Solid post, pulga, and I would to draw attention to the portions in red.pulga wrote:But just how strict can reflexion become? What Ven. Ñāṇavīra is describing here can apply to our experience of a lived moment of near infinitely brief duration as well as our experience of the infinite universe – cf. the structure of a line, or better our looking at a line. It isn't about seeing such moments but rather understanding their structural necessity. I do think however that the Abhidhammikas went horribly awry in pondering over such matters.A universal becomes an abstraction only in so far as an attempt is made to think it in isolation from all particular or concrete content—divorced, that is to say, from existence. The stricter the reflexion the less the abstraction.
...abstractions and ideas are the same thing; and, though they do not exist apart from images, they are not anchored to any one particular image; but, in the sense that they necessarily have one or another concrete (even if multiple) imaginary content, the abstraction is illusory: abstraction is a discursive escape from the singularity of the real to the plurality of the imaginary—it is not an escape from the concrete. Ven. Ñāṇavīra – SN Mano
I am pretty much with Ven. Ñāṇavīra on this one. Time is a construct built on an interpretation of experience. An analysis of that construct can be useful only in an effort to understand the experience and break it down. However once broken down, time is no longer a factor. So this is idea of dhamma being subeject to time seems counterproductive, since dhamma is - in the words of Ven. Punnaji - "That which bares. The ground of experience." Time is not more fundamental than that.