Abstract

On the one hand, Chinese traditions of philosophy are famous for emphasizing that things are changes, that reality is filled with processes rather than substances. This philosophy was present at least from the Yijing onward and was developed in diverse ways by Confucians, Daoists, and then Chinese Buddhists. But there has not been a similar rich development of the idea of eternity, that nontemporal context within which change can be recognized and measured. This article argues, first, that change presupposes an ontological context of eternity and, second, that eternity so conceived can be experienced and even interpreted in terms of the Chinese traditions.