Buddhist time is cyclical individuation while the West makes generalized linear History

Evidence

Buddhist mythologies, to offer an almost commonplace comparison, are based on temporal cycles and consider first of aU, and uniquely, the individual (himself impermanent or almost so), whose “stories” are of selfperfection through dissolution into the AIl. The Buddha is the exemplary, but not necessarily original, individuation, whose oneness is due to this fulfillment. The One is distinguished from oneness, by the total lack of any generalizable understanding in this latter. Aided by a collection of ritual precepts that do not constitute a body of Knowledge, each individual will su-ive to follow from afar the example of Buddha. The community’s chronology-its linearity (which in the \l\1est becomes History)-is completely ineffectual there.* Western mythologies, in contrast, conceive of the individual only insof~lIas he is a participant in the community. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 285

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the reader’s lineage on how the West universalizes History (relevant to Foucault’s counter-history motif in Society Must Be Defended). — connects to: Scholars read Polanyi’s double movement as either cyclical or structurally continuous — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 680; Social structure determines whether a society experiences time cyclically or linearly — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 84; Distinct traditions run on heterogeneous temporalities that secular time cannot contain (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies a key distinction between Buddhist cyclical individuation and Western linear generalized history that frames the chapter.

Broader Connections

• Distinct traditions run on heterogeneous temporalities that secular time cannot contain #corroborates (0.85)
• Multiple simultaneous temporalities complicate any simple model of secular time. #corroborates (0.80) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 875
• Social structure determines whether a society experiences time cyclically or linearly #expands (0.78) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 84