Mountains are time and seas are time

Ever since I can remember, I've always wondered about the concept of time. What exactly is it, and what do we mean when we say things like "time is passing"? Is the passing of time just an illusion of our senses? Sure we can accurately measure a second or a minute, but, if time proceeds without any input from our minds, it would pass at the same pace for everybody, regardless of our situations or states of mind. But we all know that this is not the case ... people often say, "time flies when you're havin' fun" and time seems to go much slower when you're anxiously awaiting your exam results, and people often report that time seems to go in slow motion just before a car accident.

Isaac Newton, one of history's greatest ever scientists, wrote: "Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external." The Newtonian notion of universal time - a time scale that is the same for all observers anywhere in the universe - prevailed virtually unchallenged, until a humble Swiss patent clerk began thinking about it. That humble patent clerk was, of course, Albert Einstein.

In his "Special Theory of Relativity", Einstein destroyed the concept of absolute and universal time. He showed that time is flexible - it can be distorted by motion and by gravity. Each observer has his own personal scale of time that does not agree with anybody else's. For example, gravity slows down time, that is, a clock on Earth will run slower than a clock in space where the Earth's gravity is weaker. Another result of Einstein's work was to show that the constancy of the speed of light implies that a moving clock ticks more slowly than a stationary clock. The faster it goes the slower it ticks - although you'd have to be travelling extremely fast to notice the difference in ordinary clocks. If 2 observers moving relative to each other measure an event in time, they will not agree on its duration. The amount of disagreement increases with the difference in velocity between the two.

The theory of relativity rules out a universe past, present and future, so the concept of a "flow of time" doesn't really exist. Or does it? Certainly we can feel the flow of time. Moreover, the flow of time is so ingrained in our minds and culture that it must be real, right? Or are our minds playing tricks on each and every one of us?

The magazine "New Scientist" had an article "When a Second Lasts Forever" (November 1st 1997). This article talks about the so-called "brain clock": a circuit of neural activity which flows from the substantia nigra (where the neurotransmitter dopamine is produced), to the basal ganglia to the prefrontal cortex and back again to the substantia nigra. The following picture comes from the New Scientist article:

The time it takes for a dopamine-fuelled signal to complete the loop (typically 0.1 seconds) is one "tick" of the brain clock and is perceived as a single moment. If, for example, 2 events occur in 1 "moment", it will be experienced as one event. Anything that increases the amount of dopamine in the brain - for example, drugs, emotional state, even brain temperature - will speed up the brain clock and make time appear to slow down and give the impression that life is rushing by (since more events are experienced per cycle). A reduction in dopamine levels has the opposite effect. So that's it? The flow of time is simply a cycle of signals in the brain.

There is no such thing as universal time - physics and neurology tells us so. There is no "clock of ages". But, in this case, science has been pre-empted by Buddhist philosophy. Dogen, a 13th century Japanese Zen master wrote the following:

Mountains are time and seas are time. If they were not, there would be no mountains and seas. So you must not say there is no time in the immediate now of mountains and seas. If time is destroyed, mountains and seas are destroyed. If time is indestructible, mountains and seas are indestructible. Within this true Dharma, the morning star comes to appear, the Tathagata comes to appear, eyes come to appear, the holding up of the flower comes to appear. This is time. Were it not time, things would be not-so.

In other words, time and "things" cannot be separated; there is no time apart from things in the universe, so time is not a separate entity that flows inexorably forward.

Over the years, my concept of time has changed considerably, but it still remains a mystery and is something I think about a lot. I intend to write more blog entries on the subject of time, but not right now ... I simply don't have time.

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