Beyond the clock: Dharma and the space-time continuum

A friend texted me this thoughtful conversation about time management and burnout the other day, and I thought I’d add my ideas.

We really feel an extreme pressure — from inside and from the culture and from all sorts of sources — to overcome our built-in limitations. To fit more into the time that we have than anyone ever could. To exert more control over how things unfold. Because we feel that we must just to keep our heads above water in the modern world.

A lot of us feel like we’re constantly running after the bus. And there’s no doubt that some people do have an impossible number of things to get done in any 24 hour period, such as holding down multiple jobs and family obligations. If they are Buddhists, they have to get very good at doing Dharma on the go – all day cherishing people, patiently accepting the struggles, being mindful, not grasping. And, if they get that right, I have observed that they become strong, resilient practitioners who can transform pretty much anything. I really admire such practitioners.

For a lot of us, and based on my own experience, I reckon that we are often not so much short of time, these days, as presence. I for one have at least 200 interesting (to me anyway) articles up my sleeve, yet have been having trouble getting around to writing them in any systematic way. I could find the time, but I let other activities fill up those hours, some meaningful or responsible, but some a mindless waste of energy.

Time management has to include an ability to be mindful, which means managing distractions, for without this we can easily fill up our lives. In fact, the more spare time we have, the more we seem to be able to fill it up with fluff and nonsense – think endless video shorts, social media, doomscrolling, Snapchat streaks, wandering to the fridge, etc. What is it that they say? “If you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

It’s not just about how we try to manage our time externally (spreadsheets, calendars, to-do lists, prioritization, or deadlines). It depends on the quality of our attention and ability to stay in the present moment, as I explain more in this article: Are you busy? 

Infinite moments, finite lives

What time do we have? There isn’t a river of time flowing outside us or around us in which we swim from place to place. Time is simply a characteristic of each impermanent phenomenon. For what is time without impermanence? And impermanence depends upon whatever it is that is impermanent; it is not an independent object. My impermanence, for example, depends on me.

Time is also dependent on thought – not fixed, but relative to the mind experiencing it, like everything else. Like time in a dream – a dream can seem to last for years, but the time on our alarm clock says differently. I think quantum physicists would agree that time is a slippery thing that depends upon the observer. Therefore, time is relative, not absolute. Did this year go fast or slow for you? Does an unhoused, jobless person think they have too much or too little time? What is a second to someone about to win an Olympic gold? Or to someone who is in agony? How is the passing of time noticed by a Yogi on a mountaintop or even a Yogi in their bedroom?

Time is not like linear railway tracks stretching out behind us or before us, although it does depend upon a progressive order of cause and effect. This is because time can be understood as the impermanence of momentary phenomena – also known as “functioning things” or sometimes just “things” – in which each moment of the thing gives rise to the next moment of that thing. (More on that here: Subtle impermanence.) Both time and space are fluid and dynamic; all things undergo momentary change.

Some scientist wrote that time is “just a nod to things happening in order” – I quite like that! Every functioning thing progresses moment by moment in dependence upon cause and effect, which is its order.

There is always time. We never really run out of time, on one level, because cause and effect is endless (chicken and egg?!); and even after death, time continues. But we do run out of lifespan and the karma for certain things to appear. Things slip in and out of existence in dependence upon causes and conditions, including our karma.

The space-time continuum

I mentioned quantum physicists and space just then because my thoughts have now turned to the space-time continuum, which may seem somewhat impractical in an article about time management, but I think I can still salvage something from this.

I actually know little of the scientific explanations of the space-time continuum, so please feel free to jump in the comments; but what I think I do understand is that time is a continuum and space is a continuum, which means they are both ever-changing in dependence upon causes. And that time depends upon space and vice versa.

From a Buddhist perspective, we would say that space and time are not absolute but relative realities, each depending upon many factors, including their causes, their parts, their basis of imputation, their name, and imputation by conceptual thought.

(For the Buddhist scholars amongst you, here I am mainly talking about produced space, not unproduced space. More coming up on these two types of space if I can ever manage my time sufficiently efficiently to get around to it.)

I find it a lot of fun to think about time and/or space in these five ways, all obviously and thankfully taught by wise, omniscient Buddha and not made up by me. You can find out more about these so called “five types of dependent relationship” in this incredible book, The New Heart of Wisdom. Just thinking about dependent relationship can entirely loosen up our sense of being fixed or trapped in either time or space.

Because they are dependent related in these five ways, if we search for space or time with wisdom, we will never find them – anymore than we can find the water in a mirage or the actual location of a rainbow. In emptiness there is no here or there and no past or future. The space-time continuum is not outside our mind – it is mere appearance, a conceptual framework that allows us to navigate through life but is merely a mental construct with no existence from its own side. Therefore, how we experience the passing of time depends upon our experience! That is, our mind. Change our mind, change our experience, change our space and time.

Practical wisdom

An aside, but hopefully not a distraction … when we bother to spend time studying profound Dharma, even if we don’t yet understand it that much, wisdom winds begin to flow in the channels of our subtle body. We start to feel lighter, happier, and more spaced out (in a good way). Indeed, the closer we get to understanding ultimate truth, the more blissful we become – perhaps because the mind that fully and inseparably mixes with emptiness is the clear light of bliss. If you are able to delve into Buddha’s teachings on wisdom, the whole day can open up and you can feel like you have a bunch more time. This could also be because wisdom, like every virtuous mind, is not only a relaxed but a fully present state of mind. That said, here is a pro tip for saving time: download one of these two free ebooks, How to Transform Your Life or Modern Buddhism, go to the chapter on ultimate bodhichitta, and have some fun reading it slowly and thinking about it.

Back to the space-time continuum and my admittedly amateurish attempts to explain it … suppose I want to meet up with a friend in New York City. We’d have to specify a location by saying for example: “Meet me at Van Gogh’s Starry Night in MoMa on the intersection of 53rd^th street and 6^th Avenue on the 5^th floor.” We are specifying the location within 3 dimensions – the street, the avenue, and the floor – which comprises the length, width/breadth, and depth/height, or latitude, longitude, and altitude. Call this x,y,z. But clearly this is not enough if we don’t specify when to be there: “Let’s meet at 2pm”. Therefore, the true location is (x, y, z, t), which is four-dimensional. From this perspective, time is just another dimension of location, much like the streets and the floor. So whereas in our everyday lives we think of space and time as separate things, they are one fabric or interconnected framework.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a crowded and loud café – it is the arctic tundra so everyone and their bulky coats is in here getting coffee. Does time move faster in New York?! I am eavesdropping on a conversation between two young women next to me and they are talking so fast that they’ve just managed to explain their entire life story and goals in two minutes flat, per person. It is so rapid fire that I am having trouble keeping up with what they are saying! 😉 Looking around at all the bustle and hustle going on in here, I can see that everything physical is four-dimensional, dependent on x,y,z,t – eg, our bodies, this table I’m sitting at in this building, the steps I walked up to get inside.

All impermanent phenomena presumably exist as part of space and time, or vice versa? If everything stayed in exactly the “same” space and nothing moved or changed, how would we tell whether or not time was passing? And if we froze time, what would happen to space?

I can divide up this sensory world of forms, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile objects in any which way and into any size, making an infinite array of objects with my labelling – “city”, “street”, “building”, “room”, “table”, “chair”, “flat white”, “body in chair”, “parts of body”, “atoms”. And they all depend upon each other. We only exist in dependence upon everyone and everything else – all other beings and all of space and time; and we only move around and change relative to everything else. Everything depends on everything else. We are all parts of a whole, not individual wholes. We all move as one! (Not just our physical bodies – even our minds depend upon others’ minds, story for another day).

The table I’m sitting at is tiny, if you ask me; but a stranger has still just asked if they can squeeze in and join me at it because there is no more space in here. (In Colorado, everyone gives each other six feet of space, here it’s more like six inches. You have to really like people to like living in New York.) Question: what has this stranger’s arrival done to the x, y, z, t of this table? What about the book he has cracked open, “The House in the Cerulean Sea ~ It is Never Too Late to Follow the Dream”? That seems to be rather a coincidence. Dreams are clearly a projection of our minds, and so too is their time and space. If we learn to live in the moment and to truly connect with the people around us (as a quick Google shows me is the theme of this book), it can be never too late. We are making the most of each moment. We can avoid seeing time as a problem.

Why does this matter? Because we hold ourselves to be separate individuals trying to navigate our way through a time and a space that are outside of ourselves, and often inimical to our well being, even dangerous. If we are in a constant rush and can never keep up, we are working against the clock, we feel time is our competitor, it is even our enemy. No wonder we feel burned out. By remembering impermanence and emptiness we can see our obligations and to-do lists as less rigid and hard, more of a flow, especially if we decide to focus on them one by one without picking up our phones.

We are out of time, ironically, and whatever that means. This carries on here:

A quick introduction to the 3 higher trainings in Buddhism

Your comments are warmly invited!