Momentariness (སྐད་ཅིག་མ་, kṣaṇika)
The Buddhist doctrine that all real entities are momentary — they arise and cease within an instant. Central to Dharmakīrti’s ontology and a major point of divergence between Sa-gya and Ge-luk interpretations.
Definitions
Dharmakīrti (Pramāṇavārttika)
མཚན་གཞི་ (Definiendum): སྐད་ཅིག་མ་ (kṣaṇika) — momentary / impermanent entity
མཚན་ཉིད་ (Definiens): That which does not remain from the second moment onward after having been produced for a single moment from its causes — disintegration (འཇིག་པ་, vināśa) is not a separate phenomenon but the mere fact of not persisting
མཚོན་བྱེད་ (Illustration): A jar (བུམ་པ་), sound (སྒྲ་)
“Disintegration is not to be thought of as the state of disintegratedness [of something already] disintegrated, [for] this is a nonthing. Rather, the mere [fact] that [something] does not remain from the second moment onward after having been produced for a single moment from its causes is called disintegration.”
English: All things that exist are impermanent — they cease the instant after production. Disintegration requires no separate cause; it is intrinsic to existence itself.
Source: dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 79
Dzong-ka-ba (Ge-luk) clarifies: “The momentariness which is spoken of as the defining property of impermanence is [the fact that something] will not remain for a second moment after its time of establishment. Momentariness does not mean [that something] will remain only for a short moment” (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 114).
Dharmakīrti’s Account
For dharmakirti, the specifically-characterised is momentary: reality consists of causally connected individual thing-events in constant flux. Material objects are aggregates of infinitesimal temporal parts in constant transformation. Consciousness is a succession of moments of awareness.
This denial of enduring stability is grounded in the Buddhist doctrine of selflessness (བདག་མེད་, anātman) — the rejection of any unifying principle such as substance or whole.
Two Arguments for Momentariness
Dharmakīrti advances two arguments (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 232–233):
- Argument from cessation (vināśitvānumāna): All things perish sooner or later. Their perishing cannot be caused (since absences are not real things and cannot enter causal relations), so things must perish spontaneously — and this spontaneous perishing must happen immediately after arising, since delay would require a cause to explain its timing
- Argument from existence (sattvānumāna): Real things are always causally efficacious. Even the most inert objects produce the existence of a closely resembling object at the next moment. But if things are always producing effects, they must always be changing. A permanent object could not explain the production of different successive effects
Consequences
The rejection of objects in general has implications beyond ontology (westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti, pp. 233–234):
- Against ātman: intermittent self-awareness (Dreyfus: “self-cognition”, རང་རིག་) implies an intermittent cause, not a permanent soul (Mokṣākaragupta’s argument)
- Against a creator god: a permanent being cannot be causally efficacious, hence cannot have created the world (Ratnakīrti)
- Against caste (jāti): since jāti also means “object-type,” arguing that object-types are unreal provides ontological grounds for rejecting the brahmanical caste system
Sa-gya Interpretation (Strict)
sakya-pandita takes a literal reading: any real entity must cease to exist as soon as it comes into existence. Duration is a conceptual fiction due to the quick arising of discrete moments looking alike. Our intuition of enduring objects is “the product of our attachment to permanence” and should be eliminated — this is the very goal of the Buddhist tradition (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 112).
gorampa develops the argument from cessation at length in his commentary on PV 1.193–196 (gorampa-pramanavartika, §24): the disintegration of a pot is “by way of its own nature” — i.e. is created from the pot’s own direct cause, without depending on any later cause (such as a hammer). Later factors are only indirect causes; disintegration is intrinsic to production itself. The reason is that later causes “have no ability to generate the entity of disintegration and the non-entity of the state of destruction,” so “this pot that we see here will be destroyed by way of its own entity because it was created as an entity of disintegration without dependence upon any cause other than its own.”
Ge-luk Interpretation (Moderate)
kay-drup and the Ge-luk tradition argue for a less counterintuitive understanding:
- Objects change from moment to moment but their continua (རྒྱུན་) have a certain reality
- “Momentariness” means objects “will not remain for a second moment after their time of establishment” (གྲུབ་དུས་) — this time of establishment is not a single instant but the period required for an object to complete its function (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, pp. 112–113)
- A mountain can exist for thousands of years and still be momentary — momentariness means constant change, not brief duration
- dzong-ka-ba: “Momentariness does not mean that something will remain only for a short moment” (dreyfus-recognizing-reality, p. 114)
Philosophical Stakes
The debate is not merely about the duration of things. It concerns whether Buddhist philosophy should accommodate commonsense intuitions:
- Sa-gya: commonsense is corrupted by attachment to permanence; epistemology should not be held hostage to it
- Ge-luk: common conventions have a validity that cannot be entirely contradicted by philosophy
Sources
- dreyfus-recognizing-reality — Chapter 2 (Dharmakīrti’s ontology) and Chapter 5 (Ge-luk ontology)
- westerhoff-dignaga-dharmakirti — the two arguments for momentariness, consequences for ātman, creator god, and caste (pp. 232–234)
- gorampa-pramanavartika — Gorampa’s commentary on PV 1.193–196 (§24, “Disintegration by Nature”): disintegration as non-dependent on later causes; later “causes of destruction” as merely indirect