On the occasion of Buddh Purnima today, I yet again revisit a post which I wrote on February 25, 2017.
February 25, 2017
It is time to return to the “Kshanvaad” or the philosophy of momentariness. At its center is the astonishingly ingenious concept of Gautam Buddha that the universe is momentary and does not exist between moments. I have written about this frequently being quite conscious how quantum-like existence stood revealed to Buddha.
I describe this philosophy in with these lines of mine:
क्षणों के मध्य में जो छुपा है
वही तो हमारा भ्रम है
हमारे अस्तित्व का
(Kshanon ke madhy mein jo chhupa hai
Wahi to hamara bhram hai
Hamare astitv ka)
What hides between moments
Is our illusion
Of our existence
--Mayank Chhaya
I am as interested in the philosophy of momentariness as I am in quantum physics because both in their own way deal with an unresolved realm at the Kshan/quantum level. It is not my case that there is any intellectual affinity between the two. One was conceived of by the staggering mind of Buddha over 2500 years ago while the other a collective result of the work done by Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger and Werner Heisenberg in the early 20th century.
I find Kshanvaad calming in a strange way. Swinging from moment to moment like on vines in a surreal jungle of time is exhilarating. A vast majority of us negotiates swinging on vines for quite a long duration; some of us miss and fall in the void of illusion that we call death.
If the universe and the experience of the universe, including our own individual existence, is nothing but forever flowing discrete moments, then what is all this frenzy about anything? This has been my default response to everything in life so far. Of course, there have been times in recent years when familial responsibilities trigger a baser level response but as a single self, I have no particular response to anything.
‘Kshanvaad’ is part of the overarching Buddhist idea of Anitya or Impermanence. Those who believe in the traditional God-Us dynamic, as in most religions of the world, feel rather unsettled by the idea of Impermanence/Momentariness and hence perpetual fluidity of existence, its origin, its meaning and its resolution. As in quantum physics, we never really catch the essence of our existence. I have never felt unsettled by this. I ride discrete moments of existence like a highly skilled surfer or a vine leaper.
***
On Buddh Purnima some years ago I wrote about what Buddh thought about the idea of existence.
One of the most brilliant insights that came from him was the idea that we are forever in the process of becoming and never become. That is at the heart of Anitya or Anicca* or Impermanence.
Just consider some of what Buddh said and you get a measure of the man's cerebral depth.
“That being present, this becomes; from the arising of that, this arises. That being absent, this does not become; from the cessation of that, this ceases.”
Or this.
“The being of a past moment of thought has lived, but does not live, nor will it live.
“The being of a future moment of thought will live, but has not lived nor does it live.
“The being of the present moment of thought does live, but has not lived, nor will it live.”
I am willing to assert that as a purely cerebral living goes, there has been nothing that has surpassed Buddha since Buddha with the possible exception of Albert Einstein. In the timeline that we understand, that would be some 2500 years. It is ironic that for someone who emphasized the idea of Anitya or Anicca or Impermanence above all else seems to have lasted quite a while.