sam

I spoke at Yale. I pointed out a few things. 1. There is a “time before time” in the Buddhist cosmogenesis. Between the awakening of Brahma (the first being to appear after the reemergence of the world) and the rise of the Sun out of the sea, there is technically a time before time. The length of this is not stated, but timekeeping only begins when the Sun begins to move and days are constituted. Buddhist time is calibrated to a worldly Sun (and then the Moon). 2. Buddhist timekeeping is not a consistent system. Buddhist traditions across history did not follow a single or standardized system of timekeeping and calendrical science. What was done in India was very different from China and Tibet. 3. There is no one Buddhist calendar. People didn't agree on the number of years elapsed since the Buddha's death. 4. Buddhists added elements to timekeeping. The most obvious example is the seven-day week, which is Greco-Egyptian in origin. Why does this matter? If something so fundamental as timekeeping was never consistently formulated and applied across Buddhist traditions, should we expect coherence for abstract doctrines such as karma, the Noble Truths, emptiness, non-self, etc.? – at New Haven, CT