Everything Is Time

"The entire evolution of science would suggest that the best grammar for thinking about the world is that of change, not of permanence. Not of being, but of becoming.

"We can think of the world as made up of things. Of substances. Of entities. Of something that is. Or we can think of it as made up of events. Of happenings. Of processes. Of something that occurs. Something that does not last, and that undergoes continual transformation, that is not permanent in time.

[…]

"Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend, and describe it. […] The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events.

[…]

"A stone is a prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event.' It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.

"The basic units in terms of which we comprehend the world are not located in some specific point in space. […] They are spatially but also temporally delimited: they are events."

Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time

What Dr. Rovelli, internationally noted theoretical physicist and philosopher of science, is saying here, is that a rock isn't an object; it's an event. Which is true of literally every "thing"; they're phenomena, not matter. They only exist for a specific time, their natures changing from moment to moment. So time is the only thing objectively present in that space.

We think objects are solid and exist because we can't grasp the temporary (the word means "subject to time") nature of matter and energy – which are the components of "stuff".

But stuff is an illusion. (More accurately, it's a hasty conclusion, leading to a practical fiction.)

So the good doctor has at long last caught science up with Zen, of which this notion of an "empty" universe, where things don't really exist, but are instead an ever-changing stream of dependent co-arising (scientists call it "attraction") that never attains stasis, is a fundamental teaching.

Which is why every "thing" in the universe – you and me and rocks and trees and amœbas and planets and galaxies and Labrador retrievers – aren't objects or things at all, or even matter, but events.

Literal products of time, having a beginning and end, because the agglomeration of attractions that make us all up never settles on a permanent relationship, and eventually dissipates entirely, its components running off to join other processes, in the manner of a wave or a cloud.

Thanks to Brad Warner, whose latest book, The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being, alerted me to Dr. Rovelli's thoughts on this matter.

(By the way, Dr. Rovelli also turns out to be a professor emeritus of L'Université Aix-Marseille Luminy, where I spent a year in the late 80s. An observation à propos of nothing but my startled satisfaction.)


(Photo courtesy of Neil Owen and Wikimedia.com.)

The Grandfather Paradox

This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.

Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.

For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.

So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):

I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...

You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:

– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…

The solution? There isn't one.

Not if you're human.

Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.

(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)

Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.

That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.

You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.

In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? Ok, so maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?

See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.

Just Because You Don't Exist Doesn't Mean You Can't Have Integrity

Last week a reader posted a provocative question under Everything Doesn't Happen For a Reason:

"If one is not seeking to avoid pain [under Zen]," he asked, "should one look both ways before crossing the street?"

I confess to a weakness for this kind of Jesuitical repartee, though Zen teachers are famous for screaming "Katz!" at, slapping, or throwing hot tea on those who attempt it. The impulse is honest; since such queries arise in the discursive mind – whose self-centred, dualistic viewpoint is suited only to housekeeping – indulging them can block insight. Anglophones call the result "can't see the forest for the trees".

However, this case addresses a pitfall common to spiritual pursuits – the tendency to confuse theoretical truth with operational – and I think it's well worth exploring.

First, a point of order: Zen students are not taught not to avoid pain; we're taught to accept pain as inevitable. But notwithstanding Zen monasteries manufacture it on an industrial scale, the Buddha did say that enduring avoidable suffering is worthless to enlightenment practice.

However, the underlying issue here goes much deeper than practice forms; it's nothing less than the nature of existence. And I'm pleased to report that science has finally caught up with Buddhism in one essential detail:

Nothing exists.

The Buddha of course knew nothing about particle physics. He drew his conclusions from simple observation of his surroundings, albeit with delusion-corrected eyes. Now, two and a half millennia later, physicists can explain why stuff appears to exist, while in fact not existing.

Since I'm not one of them, I'll just cleave to their hypothesis here: most, possibly all, of what we consider "matter" is actually a cloud of electrical charges in transitory association. This is basically the same insight the Buddha handed down (though again, he had no notion of electricity), but science has extended it infinitely: molecules are tiny solar systems of atoms, which are tiny solar systems of subatomic particles, which are tiny solar systems of smaller particles, and so on.

To bring this all home, here's a scientific assertion I recently encountered online:

If you removed all of the empty space from every person on earth, the amassed matter of our entire species would amount to the volume of a sugar cube. (And if your discursive mind is well-oiled, it's now asking: "How do you know even that matter exists?" Exactly.)

Right. So that's all spacey n'all, but what does it mean? Well, to perhaps no-one's surprise at this point…

Nothing.

Seriously. OK, so you're a cloud and so is your piano. Go run through it.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

With any good luck, no-one will have tried. Because even though neither you nor your piano exist, there are other rules in play. Such as the one that says your particles can't trespass in the electrical fields of piano particles, even though all the particles are mostly the same, and you and your furniture are mostly empty space anyway.

In other words, just because you don't exist doesn't mean you can't have integrity. (And if I had any business sense I'd be selling t-shirts with that on.)

The koanic literature contains a few parables on the dilemma of simultaneously existing and not existing. My favourite involves a monk who goes out on his begging rounds after learning that nothing he sees is really there. When a rampaging elephant comes stomping down the road (and really, who among us hasn't been there?) the loyal young student, fresh from dokusan, focuses his mind on the elephant's non-existence.

And is immediately trampled. He limps back to his teacher and complains loudly that the teaching is false.

The teacher sighs, and says:

Alright. Here is the whole truth:

Nothing you see is really there.

And when a stampeding elephant is bearing down on you, get out of its way.

The monk confused theoretical truth (everything you see is a squirming splotch of promiscuously recombining particles, so whatever you think is there, isn't there) with operational truth (regardless of how temporary you and the elephant are, it hurts when one steps on you.)

And so, to accept my honoured reader's dharma challenge, I am bold to say:

Yes. One should look both ways before stepping into the street, unless one does not mind being creamed by a briefly-manifesting moving van.

At this point, some will ask: "What good is theoretical truth if it won't save you from being creamed by a slowly-dispersing moving van?"

Now that's a question.


(Photo of Namibian road sign courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer. You gotta respect the nation that posts "Mind the Paradox of Non-Existence" warnings along its highways.)