What does Buddhism have to say about "time"? One thing's sure, there is anionic time called the Eternal Now. There is only now, and there only ever has been now.
But that is hard to understand until one experiences it then it suddenly seems obvious. Ask Eckhart Tolle. He experienced it and wrote The Power of Now with just one message for the world, talk after talk.
Ram Dass on LSD saw love
Ram Dass (Harvard Jew turned Hindu Dr. Richard Alpert) wrote the classic Be Here Now, having also realized this truth about time. There are wonderful stories in ancient Indian texts about time that say that time is NOT simultaneous. It is relative. It differs from plane to plane in Buddhism's 31 Planes of Existence.
Ancient India understood that time in terms of kalpas (aeons) explained by akasha devas (space entities). It moves differently in heavenly worlds, lasting so much longer than our time -- but possibly happening at the same time. Time will feel very long, even eternal, in other worlds, on other planes. But though that much time may move that slowly there, it will not simultaneously move that way on earth.
Whoa, perhaps too much thinking doesn't pay and I should just be attentive to now and accept.
.
The ancient Vedas speak of time travel?
One Vedic Sanskrit tale speaks of a king and his daughter who were visited by ETs and invited to visit their world/planet. They boarded a vimana (UFO), flew there very quickly, enjoyed a day there, then asked to return home. They were told they could be returned home, but a great deal of time would have passed on earth while they were visiting. When they returned, everyone they ever knew would be long dead and forgotten.
But this is all I have to say about time. I learned it in college as an anecdote in the social sciences. I laughed at how backward some human societies can be until I suddenly realized they were right. We were wrong and we had always been wrong. You know how we say time is an arrow moving from left to right?
We can, and often do, picture time like a boat moving west on a river. The boat relentlessly move from the past (on the left) through the present (in the middle) into the future (on the right). That may all be true. What this society saw is the opposite of what we see, and that is:
Which way am I facing in the arrow of time?
Where are we standing on this boat moving through time?
WEST'S ANSWER: Of course, we're toward the front of the boat, in the driver's seat, looking forward into the future, the present all around us, and the past vanishing into the distance behind us.
THEIR ANSWER: Of course, we are in the back of the boat only ever looking backward into the past. We can never see the future (other than with premonitions, omens, or exhibitions of psychic power) because the boat hasn't gotten there yet (and of course never really does because everything always stays in the present, which is all there is).
What time is it? - Look carefully.
But, we might argue, what about the past? I'm always living in the past, except for the time I "spend" (metaphorically like a limited amount of money) living in the future.
I spend next to no time here, now, just being.
I ruminate and am sad about the past, or I worry and am nervous about the future. I more or less ignore the present -- except when meditating, practicing mindfulness (sati), or listening to the Dhamma, the Buddha's Teachings.
Time travel will confuse us more
The truth is, if we think about it, even when we are "living" in the past or future, we only ever actually do that NOW. We don't go back to the past, and we don't actually "go" to the future. Those are just designations, so that the only time we ever are when we look is in the present. We are not present for the present, but that's where we actually are. Virtually, we're wasting away in the imaginary past or imaginary future, being imagined right NOW. But where are we on that imaginary boat in the example?
That's right, they're right. We've been wrong and haven't been seeing it correctly. We are not in the front part looking forward, and we certainly aren't in the driver's seat (controlling all that's coming at us). We are being carried along, not knowing where we're going, and only finding out after the fact.
I'm bored being here now. Let's talk future.
It could well be that this "now" business is not just a designation. Like a book or album, all time may already be. The story might already be set but we just haven't read it or heard it yet. So we imagine we have perfect freewill and will find out as things transpire.
Time exists, but how it exists -- not as a natural and integral part of the universe, but an artificial and imposed screening device -- is the real question. In a book, there is no time. It is all there all at once. In reading it or flipping through the pages, we create a kind of time or sequencing, ordering, stacking. We can read slowly or jump around very quickly, but wherever we go (in the book), there we are. When? Now. Only ever now.
This is the first paradox of time: Our attitudes toward time have a profound impact on our lives and world, yet we seldom recognize it. The authors' goal is to help reclaim yesterday, enjoy today, and master tomorrow with new ways of seeing and working with our past, present, and future. Just as Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences permanently altered our understanding of intelligence and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink gave us an appreciation for the adaptive unconscious, Prof. of Social Psychology Philip Zimbardo (infamous for his Stanford Prison Experiment) and Dr. John Boyd’s book changes the way we think about and experience time.
Astropyre (video); text by Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
It’s time for our newest installment on Paṭṭhāna — the Buddha’s hyper-precise in-depth teachings on cause and effect. For those not yet up to speed on this series, I recommend reading my previous posts. For the sake of today’s installment, the one on different types of “support” is relevant.
Those who have read the previous one on the three different types of support will remember that one of those three is sahajata paccaya — the condition by which things must always arise at the same time.
Paccaya is the Pali word for “cause” or “condition.” Jati is the Pali word for “birth.” Saha means “same” — so sahajata means “born at the same time.”
But Patthana goes further. It also offers us purejata paccaya and pacchajata paccaya. The jata part still means “born,” while pure is Pali for “before,” and paccha is Pali for “after” — so here we have “born before” and “born after” conditions.
Of these two, purejata paccaya, or “born-before condition,” is intuitively far easier to understand. This is a condition whereby the cause arises before the effect. We can think of countless examples in nature where this condition holds:
a mother must always be born before her child,
the fruit tree must always grow before the fruit,
the river must exist before the fish come and swim in it.
In Abhidhamma terms, an example of this condition would be the various types of sensitive materiality that must already exist in order to support the consciousness that arises dependent on them. For example, eye-sensitive materiality must already exist in order for eye-consciousness to arise.
Another example occurs with some objects of attention. For example, eye-consciousness cannot arise without a visual object to cognize. So the visual object, which will be some kind of light or color, needs to already be existing and well established in order for eye-consciousness to arise. The cause comes first; the result comes after.
Pacchajata paccaya, however, is not as intuitive. Here we have the result arising first and the cause coming later. What?! Backwards [retro-] causality? Really? Well, no, not quite. It’s not really as mystical as it might sound.
Pacchajata paccaya is actually a condition whereby something that arises later is the cause for something that arose earlier to keep on existing. For example, there’s rain that falls after a tree already exists and helps keep that tree alive. Another example would be how children may at times give their otherwise exhausted parents a reason to keep on living, or indeed how students might give their weary teacher a reason to keep on teaching. ;-)
In Abhidhamma terms, we see that the consciousness and mental factors support materiality to keep on existing, even though the materiality existed first and the consciousness and mental factors came along later.
Why time has a direction
The truly powerful thing about these two conditions is that
I study without but not within.
they give a direction to time.
Time, at least in the way we usually think about it, is just a concept. It is something the mind makes up to measure change.
This is easy to understand by choosing any unit of time and thinking about how it is defined.
One year = the Earth goes round our Sun;
One day = the Earth completes a full rotation on its axis;
One second = the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine energy levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. (Yes, that really is how it came to be defined).
Time is always measured in terms of an amount of change that has happened in that period. Change is what is really happening. Time is the mind’s overlay in order to measure and make sense of the change.
But if time is just a concept, does that mean that we can just choose to freeze or go back or forwards in time? Well, no, because what purejata paccaya and pacchajata paccaya tell us is that some things must always happen first and other things must always happen after.
The flow of change has a direction. It doesn’t just seem to have a direction on a conceptual level. The directionality of time is hard-baked into the building blocks of reality.
So here we have two unassuming conditions having a profound effect on our reality or at least on how we experience it. If reality itself unfolds directionally, what does that tell us about the nature of our own lives?
What things in our lives need to come first? What things must follow after in order to sustain us? Let me know in the comments how you see these two conditions quietly working in daily life and how they are shaping your Dhamma paths.
Though, just like with other famous and eccentric personalities, there are real facts mixed with myths that survive to this day. Is he another Ashkenazi Jew guilty of incest? Or was he a crossdresser who married himself?
Having married his manly looking cousin, who grew to look more and more exactly like him, does not bolster his case for good judgment. But she may have been instrumental in his fame and his math.
In this gallery let's debunk some of the myths and bring a number of surprising facts about Al that most have probably never heard. Browse through and learn more about the supposed genius that was Dr. Einstein (who had no doctoral degree of any kind). More: msn.com
There are two Einsteins, aren't there? Not Mr. and Mrs., but rather like Jesus (Yeshua) the real person and the pop icon (Christ). Reza Aslan was emphatic about this distinction. Everyone knows about the popular fantasy, and very few bother to learn about a possible historical figure in the context of his cultural milieu.
During the historic dialogue between rabbis and the Dalai Lama, as told in his international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, Rodger Kamenetz heard a penetrating question to the rabbis: "How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?"
To Kamenetz, this seemed the most fundamental question to ask of any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you with negative emotions like anxiety, envy, resentment, and shame?
You support our cause, right Mr. Lama?
Taking the listener with him on an exhilarating intellectual and emotional journey, he finds a natural spiritual path in the imagination. Kamenetz connects daily life to spiritual longing, from the musical rhythms of his beloved New Orleans to his tender bond with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, visionary founder of Jewish Renewal and a central figure in the Dharamsala, India (where the Dalai Lama lives in exile), dialogue.
Why light speed is the LIMIT? What Feynman uncovered will COLLAPSE your mind
(Imagine the Physics) Jan. 8, 2026: Ever wonder why nothing can break what Eistein called the "cosmic speed limit"? 🚀
Most people think it's just "Einstein's rule" — but the real answer is WAY weirder.
The speed of light isn't some arbitrary speed limit slapped onto the universe. It's literally built into the structure of space and time itself.
⚠️WARNING:
This channel is not officially connected to Richard Feynman or his estate. It's here to share his incredible way of explaining physics with a new generation who never got to learn from him directly. This is not his voice — it's a tribute to his teaching style, created purely for education and inspiration. No impersonation intended, just deep respect for one of history's greatest teachers.
🙏
All content created to inspire, educate, and encourage reflection. This channel follows YouTube’s monetization policies, including clear labeling of synthetic media.
This channel has no official connection to Richard Feynman, his estate, or Caltech. It is composed of independent educators using AI technology to make Feynman's teachings more accessible.
What the channel does: Transform Feynman's lectures and writings into engaging video format using AI voice synthesis, staying faithful to his original words and style.
What it does not do: Claim this is actually Feynman speaking, add our own theories, or misrepresent his ideas.
This journey starts with Newton staring at our Moon and realizing something wild: It's FALLING (sideways making an ellipsis) right now. It is constantly falling toward Earth (but missing because it's moving sideways). That single insight kicked off a 400-year avalanche of discoveries about how the universe really works.
⚡ Then came a total accident: Astronomers noticed Jupiter's moons were running 8 minutes late sometimes. Instead of blaming their math, one guy (Rømer) had a crazy idea: What if light takes TIME to travel? Boom! "Speed of light" discovered by accident, while studying gravity.
🧠 Fast forward to Einstein, who breaks everyone's brain by proving that the faster we move, the slower TIME flows for us. Not as a feeling — it does so literally. Our clock ticks more slowly. Distances shrink. The universe reshapes itself around us to keep light moving at exactly the same speed no matter what.
This has been TESTED.
✅ Particle accelerators prove it. GPS satellites depend on it. (They'd fail without Einstein's corrections). Cosmic rays streaming through our atmosphere show it. The universe doesn't care about our common sense; it plays by different rules.
💡 Feynman's genius was showing how these discoveries connect, how confidence in one law helps us discover the next. How asking the question, "Why are Jupiter's moons wrong?" led to finding light speed, how each breakthrough creates an avalanche of new ones.
Ready for a brain rewiring? Let's go. ⚡
💬 QUESTION:
What breaks the brain more, that Jupiter's moons revealed light speed or that time literally slows down when we move? Ever thought about why GPS actually works? Let us know what hit differently!
👇
📚 GO DEEPER:
Want to explore this?
📖 "Six Not-So-Easy Pieces" by Feynman — the relativity chapters are 🔥
📖 "The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. 1" — Chapters 7-9 (gravity), 15-17 (relativity)
📖 "The Character of Physical Law" — Chapter 4 is a masterpiece
📖 Free access to all lectures: feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.
⚠️ DISCLAIMER:
This channel is not officially connected to Richard Feynman or his estate. It is here to share his incredible way of explaining physics with a new generation who never got to learn from him directly. This is not his voice; it's a tribute to his teaching style, created purely for education and inspiration. No impersonation is intended, just deep respect for one of history's greatest teachers.
🙏
Every video is carefully researched from his published works and lectures. This channel is independent, unofficial, and driven by one mission: keeping Feynman's legacy alive for curious minds everywhere.
“I spent 3 years with Tall White space aliens at Area 51," UFO whistleblower Charles Hall
(Jesse Michels) Sept. 11, 2025: American Alchemy. Our American Alchemist this week is American scientist Charles Hall.
He shares his extraordinary experiences with extraterrestrial beings at Area 51 known as the Tall Whites, detailing his time at Area 51 and interactions with various alien species.
He challenges established scientific theories, particularly Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, with his Hall Photon Theory, suggesting that advanced alien technology operates on principles beyond current human understanding.
12:15 The nature of alien craft and their abilities
20:28 The coexistence of aliens and military operations
25:21 Patterns of military bases and paranormal activity
29:21 Historical context of Area 51 and military secrecy
32:29 The role of extraterrestrials in human history
41:14 Psychological insights and alien interactions
01:09:46 The speed of gravity and electromagnetism
01:14:54 Designing UFOs: principles of propulsion
01:22:30 Deep space vs. Scout crafts: purpose and design
01:29:36 The role of subatomic particles in craft design
01:36:46 Materials and technology in UFO construction
01:41:58 Human interaction with extraterrestrial crafts
01:53:42 The Tall Whites: goals and diplomatic relations
02:02:38 Tim Taylor: NASA connections and ET encounters
Hall discusses the implications of these interactions on human evolution and the nature of UFOs (vimanas, spaceships, flying saucers, UAPs), providing insights into their design and [anti-gravity] propulsion systems.
Hall invites us to imagine a future when humanity must expand its science, its spirit, and its vision of "reality" to meet the cosmos on equal terms.
What if I, Ven. Subhuti (americanmonk.org), were to explain the Three Jewels (Triple Gem) to Westerners who know very little about Buddhism but do it in an unconventional way?
What if I were to use an analogy to understand what the Buddha (Teacher), the Dhamma (Teaching), and the Sangha (Taught) really mean?
That might work, Bhante ("venerable sir"). Let's give it a try.
Westerners respect Real Fly Science Guy Alby Einstein and the laws of physics.
The Buddha — The Awakened One — discovered the Path to Awakening. If I were to talk about the Buddha, I would say he’s a great scientist, but not just any great scientist.
He’s the Alby Einstein of scientists.
The Buddha discovered (rediscovered because others in ancient times also awakened and taught the liberating truth) the laws of the spiritual (metaphysical) universe, the Dhamma, just as Einstein discovered (rediscovered) some laws of physics. All of these laws existed before, during, and after these discoveries. Neither the Buddha nor Einstein created them, of course. They are always there to be found.
Of course, the comparison is imperfect. Einstein is talking about the world we see and touch, whereas the Buddha goes far beyond to the unseen and hard to grasp. If one is worldly, the other seeks to go beyond. Beyond? Beyond the beyond, as the Heart Sutra claims. What is the use of worldly science to get beyond the world?
Do people understand that the Buddha’s realization was about ultimate truth? It’s not just counterintuitive, it’s timeless, beyond time, reaching universal laws of nature.
The Dhamma is the Truth, the Law, the Norm, the Regularity of thing, like E = mc² — a universal truth that does not depend on faith, belief, or even understanding. If no one understood, it would be no less true. (If no one entered nirvana, nirvana would remain just the same; like the ocean, it is neither increased nor decreased as rivers pour into it).
The Dhamma exists. It precedes things, succeeds them. It was existing before the Buddha realized it and continued just the same after him. But what truth could be true, unchanged, before and after?
For one thing, there’s the truth of suffering. Disappointment exists. It arises dependent on conditions. Three other more hopeful things are also true. Suffering has a cause. It has an end. And there is a path leading to the end of all suffering. This overview is known as the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
These are not ideas, not mere hypotheses, but truths to be tested, each person for oneself. There is no need of acceptance or faith -- except the faith (saddha, confidence) to come and see, to investigate, to test the path for oneself.
Natural laws govern the mind, body, and life itself. When one understands these deeply, so deeply that they have been penetrated, one awakens. The Truth is that close. How to approach it for optimal results, that only a supremely awakened teacher can point out.
The Saṅgha — Those Who Understand
Who hears the Buddha? The Sangha.
How to explain the spiritual community of practitioners, the Saṅgha, whether taken as the entire community of practitioners of Buddhism, the accomplished Noble (Aryan) Community, or the elite researchers, the Monastic Community?
Anyone can study physics, but only a few reach the research level, where they truly see the laws at work. Likewise, anyone can hear the Buddha's Teaching, the Dhamma, and attempt to practice it.
However, only the Noble Community (Ariya Saṅgha) — those who have already directly realized it, penetrated it, and therefore entered the four stages of enlightenment — truly know-and-see it. Between the average practitioner and the accomplished practitioner, there are the avid practitioners, the monastics.
That’s why it is said that "going for guidance" (sarana) to the Triple Gem or Three Jewels is not just going to any community. It is approaching the Noble Saṅgha — the four pairs and eight individuals who have attained realization (bodhi) and directly glimpsed nirvana (nibbāna).
The Poster on the Wall
Oh, Alby, what is the right equation?
I once met a physicist who said he didn’t "believe" in religion.
He said that many elite physicists do not believe either. Instead, they follow another religion of faith ("Scientism" or "White Labcoatism"). They think that when we die, that’s it, we’re dead and nothing happens.
This is the materialist, annihilationist wrong view the Buddha warned about, which is as much in error as the spiritualist, eternalist wrong view. He cautioned to avoid both extremes, following the Middle Way that explains all phenomena in terms of Dependent Origination, so that what does not make sense and seems to be a binary, a dichotomy, resolves into a very rational and impersonal explanation of things in line with ultimate truth.
Orthodox Theravādins might think of the Buddha in similar terms. While an average person is subject to old age, sickness, death, and [incessant] rebirth, a fully enlightened person (arahant) and a supremely enlightened Buddha has gone beyond all suffering and is no longer subject to this painful cycle known as samsara (the Wheel of Life and Death).
When one passes away, there is no more the arising of the rebirth-linking-consciousness in the very next mind-moment as there is with everyone else.
A physicist who is an atheist might have a large poster of Einstein on the wall. When stuck on a problem, that research physicist might look at it and may at times say, “Help me, Einstein!”
One doesn’t believe Einstein is listening — yet feels inspired by approaching, bring to mind Einstein, and directing attention towards him to renew confidence and inspiration. "Einstein" lives on through the laws he discovered and made known and through those who continue to explore and realize the truth of those laws of physics.
The Buddha's life as allegory: the heroic journey
That’s exactly how the Buddha “lives” on through the Dhamma,the Teaching, the things made known through his great awakening.
The Buddha himself said,
“Whoever sees the dhamma [the truth of phenomena] sees the Buddha.”
So when someone knows and practices the Teachings, the Dhamma, that Dhamma is alive in that person, and that person knows the Buddha in that way and to that extent — not as a being abiding somewhere else but as that wisdom itself.
As long as Einstein’s physics are made known and kept alive, we may also say that Einstein also lives on.
Going Beyond Mind and Matter
In the end, all that arises — the Five Aggregates clung to as self, the mind and body — pass away.
When one truly knows Dhamma, that knowing leads beyond mind and matter. That’s nirvana: the complete cessation of ignorance and suffering with no more new arising of mind and matter.
So may this reflection help those on the path to develop right view so as to see clearly into the true nature of reality and reach the peace of nirvana safely and quickly.
Summary poem
The Buddha saw the timeless law
Pure, unwritten, free of flaw
Like Einstein beholding light of form
Knowing the effects of atom torn
The Dhamma lives when Truth is known
The Saṅgha walks a path of wisdom grown
Not in realms unseen at which angels gnaw
The Buddha lives by Dhamma's awe
Bhante, Ven. Subhuti (americanmonk.org), Oct. 8, 2025; edited by Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly
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