The Illusory and Unreality of Time

The body and mind of the five aggregates (pañcaskandha) running through the course of one year is called one year of age. A year has three hundred and sixty-five days, and the time of a day is set according to the movement of the sun, or rather, it is set according to the earth's revolution around the sun. Each hour of the day is set according to the angle at which sunlight is cast upon the ground, or according to the length of the shadows of objects under the sunlight. But the earth is a false dharma, the sun and its light are false dharmas, objects on the ground are false dharmas, and shadows are false dharmas. When these false dharmas combine together, can they yield a true dharma called time? Obviously not.

The time thus displayed is even more false than those material forms (rūpa); it does not correspond to one's own mind. No matter what the mind does, these false dharmas simply run on in their regular way, and the time of a day must pass. Day after day, time accumulates into a year; year after year accumulates into ten years; further accumulation and half a lifetime has passed; further accumulation and a whole lifetime has passed, and life comes to an end. That is why time is also called "light and shade" (guāngyīn) and "time's passage" (shíguāng)—a false appearance displayed primarily by the sun and objects. In truth it has no appearance at all, no appearance whatsoever. Yet everyone still counts on their fingers; however they count, there is no such dharma as time in existence. It is all misperception, miscalculation, false discrimination, and conceptual proliferation (prapañca).

Time also represents the process of the running and changing of mind consciousness—one thought after another, one action after another, running onward, sequentially continuing, and thereby displaying time. Thoughts are not real, actions are not real, the appearance of continuity is false, and so time is also not real. Empty out time, empty out space, empty out material form, and our mind becomes much more relaxed—no sense of oppression, no sense of tension, at ease and carefree. Then empty out body and mind as well, and the self is liberated.