Some time has elapsed since I started talking about the emptiness of time, but there is only now, and now is the time. So here we go, carrying on from this: Wherever we go, there we are.
Why think about these deep topics?!
As the two wings of a bird propel them through space to their desired destination, as opposed to them staying forever grounded (no wings) or flying round and round in circles (only one wing), so to help others and attain enlightenment we need the two wings of compassion and wisdom.
To help ourself and others deeply and properly by getting rid of suffering once and for all, we need to keep at least part of our focus on reality: suffering is not fixed nor stuck because we and our suffering depend upon our thoughts, and we can change our thoughts. Otherwise it can get depressing fast! Compassion fatigue will strike as we feel the crushing burden of a world filled with real suffering that we don’t like but can do precious little about. We are like that bird flying around and around in circles with one wing, trying so hard to be happy, trying so hard to help, but basically getting nowhere.
Imagine we’re on the Tube at rush hour. It’s hot, crowded, someone’s backpack is digging into our shoulder, and the train has stopped between stations. Our mind is saying: “This is unbearable. This always happens. New York/London is awful. I’m trapped.” In that moment, the suffering feels solid and unavoidable — as if the Tube itself is the problem.
What happens if we shift our mind to other thoughts, such as: “This is uncomfortable, but it’s temporary. Everyone here is just like me, just trying to be happy, just trying to get home. People in Ukraine/Iran/Sudan/Gaza are far worse off right now. I am a very lucky person. I have everything I need to make my life meaningful and help others.” The suffering eases.
But we’re still standing here. So what changed?
How things appear and even function for us depends on how we are labelling them. The suffering wasn’t inherent or one with the situation itself (which isn’t even really there), but depended on the story our thoughts were telling us. And because the thoughts were changeable, the suffering was changeable too. This is true for everyone, and Buddha was all about showing us how to capitalize on this. Put simply:
If we wish to protect ourself from suffering we can either try to change the whole world to make it conform to our wishes, or we can change our mind. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Eight Steps to Happiness
Once we directly realize the emptiness of inherent or objective existence, our self-grasping ignorance no longer has a leg to stand on, its delusions dissolve away, and our mind is completely purified. Buddha Maitreya said that because living beings’ minds are impure their worlds are impure; and when living beings purify their minds, they’ll inhabit a Pure Land. (More here: How to broaden your horizons.) This potential for purity, our Buddha nature, has always been in us and always will be. As Venerable Geshe-la says:
From this point of view sentient beings are like enlightened beings. Their root mind, their own mind, is completely pure. Their own mind is like a blue sky and their delusions and all other conceptions are like clouds that temporarily arise. From another point of view sentient beings mistakenly identify themselves and are harmed by delusions. They endlessly experience immense suffering as hallucinations. Therefore we need to develop compassion for them, and liberate them from their deep hallucination of mistaken appearance by showing them the real nature of things, which is the emptiness of all phenomena. ~ How to Transform Your Life
It’s in this context that I thought we could keep exploring the topic of time and space 🙂
The emptiness of time
The traditional meditation on emptiness has four steps called “the four essential points.” (See Reasoning our way into reality.) So let’s apply these to time …
- Identify the object of negation – the time we normally see.
This can be a generic idea of time, like those examples in the last article, or be some specific time that we are grasping at in our lives at the moment.
I’ll go first. (I wrote this next bit two very busy months ago, lol).
I did this meditation today and it made me feel high (in a good way). Five days ago I was unexpectedly asked to leave this place that I love in one month’s time to go somewhere else. So November has suddenly taken on much significance and poignancy – it also feels quite short, lol, because I have to pack in a lot of things, including goodbyes, packing up 26 years of stuff, and preparing to hit the ground running. So I spent some time in meditation identifying the month that I normally see.
- Ascertaining the pervasion
If November exists from its own side, outside of my mind, I should be able to find it or point to it without pointing at something that is not it. It must be findable either within its parts – eg, the weeks, days, and moments – or separate from them. If I cannot find it, it follows that it is not there, that there is no objectively existing November. We need to check if this is true before we go on to search for it.
- Ascertaining the absence of oneness
I looked for November in its weeks and days and it isn’t there: each of these is just a part of November. And it is also not the collection of its parts – these weeks and days – because these are just a pile up of things that are not November. Thursday for example is a non-November, as is Friday, as is next week – and if you add a lot of non-Novembers together you don’t get a November.
- Ascertaining the absence of difference
November is none of its parts, such as its weeks and days, but take these away and there is no November. This is true of all time.
Conclusion/object of meditation
Time is unfindable and therefore lacks inherent existence. I spent some time meditating on the emptiness of time and it made me happy.
We can never point at time existing objectively, in and of itself, or from its own side. Time is not outside of my mind. It exists only as appearance for my mind, as in a dream.
A dad in this café is just asking his 8 year-old son, “What is infinity plus one?” I feel that this is relevant, somehow 😀
Don’t kill time!
This is very practical and liberating wisdom brought to us by Buddha, if we take the time to understand it and let it touch our hearts. To feel less overwhelmed by how little time we have to do everything, we can keep reminding ourselves that time is not real, out there, but subjective, depending on our thoughts, which we can change. After getting some sense of that in meditation, we can make a decision:
I will not grasp at time because it does not exist from its own side.
This decision will help us to bring our insight into daily life and remember it.
Whether time is our enemy or our friend depends on how we are looking at it. If we feel rushed, we can remind ourself, “Time doesn’t exist from its own side, it is mere name; I don’t need to grasp at it. I can develop a peaceful mind and time will change.” We experience time differently when joyful, for example, as opposed to when stressed. It can even feel timeless when our joy is arising from within – just like it did, perhaps, for Venerable Geshe-la, who never seemed stressed about the gargantuan literally never-ending task of bringing Dharma to all corners of the world.
If we find
ourselves bored and wasting time, we can also remember our precious but fleeting human life, re-projecting today as so priceless in terms of what we can accomplish.
And we can stay more in the moment – this contemplation helps us to live in the present moment as opposed to endlessly dwelling on the past or fantasizing or worrying about the future. The present moment has plenty enough time in it.
Click here for the next and final installment: How to meditate on the emptiness of space.
