What we call "Time" (if indeed a "what" can at all be appropriately applied) is in fact a greater background. Consider how Time arises in relation to the face-to-face encounter: the person comes into-and-out-of our lifespace, our personal vantage point. In this arising of appearance, this coming-near or proximity, there lay the clue to our question concerning Time's greatness. When the other person disappears, it is as it were a disappearance into the great background of the world. And so, the other transcends proximity, being-there only in terms of varying degrees of closeness and remoteness, immediacy and mediacy. Abstractly construed, this degree admits of a thinking in which the other is removed from us—not by some mere spatiality, but—by a temporal distance. This temporal distance is itself a background (and as such, a condition) for the dimensions we call space.
Though one studied philosophy, one is not as yet a philosopher, not of the highest rank. But such talk is theological at base. The thinker must think about time. Thinking God as Time is a thinking of life as miraculous, wondrous. Time as Father-of-All. Nature as Mother-of-All. These are pagan thoughts, yet they are too the thoughts of science, so that a deep truth comes to light in consideration of them, one that might even go far to repair theology from the violence of historical conquests carried out in His Name.
Under current standards of scholarship, Time appears within the Hindu Pantheon as if the image of a tripartite deity, Past, Present, Future; so that there is a necessity of critique in light of the monotheological, the idea of a single God over all other gods (deva-deva jagat-pate). The transformation of the many gods into demons (into images of avarice toward the monotheological), flows in many ways from the exigencies of historical consideration concerning the chief human virtues demonstrated in the light of history itself: ye shall know the tree by its fruits. A knowledge of history requires training in rigor and care for the fragile condition under which any such history leads humanity to a greater flourishing by having a greater view of itself in the light given by historical understanding.
South Asian religions of numerous varieties are still called to respond to the question of monotheism. The culture of the Bible, and the culture of the Veda are both great plants, born in the soil of the everyday world. Thinking theologically means caring for these plants, and finding practical, insightful ways of leading them to flourishing.
Considering Time gives us pause to regard the conditions under which South Asian religions respond to contemporary theology. Its own history demonstrates a deep concern for the historical through the envisioning of these tripartite deities, Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva. They are later products of a thinking which perhaps began even from a mere consideration for the diverse annual festivals that populated humanity. Our habits, our practices, our daily ways-of-being; consideration for the gods, for those celestial deities who occupied the deep of the night and marked the passage of Time.
Astrology today is still regarded by Roman Catholics as a dark art, so that a robust possibility of comparative theologies looks dim at first face. And indeed, without a knowledge of the night sky, one would be bereft of the art of understanding time, as it were, in the light of mythology. The mytho-logy, or reasoning which arises from a consideration for myth, belongs to a heuristic device (much like the Antikaithera Mechanism) adopted from pre-history for the sake of importing an understanding of the will of the gods, the seven moving in the twelve houses, the zodiacal ring of the year, The great Giants resting at the whirling peak of the world and the deluge below. As Levinas puts it in Time, Death, and God, the upward image discloses a curiosity which precedes all taboo. Science sees the world, and subjects it to the criticism of a mathematical consideration for the conditions of its being, its physics.
A consideration for Hinduism means not less than a consideration for the marks made by a consideration for Time in Hindu thinking. The calendrical culture of South Asia is one of many histories, one of many ways of being. A consideration for astrology is no plunging oneself into a dark art (no rash judgement!), but rather a plunging oneself into a question for the role and domain of astrology in making intelligible the very meaning of the texts under consideration; it would be rash to judge Great Hindu works without a consideration for the astrological cultures which produced them. The myths open themselves more freely to a reader who has an ear for astrological thinking, and even more so when they are not limited to such astrological thinking! But how rash are we to skip the elementary in order to appear as more advanced!
The elementary stands as the guardian to thinking; when elements of thought are lacking in consideration, one thinks rashly, one acts impulsively. Consideration for the time of the other is a consideration which belongs to an even broader ethical thinking. The neglect of India is the neglect of a growing economy, a new consumer. Capitalism itself then wants a healthy India, an India with a healthy appetite.
But India consumes diversely, it is a marketplace of diverse cultures. And with that, diverse understandings of Time. This diversity in many places and in many ways implicates itself in a process of exchange, a multi-cultural gifting. To seek a monotheology in Indian thought thus abstracts skyward, away from the ground of daily existence, and toward the cultural background, toward the idea of a culture of thinking horo-theo-logically (rather than pan-, panen-, poly- et al).
It is perhaps uncanny to Middle-Eastern monotheologies to find in India a habit for divinizing the diverse ontological groups in the world, and yet for the throngs therein, for thinking oneself monotheologically. Generally, this leads to a thinking of brahman, abstract unity or monism. Yet the mono- in monism is not yet a monotheology.
There does stand before us an important question for consideration, and an important critique, one that aims to reach near the heart of Hindu thought, in order to better bring out the historical course of its monotheological thought, which is even now already well under way. It is perhaps the fate of Vaiṣṇavism to always be preparing the way for the arising of monotheological thought. And this, because it is always thinking horo-theo-logically. In abstraction, kāla stands as the supreme deity of the whole of the Hindu Pantheon.
Kāla, or Time, is the vision of a supreme and absolute deity, a God-over-all-other-gods. Time, as a theological product, as a product of thinking—theologically, ritually, annually, calendrically, horologically—is a thinking which produces a cultural fruit, in many cases, a diverse market-place of cults and rituals. These cultures interact as through the medium of shared calendars, public annual festivals, habits of gifting and exchange, of sacrifice, mercy, and renewal. The sacrificial mind dresses up the pleas of humanity to the hearts of the gods; it seeks a way into their hearts as through their stomachs. Fate is taken to be in the many moving hands of the gods, and with that, a certain fatalism arises which motivates the sacrificer to seek clemency, mercy.
Kāla slays all. None can withstand his approach forever. The thought here merges darkness with finitude, and gives rise to the thinking of death. Immanuel Levinas would have us think of what lay beyond death, so that the finitude of Time's grasp on life would appear as a demonic grip, and one broken by the final, fatal act of death. So that the Grim Reaper seems the constant companion of Time: one of the four horsemen at the advance of the end of history. But what is perhaps an even more frightening thought than the end of history itself: what if instead of pre-occupying thought with consideration for the fate of humanity, given as unavoidable and inevitable, so as to usher it in all the quicker, we had to think of future generations and all those yet to come, all those who are yet to inhabit a lifespace, yet to confront the questions and quests this lifespace opens up to them. What if we stopped preparing the world merely for death, but instead prepared it too for life?
The image of Time as Supreme Deity needs to be understood if Vaiṣṇavism is to uphold the mantle of monotheology. But it appears as if under the weight of a mythical thinking, inspired by a naive consideration for a super-stitious and pre-critical horo-theology (i.e., astrology). The calendar, the culture, their history, and very many of their visions of deities patently belong to such a mode of interpretation, and as such, our question concerns the interpretive principles under which our understanding obtains its object. To teach Hinduism as an elementary subject, so as to produce an Introduction, not merely as useful, but insightful, helpful in clarifying Hinduism beyond misunderstanding. To do this, one needs to broach the question of astrology for the student, not so as to lead them to think superstitiously; rather, mythologically, to help them better understand the abstract and practical roles that myth plays in Hindu culture and thought, in setting its traditional, annual, seasonal patterns.
The facet of South Asian religion I am concerned with is just that one which adores Time as Supreme, roughly defined as the kāla-vādins. The term, kāla-vadin, does implicate a specific if loosely bound historical group (Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas, Rāma-bhaktas, various Śaivas, and some groups of Śāktas can be said to belong to this group), or it can also simply refer to the group contributing the Atharva-Vedic hymns dedicated to kāla. Perhaps this latter might even include those earlier thinkers who first worked out the length of the year, and who considered its understanding to be a great riddle, as collated by J. Gonda in his work, Prajāpati and the Year. We might roughly view these then as two groups, since there is evident an earlier and a later in terms of the history of the concept of Time in South Asian literature. We do not mean to introduce a new religion where there was not one before; rather, we are using the term kāla-vādin in a formal sense, as an historical category of the understanding, one utilized in Hindu thinking and one we too might adopt for analytical ends (even if thereby doing so, we extend its meaning further).
This facet would be best viewed without reduction to an incomplete reading, but its complexity and enormity evades a singular consideration on my part alone. Its role is increasingly clear to me, insofar as so much of what is thereby recognizable in South Asian religion reflects an intuition or notion of it, insofar as the people set their own life-patterns after it in one form or another. The timing of weddings by consideration for the proper muhūrta, the calculation of the Vedic or Vaiṣṇava calendar, The timing of births and reading of fates in astrology—all of these belong to a broadly elementary "Hindu" intuition of kāla. Even the conflicting paces in the daily grind of both urban and rural life in South Asia still show deep regard for these intuitions.
Time, whether regarded by its "Western Sense" or by its "Asian Sense" is clearly a background condition for the thinking of human history in South Asia, as much as it is for that collective we call the West. Indeed, Time is no less a condition for the world of the mere animal! As such, it is an absolute background condition for being. The thought of Time's greatness refers to the remoteness of its idea as the background for lived spaces. Time is a basic condition. As a basis, it is also a baselessness or what is too remote to give itself in any basic way; i.e., a background. Time considered conceptually might give us such language as before and after, as past, present, and future, and as such, might be subject to J. M. McTaggart's logical critique. But if Time simply and truly shows itself as a basic baselessness, does not this suggest a patent contradiction too? Does not Time here become too absurd even to think?! Is Time no more than a great absurdity?
But such unserious thinking would have us ignore the basic truth of Time's conditional character: as a remote background, it perhaps does not stack up to the Eternal. Perhaps Time is not so Great as Eternity? Or have we simply lost sight of what is similar in them, the sempiternal? Is not the "forever and ever" of Time like that of Eternity? Or do we only regard as Time what is finite in one degree or another?
Though one studied philosophy, one is not as yet a philosopher, not of the highest rank. But such talk is theological at base. The thinker must think about time. Thinking God as Time is a thinking of life as miraculous, wondrous. Time as Father-of-All. Nature as Mother-of-All. These are pagan thoughts, yet they are too the thoughts of science, so that a deep truth comes to light in consideration of them, one that might even go far to repair theology from the violence of historical conquests carried out in His Name.
Under current standards of scholarship, Time appears within the Hindu Pantheon as if the image of a tripartite deity, Past, Present, Future; so that there is a necessity of critique in light of the monotheological, the idea of a single God over all other gods (deva-deva jagat-pate). The transformation of the many gods into demons (into images of avarice toward the monotheological), flows in many ways from the exigencies of historical consideration concerning the chief human virtues demonstrated in the light of history itself: ye shall know the tree by its fruits. A knowledge of history requires training in rigor and care for the fragile condition under which any such history leads humanity to a greater flourishing by having a greater view of itself in the light given by historical understanding.
South Asian religions of numerous varieties are still called to respond to the question of monotheism. The culture of the Bible, and the culture of the Veda are both great plants, born in the soil of the everyday world. Thinking theologically means caring for these plants, and finding practical, insightful ways of leading them to flourishing.
Considering Time gives us pause to regard the conditions under which South Asian religions respond to contemporary theology. Its own history demonstrates a deep concern for the historical through the envisioning of these tripartite deities, Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva. They are later products of a thinking which perhaps began even from a mere consideration for the diverse annual festivals that populated humanity. Our habits, our practices, our daily ways-of-being; consideration for the gods, for those celestial deities who occupied the deep of the night and marked the passage of Time.
Astrology today is still regarded by Roman Catholics as a dark art, so that a robust possibility of comparative theologies looks dim at first face. And indeed, without a knowledge of the night sky, one would be bereft of the art of understanding time, as it were, in the light of mythology. The mytho-logy, or reasoning which arises from a consideration for myth, belongs to a heuristic device (much like the Antikaithera Mechanism) adopted from pre-history for the sake of importing an understanding of the will of the gods, the seven moving in the twelve houses, the zodiacal ring of the year, The great Giants resting at the whirling peak of the world and the deluge below. As Levinas puts it in Time, Death, and God, the upward image discloses a curiosity which precedes all taboo. Science sees the world, and subjects it to the criticism of a mathematical consideration for the conditions of its being, its physics.
A consideration for Hinduism means not less than a consideration for the marks made by a consideration for Time in Hindu thinking. The calendrical culture of South Asia is one of many histories, one of many ways of being. A consideration for astrology is no plunging oneself into a dark art (no rash judgement!), but rather a plunging oneself into a question for the role and domain of astrology in making intelligible the very meaning of the texts under consideration; it would be rash to judge Great Hindu works without a consideration for the astrological cultures which produced them. The myths open themselves more freely to a reader who has an ear for astrological thinking, and even more so when they are not limited to such astrological thinking! But how rash are we to skip the elementary in order to appear as more advanced!
The elementary stands as the guardian to thinking; when elements of thought are lacking in consideration, one thinks rashly, one acts impulsively. Consideration for the time of the other is a consideration which belongs to an even broader ethical thinking. The neglect of India is the neglect of a growing economy, a new consumer. Capitalism itself then wants a healthy India, an India with a healthy appetite.
But India consumes diversely, it is a marketplace of diverse cultures. And with that, diverse understandings of Time. This diversity in many places and in many ways implicates itself in a process of exchange, a multi-cultural gifting. To seek a monotheology in Indian thought thus abstracts skyward, away from the ground of daily existence, and toward the cultural background, toward the idea of a culture of thinking horo-theo-logically (rather than pan-, panen-, poly- et al).
It is perhaps uncanny to Middle-Eastern monotheologies to find in India a habit for divinizing the diverse ontological groups in the world, and yet for the throngs therein, for thinking oneself monotheologically. Generally, this leads to a thinking of brahman, abstract unity or monism. Yet the mono- in monism is not yet a monotheology.
There does stand before us an important question for consideration, and an important critique, one that aims to reach near the heart of Hindu thought, in order to better bring out the historical course of its monotheological thought, which is even now already well under way. It is perhaps the fate of Vaiṣṇavism to always be preparing the way for the arising of monotheological thought. And this, because it is always thinking horo-theo-logically. In abstraction, kāla stands as the supreme deity of the whole of the Hindu Pantheon.
Kāla, or Time, is the vision of a supreme and absolute deity, a God-over-all-other-gods. Time, as a theological product, as a product of thinking—theologically, ritually, annually, calendrically, horologically—is a thinking which produces a cultural fruit, in many cases, a diverse market-place of cults and rituals. These cultures interact as through the medium of shared calendars, public annual festivals, habits of gifting and exchange, of sacrifice, mercy, and renewal. The sacrificial mind dresses up the pleas of humanity to the hearts of the gods; it seeks a way into their hearts as through their stomachs. Fate is taken to be in the many moving hands of the gods, and with that, a certain fatalism arises which motivates the sacrificer to seek clemency, mercy.
Kāla slays all. None can withstand his approach forever. The thought here merges darkness with finitude, and gives rise to the thinking of death. Immanuel Levinas would have us think of what lay beyond death, so that the finitude of Time's grasp on life would appear as a demonic grip, and one broken by the final, fatal act of death. So that the Grim Reaper seems the constant companion of Time: one of the four horsemen at the advance of the end of history. But what is perhaps an even more frightening thought than the end of history itself: what if instead of pre-occupying thought with consideration for the fate of humanity, given as unavoidable and inevitable, so as to usher it in all the quicker, we had to think of future generations and all those yet to come, all those who are yet to inhabit a lifespace, yet to confront the questions and quests this lifespace opens up to them. What if we stopped preparing the world merely for death, but instead prepared it too for life?
The image of Time as Supreme Deity needs to be understood if Vaiṣṇavism is to uphold the mantle of monotheology. But it appears as if under the weight of a mythical thinking, inspired by a naive consideration for a super-stitious and pre-critical horo-theology (i.e., astrology). The calendar, the culture, their history, and very many of their visions of deities patently belong to such a mode of interpretation, and as such, our question concerns the interpretive principles under which our understanding obtains its object. To teach Hinduism as an elementary subject, so as to produce an Introduction, not merely as useful, but insightful, helpful in clarifying Hinduism beyond misunderstanding. To do this, one needs to broach the question of astrology for the student, not so as to lead them to think superstitiously; rather, mythologically, to help them better understand the abstract and practical roles that myth plays in Hindu culture and thought, in setting its traditional, annual, seasonal patterns.
The facet of South Asian religion I am concerned with is just that one which adores Time as Supreme, roughly defined as the kāla-vādins. The term, kāla-vadin, does implicate a specific if loosely bound historical group (Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas, Rāma-bhaktas, various Śaivas, and some groups of Śāktas can be said to belong to this group), or it can also simply refer to the group contributing the Atharva-Vedic hymns dedicated to kāla. Perhaps this latter might even include those earlier thinkers who first worked out the length of the year, and who considered its understanding to be a great riddle, as collated by J. Gonda in his work, Prajāpati and the Year. We might roughly view these then as two groups, since there is evident an earlier and a later in terms of the history of the concept of Time in South Asian literature. We do not mean to introduce a new religion where there was not one before; rather, we are using the term kāla-vādin in a formal sense, as an historical category of the understanding, one utilized in Hindu thinking and one we too might adopt for analytical ends (even if thereby doing so, we extend its meaning further).
This facet would be best viewed without reduction to an incomplete reading, but its complexity and enormity evades a singular consideration on my part alone. Its role is increasingly clear to me, insofar as so much of what is thereby recognizable in South Asian religion reflects an intuition or notion of it, insofar as the people set their own life-patterns after it in one form or another. The timing of weddings by consideration for the proper muhūrta, the calculation of the Vedic or Vaiṣṇava calendar, The timing of births and reading of fates in astrology—all of these belong to a broadly elementary "Hindu" intuition of kāla. Even the conflicting paces in the daily grind of both urban and rural life in South Asia still show deep regard for these intuitions.
Time, whether regarded by its "Western Sense" or by its "Asian Sense" is clearly a background condition for the thinking of human history in South Asia, as much as it is for that collective we call the West. Indeed, Time is no less a condition for the world of the mere animal! As such, it is an absolute background condition for being. The thought of Time's greatness refers to the remoteness of its idea as the background for lived spaces. Time is a basic condition. As a basis, it is also a baselessness or what is too remote to give itself in any basic way; i.e., a background. Time considered conceptually might give us such language as before and after, as past, present, and future, and as such, might be subject to J. M. McTaggart's logical critique. But if Time simply and truly shows itself as a basic baselessness, does not this suggest a patent contradiction too? Does not Time here become too absurd even to think?! Is Time no more than a great absurdity?
But such unserious thinking would have us ignore the basic truth of Time's conditional character: as a remote background, it perhaps does not stack up to the Eternal. Perhaps Time is not so Great as Eternity? Or have we simply lost sight of what is similar in them, the sempiternal? Is not the "forever and ever" of Time like that of Eternity? Or do we only regard as Time what is finite in one degree or another?
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