Description of time

Ultimate time is described as powerful and unavoidable, beginningless and endless, subtle, indivisible and formless, marked by vartanā, the moment-to-moment change it supports in all substances. Time is known by inference and is of two kinds: absolute (niścaya) time, present as one atom in each point of cosmic space and known only to omniscience, and conventional (vyavahāra) time, reckoned from sunrise and the like as years, months, days and hours.