Time Flow
Now he is here
and now he's there.
When here, it is here, now.
When there, it is then.
But when "then" was "now,"
"there" was "here."
Whenever anything happens
it happens now
and "now" is this "happening."
Each moment, when it is this moment, is right now.
(Dogen Zenji’s - Being Time)
Gabriel Popkin (The Christian Science Monitor)
Almost nothing is more obvious than the fact that time flows from the past, which we remember, toward the future, which we don’t. Scientists and philosophers call this the psychological arrow of time. Hot coffee left on your desk cools down, and never heats up on its own, which reflects the thermodynamic arrow of time….
….Many researchers note that real-world objects that store memories -- such as human brains and computer hard drives -- often heat up as they operate. Heat generation increases entropy and is an irreversible process, so the laws of thermodynamics require that such objects can only run in one direction: from past to future…..
Paul Davies (Posted by John Steele)
…. The flow of time is an illusion … what does it even mean that time is flowing? When we say something flows like a river, what you mean is an element of the river at one moment is in a different place of an earlier moment. In other words, it moves with respect to time. But time can’t move with respect to time—time is time. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the claim that time does not flow means that there is no time; that time does not exist. That’s nonsense. Time of course exists. We measure it with clocks. Clocks don’t measure the flow of time, they measure intervals of time. Of course there are intervals of time between different events; that’s what clocks measure.
Zen
o Zen doesn’t deny time any more than it ignores the laws and rules of society. But Zen sees time uniquely. Zen sees time as right now. Neither the past nor the future exists. Only now is actual, and now doesn’t last long.
Hinduism
o The passage of 'linear' time has brought us where we are today. But Hinduism views the concept of time in a different way, and there is a cosmic perspective to it. Hindus believe the process of creation moves in cycles and that each cycle has four great epochs of time, namely Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapar Yuga and Kali Yuga. And because the process of creation is cyclical and never ending, it "begins to end and ends to begin". (The Concept of Time By Subhamoy Das)
o According to the Advaita philosophy, this world we live in, the space as well as time is a projection of your consciousness or your awareness. In fact your mind, your thoughts as well as your physical attributes are just a projection of that consciousness into the state of waking. Advaita Vedanta calls this projection as Maya. Maya creates apparent multiplicity in a universe where only Brahman really exists……
…..The world has no existence” really means “The world has no existence-absolute”. It only exists relative to our minds. It is perceived by us, by our five senses. That is what is meant by the “no existence” clause. It is a mix of existence and non-existence. This is Maya. It is the projection or manifestation of the Infinite through our finite minds. Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya, for, everything that is bound by the laws of time, space, and causation, is within Maya…… (Hari Menon- vedantastudent.blogspot.in).
J.Krishnamurti
o It is the mind, it is thought, that creates time. Thought is time, and whatever thought projects must be of time; therefore, thought cannot possibly go beyond itself. To discover what is beyond time, thought must come to an end -and that is a most difficult thing because the ending of thought does not come about through discipline, through control, through denial or suppression. Thought ends only when we understand the whole process of thinking and, to understand thinking, there must be self-knowledge. (Choiceless Awareness)
o Perhaps man has developed this idea of evolution through watching a little bush grow into an enormous tree, the baby into manhood, the developing of a muscle, that muscle is weak but practice and exercise and it gets strong. So this idea of evolution, growing, psychologically thought has taken it over saying, 'I need time to become something'…. We have accepted it. We live by it. We are accustomed to it. It is our habit: "I can't do this", psychologically, "Tomorrow I will work at it. I will try", which means you have developed a duality: "I am this, but I will be that". right? "I am angry, but I will get over it", which is, the little seed growing into an enormous tree, the baby growing to manhood, the little animal which hasn't the strength to walk, run, will take time. So that same observation has entered into the psychological field and there we say we will be born, we will become. Is that so? You understand? That is, there is physical time and we have cultivated the psychological time. Now why have we created psychological time? (Saanen 7th Public Talk 23rd July 1978)
o Is it possible to meet every issue without this space-time interval, without the gap between oneself and the thing of which one is afraid? It is possible only when the observer has no continuity, the observer who is the builder of the image, the observer who is a collection of memories and ideas, who is a bundle of abstractions. (Freedom from the Known,93)
o Psychological time exists only when there is comparison, when there is a distance to be covered between 'what is' and 'what should be', which is the desire to become somebody or nobody, all that involves psychological time and the distance to be covered. So one says, is there a tomorrow, psychologically? And this you will not be able to answer. Is there tomorrow - 'tomorrow' having come into being because I have had a moment of complete freedom, a complete feeling of something, and it has gone. I would like to keep it, to make it last. Making it last is a form of greed. We struggle to achieve that thing again. All this is implied in psychological time. When you have some experience of joy, of pleasure or whatever it is, live it completely and do not demand that it should endure, because then you are caught in time. (Talks with American Students, Chapter 4)
Reference;
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_space_and_time
2. http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0501/Why-does-time-flow-in-only-one-direction
3. http://nautil.us/blog/where-did-time-come-from-and-why-does-it-seem-to-flow
4. http://cosmos.asu.edu/
5. http://zentalks.blogspot.in/2009/06/uji-time.html
6. http://sweepingzen.com/dogens-time-being-uji-1/
7. http://wwzc.org/dharma-text/wild-time-commentaries-dogen-zenjis-being-time
8. http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/time.htm
9. http://vedantastudent.blogspot.in/p/maya.html
10. http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/sadananda/paradox_sadananda.htm
11. http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/
12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hourglass