Tricycle | Awake in the World

Daniel Goleman: What is the Buddhist understanding of Time? How can we relate our sense of the process of time to our experience of the present moment?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama: In Buddhism, the concept of linear time, of time as a kind of container, is not accepted. Time itself, I think, is something quite weak. It depends on some physical basis, some specific thing. Apart from that thing it is difficult to pinpoint—to see time. Time is understood or conceived only in relation to a phenomenon or a process.

DG: Yet the passage of time seems very concrete—the past, the present, aging. The process of time seems very real.

HH: This business of time is a difficult subject. There are several different explanations and theories about time; there is no one explanation in Buddhism. I feel there is a difference between time and the phenomena on which time is projected. Time can be spoken of only in relation to phenomena susceptible to change, which because they are susceptible to change are transitory and impermanent. "Impermanent" means there is a process. If there is no process of change, then one cannot conceive of time in the first place.

The question is whether it is possible to imagine an independent time which is not related to any particulars, any object that goes through change. In relation to such an object, we can talk about the past of that thing, its present state, and its future; but without relation to such particulars, it is very difficult to conceive of an instant of time totally independent of a particular basis.

DG: Can we connect what you are saying with our own experience? We experience time, we experience growth and aging, we experience that one thing leads to another.

HH: That's right.

DG: One thing is the cause of another thing. Now how do we explain that process of time in terms of being in the present moment? There are differences in the way each of us experiences time. Sometimes it goes very slowly, sometimes very quickly. Our sense of time seems to change with our state of consciousness. If you're fully focused-just right here, right now-then the sense of time changes. What is the relationship between the sense of time and one's own state of consciousness?

HH: Depending on a person's spiritual maturity or realization, there could be a difference in how one sees the moment. That one could have different experiences of time is demonstrated by an ordinary fact: For instance, if two people attend a party, one person might be so absorbed in the party he would feel that time went [snaps his fingers] just like thatl Whereas the other person who did not enjoy it very much might have felt it long, dragging, because he was thinking about when it would finish. So although both of them attended the same party, in terms of time they were different.