Comments on: Time as a range of mountain peaks, or not http://www.numenware.com/article/532 Religion. Brain. Dogen. Language. Japan. Fri, 16 May 2008 13:38:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: DavidD http://www.numenware.com/article/532#comment-553 DavidD Sat, 29 Jul 2006 17:36:03 +0000 http://www.numenware.com/article/532#comment-553 I don’t suppose Dogen knew how relativity shows time to be just as linear as any spatial dimension. Someone might be tempted to write off this discussion from knowing that, but like many words, “time” can means many things. As a physical entity, there is no question that time is utterly linear, at least anywhere near our existence. Yet time is also an element of our consciousness, and there one can look at different possibilities for time. One I think about a lot is how I forget the vast majority of my life, instead building myself up from a few moments, some of which were contained completely within those moments, some of which were summaries from some long process, the details of which I forget. These can be from long ago or recently - decidedly nonlinear. I try to think about possibilities for time in whatever nonphysical world my consciousness might connect with. That’s very hard. There are so many possibilities there, so many things that may be real or may be metaphors, like an afterlife, that are hard to know what to do with. I don’t suppose Dogen knew how relativity shows time to be just as linear as any spatial dimension. Someone might be tempted to write off this discussion from knowing that, but like many words, “time” can means many things. As a physical entity, there is no question that time is utterly linear, at least anywhere near our existence. Yet time is also an element of our consciousness, and there one can look at different possibilities for time. One I think about a lot is how I forget the vast majority of my life, instead building myself up from a few moments, some of which were contained completely within those moments, some of which were summaries from some long process, the details of which I forget. These can be from long ago or recently - decidedly nonlinear.

I try to think about possibilities for time in whatever nonphysical world my consciousness might connect with. That’s very hard. There are so many possibilities there, so many things that may be real or may be metaphors, like an afterlife, that are hard to know what to do with.

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