article could be used to support such a reinterpretation for it could be argued that its conclusions are compatible with the fragments that remain of both Heraclitus and Parmenides and perhaps even offers a more consistent interpretation of their claims

3 For the same reason Cratylus also concluded that language can never describe reality since words are an attempt to fix that which never stops changing So at the end of his life he no longer spoke but just wagged his finger

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4 Aristotles description of Parmenides is as accurate a summary Nāgārjuna

Some earlier philosophers eg Melissus and Parmenides flatly denied generation and destruction maintaining that nothing which is either comes into being or perishes it only seems to us as if this happens (De Caelo 298 B14) They say that no existing thing either comes into being or perishes because what comes into being must originate either from what exists or from what does not and both are impossible what is does not become (for it already is) and nothing could come to be from what is not (Physics 191 A27)

5 Thomas McEvilley makes a strong case for Plato as a Mādhyamika in Early Greek Philosophy and Mādhyamika Philosophy East and West 31 no 2 (April 1981) 149-152

6 Nietzsche was the first to emphasize this and even his own Eternal Recurrence may be seen as yet another and more desperate attempt to wrest a Being from the flux of Becoming

7 T R V Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London Alien and Unwin 1960) pp 10-11

8 That Śaṅkaras and other Vedantic systems were elaborated after Mādhyamika and even utilized much of Nāgārjunas dialectic does not deny the fact that Mādhyamika is a synthesis of the two extremes as Murti has shown With regard to historical influence the comparison with Plato is also apt the Mahāyāna resolution did not prevail in India but its influence elsewhere -- Tibet and environs China Mongolia Korea and Japan -- has been incalculable

9 Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta Are Nirvāna and Moksha the Same International Philosophical Quarterly 22 no I (March 1982) The Paradox of Causality in Madhyamika International Philosophical Quarterly 25 no I (March 1985)

10 Chāndogya Upaniṣad Vlviii7ff

11 Of course this insight is not confined to the Indian tradition As long as I am this or that or have this or that I am not all things and I have not all things Become pure till you neither are nor have either this or that then you are omnipresent and being neither this nor that are all things (Eckhart) Here we see that solipsism coincides with pure realism if it is strictly thought out The I of solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and what remains is the reality coordinate with it [A]t last I see that I too belong with the rest of the world and so on the one side nothing is left over and on the other side as unique the world In this way idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out (Ludwig Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916 (Oxford Blackwell 1961) 2916 and 151016)

12 Dōgen Zenji Shōbōgenzō Vol I trans Nishiyama and Stevens (Sendai Japan Daihok-kaikaku 1975) p 1

13 Perhaps Heraclitus is making the same point in fragments 67 and 65 God is fullnessemptiness Fullness and emptiness are the same thing

14 They are so similar that some scholars perceive them as two moments in the evolution of the same nondual philosophy Buddhism and Vedānta should not be viewed as two opposed systems but only as different stages in the development of the same central thought (Chandradhar Sharma A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy (Delhi Motilal Banarsidass 1976) chap 17 p 318 defends this point of view) I am led to think that Śaṅkaras philosophy is largely a compound of Vijntildeānavāda and Śūnyavāda Buddhism with the Upaniṣad notion of the permanence of the self superadded (S Dasgupta A History of Indian Philosophy (Delhi Motilal Banarsidass 1975) Vol I pp 493-494) Sharma is sympathetic to this nondualist tradition Dasgupta is critical of it

15 Hannah Arendt The Life of the Mind (New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1978) vol 1 p 45 Arendt is describing Plotinus and Hegel but the quotation also fits the nondualist Eastern traditions

16 For example the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra attributes saṁsāra to memory wrongly interpreted and Śaṅkaras definition of māyā in the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya makes the same point in terms of superimposition (adhyāsa)

17 In the exercise of our thinking faculty let the past be dead If we allow our thoughts past present and future to link up in a series we put ourselves under restraint On the other hand if we never let our mind attach to anything we shall gain deliberation (Hui Neng Platform Sutra chap 4) This is issue is discussed in detail in Nondual Thinking forthcoming in the Journal of Chinese Philosophy

18 Heidegger finds the same duality at the origin of Greek philosophy

even the very relation between presencing and what is present remains unthought From early on it seems as though presencing and what is present were each something for itself Presencing itself unnoticeably becomes something present The essence of presencing and with it the distinction between presencing and what is present remains forgotten The oblivion of Being is the oblivion of the distinction between Being and beings (The Anaximander Fragment in Early Greek Thinking trans Krell and Capuzzi (New York Harper and Row 1975) p 50 Heideggers emphasis)

So Heidegger sees the interdependence of presencing and what-is-present but he does not further deconstruct the duality because he still wants to maintain an ontological distinction between Being and beings

19 A possible objection here that I am confusing psychological time with objective (eg Newtonian) time presupposes the very duality that this article challenges

20 Masunaga Reiho The Soto Approach to Zen (Tokyo Layman Buddhist Society Press 1958) pp 68-69

21 Shōbōgenzō op cit pp 68-69

22 Mūlamadhyamikakārikā XIII 5

23 Dōgen Shōbōgenzō p 2

24 Ibid

25 And perhaps not The source is Sextus Empiricus (Pyrr Hyp Ill 230) Heraclitus says that both life and death are in both our living and dying for when we live our souls are dead and buried in us but when we die our souls revive and live The gloss makes the first statement much more pedestrian but it may not be Heraclitus own

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26 Dōgen Shōbōgenzō pp 69 70

27 Wittgenstein Notebooks 1914-1916 p 75e 8716

28 This is the wu-wei of Taoism discussed further in Wei-Wu-Wei Nondual Action Philosophy East and West 35 no 1 (January 1985)

29 The argument of this article uses Mādhyamika dialectic but the same points could be made in terms of Yogācāras trisvabhāva doctrine The imaginary world of parikalpita is our usual dualistic experience of a collection of discrete things causally interacting in space and time The interdependent world of paratantra is experiencing a spacetime continuum of causal interrelationships distinguishable but no longer separable (Indras web) The perfected world of parinispanna negates spacetime and causality there is just this one thing (each interstice-jewel contains the whole of Indras web)

30 This suggests a solution to Zenos paradoxes which presuppose a realist -- that is objectified -- conception of time Quantification into a succession of finitely (atomism) or infinitely (continuum) divisible moments is inevitable if time is a thing and thus obviously composed of parts but no collection of such units can ever add up to the flux of an event As Nāgārjuna also pointed out the basic problem is that continuity can never be established between such discrete moments regardless of their duration The error was to presuppose that the now is merely a unit of time one of a sequence of moments successively falling away Of course this does not refute Zeno His paradoxes prove just what he wanted as his teacher Parmenides argued time as something objective that things are in is unreal