by Tang Huyen
Without apprehension of time, there is no thing, no object, and no present. One can still perfectly remain aware of what happens, but one refrains from freezing that flow by means of concepts and categories, structures and frameworks.
Since Leibniz, time and space are in the class of relations, not of realities, and Kant calls them thought-up representations. Kant, Reply to Eberhard, VIII, 222–23 refers to space and time as "the thought-up representations [die gedachten Vorstellungen]."
In sensation, there is no space and time, because in sensation, no relation has been made up (or made out) by the understanding yet.
Krishnamurti says that one cannot grasp the present because by the time one grasps it, it is already past. Likewise one cannot grasp things and objects in the present, because it takes the categories of the understanding to cut up the wholesome sensation into bits and process the bits into things and objects, and that process takes time, by which time the present has already slipped away.
In Buddhism, just as in European philosophy and theology, the ultimate category (or super-category) is the something (kiñcano, ti in Greek), and without desire to fuel the mind, there is no impetus to arrive at somethings. The wholesome sensation is left alone, uncut and unprocessed, that is, untouched by mind (in western terms, untouched by the categories of the understanding). The Buddha says that sensation (actually, feeling, the second aggregate) is "born in cessation" (nirvṛti-ja).
The layman Citra says: Lust makes for limit (rāgo pamāṇa-karaṇo), hostility makes for limit, delusion makes for limit; but the strifeless (araṇa) is the best unlimited (appamāṇa). Lust makes for sign (nimitta-karaṇo), hostility makes for sign, delusion makes for sign; but the strifeless is signless. Lust is something (kiñcano), hostility is something, delusion is something; but the strifeless is no-thing (a-kiñcano, not something). Furthermore the strifeless is empty of lust (suññā rāgena), of hostility, of delusion, of anything stable, unchanging, of self and of 'what belongs to self' [= of I and mine]. SA, 569, 149c–150a, SN, VI, 295–297 (41, 7); MN, I, 297–298 (43) also has roughly the same content.
So in the absence of desire and its products like mentation and the self, there is no "thing", no "object", no tending to, no intentioning. Contrariwise, if there is intentioning, there is bondage. By setting up the trap (the categories) to catch something, one catches oneself in that trap (the categories) first of all.
The Buddha says: "If one tends to anything (Skt. anusete) then one follows on it (anunīyate), and if one follows on it one is bound by grasping (upādāya samyuktaḥ)," and the opposite: "If one does not tend to anything then one does not follow on it, and if one does not follow on it one is freed by not grasping (anupādāya visamyuktaḥ)." Poussin, Documents, 571, SA, 15, 3a. "If one tends to anything one follows on it, and if one follows on it one goes to reckonings (saṃkhyāṃ gacchati)" and the opposite: "If one does not tend to anything one does not follow on it, and if one does not follow on it one does not go to reckonings." Poussin, ibid., 572, SA, 16, 3b. The Pāli, SN, III, 35 (22, 35) says: "If one tends to anything one is measured after it, and if one is measured after it one is reckoned by it (yaṃ kho bhikkhu anuseti, taṃ anumīyati, yaṃ anumīyati, tena saṃkhaṃ gacchati)."
In the Great Vehicle, it is said: "The past thought is already vanished, the future thought is not reached yet, the present thought does not stand (yadi tāvad atītaṃ cittaṃ tat kṣīṇaṃ yad anāgataṃ cittaṃ tad asaṃprāptaḥ atha pratyutpannasya cittasya sthitir nāsti)." A. von Staël-Holstein, ed., Kāśyapa-parivarta, Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1944, §97, 142. The Diamond scripture says: "The past thought cannot be got at, the present thought cannot be got at, the future thought cannot be got at."
Without apprehension of time, there is no thing, no object, and no present. One can still perfectly remain aware of what happens, but one refrains from freezing that flow of what happens by means of concepts and categories, structures and frameworks, one abstains from making relations, and in such a state, there can be no present. The question, whether relations are objective, exist out there, or not (but are instead purely thought-up), does not arise.
Kant, B208: "sensation is not at all in itself an objective representation, and in it are found neither the intuition of space nor that of time." Kant, Preisschrift, XX, 325: "By this naked intuition without concept, the object is certainly given but not thought [Durch diese blosse Anschauung ohne Begriff wird der Gegenstand zwar gegeben, aber nicht gedacht], by the concept without the corresponding intuition it is thought but not given, and in both cases it is not known [nicht erkannt]." This is a rephrasing of A258, B314: "If we separate them [the understanding and sensibility], we have intuitions without concepts, or concepts without intuitions, and in both cases we have representations which we cannot refer to any determined object [Gegenstand]." B166: "We cannot think to ourselves an object unless by means of the categories; we cannot know a thought-up object [gedachten Gegenstand] unless by means of intuitions, which correspond to these concepts [Wir können uns keinen Gegenstand denken, ohne durch Kategorien; wir können keinen gedachten Gegenstand erkennen, ohne durch Anschauungen, die jenen Begriffen entsprechen]." Also A253, B309: "If I take away from an empirical knowledge all thought (through the categories), there remains no more knowledge of any object [Gegenstand]; because by the naked intuition nothing is thought [durch blosse Anschauung wird gar nichts gedacht], and the fact that there is in me this affection of sensibility does not produce any relation of such a representation to any one object [dass diese Affektion der Sinnlichkeit in mir ist, macht gar keine Beziehung von dergleichen Vorstellung auf irgend ein Objekt aus]."
Colophon
Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on March 7, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post arose from a thread about free will, but expands into a sustained argument — drawing on Leibniz, Kant, Krishnamurti, the layman Citra's doctrine of the strifeless, and the Great Vehicle teaching on the ungrasped present — that without desire to fuel mentation, there are simply no "things" or "objects" at all.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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