Formulation of the Topic for Analysis
In Buddhism, a temporal interval is what we’re speaking about when we talk about time; it’s an interval between the occurrence of a cause and the occurrence of an effect. What is most common in Buddhism (and what all Buddhist tenet systems accept) is that this is measured according to an individual person’s mental continuum – the occurrence of a cause until the occurrence of an effect. We also saw the units with which it is measured; a period of time is dependent on parts, so we need to have units for the parts. Also, it varies – years vary, months vary, days vary, hours vary and so on. There are so many different systems and conventions for how we measure that interval (in other words, how we label it).
However, is there a common-denominator (gzhi-mthun) temporal interval that serves as the basis for labeling with many different labels of temporal units by different persons? It’s like this projection screen: Is there some sort of blank thing which is there, a temporal unit – let’s say a year – which could be labeled by different people traveling at different speeds in different ways? Actually, it would seem as though that common-denominator period of time would probably have to be that period on the absolute grid in the background of space-time that things were measured on. I think it’s only really within that framework that we can have a common-denominator period of time that is labeled or experienced differently by different people.
What does Buddhism say about all of this? This gets into the discussion of external phenomena (phyi-don) and the way that external phenomena exist or don’t exist. This is a topic that is discussed very much in the Chittamatra and Prasangika schools of Indian Buddhist tenet systems. Here, let’s speak just in terms of the Gelugpa interpretation. As we’ve seen in other courses, the other Tibetan traditions – Kagyu, Nyingma, Sakya, etc. – each have their own individual interpretations of these different Indian systems, and even within one system, there are differences in interpretation. As we’ll see shortly, there are differences even within Gelugpa and within one author – Tsongkhapa – who had different opinions in the early and later parts of his life. That doesn’t help us very much if we are clinging to “But what is it really like? What is the real point?”
I mean, this is interesting. This came up when I was in India a few weeks ago. Why are there all these different viewpoints? This had to do with some questions I was asking about karma to Ling Rinpoche’s main tutor, Geshe Wangchen. He said the main point of it was to make us think that “Here are several different positions, but then how do you gain liberation?” We gain liberation not by somebody giving us the answer and then we just memorize the answer and give it back on a test. We gain liberation by gaining understanding through analyzing: “Does this system make sense? Does that system make sense? What aspect of the system makes more sense than other aspects?” Also, by going through this internal debate – or it can be an external debate with other students or teachers – we gain understanding. For internal investigation, it’s very important to have several points of view (all of which perhaps make a great deal of sense). Thus, we have these different views.
The Chittamatra Position According to Tsongkhapa’s Earlier View
Let’s look at Chittamatra. In Chittamatra, according to Tsongkhapa’s interpretation that he had during the earlier part of his life – he had a different interpretation in the later part of his life, which we’ll come to in a moment – he says that there is a conventionally existent common-denominator clay pot involved when several people all validly see a clay pot at the same time, but each from a different angle and distance. They’re all seeing the same clay pot. The same would be true of two different people traveling at different speeds and observing a temporal interval, such as the year 2006.
Remember, we used to analyze this question. I challenged you to prove that we were all in the same room. How do you prove we’re in the same room?
You can’t.
Right, we can’t. We can’t prove it, because if each of us takes a picture with a Polaroid camera, it’ll look like something else. I mean, we’ll see something different. Is there, then, a common-denominator room that we are all actually in at the same time? How does that actually work? Well, that’s not an easy question to answer. Tsongkhapa in the earlier part of his life said, despite the fact that what appears to each person is different, a different angle, and so on, depending on what is ripening from their mental continuum (karmic seeds or tendencies or whatever we want to call them), we’ve got to say that what is appearing is the same thing. Otherwise, it’s very difficult to put common experiences together.
This is his earlier view. Although that discussion is usually made in terms of objects like the clay pot sitting in the middle of the floor or us all being in this same room; we can also apply that to an interval of time, let’s say the year 2006 (now we’re in the year 2007). So each person would experience the year 2006, and although their experiences would be different, conventionally, it would be the year 2006 for all of them. Okay?
However, there’s a distinction that Tsongkhapa makes in Chittamatra. Conventionally, there is an existent clay pot, but ultimately there’s no common-denominator clay pot or year 2006 coming from a different natal source (rdzas) than someone’s cognition of it. Remember, when we think of voidness in the Chittamatra system, we have to put it into the Chittamatra formulation of voidness. It’s impossible that there is a year 2006 coming from its own natal source. A natal source was like the oven out of which a loaf of bread comes or something like that. It’s not that there is this grid of time out there and from it there pops out the year 2006, that little temporal space on it or temporal interval on it, and we all experience it. It’s not like that. It’s coming from the same natal source as our cognition of it – a seed of karma or a karmic tendency on each person’s mental continuum. It’s devoid of coming from a different natal source than our experience of it, our cognition of it. Nevertheless, we’re all experiencing the same year; there is conventionally a common denominator that we’re all experiencing.
Tsongkhapa says that a common-denominator clay pot or year 2006 could not be an object cognized by an arya’s total absorption. An arya, somebody with non-conceptual cognition of the four noble truths, wouldn’t perceive this type of year 2006 coming off an absolute temporal-spatial grid.
What class of phenomenon would this common-denominator object be?
Well, this is a very interesting question. Which type of phenomenon would that common denominator be? I was thinking about that. In Chittamatra, we have thoroughly established phenomena (yongs-grub), so it can’t be that (that’s voidness). We also have what is called a dependent phenomenon or other-powered phenomenon (gzhan-dbang); that’s a nonstatic phenomenon that arises dependent on various causes. We have totally conceptional phenomena (kun-btags), which are like categories and things like that. I don’t think a common-denominator year would be totally conceptional. I think it would dependently arise because it certainly dependently arises on its parts, on months, and would dependently arise within somebody’s experience of what they would observe of the passage of the earth around the sun (or the sun around the earth or however they conceptualize it).
In Chittamatra, space is totally conceptional. However, what is space? Is it location? I don’t think it’s location, as location is not totally conceptional because within our perception there is the relative location of different objects. Location is one of these nonstatic phenomena that are neither a way of being aware nor a form of physical phenomenon. When they say that space is totally conceptional, they are referring to the static phenomenon that is the lack of something that would impede motion or that could be contacted, and that would prevent the object from occupying three dimensions.
Are there three dimensions (or four dimensions) within the Chittamatra system? Yes, within our perception. Are these spatial and temporal dimensions forms of physical phenomena or things that are in this neither category? They are in this neither category. Just because these dimensions, as imputation phenomena on the basis of a clay pot, for instance, are objects of non-conceptual cognition when we see the clay pot and just because both the clay pot and the dimensions arise from the same natal source as do the consciousness and mental factor cognizing them doesn’t make the clay pot and dimensions merely a way of being aware of something. From a Chittamatra point of view, when we see a table, it’s an appearance, of course – I mean, it’s a mental hologram – but it’s an appearance of a form of a physical phenomenon: a sight, physical sensation if we touch it, and so on.
I would think that similarly a common denominator would not be conceptually constructed from everybody’s experience and then we make a concept of a common one that everybody is seeing. I don’t think it would be that. However, I’ve never seen a discussion of that, and I’ve never actually asked.
The word common is a bit stretched in this case. I mean, if everybody has their own common version of it…
If everybody has their own common version… However, is it the same? Okay, now we have to get a bit more precise here, so let’s change our level of discussion.
What is a common denominator? It’s shitün (gzhi-mthun) in Tibetan; shi (gzhi) means a “basis” and tün (mthun) means “shared.” Now, what are they talking about? Remember, Chittamatra says that there are findable defining characteristics on the side of dependent phenomena; we don’t have them on the side of totally conceptional ones like categories, but on the side of dependent phenomena, there are findable defining characteristics. They establish the existence of something as a truly existent phenomenon, which means something that exists independently of being merely what a mental label refers to. All dependent phenomena, whether objects of non-conceptual cognition or conceptual cognition, have such a defining characteristic mark.
When we see some item on the floor existing in a certain temporal interval, what appears to each of us is different, depending in our location and speed. The natal source from which this appearance arises is a tendency (a seed) for this cognition on each of our alayavijnanas (our foundation consciousness). Each of these appearances, however, has established on its own side a defining characteristic mark that establishes its existence. Although the appearances are all different and none of them originate externally, this defining characteristic is the same in each of these appearances. Because all these defining characteristics are the same, they establish they everyone is seeing the same common-denominator object. It is not, however, that there is a common-denominator externally established object that we are all seeing, nor is there a common-denominator internally established object in everyone’s foundation consciousness.
This is the Chittamatra system. Do you follow that? Does that make any sense to those who have not studied Chittamatra? Chittamatra means “mind only.” It’s one of the Mahayana schools of Buddhist philosophy.
If we use the example of the room, although each of our perceptions of the room is different, nevertheless, the defining characteristics of the room – four walls, located here on this street, in this color, with this furniture and so on – whatever the defining characteristics are, they will be the same in everybody’s perception unless we have defective cognitive sensors or defective mental faculties. Defective cognitive sensors would be, for example, I take my glasses off, and I believe that I am in a blurred thing, the room, and it actually exists as a blur, out of focus. Well, that’s not correct. There’s something wrong with my eye sensors. That’s not what’s in common with everybody else. Or perhaps I’m having a hallucination or on a drug, and the room seems to be flashing with psychedelic colors, or something like that.
Discounting those causes for deceptive cognition, then the defining characteristics… I mean, this is the interesting point, because Chittamatra says defining characteristics are findable on the side of the object. From their own power, they make the object what it is. They establish its existence. They’re the same findable defining characteristics on the side of everybody’s perception of the same period of time, whether they call it the year 2006 or whatever they might call it. If that period is called the year 2006, what would establish it as 2006? Nothing on the side of the period of time that each person experiences in common. It is 2006 relative to it being after the year 2005, and it’s before the year 2007. It’s 2006 revolutions of the sun past the birth or the death of Christ. Okay?
I could endlessly ask more questions.
You could endlessly ask more questions. Well, endless is very time-dependent, isn’t it? Time-consuming, yes. That, of course, gets into a whole other question: Can time have no end? Is it an open-ended interval? This is an interesting question actually. Does time have a beginning? This gets into our whole relativity discussion of what we are measuring, I suppose. Does time have a beginning? Well, if we consider the interval between the Big Bang and now, then it has a beginning; that interval has a beginning. However, is there some sort of abstract entity called “time” that begins? This becomes quite interesting. We’ll get to that, but let’s go on.