Buddhism A to Z "T": "'Earlier a disciple asked me, 'What is time?' I haven't any time. There is no time. Time is just each person's individual awareness of long and short; that is all. If you are happy every day, fifty years can go by and you won't feel it has been a long time. If one's life is very blissful, if one has no worries, anxieties, anger, or afflictions, one's entire life seems but a short time--the blink of an eye. Ultimately, time is nothing more than a distinction based upon each person's awareness. . . . (SS II 69)

If 'the present' and 'future' exist presupposing the 'the past,' 'the present' and 'future' will exist in 'the past.'

If 'the present' and 'future' did not exist there [in 'the past'], how could 'the present' and 'future' exist presupposing that 'past'?

Without presupposing 'the past' the two things ['the present' and 'future']cannot be proved to exist.

Therefore, neither present nor future time exist.

In this way the remaining two [times] can be inverted.

Thus one would regard 'highest,' 'lowest' and 'middle,' etc., and oneness and difference.

A non-stationary 'time' cannot be 'grasped;' and a stationary 'time' which can be grasped does not exist.

How, then, can one perceive time if it is not 'grasped?'

Since time is dependent on a thing (bhava), how can time [exist] without a thing?

There is not any thing which exists; how, then, will time become [something]?

(Nagarjuna, 'Mulamadhyamakakarikas', Streng, tr. Emptiness)

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1) Ch. shr , 2) Skt. kala, 3) Pali kala.

See also: world-system.

BTTS References: TT 6; EDR I 28-29; UW 219-220, 222; FAS Ch5-6 115Ä 117; FAS Ch9 147-148; SS II 68-69; SS IV ?; VS 124. "