Reading Comprehension

The human experience and observation of time has been variously interpreted. Parmenides, an Italiote Greek (Eleotic) philosopher (6th-5th century BC), and Zeno, his fellow townsman and disciple, held that change is logically inconceivable and that logic is a surer indicator of reality than experience; thus, despite appearances, reality is unitary and motionless. In this view, time is an illusion. The illusoriness of the world that flows in time is also to be found in some Indian philosophy. The Buddha and, among the Greeks Plato and Plotinus, all held that life in the time flow, though not wholly illusory, is at best a low-grade condition by comparison, respectively, with the Buddhist Nirvana (in which desires are extinguished) and with the Platonic world of Ideas; i.e., of incorporeal timeless exemplars, of which phenomena in the time flow are imperfect and ephemeral copies.

It has been held, however, by disciples of the Greek philosopher Heracleitus, that the time flow is of the essence of reality. Others have held that life in the time flow, though it may be wretched, nevertheless is momentous; for it is here that a person decides his destiny. In the Buddhist view, a person's conduct in any one of his successive lives on earth will increase or diminish his prospects of eventually breaking out of the cycle of recurrent births. For those who believe in only one earthly life, however, the momentousness of life in the time flow is still greater, because this life will be followed by an everlasting life at a destination decided by conduct in this brief and painful testing time. The view that life in time on earth is a probation for weal or woe in an everlasting future has often been associated, as it was by the Iranian prophet Zoroaster (c. 600 BC), with a belief in a general judgment of all who have ever lived to be held on a common judgment day, which will be the end of time. The belief in an immediate individual judgment was also held in pharaonic Egypt. Both beliefs have been adopted by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

The foregoing diverse interpretations of the nature and significance of the individual human being's experience and observation of time differ sharply from each other, and they have led to equally sharp differences in views of human history and of ultimate reality and in prescriptions for the conduct of life that these differing views have suggested. Variations in the two basic views of time and in the corresponding codes of conduct have been among the salient characteristics distinguishing the principal civilizations and philosophies and higher religions that have appeared in history to date.

The author qualifies the Buddhist belief that life in the time flow is illusory by citing:

• the Buddhist belief that life in the time flow is followed by an everlasting life
• the similarities between the Buddhist Nirvana and the Platonic world of Ideas
• the Buddhist belief that life in the time flow, though wretched, decides a person's destiny
• Heracleitus' contention that the time flow is the essence of reality
• the Buddhist belief in the cyclical nature of time