Are phenomena as we seem to experience them actually timeless and unmoving? And is there any evidence for phenomena being described as timeless or unmoving in the EBTs?
I happened to be skimming this thread and found this very thought provoking post from Bhante Paññādhammika:
In physics, I was well acquainted with the idea that time is an illusion, but before now I only understood that in the relativistic sense. I had not heard of this experiment proving the Wheeler–DeWitt equation’s prediction is accurate, and that time is an emergent phenomenon that arises due to entanglement. I’m not accustomed to hearing this stuff discussed in a buddhist context, so I was pleasantly surprised. From wiki, Problem of time:
In 2013, at the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM) in Turin, Italy, Ekaterina Moreva, together with Giorgio Brida, Marco Gramegna, Vittorio Giovannetti, Lorenzo Maccone, and Marco Genovese performed the first experimental test of Page and Wootters’ ideas. They confirmed that time is an emergent phenomenon for internal observers but absent for external observers of the universe just as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation predicts.[10][11][12]
For some background, I’m coming from a mahayana perspective, and in the mahayana phenonema are frequently described as both “unmoving” and “timeless”, much in line with the results of this experiment and the idea that time is an emergent phenomenon or an illusion created by entanglement. Here are a few relavent quotes (I will mark mahayana passages with and [what I think are] EBT passages with ):
From Toh 124 Ratnākara - The Jewel Mine (84000.co):
“All phenomena remain stable, unmoving—
A state of peace that is unchanging and without harm.
Just like space, nothing can be perceived—
This point maddens unwise beings.”
“When you understand the identity of things,
You will forsake the self and become undaunted.
When you know phenomena to be unmoving,
You can teach that understanding to others."
And from Toh 218 Karmāvaraṇaviśuddhi - Purification of Karmic Obscurations:
“Monk, as all phenomena are free of the three times, they are timeless.”
So I did some digging in on SuttaCentral for comparable things. Let’s start with “timeless”. From SA2 17 - A deva tempts a monk and is granted an interview with the Buddha (suttacentral.net), Bhikkhu Saṁyutta’s translation:
The monk answered: “I have gone forth at the right time, to attain the timeless.” The deva said: “What does it mean to ‘have gone forth at the right time, to attain the timeless’?” The monk replied: “The Buddha, the World-honored One, has explained how the five sensual pleasures are bound to time, the Buddhadhamma , however, is not bound to time. The five sensual pleasures bring very little pleasure, but multiply our sufferings, accumulate our worries. In the Buddhadhamma I have found certainty within this very body, with no more troubling passions. In everything we do, regardless of the time, when we sow even a little karmic seed, we will obtain the full fruit of its results.”
Now this is not exactly an assertion that phenomena are timeless. In this context, presumably this could be simply interpreted as the Buddhadhamma is timeless because it is true in any time, as the laws of karma operate the same in every time. From certain mahayana perspectives you could perhaps make an equation to dharmakāya, but even from a mahayana perspective, textually that’s probably a bit of a stretch. I tried understanding this with Chinese machine translation tools, but I got nowhere. Still, maybe I’m dismissing “attain the timeless” too quickly?
More frequently, the use of the English word “timeless” appears in the stock phrasing (here from an5.179 - Gihisutta Thanissaro):
“Furthermore, he is endowed with verified confidence in the Dhamma: ‘The Dhamma is well-expounded by the Blessed One, to be seen here & now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent, to be realized by the wise for themselves.’ This is the second pleasant mental abiding in the here & now that he has attained, for the purification of the mind that is impure, for the cleansing of the mind that is unclean.
However, an5.179 Sujato does not use the word timeless, opting instead for a more down to earth translation:
Puna caparaṁ, sāriputta, ariyasāvako dhamme aveccappasādena samannāgato hoti: ‘svākkhāto bhagavatā dhammo sandiṭṭhiko akāliko ehipassiko opaneyyiko paccattaṁ veditabbo viññūhī’ti. Ayamassa dutiyo ābhicetasiko diṭṭhadhammasukhavihāro adhigato hoti avisuddhassa cittassa visuddhiyā apariyodātassa cittassa pariyodapanāya.
~
Furthermore, a noble disciple has experiential confidence in the teaching: ‘The teaching is well explained by the Buddha—visible in this very life, immediately effective, inviting inspection, relevant, so that sensible people can know it for themselves.’ This is the second blissful meditation …
This seems to be because the word translated is akāliko, defined by SC’s dictionary as: “Timeless; without interval; in this very life.” Again, this seems mostly to be referencing the Buddhadhamma’s quality of being relevant at any time, not a feature of phenomena.
Also of note but probably not relevant is the word asamaya being translated as timeless, defined by Suddhaso as “non-momentary,” “non-occasional,” or “non-temporary".
Of note is that two out of three of my mahayana examples, Toh 124 and Toh 99, don’t seem to have been translated into Chinese or have parallels according to their translators’ introductions—I am unsure if Toh 218 was—and so they may only be preserved in the Tibetan. I am unsure how common this idea is in other canons. As a counterexample, let’s look at these two passages that deal with the concepts of ‘unmoving’ and ‘timeless’ from T 232: Mahāprajñāpāramitā Mañjuśrīparivarta Sūtra (lapislazulitexts.com):
Mañjuśrī said, “The wisdom without fabrications is called the wisdom of non-regression. It is similar to a gold ingot before it is hammered, to know whether it is good or bad. Without being hammered, one is unable to know this. The characteristic of the wisdom of non-regression is also such as this. In the essential realm of practice, neither mindful nor suffering, without arising and without fabrication, endowed with the unmoving, with neither birth nor death, then it manifests.”
Mañjuśrī then addressed the Buddha, saying, “Thusly, Bhagavān, have I come wishing to perceive the Tathāgata. Why? I delight in correct contemplation for the benefit of sentient beings. I contemplate the Tathāgata’s appearance of suchness and nothing else: neither moving nor acting, without birth and without death, neither existing nor void, neither here nor away, neither in the Three Times nor apart from the Three Times, neither dual nor non-dual, and neither impure nor pure. Such is the correct contemplation of the Tathāgata for the benefit of sentient beings.” The Buddha told Mañjuśrī, “If one is able to perceive the Tathāgata thusly, then the mind has nothing to grasp nor not grasp, and neither accumulates nor does not accumulate.”
Without an understanding of the original Chinese, this seems to be to be somewhere in between the way these concepts are featured in the EBTs and in the translations from the Tibetan. Like the EBTs, especially in the former example, the ‘thing’ that is unmoving seems to resemble the ‘timeless’ which was attained mentioned in SA2 17, the Buddhadhamma. Of course these are both translated from Chinese.
However, I think the timelessness of phenomena exists in the broader sense in both canons because it is included in Toh 10 Aṣṭādaśasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā - The Perfection of Wisdom in Eighteen Thousand Lines, which, I believe(?) is included in parallel in T06 220 Mahāprajñāpāramitā:
“Subhūti, all phenomena have being unmoving as their way of being; they do not pass beyond that way of being. And why? Because phenomena do not move anywhere, so going and coming do not exist.”
According to the glossary, the word translated here is མི་གཡོ་བ། གཡོ་བ་མེད་པ། , from the Sanskrit aneñja, often defined as “stable” or “immovable”. However I do not know of a Chinese > English translation of the 18,000 lines to verify myself that this concept is reflected the same. Alas, even though Pali shares aneñja with Sanskrit, I can’t seem to find this word used the same way.
Now, let’s move on to “unmoving” in the EBTs, which I think is more fruitful. The only convincing instance I can find of phenomena being described as “unmoving” is in Ud 8.1 Paṭhamanibbānasuttaṁ 71 - The First Discourse about Nibbāna, (Bhikkhu Ānandajoti’s translation):
“There is that sphere, monks, where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air, no sphere of infinite space, no sphere of infinite consciousness, no sphere of nothingness, no sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, no this world, no world beyond, neither Moon nor Sun. There, monks, I say there is surely no coming, no going, no persisting, no passing away, no rebirth It is quite without support, unmoving, without an object,—just this is the end of suffering.”
Translated in Ud 8.1 Sujato as:
“Atthi, bhikkhave, tadāyatanaṁ, yattha neva pathavī, na āpo, na tejo, na vāyo, na ākāsānañcāyatanaṁ, na viññāṇañcāyatanaṁ, na ākiñcaññāyatanaṁ, na nevasaññānāsaññāyatanaṁ, nāyaṁ loko, na paraloko, na ubho candimasūriyā. Tatrāpāhaṁ, bhikkhave, neva āgatiṁ vadāmi, na gatiṁ, na ṭhitiṁ, na cutiṁ, na upapattiṁ; appatiṭṭhaṁ, appavattaṁ, anārammaṇamevetaṁ. Esevanto dukkhassā”ti."
~
“There is, mendicants, that dimension where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no wind; no dimension of infinite space, no dimension of infinite consciousness, no dimension of nothingness, no dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; no this world, no other world, no moon or sun. There, mendicants, I say there is no coming or going or remaining or passing away or reappearing. It is not established, does not proceed, and has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.”
However, the ‘phenomena’ being discussed here is seemingly restricted to nibbāna. Admittedly, to me this still seems a fairly compelling yes, because from a mahayana perspective (at least in my limited understanding), nirvāṇa and saṃsāra do not have distinction, as seen in Toh 184 Bodhisattvacaryānirdeśa - Teaching the Practice of a Bodhisattva:
“An infinite number of teachings are proclaimed,
Yet there is no such thing as the liberation of beings.
Understand this: there is no distinction [F.102.a]
Between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra."
The topic of nibbāna and saṃsāra having no distinction has already been discussed at length on this forum here, so let’s look at Bhante Sujato’s analysis of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā from that thread (sorry, long chunk here; emoji additions are my own just to break up the text):
Personally, I also think Bhante Khemarato’s comment here is insightful:
Extrapolated to the original topic (warning: pseudo-buddho-physics ahead), in the same way that saṃsāra is the heart that is fetterred, full, and nibbāna is the heart that is free, empty, phenomena when entangled would seem to have the qualities of saṃsāra, a place where time and beings appear to be, but when viewed from an unentangled perspective, time (and beings) do not appear, and so those phenomena have the qualities of nibbāna (that is to say, they are empty of qualities).
Still, this isn’t exactly an EBT answer, nor was one found in the thread as far as I can tell. Nāgārjuna’s analysis would seem to be on the side of ‘yes’, and as discussed above by Bhante Sujato, he was arguing counter to the Abhidharma’s methodology, which would probably put his analysis closer to either an EBT reading or a prajñāpāramitā one. However, scholars (and this forum) seem to have a hard time committing to categorizing Nāgārjuna (I’m sure he’d be happy about that), as noted by Bhante here:
I’m curious if anyone has stumbled across something in the EBTs since the above discussions, or if anyone with mastery over any of the languages of the source material sees anything jumping out that might be relevant, because the answer to the original question seems to hinge on whether or not Nāgārjuna’s position requires Prajñāpāramitā to support it or not.
Anyway, this is just me playing connect the dots, no original ideas here, but I thought I would post it because there seems to be a fair amount of interest in the buddhist implications of quantum physics here and it’s one of my favorite subjects. I find it personally liberative, but it may be too 'metaphysical to be overly featured in the EBTs.
As a side note, I hope it is clear from the context of my post but I am not looking for anyone in the thread to start arguing the validity of EBTs vs mahayana, or criticizing one or the other, so if your reply only contains that kind of thing please reconsider it. Also, this is my first post here, hello and thank you for making such a great resource and forum . Please let me know if this kind of content is outside the scope of discussion here and I’ll refrain from it.