Madhyamaka and Advaita Vedānta on the Ontology of Time
Voprosy filosofii January 1, 2022 S. Burmistrov
The analysis contrasts how two Indian philosophical traditions—Mahāyāna Buddhism’s Madhyamaka school and the Brāhmaṇic school of Advaita Vedānta—understand time. In Madhyamaka, time is a mental construction produced by consciousness clouded by afflictions (kleśa); it has no reality outside the mind, and true reality is timeless and free from distinctions like past, present, and future. In Advaita Vedānta, time has a positive but relative ontological status: it is part of māyā, the creative power of Brahman, and exists both in individual consciousness and outside it. The empirical world, including time, is not perfectly real but is not perfectly unreal either, as it conceals the truly real Brahman. Overcoming ignorance means penetrating through the changing temporal world to reach Brahman.