________________
NATURE OF TIME
11
states; that it is the sine qua non of the succession of mental states. 46 * The Mādhyamikas maintain that even from the empirical point of view Time is unsubstantial. It is admittedly not an object of perception. They - past, present and future - appear to be existences due to our tendency to objectify concepts. It is impossible to conceive time either as a permanent immutable entity causing things or as an existent. The reasons given against the first view are as follows. It cannot be a cause. As the cause of the state of production (of a particular thing) is eternal, that state the thing will have eternally. Again, the thing whose cause is presumed immutable (Time) should really be uncaused or caused at random. It is so because a cause to produce an effect must transform itself into the effect and cease to exist. The arguments adduced against the second view are as follows. The divisions of Time into the Past, Present and Future are vital to its conception. The Present and the Future are what they are in relation to the Past; they should therefore exist in the past, for they are dependent on it. If so, they too would be included in the past, or the latter would be indistinguishable from the present and the future. If, to avoid this, it were held that the present and the future do not exist in the past, relative to what are they the present and the future ? A non-relative present or future is not possible; and without distinctions, time too is unavailable. The same arguments may be urged, mutatis mutandis, with regard to the existence of the past or the present in the present and the future, etc. Time might be thought to exist in relation to things that change. But as changing things (bhāva) are untenable, the reality of Time too is not established.47
"Kamalasīla shows the futility of time in the following manner. When the speaker addresses a person with the words 'this is prior', “this is posterior' with reference to objects or events taking place successively .a particular impression (ābhoga) is formed in the mind of the latter. This impression gives rise to the knowledge that things thus referred to are prior or posterior. Thus temporal order being otherwisè explainable time is not accepted by the Buddhists. Again, as Time is partless according to those who accept it as real, the concept of priority or posteriority is not applicable to it. If this priority or posteriority, as they say, primarily belongs to actions and objects, and only secondarily to time, then too, says Kamalasíla, time is unnecessary.48
