DJ Trump and the Sarvāstivādin Theory of Momentariness…
Reflections in the back seat
For those of you who are not in the process of pursuing a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies, let me explain that the Sarvāstivādins were a large Abhidharma-era group that split off from the mainstream Theravādins after Asoka’s third Buddhist Council at Pataliputra c. 250 BCE, over their insistence that ‘everything exists’, i.e. ‘sarvam asti‘ (or something like that, my Sanskrit sucks), while the Theravādins preferred a bit more ‘discrimination’…
And part of that theory of everything was an atomistic conception of time: atoms, of both time and matter, and classifiable as either: (1) states of consciousness (citta); (2) mental ‘concomitants’ (cetasika); (3) corporeality (rūpa); plus (4) nirvāna. According to the Sarvāstivādin conception of time, these could exist equally well in the past, present or future. For their part the Theravādins only acknowledged the present, albeit in successive moments… (More …)
…crazy, baby, like WOW, brother, like don’t f*ck with my ETERNAL NOW, sister, feeling the Bern and the rising tide, of the coming revolution and time on our side, blows against the empire and folks too proud to beg, quinoa muesli tofu granola and the gluten-free fertilized free-range yolk-free three-minute egg, man…
streaming consciousness... 
Reply