One of the inmates in a prison I teach asked an interesting question. He wondered how meditators in the Buddha’s time kept track of how long they meditated.
Obviously they’d have had a different approach to time than we have in the modern world. We use clocks and timers, and we think in terms of meditating for 40 minutes, or an hour, or whatever. Presumably back then you’d use the sun as your main method of timekeeping, but that’s more tricky if you have your eyes closed. (Did they have their eyes closed?)
Is anything known about this, particularly from the EBTs or studies of the Early Buddhist period? Does anyone have experience of being in a place where meditators didn’t use modern time-keeping methods? Even educated guesses would be welcome. Zebediah will be very interested to hear your responses.
I’m not sure how educated this guess is, but forests are kind of noisy places and the sounds change throughout the day. So absent a time piece, simply hearing the changes would tell you something.
Though it’s from the 18th century, not early Buddhism, the Sri Lankan Manual of a Mystic describes a pre-modern meditation timing method using wax tapers. See pages 24-6.
Though I agree with Ven Snowbird’s answer. You become acutely attuned to the way time passes and the different movements of the forest. Temperature, wind direction etc. My internal clock is accurate to a digital clock within a minute or two, even living in the suburbs.
It’s an easy enough skill to develop, or was for me. Determine how long/what time you will wake up/come out of meditation and it can be super accurate. The closest I can think of in the EBTs is somewhere in SN, or maybe it was Ven. Bodhi’s notes, there is the discussion on the skill of entering, remaining and exiting meditation states.
Most monks seemed to live near towns, so i imagine they would have been attuned to the rhythm of the day there, like markets opening and closing, or in more rural settings people driving cattle out to graze and back home again. I don’t recall any mention of such things, though.
Thank you. The only units of time measurement smaller than a day I could think of were the three watches of the night, although I’d never thought to enquire what those were, exactly.
I’m sure you’re right, and that most people would have had an innate sense of the passing of time. I had a friend who was good at that: without looking at a clock he could tell you the time of day within a few minutes.
I’m not sure how true that is. Or at least if it maps to current geography.
Monastics would need to live close enough to lay people to get food, but that could easily be an hour’s walk away. And after they returned to where they lived, they could walk that far in the opposite direction and be quite far away. At least in terms of human sounds.
There’s nothing in the Pali dictionary I can see that corresponds to our concept of an hour.
Two fixed points the monks would have been very aware of were dawn and midday, since those defined the times when they can eat. Sunset’s another obvious one. I guess an intuitive sense of the passing of time between those fixed points would divide the day further, without perhaps having named units of time. Maybe it would have been ad hoc, like it “felt” like a fifth (or a sixth, or a quarter) of the time between noon and sunset had passed.
I find it a bit hard to see beyond the modern mindset that I’m conditioned to accept as “the only way to see things.”
A lot of sources place bhikkhus on the outskirts of villages. I’ve heard it so often I just assume, rightly or wrongly, that it’s true. For example, Encyclopedia Britannica says, “Bhikkus tended to live as a group in forest retreats near villages and towns.” And I seem to remember other ascetics criticizing them for doing this, which suggests that they were outliers (LOL, not literally!) compared to the norm of real forest-dwelling ascetics, who avoided towns.
Even if they lived as far as a mile from town, presumably they’d still be aware of some of the rhythmic comings and goings in rural communities, like animals being driven out to pasture, etc. This is just me guessing, of course. I’ve really no idea.
And seeing the angle of the light. The variegated foliage above me has a distinct pattern that changes the shadows noticably every ten or so minutes.
In the Thai Forest (and Chinese Hermetic) Traditions there are lots of stories of monks using incense or candles to measure time at night, for example vowing to meditate until their candle goes out.
Years ago I used to use a timer but, as Ven. Pasanna said, I just somehow know.
What I get from the suttas is that they are in the context of mendicants with little time restraints. Meditation was the main event and wasn’t squeezed into a rigid schedule.
Ancient people did have various devices to mark the passage of time throughout the day. There were of course familiar tools like sundials or hourglasses, but Indians had somethng called a water-clock that they used to divide up the day into subunits of time (seemingly by 24 minute intervals). You can read many details of their system in this book about Measurement of Time.
As he says, the commentators were projecting their own water-clock technology back to the Buddha’s time. I really was struck that beyond the three watches of the night I’ve no recollection of seeing any units of time being mentioned in the EBTs.
(Unfortunately I couldn’t get the second link to open. Maybe that’s just me, but can you check and see if it’s correctly formatted?)
Those three time periods are found in Ayurvedic science. There are six time periods each day, each one dominated by specific doshas. The night watches have counterparts in the day. But as far as I recall they are not broken down into smaller units even there.
AN3.19 may not be the answer to your specific question, but it tells us how much time in a day should a monk “meditate”:
(B. Bodhi translation)
“Bhikkhus, possessing three factors, a shopkeeper is capable of acquiring wealth not yet acquired and of increasing wealth already acquired. What three? Here, a shopkeeper diligently applies himself to his work in the morning, in the middle of the day, and in the evening. Possessing these three factors, a shopkeeper is capable of acquiring wealth not yet acquired and of increasing wealth already acquired.
“So too, possessing three factors, a bhikkhu is capable of achieving a wholesome state not yet attained and of increasing a wholesome state already attained. What three? Here, a bhikkhu diligently applies himself to an object of concentration in the morning, in the middle of the day, and in the evening. Possessing these three factors, a bhikkhu is capable of achieving a wholesome state not yet attained and of increasing a wholesome state already attained.”
