Madhyamaka and Advaita Vedānta on the Ontology of Time
Voprosy filosofii January 1, 2022 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.21146/0042-8744-2022-12-168-179 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Madhyamaka Buddhism and Advaita Vedānta differ fundamentally on the ontology of time. For Madhyamaka, time is a mental construction produced by afflicted consciousness, with no reality beyond epistemology; true reality is timeless and free from distinctions like past, present, and future. In Advaita Vedānta, time has a positive but relative ontological status as part of māyā, the creative power of Brahman. Though the empirical world is not perfectly real, it is not utterly unreal—it conceals Brahman and manifests ignorance. Liberation involves penetrating through the changing, temporal world to reach truly real Brahman.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Madhyamaka treats time as an epistemological phenomenon with no reality, while Advaita Vedānta grants time a relative ontological status as part of māyā, the creative power of Brahman. |
Abstract
Fundamental difference between Buddhist Mahāyāna school of Madhyamaka and Brāhmaṇic school of Advaita Vedānta in interpretation of ontology of time is analyzed on the basis of Nāgārjuna’s (2–3rd cc.) treatise Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā, Candrakīrti’s (7th c.) commentary Prasannapadā, Vasubandhu’s (4th c.) treatise Abhidharmakośa, Asaṅga’s (4th c.) Abhidharma-samuccaya, Śaṃkara’s (9th c.) commentary to Bādarāyaṇa’s (2nd c.) Brahma- sūtras and Sadānanda’s (15th c.) Vedāntasāra. Time according to Madhyamaka is the result of the activity of consciousness blinded by afflictions (kleśa), and therefore it is just mental construction having no referent in reality. There is no time in true reality, for time presupposes the difference between past, present and future. But, according to Mahāyāna, any difference is engendered by afflictions and the true reality is free from them. Differences, including the difference between past, present and future, exist only in a saṃsāric consciousness. In other words, time for Mahāyāna is nothing more than an epistemological phenomenon. Time in Advaita Vedānta has a positive ontological status. The only true reality is Brahman, and the empirical world is subject to changes and therefore cannot be considered as perfectly real. But if it were perfectly unreal it could not conceal Brahman and manifest itself in individual consciousness as ignorance. Therefore time as one of its aspects is only relatively real and exists not only in individual consciousness but also outside of it as a part of māyā, the creative power of Brahman. The overcoming of ignorance is the penetration to truly real Brahman through changing and temporary world that conceals it.