The Kṣaṇa and the Living Present: Husserl’s Time-Consciousness and Buddhist Momentariness on the Structure of Cognitive Time
WooHyun Jung
Philosophy East and West October 1, 2026 DOI: 10.1353/pew.2026.a1004292 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Buddhism |
| Key points | Argues that both the assimilation of Buddhist momentariness to Husserl's time-consciousness and the claim that the two are incompatible fail. Husserl retains a momentary phase while denying isolated now-points suffice for time-consciousness, and the kṣaṇika tradition distinguishes momentary sensation from perceptual construction and locates continuity in the mental stream. The author proposes the real disagreement concerns the location and register of temporal structure. |
Abstract
One familiar gesture pairs the Buddhist doctrine of momentariness (kṣaṇikavāda) with Husserl’s phenomenology of internal time-consciousness; another declares the two incompatible because Husserl rejects the punctual now-point the kṣaṇa affirms. Both fail. Husserl retains the momentary phase—Hua X §39 speaks of the “primal sensation” and the “actual momentary phase” of the flow—while denying that isolated now-points could account for time-consciousness. The kṣaṇika tradition, for its part, distinguishes momentary sensation from the constructive work of perception (saṃjñā), locates continuity in the mental stream (santāna), and, in Karṇakagomin’s reply to Aviddhakarṇa, had already refuted the pointillist caricature from within. What remains is a largely unthematized disagreement about the location and register of temporal structure: a synthesis given within the living present and analyzed transcendentally, against one distributed across a causally ordered series of moments and derived from an ontology of momentary particulars.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on buddhism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and Western psychology. | 2006 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience | 1995 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Buddhist and Psychological Perspectives on Emotions and Well-Being | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges—Ethical and Otherwise—Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From self to nonself: The Nonself Theory | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |