The Illusory and Unreal Nature of Time

Time is a conditioned dharma disassociated from thought (citta-viprayukta-saṃskāra), a false and nonexistent dharma. Why is time not a real dharma but an illusory one? On what basis is the time of this life, or half of this life, calculated?

The five aggregates of body and mind running through the course of one year is called one year of age. A year has three hundred sixty-five days; the length 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 time period within a day is set according to the angle at which sunlight strikes the ground, or according to the length of the shadows cast by objects under the sunlight. But the earth is a provisional dharma, the sun and its light are provisional dharmas, objects on the ground are provisional dharmas, and shadows are provisional dharmas. Can the combination of these provisional dharmas yield a real dharma called time? Clearly 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 is like, these provisional dharmas simply run their regular course, and each day passes. Day after day 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 reality there is no such appearance; there is no appearance at all. Yet everyone still counts on their fingers—however they count, there is no such dharma as time in existence. It is all misperception, mistaken reckoning, false imagination, 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, with successive continuity displaying time. Since thoughts are not real, actions are not real, and the appearance of continuity is false, time is likewise not real. Empty out time, empty out space, empty out material form, and our mind becomes much more at ease—no sense of oppression, no sense of tension, serene and carefree. Then empty out body and mind as well, and the self is liberated.