Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 13-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering takes up a question that sounds simple but isn’t: what exactly is time? Drawing on the Abhidharma — Buddhist scholastic phenomenology — he maps all phenomena into three categories: form, mind, and a miscellaneous bin called “non-associated compositional factors.” Time belongs to that third category: it exists, yet it is neither form nor consciousness. He explains why time counts as a functioning, impermanent thing — constant momentary change makes one moment give rise to the next — and distinguishes our shared karmic experience of time (seasons cycling, hours running out) from the personal, subjective sense that time drags or flies. He closes with the three standard divisions: past, present, and future. A compact philosophical primer for students new to Buddhist categories of existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 BS GtL 2005 03 01.mp3
UUID: 1cf589ad-58ec-4ea1-a9f8-9ccf71a02759
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Bodhisattva Guide to Life (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 13.2 minutes
Words: ~888
Okay. So first of all, time isn’t form. Time is what’s called a a non associated compositional factor. Alright? Which means it’s neither consciousness nor form.
Alright? So in in Okay. So in Buddhist cosmology or phenomenology, alright, all phenomena are divided into three things. They can either be mind, matter, or non associated compositional factors, which is a short form of saying not mind or matter. Alright?
It’s like a miscellaneous category. Yeah. So these are things that exist, but they don’t exist as mind and they don’t exist as form. Okay? So time exists because there is this if you have because things keep changing.
Right? Because there is a constant change. Yeah? And because there’s constant change, one more moment follows another moment follows another moment follows another moment. Yeah.
This is the nature of our existence. There is constant change in our existence. Time exists because an hour runs out, the next hour starts. Yeah. It exists because previous moments of by by relation to previous moments of mind of time, future moments of time exist.
Right? And it’s the nature of our existence as humans in this realm to have the time scheme that we do. Yeah? That is winter runs out, spring comes about or then what comes after spring? Summer.
Autumn, winter. It it goes like this. The world turns like this, and we experience time like this. Now, in general, the cause for time to be like it is is our karma. Alright?
It’s a it’s a generic karma of being of being born as a a human being to experience time. Said. Okay. So you so this is the experience that we have of things changing and changing and changing, and that’s part of our general experience as human beings that we share in terms of our karma or our the results of our karmic actions with other beings. Yeah?
Now we can have a personal experience of time depending on how we use time or what we do with our time. So whether we’re working in our time and it it feels like it’s happening slowly or enjoying ourselves and it feels like it’s happening fast, right, we can have a personal experience of time. But the way that time works is is much more of a a vaster experience that we share with other human beings, which means one moment follows the next follows the next follows the next. So it’s part of more general karmic experience as opposed to a personal experience. So that means it’s not it’s yeah.
Okay. So in In Buddhist terms, yeah, there’s this this thing that they study called Abhidharma or collected topics. Right? Whatever you wanna call it. They divide things into things.
Yeah? So they start it starts off with this idea that you have things that can be known and things that can’t be known. Right? Things that can be known exist. Things that can’t be known don’t exist.
Right? So from amongst things that can be known, you have two types of things that can be known. That which is that which is permanent and that which is a functioning thing. Right? Okay.
So there’s a permanent or a functioning thing, permanent or impermanent functioning thing. Yeah? From amongst these two, a functioning thing is that which undergoes momentary change. Yeah? Now as time undergoes momentary change, it’s a functioning thing.
Okay? And as and from amongst functioning things, yes, things that perform a function, there is three. Right? There is that which is form, and form includes all the things that we can visually see, all of the objects of the senses. So that is things that we can touch, things that we can smell, things that we can see, things that we can hear, and so on.
All of those kind of things. Then we have mind. Alright? So we have form and you can have mind. Yeah?
And so a mind is a consciousness, different moments of consciousness or different moments of mental activity. Right? That take objects. Yes? That’s mind.
And its definition is that it’s clear and known. Anything that doesn’t fit into those two categories gets lumped into the miscellaneous non associated compositional factors. Alright? So it’s not associated with form. It’s not associated with mind.
It’s not associated, but it’s still a compositional factor. It’s still a functioning thing. So it gets called a non associated compositional factor. Right? In this group of things, we have time for one.
Something we can know. Right? But not something that we can say is mind and not something that we can say is form. Another thing is ownership. Alright?
We can’t see ownership, but we recognize its existence. And we cannot. And it’s not mind either. Yeah? So there’s these different group a group of things that don’t quite fit into mind and don’t quite fit into form, and they’re the non associated compositional factors, and time’s one of them.
And time has three different divisions, past, present, and future. So past is that which has gone. Present is that which is now, and future is that which will happen in the future. Alright? Tomorrow, the next day, or whenever.
That’s the the divisions of time. That’s all. Yeah. And time’s up.