Abbot's Teaching
Zen inspired Thoughts on Space/Time
by Michael Zenkai Taiun Elliston Sensei
November 15, 2000
There is a Zen expression - in Japanese "Moku-rai" - which was one of my teacher's favorite points of emphasis. It roughly translates into "stillness-in-action", or "silence is thunder". This phrase points to the mutually-defining complementarity and inseparability of perceived opposites. Buckminster Fuller (another mentor) similarly referred to such pairs as tension-and-compression as "always and only co-existent". Dogen Zenji, the great Zen master of thirteenth-century Japan, coupled "time" with "existence" in the chapter "Uji", sometimes translated as "being-time" (copy enclosed) from his seminal work, Shobogenzo. Dogen also joined "practice-enlightenment" or "cultivation-authentication" as well as "thinking/non-thinking". Buddha famously linked "form-emptiness" as an identity. Your discussion of "space-time" seems related to these formulations.
My teacher, Matsuoka Roshi, referred to "the eternal moment" as the true nature of time. Daisetz Suzuki, who was one of his mentors, regarded man's measurement of time as a great and useful invention, but emphasized that it was also a spiritual tragedy, in that people took it to be the way time actually is - that is, linear in nature.
Similarly, Descartes's coordinate system of height-width-depth on 90-degree, x-y-z axes, may have the effect of subliminally limiting people's grasp of space. Bucky Fuller's geodesic geometry (based on a 60-degree coordinate system derived from closest-packing of spheres) is surely a higher approximation to nature's "geometry of space" - and structure - though it may have no application in your realm.
Referring to time as a dimension in the context of spatial thinking seems sloppy to me; time seems to be of another quality entirely, though inseparable from space. Its more useful pairing may be with "being" or action (motion). Before talking about time, let me briefly discuss space, including the things that seem to exist in it.
The Self
In Buddhism, things are seen to exist conventionally, but not absolutely. That is, all things arise, abide and decay (abiding being the questionable part, that which makes things appear as substantial and permanent). On the classic level of perception, things seem to actually exist, to be "established". One Buddhist system of analysis even proposes that there is an inborn belief in the existence of things, including the "self".
This self cannot be found upon analysis, according to Buddhism, though it is said to exist conventionally. That is, you are you and I am I. A pile of stones or a sculpture may look like a person, but it cannot perform the functions of a person, so it is not "real" as a person, whereas a person is real - conventionally. Anything that can perform the function of the defined entity is "real" in the conventional sense.
A cursory summation of the doctrine of anatta - the non-existence of self: if the self inherently exists (as opposed to conventionally), then it must be either the same as, or must be different from, its constituents - e.g. the "five aggregates" (form-feeling thought-impulse-consciousness) and the "four elements" (traditionally earth-wind water-fire) that make up the physical being. (Our modern view of the psycho-physical aggregates and elements is much more detailed and, we believe, sophisticated, than this, but it will suffice for now.) If the self is the same as these, then by definition it must be "many", not "one". If it is different and separate, then by definition it can not change, or die or be reborn - which contradicts observation as well as the Buddha's teaching.
As an aside, belief in the self stems from a primordial condition of "ignorance" - which leads to birth through desire (i.e. if there were no innate belief that the self and universe are real, we would have no desire to be born). Ignoring these human-life implications, which are perhaps more germane to the field of philosophy or religion, let us further consider the existence of "things".
Things
Buddha's teaching says that nothing arises independently; that is, all things exist through dependent origination, or the workings of causality. However, this means that nothing actually exists inherently - that nothing can be self-existent.
The usual example given is that of a sprout, which is no longer a seed and not yet a tree. In this system, something does not exist if it is not "findable" - if it does not hold up under analysis (usually conducted in debate format and/or combined with meditation). The seed is not findable in the sprout, nor is the tree. Earlier, the sprout did not exist in the seed, and later it will not be findable in the tree. With our current knowledge of the workings of genetics, we might insist that future potentials exist in the form of DNA, for example; but his would not apply to inanimate or insentient beings, which also arise-abide-decay. And the DNA itself is subject to impermanence.
Without going much further into this analysis of things (which can become quite gnarly), suffice it to say that if anything did exist inherently, it could not be capable of change, would have to have always existed, and/or would absurdly arise repeatedly as the effect of its own cause. At each stage the seed, the sprout and the tree do indeed exist conventionally - arising, abiding, and decaying in the fullness of time - but they do so in accordance with Buddha's attributes of "emptiness' - I.e. insubstantiality, impermanence, and imperfection. They do not exist absolutely. The fundamental emptiness is "emptiness of entity". Dependent origination and emptiness are thus inextricably linked.
Space
Space, in Buddhist thought, is considered to be the lack of obstruction of things. It is thus not reified as an entity, but defined as that in which conventional entities exist, unobstructed. Space in classical physics was I believe conceived as the "field" in which the movement of objects occurs, and is now considered inseparable from time, and shaped by gravity. As I understand it, Euclid's geometry attempts to reduce the concept of space from volume to plane to line to point, with a corresponding reduction of "dimension", a "point" having no dimension in all directions. I understand the Cartesian coordinate system as an extension of this idea to account for location and movement relative to a point of origin (zero).
For the unsophisticated layman, this seems to imply that the "Big Bang" would have occurred at Point Zero, the absolute center of the primordial "atom" or singularity; the universe expanding from there out along spatial axes, and, from recent reports, accelerating. In this simplified model, "Point Zero is still there", unmoving, with everything in the universe moving relative to it. The universe, if "closed", will perhaps collapse back to the same point one day.
Similarly, we can conceive of a "still point" at the center of any object such as the sun or the earth (or a given electron), a point around which the object spins, but which itself must be considered still. The object is in motion only relative to other objects, or it is in motion relative to its center, but its center cannot be in motion relative to itself. Thus, from the "point-of-view" of the center of the sun, the earth does indeed revolve around it; but from the viewpoint of the center of the earth, the sun revolves (in loop de-loop fashion) around it; and from the still center at the heart of any electron, the entire universe is moving around it in crazy motion! This thought makes me dizzy.
While we conventionally conceive of space as static, a kind of background against which objects move, it seems that space cannot have only the attribute of stillness, but must have stillness-in-action, as the two "always and only co-exist".
Another such "still point" of massive bodies would be the singularity which is posited to be at the heart of the black hole. The idea of a still point at the center of our being is a traditional one in Zen - it is named the "tanden", or in the martial arts, the "ki", and visualized as a point in the pit of the pelvis. The radical nature ascribed to Buddha's awakening seems analogous to this idea of a singularity - through meditation, "collapsing" to a kind of psycho-physical singularity, where all the laws of the known human universe break down. It is said of zazen, "the barriers of time and space fall away".
Time
Perhaps "time" can usefully be considered from conventional and absolute standpoints. When we establish "time" as existent, we also set up its opposite, "no-time", like stillness in action. While it seems to me that time cannot be considered a "dimension" akin to those of measured space, it may perhaps be viewed as complementary to action itself. The "arrow of time" may be conceived as linear and irreversible on the classical scale, but to me its nature seems omni-directional, and inseparable from being and becoming.
When Buddha experienced enlightenment, he is said to have expressed it as "I and all sentient beings are enlightened simultaneously with the universe". He is said to have "stopped the sun in the sky" and was said to be able to "speak a word in a ksana" (the smallest particle of time). "Speak a word" means "apprehend reality".
In Buddha's first sermon, taught to five fellow monks immediately following his profound enlightenment, the last phrase is, "...and a vision of true knowledge arose in me thus: My heart's deliverance is unassailable - this is the last birth - now there is no more becoming!"
If we take this experience to be genuine, and examine the teachings that he used to point to it, we see that it requires an explicit revision of the conventional view, and meaning, of time. The "life of Buddha" is said to comprehend both life and death. This implies that our conventional view, in which life and death are separate, can be modified by the experience of profound awakening like that of the Buddha (from the root word "bud": "awake"). In this modified view, we would see life and death, existence and non existence, time and no-time, etcetera, as "not two".
This life of Buddha can be said to be a kind of "being", while "becoming" is the nature of being in this life (or this existence, in the case of nonliving things). All "beings", living and non-living, sentient and non-sentient, are "becoming" in a process of arising-abiding-decaying, and are thus existent in the conventional sense. (This is the meaning of Buddha's "suffering" in the Four Noble Truths - everything is suffering change, not just on the human scale.)
Outside of this existence, Buddha cannot be said to be either existent nor non existent. Similarly, outside of this existence, time cannot be said to be existent, nor can it be said to be non-existent. Being is time and time is being; and being in this existence is, inevitably, becoming.
The person of the awakened Buddha was no longer subject to becoming, and therefore can not be said to have existed nor not existed. All aspects of being attributable to the Buddha - the five aggregates, the four elements, genetic code, etc. - continued to be subject to becoming, but Siddhartha Gotama, the self at the center of the being, no longer existed. (A title given to Buddha by himself, is "Tathagata". This word means "one who apprehends truth", or "One who comes from and returns to suchness". This "suchness" is the true condition of things, in which all dualistic contradictions are resolved.)
The Buddha was also said to have experienced retrocognitive awareness through his enlightenment - as did many of his disciples to varying degrees. The past lives they witnessed by definition were not "them", any more than this body is the same as it was at five years old. The past lives were "other" beings, yet not completely separate, just as a tree is not the same as its parent tree, yet not completely separate either. The important point for us is the implications for time.
When there is no more becoming, then we embrace both time and no-time. We can not be said to be inside or outside of time. Time/no-time has an analogous relationship to life/death. The time of Buddha includes both, in the "eternal instant" which is not one, not two. Time exists only as being exists, by virtue of becoming - arising-abiding-decaying. If and when we see "our" past lives, we are in time/no-time. What is presently in front of us is the end-result of our past lives, so this is where we look. In classical Buddhism, this life is conditioned by past lives, and this present conditions the future. At death, our present view conditions the next birth. Yet there is no entity which transmigrates through time.
Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar who developed Buddhist analysis to its highest level, spoke of awakening as "seeing into the flux of the arising and decaying". This indicates to me a direct perception of the movement of time itself. (It can only be perceived from the point-of-view of absolute stillness.)
He also claimed that "Nirvana is happiness". Nirvana is often defined as the snuffing out of desire, to the point of extinguishing experience. When his fellow monks asked, "But how can it be happiness, when there is no sensation?" he replied, "That there is no sensation is happiness". Nirvana can be understood as the extinction of all duality, the unification of it with Samsara, or every day existence, being the final non duality. In this coming together of Nirvana and Samsara, through awakening to the Buddha's awakening, we "transcend time".