Exploring the nature of time : reflections on the article "Four-dimensional time in Dzogchen and Heidegger" by Zhihua Yao

In 2007, in “Philosophy East and West” (Vol. 57, Issue 4), Zhihua Yao published the article Four-dimensional Time in Dzogchen and Heidegger. The main purpose of Zhihua Yao’s text was to discuss the similarities and differences between the four-dimensional time theories as found in these two different traditions of thought and inquire into the possible sources of their striking similarities. Zhihua Yao’s text ends with his careful tentative conclusion: “Both Longchenpa and Heidegger go beyond the conventional understanding of time by examining carefully the experience of passage of time. In such an experience, a fourth time or dimension of time manifests itself to be presence or presencing.” Finally, he states that this coincidence has a source in the fundamental fourfoldness inherent in the human mind, a fourfoldness which also works in the process of its temporalization. My paper is an attempt to examine some other possibilities of understanding the question of four-dimensional time in Dzogchen and in Heidegger’s thought than that proposed by Zhihua Yao. However, I will also try to comment on, or even complete, some of Zhihua Yao’s conclusions.