Time

My friend Airyn said while in a sleepy mood:

"We humans measure time - it's what we do. We mark our lives by minutes, hours, days and so forth. Generally, I think we experience the world on a "minute level." Obviously, that varies from person to person, but as I talk to people about time perception, many are most aware of the passage of minutes - they think about minutes the most. Some think about hours the most. I think I'm a Minute Person. We all branch out, of course, thinking about days and weeks ahead, but it seems like most of us tend to think about our experiences in terms of minute-by-minute."

Which is funny because I was thinking about posting something about time from the Buddhist perspective. So synchronicity being what it is I'll go ahead and spew forth on the subject of time.

I find it interesting that Airyn expounds about how we perceive time in incremental units in accordance to the situation at hand (see her journal for the whole discourse). I find it interesting because, from the Buddhist perspective, time is not the continuum that it appears to be.

It is said that yogis in deep states of meditative absorption perceive time as discrete moments of incredibly short duration. Kind of like the frames of a movie. When the movie is viewed from an audience perspective it seems very fluid and continual. But when you turn around and look at the projector you can see the frames flying by. And as you focus your concentration on the projector, you can glimpse the individual frames as they pass.

This is one way to look at meditation.

Your mind is the projector. And as your meditation becomes more focused, it is possible to see the discrete moments that make up your thoughts and feelings. It is then possible to perceive that each moment of every thought, feeling, and sensation is an effect that has a cause. The conditioning of our minds that dictate this cause and effect relationship is one aspect of karma.

An interesting consequence of this quality of time is the idea that time can be viewed in the same manner as points in three-space. Just as the three dimensional Cartesian coordinate system can be viewed as a locus of points in the form of (x,y,z) and it is possible for us to move freely (relatively so anyway) between these points, because of the discrete nature of time, it should be possible to move freely in the four-space of (x,y,z,t). t of course, being time.

In fact, it is said that because the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have cleansed their minds of delusion, and can see directly the nature of time, they can move freely through time. And when you are working to help ease the suffering of all sentient beings, this is a very useful ability to have.

So perhaps when Airyn is on her motorcycle and experiencing time in shorter discrete moments than is usual for her, she is coming closer to perceiving the nature of time.