space, time and Buddhism

 I have read the first half of the chapter in Chan and Enlightenment called "Transcending Time, Space and Life" and it has been quite a complex chapter. I want to share more informally on what the view of space and time might mean for a Buddhist practitioner.
    There has been an awful lot recently in physics about confirming the theory of relativity through gravitational waves. I wonder what relativity means from the perspective of Buddhist practice, however? From my own view,  I think there are both correct and troublesome views about time, and I am subject to both kinds of views.
   Perhaps most 'troublesome' is the linear notion of time: the time that is often based on the modern concept of schedules and clocks, as well as 'beginnings and ends'. Many people, including myself, have been brought up to believe that time is a spatial progression that is often thought to be linear. When you look at a typical wall calendar or event planner, you will probably see a visual embodiment of the linear model of space/time. It suggests that time is a clear progression from beginning (the top of the calendar, typically) to the bottom. Sometimes this spatial model of linear time can come out in language, such as when we say "clocks spring forward" to mean setting the clock an hour in advance of the present time. We also say "look forward to seeing you" (where forward is said to be the future) while "looking back" refers to reminiscing about the past. All of this suggests that time literally moves a person through a stream of related or connected events, and there is a single thread that binds them together. It also assumes that time exists independently of objects.
    From a Buddhist perspective (and often from a philosophical one), time cannot truly exist without objects or unfolding phenomena. For example, if there is a static object that never moves and a subject that doesn't move, how could there be time? How would it even be measured if nothing changes in that picture? In order for time to exist, there needs to be changing phenomena. But it gets more complicated than this. From a relative perspective, past-present-future must exist because there needs to be conditions for something to happen. We don't just magically arrive at work: there needs to be a way to transport ourselves to work, as well as the right conditions for the transportation to go unimpeded. If I ignore those conditions, I would never get to work on time, much less even get to work. The fact that we even speak of conditions affecting things means there needs to be a sense of space and time for these to occur. More so, there needs to be a sense of a subject bearing witness to the conditions and their configurations Otherwise, how can we say that something is conditioned if it hasn't been observed in that condition or set of conditions?
   But from an absolute perspective, time cannot exist. Why not? If a person examines it in a minute level: if conditions are continually subject to change all the time, there isn't a single unchanging reference point to say that past 'was there', present 'is here', future 'is over there'. Such things are only relative to individual reference points. But even those reference points cannot be said to have a past or future (or present) because time is not really 'connecting' anything at all. For example, you might say that the acorn 'causes' the tree to happen, so the acorn is 'in the past' and the tree is 'in the future'. But actually, the very idea of past present and future is only conceptually derived from unfolding causes and conditions, which are constantly subject to change. It isn't even that a tree 'necessarily' must come from an acorn. A tree's growth is subject to many conditions, in fact, not just necessarily coming from a temporal law of 'this must happen from this.'
     What does the Buddhist view of time do for practitioners, I wonder? I think the idea that there isn't a 'concrete' space and time upon which to fall back can be frightening as well as exciting. One thing is that it frees a person from seeing that things necessarily need to proceed in a linear progression. Sometimes, too much attachment to a linear sense of time can create a perfectionist attitude and attachment to the notion of something progressing, as though through a blueprint. It overlooks the way that things are arising from a configuration of unique conditions which often can't be replicated. Sometimes it also means that we don't necessarily know what conditions will lead to a 'good outcome', especially when even outcomes are not guaranteed, and there is no one single 'good' out there that suits all occasions. So when I loosen my sense of space/time as a linear progression, I start to see new possibilities and combinations of things that perhaps never appeared before. Rather than seeing success as conditional upon achieving a certain series of steps, I can stop and see that there are many possible steps from which to proceed and choose. This also means that one can open up to what's unfolding and see different potentials without feeling that all of them need to ripen in that moment. This can also help with creative thinking and planning.