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Monday Morning Greetings 2017 #40 – On Time

October 2nd, 2017

I wanted to write about time this week and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to discuss the subject of time in general or defend punctuality, so I decided to write about both. The subject of this entry is thus both about time, or “On Time” and punctuality, or being “On Time”.
 
On Time (the subject of time)
 
When I was in college Eric Mausert, now Akṣobhya dāsa, my former roommate who had joined the Hare Krishna movement the previous year, decided to stay with me for a few days at my off-campus apartment during the spring. He always found unique ways to preach to me in order to get me to join him. One morning I woke up and found a verse from the Gītā written on a little piece of white adhesive tape stuck on the back of my small black alarm clock.
 
“Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to destroy all people.” (Bg. 11.32)
 
There you are. Time is God or Viṣṇu. Viṣṇu means “God who pervades everywhere”. He witnesses our activities and then manifests as kāla, or time, to create circumstances in the future to teach us corrective lessons based on the impurities that He has witnessed in the past. The purpose of time is therefore karma.
 
Does time exist in the spiritual world? Is there not a sense of linear movement in Krishna’s pastimes, and if that is not time, what is it? Yes, there is the sequence of His activities to facilitate His desire to exchange love, but it is certainly not kāla, or time, as we know it. By definition God cannot be subjected to the superior power of anything—not past, present, or future—and certainly not the oppression of kāla or karma. And unlike kāla, where moments do not exist before they happen and immediately cease forever when they pass, all moments in the spiritual realm, even when sequential, exist eternally in all phases of time. It is just like the passing of the sun from one hour to another hour, where each hour that passes still exists somewhere on earth as do all phases of time.
 
Sound confusing? I hope not, but there is a sense that it should be. Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura, when discussing the origin of the living entity in this material world, discouraged one from trying to explain it by “the dirt of words”. I sensed he used this phrase to describe the futility of describing an event that reasonably must have both occurred and also originated by definition in a realm not subject to past, present, or future.
 
On Time (being punctual)
 
I already wrote so much about “On Time” (the subject of time) that for the sake of Monday Morning Greetings I will keep this part short. It is a misconception to think that because time, in a sense, is oppressive that regulation and punctuality stifle bhakti or spontaneity. Confucius spoke extensively on how ritual and regulation help to improve virtue by honing important considerations not simply determined by our impulses or personal needs. This correlation between the careful use of time and fulfilling our objectives is certainly important to Krishna consciousness when applied thoughtfully. Otherwise, why would the regulated spiritual practices of Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī [1] be described as like “the lines of a stone” or the eternal pastimes of Radha-Krishna described as aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā? [2] Thus when punctuality and regulation are used properly to facilitate keeping focused on the moment, in a sense the oppression of time ceases to exist and the spontaneity of devotion flourishes, or in the words of a modern poet: “Time is on my side, yes it is.”
 

[1] Raghunātha dāsa Gosvāmī is the prayojana ācārya, the main teacher in our line for teaching prema-bhakti.

[2] Aṣṭa-kālīya-līlā means that the Lord’s different pastimes are basically eight fold and happen at the same time daily at eight distinct junctures of the day.

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