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-cognition 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).
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)