the dao of time

[Karl]

Time is change.  There done.    Where there are flux and transient, there are time.  The idea of hours, seconds, and minutes are just illusions.  Something people in the civilization to construct to describe this state of change.  The question is does Time/ change cease to exist in the Tao???   Does time cease to be in the Dharma??

Nope, change is change, time is a human concept of the relationship between events. We know for certain that events don't reverse themselves. Broken pots don't reassemble themselves, packs of cards don't rearrange themselves back into suits neatly stacked on a table. Dead things don't reanimate.

[liminal_luke]

Broken pots don't reassemble themselves, packs of cards don't rearrange themselves back into suits neatly stacked on a table. Dead things don't reanimate.

 

Or do they? 

[silent thunder]

Nope, change is change, time is a human concept of the relationship between events. We know for certain that events don't reverse themselves. Broken pots don't reassemble themselves, packs of cards don't rearrange themselves back into suits neatly stacked on a table. Dead things don't reanimate.

 

Or do they? 

[Karl]

Or do they? 

You must of smashed enough cups, picked up enough cards and buried sufficient pets to know how it works.

[ChiForce]

Nope, change is change, time is a human concept of the relationship between events. We know for certain that events don't reverse themselves. Broken pots don't reassemble themselves, packs of cards don't rearrange themselves back into suits neatly stacked on a table. Dead things don't reanimate.

No silly.  Change is a fundamental nature of reality, which is time.  Change and time aren't linear and that's why you were born on this earth.  That's why every minute there is a baby to be born, a person dies, and someone falling in love again for the first time.  Is not linear.  Is repetitive, cynical, and progressive at the same time.  What you are describing is the relative existence of some objects in their human created form.  In their decays or recycling period, they would reanimate again as something else.  Ever heard of recycling, Karl....   Your reasoning is getting old... 

Edited August 13, 2016 by ChiForce

[ChiForce]

You must of smashed enough cups, picked up enough cards and buried sufficient pets to know how it works.

Recycling?  Ever heard of it????  Guess not....

[silent thunder]

Mechanical time has always seemed like a thin veneer smeared over the surface of my perception of what actual time or relative change may be, if such a thing exists...  so I've always dismissed mechanical time as illusory in the extreme.

 

But this persistent experience of the present moment and how long that moment may be and how I relate to it as I observe change in my surroundings and my 'self', has sprouted and taken root for the last how many moments of my life?  (five cycles around the sun at least)

 

I guess it depends how I define a moment, or how much I agree with how others and my culture tell me to define it.  In sidereal time we can measure a cycle of ~26,000 years, or rather the Aztecs appear to have been able to and our descendants could should they be inclined, we will only record that which we observe, if we're even inclined. 

 

Yet there is this sense of time passage, though it's not linear.  Some events of my childhood remain seemingly as clear as if they happened yesterday, while I couldn't tell you what I did on April 18th without the aid of a journal.  Several of my most intense dream experiences are more vivid to me than my wedding day and my recall of them in the 'now' is as potent as when I experienced them in the present moment all those years ago...

 

It seems to me that memory is tied to how we define time.  Mechanical time was a natural progression of this desire once the Cartesian Mechanistic Model took such firm hold of our imaginations.  But it's weak and fallible and relative and points up the very fluid nature of time as proven by Einstein.

 

If you've ever been in a stunning accident, or practiced meditation or martial arts to a deep point, or fallen in love in a moment, then you've likely experienced the subjective nature of time... time slowing way down.  Samadhi even more intensely gave the very palpable sense of time being rendered irrelevant, or non-existent.

 

So how long is a moment?  and where does a moment end?  where can we, with any confidence lay a stake and claim that here is one moment and it is separate from the next?  or the previous?

 

I recall when reaching for the tea one morning having the crystal clear instantaneous realization of the line of unbroken causal actions that occurred between the moment my mum and dad came together and I was planted in the womb, to me reaching for that cup.  It then extrapolated in another heartbeat to the origins of our perceptual universe and whatever that may have been.

 

But where can I draw a line that says, this is one moment and that... another?

 

Any longer to me, it's just one great soup.  All connected... and that is rather terrifying and comforting simultaneously.

which is just more dualism... and oh look... it's time to sit again

[Karl]

No silly.  Change is a fundamental nature of reality, which is time.  Change and time aren't linear and that's why you were born on this earth.  That's why every minute there is a baby to be born, a person dies, and someone falling in love again for the first time.  Is not linear.  Is repetitive, cynical, and progressive at the same time.  What you are describing is the relative existence of some objects in their human created form.  In their decays or recycling period, they would reanimate again as something else.  Ever heard of recycling, Karl....   Your reasoning is getting old...

 

Can't tell if your joking ? I presume you are ?

[ChiForce]

Can't tell if your joking ? I presume you are ?

I don't know.  Have you heard of recycling?  How a broken pot can be reanimated into something else through the process of recycling?  The problem with your old reasoning is that you think every object, such a pot or a cup, came to being because they exist by themselves.  They are only relative forms and their existences are relative, conventional.  Their ultimate forms are its parts and atoms.  They can be broken down and to decay and to recreate another forms.  Hell, another pot!!!!!  There..... 

 

If change and time are linear, everybody would be born at the same time and same place and same year.  We all would die the same.  The world and civilization would end.   

[Karl]

I don't know.  Have you heard of recycling?  How a broken pot can be reanimated into something else through the process of recycling?  The problem with your old reasoning is that you think every object, such a pot or a cup, came to being because they exist by themselves.  They are only relative forms and their existences are relative, conventional.  Their ultimate forms are its parts and atoms.  They can be broken down and to decay and to recreate another forms.  Hell, another pot!!!!!  There..... 

 

If change and time are linear, everybody would be born at the same time and same place and same year.  We all would die the same.  The world and civilization would end.

 

Good grief. You were serious:

 

Recycling is where 'we' humans perform some work-like the pack of cards being put back into suits. The pot does not magically reassemble itself before our eyes. Brush up all the bits of crockery and they stay seperated. If you try chucking them back on the bench they don't turn back into the pot. Causality doesn't run backwards.

 

I don't know what you mean about a cup coming into existence by itself. As far as I'm aware, we dig some clay out of the ground, shape it glaze it and fire it. Atoms don't automatically arrange themselves into a Royal Dalton 60 piece dinner service.

 

I don't know what you mean by 'linear' I certainly haven't said so. I said time was a conceptual relative measure of events. I leave the rest of that question to science. An atomic clock is just causality in action. We use that causality to measure causality of another set of events. That's all I know, that's all I'm prepared to say.

[ChiForce]

Good grief. You were serious:

 

Recycling is where 'we' humans perform some work-like the pack of cards being put back into suits. The pot does not magically reassemble itself before our eyes. Brush up all the bits of crockery and they stay seperated. If you try chucking them back on the bench they don't turn back into the pot. Causality doesn't run backwards.

 

I don't know what you mean about a cup coming into existence by itself. As far as I'm aware, we dig some clay out of the ground, shape it glaze it and fire it. Atoms don't automatically arrange themselves into a Royal Dalton 60 piece dinner service.

 

I don't know what you mean by 'linear' I certainly haven't said so. I said time was a conceptual relative measure of events. I leave the rest of that question to science. An atomic clock is just causality in action. We use that causality to measure causality of another set of events. That's all I know, that's all I'm prepared to say.

So, what is the difference between an unbroken cup came to being because someone made it???  Then a cup being reanimated again through recycling?  Same thing....  So, don't use cups and pots for your reasoning.  For all we know, the cups and pots you were referring to are already broken once.  Surprised..... 

 

Great...we are talking about cups and pots.

[Karl]

So, what is the difference between an unbroken cup came to being because someone made it???  Then a cup being reanimated again through recycling?  Same thing....  So, don't use cups and pots for your reasoning.  For all we know, the cups and pots you were referring to are already broken once.  Surprised..... 

 

Great...we are talking about cups and pots.

As to your first, yes, that's precisely what I said. There is no significant difference between making something and making something else except for the process and materials required.

 

The point I'm making is that Time, not the thing you measure on the clock, but the absolute form-causality, has what is referred to as a single direction. Events happen, they don't undo themselves from time to time. Causality doesn't suddenly run in reverse. Pots don't un break themselves by themselves. That's why the analogy is a good one.

[ChiForce]

Causality is not linear, period.  Its effects are not known.  I am going to break away from this pots and cups nonsense.  Let's look at the South China Sea ruling concerning about China's land recrimination in the South China Sea.  The Philippine and America thought that the International Arbitration court ruling would shift the balance of power in the South China Sea and to isolate China.  Because???  Because an international court body said so.  It turns out this wasn't the case.  In fact, it didn't change the balance power in the region at all.  Cause and effect isn't linear?  Depending on which realities you are talking about.   

 

The assumption that a court ruling, being decided by handful of judges and lawyers, can shift the balance of power in the South China Sea was wrong.  It couldn't be more wrong.

 

Yeah. pots don't make themselves either.  What is the point?  

[Karl]

Causality is not linear, period.  Its effects are not known.  I am going to break away from this pots and cups nonsense.  Let's look at the South China Sea ruling concerning about China's land recrimination in the South China Sea.  The Philippine and America thought that the International Arbitration court ruling would shift the balance of power in the South China Sea and to isolate China.  Because???  Because an international court body said so.  It turns out this wasn't the case.  In fact, it didn't change the balance power in the region at all.  Cause and effect isn't linear?  Depending on which realities you are talking about.   

 

The assumption that a court ruling, being decided by handful of judges and lawyers, can shift the balance of power in the South China Sea was wrong.  It couldn't be more wrong.

 

Yeah. pots don't make themselves either.  What is the point?

 

I did not say causality was linear. I wouldn't even know what that could possibly mean. It's like an inch of love. Causality is just a succession of events of objects acting and reacting according to their natures.

 

Humans are a kind of causality because of our volitional nature, but we still have to comply oth nature in order that we can transform nature into things that are useful to us.

 

Man made things like boundaries aren't absolutes, they are conceptual. Lines drawn on a map that are a product of reification.

[Taomeow]

 Chi Force,

 

speaking of the South China sea, the disputed islands are not islands to the Philippine side which asserts they are just coral reefs, and they are islands to the Chinese who say they may have been coral reefs "sometime in the past" but they have topsoil with both natural land vegetation and cultivated crops there and therefore are, without a doubt, islands, part of "land."  

 

No one smashed them (yet), and yet to the Philippines they didn't, don't, and won't exist.  

 

And go to China and a change occurs without any involvement of time and space -- there's islands, they exist -- did, do, and they believe will in the future, exist.

 

Funny how these things work, right?

 

Now back to my main theme -- probability.  The probability of the islands existing in the past, present and future fully depends on China's chances (stochastic, probabilistic likelihood, which can take the form of diplomatic, military, economic, power-dictated, secret-conspiratorial, open-defiant, manipulative, reckless, carefully thought through, an "act of god" or of the United States government, etc. etc. etc. -- i.e. the interplay of luck/opportunity and intent/interference I was talking about) to win the dispute. 

 

Win the dispute, kaboom -- islands!  Islands!!  Material space, under cultivation, in time -- has been, is, will be.  Lose the dispute -- kaboom!  No islands!  Fishing grounds in the sea, with some inconsequential coral reefs, who cares about coral reefs in the fishing grounds, it's not like they're islands or anything, there have never been, isn't, nor ever will be any islands in that space at any time.  

 

Funny how these things work...  awe-inspiring if you take the thought further...  and further still...  

[Brian]

Let's see if this link works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)

 

That's a starting place, anyhow.

 

Another worthwhile jumping-off point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry

 

And one more:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

 

Just food for thought...

 

 

EDIT: Fixed one...

Edited August 14, 2016 by Brian

[Miffymog]

 Chi Force,

 

speaking of the South China sea, the disputed islands are not islands to the Philippine side which asserts they are just coral reefs, and they are islands to the Chinese who say they may have been coral reefs "sometime in the past" but they have topsoil with both natural land vegetation and cultivated crops there and therefore are, without a doubt, islands, part of "land."  

 

No one smashed them (yet), and yet to the Philippines they didn't, don't, and won't exist.  

 

And go to China and a change occurs without any involvement of time and space -- there's islands, they exist -- did, do, and they believe will in the future, exist.

 

Funny how these things work, right?

 

Now back to my main theme -- probability.  The probability of the islands existing in the past, present and future fully depends on China's chances (stochastic, probabilistic likelihood, which can take the form of diplomatic, military, economic, power-dictated, secret-conspiratorial, open-defiant, manipulative, reckless, carefully thought through, an "act of god" or of the United States government, etc. etc. etc. -- i.e. the interplay of luck/opportunity and intent/interference I was talking about) to win the dispute. 

 

Win the dispute, kaboom -- islands!  Islands!!  Material space, under cultivation, in time -- has been, is, will be.  Lose the dispute -- kaboom!  No islands!  Fishing grounds in the sea, with some inconsequential coral reefs, who cares about coral reefs in the fishing grounds, it's not like they're islands or anything, there have never been, isn't, nor ever will be any islands in that space at any time.  

 

Funny how these things work...  awe-inspiring if you take the thought further...  and further still...  

 

 

Slightly off topic but a mild continuation to what Taomeow was saying. I read somewhere that one of the reasons China is keen to extend their territory up the the 9 dash line is so that they have easy access to deep sea and so can then get their submarines out without being detected. Both the Americans and Russians have a net work of detectors on the seabed around the world so they can try to track each others submarines. China wants to do a similar thing, and the deep sea inside the 9 dash line is the first step to this. (there are of course a number of other things going on there as well.

[3bob]

I'm dropping by and have not read many posts here...

 

if all of time is contained in a circle good luck in finding its beginning or end - except by an imploding the entire circle of time ?

[ChiForce]

Slightly off topic but a mild continuation to what Taomeow was saying. I read somewhere that one of the reasons China is keen to extend their territory up the the 9 dash line is so that they have easy access to deep sea and so can then get their submarines out without being detected. Both the Americans and Russians have a net work of detectors on the seabed around the world so they can try to track each others submarines. China wants to do a similar thing, and the deep sea inside the 9 dash line is the first step to this. (there are of course a number of other things going on there as well.

Off topic?  Not exactly.  We are trying to find out what are the reasons and the causes for the China sea reclamation.  Is it being dictated by some linear concept of time and cause and effect?  Is it something else?  Not so easy now once we moved away from cups and pots.  What is interesting is that you have America and the Philippine using the International court body in order to shift the balance of power in the region because they believe couple of judges and lawyers can reshape the power struggles in the Far East.  On the other hand, the Chinese govt never thought that any international court body can undermine their national interests.  Instead, you would need to exercise Real politics and substantial political capitals to cause any political changes in the region.  

[ChiForce]

I'm dropping by and have not read many posts here...

 

if all of time is contained in a circle good luck in finding its beginning or end - except by an imploding the entire circle of time ?

That would mean.....to recognize time is also void...not real.  That changes are not real.  That's what Dao is?  That's what happens when the mind realizes the Dharma??     

[Taomeow]

/

Edited August 16, 2016 by Taomeow

[Michael Sternbach]

Let's see if this link works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)

 

That's a starting place, anyhow.

 

Another worthwhile jumping-off point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPT_symmetry

 

And one more:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence

 

Just food for thought...

 

 

EDIT: Fixed one...

 

Talking about the arrow of time: Physicists are confused about its observed singular direction from the past to the future, because this direction is not apparent from the formulas which describe the physical processes: These could just as well be running in the opposite direction.

 

Now I think that there are actually two arrows of time; in other words, that time also flows from the future to the past. Granted, this is not what we usually perceive, even though glimpses - and sometimes even elaborate visions - of the future can be had under certain circumstances. Feynman diagrams show positively charged particles (positrons) as moving backwards in time, so it seems conceivable that the positively charged atomic nuclei exist in negative time flow whereas the electrons orbiting it exist in positive time flow. Our physical perception may not reveal this because virtually all of it is directly or indirectly based on photons, or light particles emitted by orbital electrons.

 

Here is another idea: What if the present is in truth the dynamic intersection of two time flows? What if it created from the future as much as it is created from the past? According to Aristotle, one of the four causes for something to come into being is its destination. That final cause, as he called it, takes effect backwards through time. A lot of spiritually oriented people feel that there is something like destiny or the fulfillment of preset patterns at work. This may yet be another question of faith to which there will be a scientific answer after all.

 

Just some food for thoughts...

[silent thunder]

"Take a moment and imagine that there is no time. Take a moment to just let go of tomorrow. What if letting go of suffering wasn't possible tomorrow--that today, even right now, was all you had, and you had nothing else but today? All of a sudden, you would look at your whole existence through completely different eyes. See if you can feel what it is to exist only now. See what its like to completely take tomorrow, and yesterday, out of the picture."

~Adyashanti

Falling into Grace

 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  ~JRR Tolkien

 

“How did it get so late so soon?” ~Dr Seuss

Edited August 17, 2016 by silent thunder

[silent thunder]

Ah synchronicity...   just came across this while looking for books on cd for our road trip.

 

The Time Keeper

 

The inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to stop time. He is banished to a cave and for centuries endures the voices of all who end up seeking more days, more years, because of our sense of time. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with an hourglass and a mission: a chance to release himself by teaching two humans the nature of time.

He returns to modern 'time' - now counting by atomic measure, the hours he so innocently counted with water drops - and commences a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop time to do so.

 

The timing of it was particularly cheeky and the book was pleasant and insightful... 

[silent thunder]

So like I mentioned my family has spent a lot of time in the truck recently... and after listening to The Time Keeper, we started pointing out all the references we caught about time...

 

 

save time
spend time
waste time
well timed
past time
prime time
time delay
time enough
too much time
time to go
time to let go
the time is ripe
telling time
time stood still
time flew
time flies
tea time
end times
too much time on my hands
time out
a set time
good timing
bad timing
i need more time
all the time
it's about time
freeze time
time in a bottle
time capsule
timetable
no time like the present
real time
big time
do you have the time?
do you have time for _______________?
squeeze in some time for you
race against time
ahead of one's time
behind the times
the spirit of the times
a stitch in time
time warp
biding time
a whale of a time
caught me at a bad time
the right place at the right time
the time of my life
a devil of a time
it's high time
making up for lost time
making good time
time's up
two time loser
time will tell
time off for good behavior
take some time off
time to blow this place
no time to lose
caught you just in time
the time has come
time after time
sands of time
time is a great healer
there's still time
maybe next time

 

 

we had a really good time