Change is constant, go with the flow

Nov 6, 2009, 12.00am IST
BAL KRISHNA MISHRA.


Change is what forms the basis for time. Clock time is nothing but an imaginary concept to relate to and comprehend the process of change that is real. We hardly ever perceive the flow of time.


However, we regularly observe the sun rising and setting, the moon traversing the sky through the night, old age following youth, autumn following winter, a seed becoming a sapling and then a tree, a river flowing and changing its course constantly, and the hands of the clock changing positions. The story of change goes on endlessly. Time has its existence only in the present moment. It's the change that flows and time is always static in the form of the present moment witnessing the change.


Let us examine a few contemporary methods of determining various time periods. The age of a tree is determined by counting the annual rings on it that shows the change that any given tree underwent during a particular period. One ring usually marks the passage of one year in the life of the tree.


In the case of dating a fossil we compare the change in decaying C-14 atoms vis-a-vis those living in the present. The radioactive C-14 atom decays to one-half in about 5700 years. This is known as the half-life-period. By looking at the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample and comparing it to the ratio in a living organism, it is possible to determine the age of a formerly living thing fairly precisely. C-14 dating also captures the story of change that has happened to the sample.


The Sun Dial was a popular instrument to track the time in ancient times where a gnomon was used to cast the shadow of the changing sun on a circular stone slab. This changing and moving shadow served as a clock.
Today's accepted scientific definition of time also captures only the phenomenon of change. The International System of Units has defined one second as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom. This definition only reveals that a second is an imaginary packet which bundles a real change of 9,192,631,770 cycles in the energy level of the cesium oscillator often called an atomic clock.

In philosophy too, time is upheld as being unreal by thinkers like Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and notably John Mc Taggart in his idea "The Unreality of Time".


Greek philosopher Heraclitus has said that you cannot get into the same river twice. A contemplative mind may even ask whether one can even enter the same river once. A profound Latin proverb proclaims: "vita est in motu" which means "change is the very essence of life". As Shunryu Suzuki puts it "Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. Unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. "


Ever since our birth, our bodies are subjected to involuntary, irresistible and irreversible changes until we die. If change is the only constant and reality then the very effort to resist change is like trying to stop a gushing river. It's futile trying to stop a river but it is fun to go with the flow, surrender and swim with it riding on the present.