From Impermanence to Emptiness: Madhyamaka and Momentariness

For many people, fear of old age or of death is replaced by an anxiety about the implacable tread of Time. This phantasmal but ever-present antagonist becomes a stand-in for the future imponderables which have less of a grip on their imagination. They turn to philosophies of time not from speculative curiosity, but in search of relief from the oppression caused by the incessant falling of sand in the hourglass, by the dismaying speed with which the quiet lapse of hours converts into an unbelievable – yet unchallengeable – reckoning of vanished years. Often the philosophers are more than happy to respond to their demand, with bland assurances that “time, like space, has most evidently proved not to be real, but to be a contradictory appearance” (Bradley, 36). If a deconstruction of time is called for, who holds out more promise than Nâgârjuna, the most radical of the Buddhist philosophers? In its rigid structure, its unfaltering rhythm, its undeniable, ever-present insistence, time would appear to have the character of intrinsic existence (svabhâva), which Nâgârjuna systematically refutes. His doctrine that all phenomena are empty (sunya) of such existence promises to end the fret of our chafing against the chain of time.