This talk will take as its focus the signature Sarvāstivāda-Vaibhāsika doctrine that past, present, and future things all exist. This theory—or theories, since the Vaibhāsika masters themselves disagreed on how to make sense of it—anticipates, in many respects, “block-time” models of the universe that are in fashion among theoretical physicists today. In these models, time is a dimension spread out like space, and everything that ever was or will be has a fixed position within this four-dimensional space-time block. I will argue that the similarities between the early Buddhist theories and contemporary scientific ones are neither coincidental nor insignificant: both are responses to deep puzzles concerning the nature of change, causation, and the apparent “flow” and “direction” of time.

(Reception to follow the lecture)