Being

सत्किम्? कालत्रयेऽपि तिष्ठतीति सत् ।

In transliteration

satkim? kālatraye'pi tiṣṭhatīti sat |

In English

What is sat, being? That which abides through all three times is being.

In plain words

What is sat (being)? That which exists in all three times, past, present, and future, is sat.

In the commentaries

Sri SankaraAdvaita

Being, just named as the Self's nature, has a single mark: it stays through the three times, past, present, and future. The point is not long duration but this: being that is never cancelled, never set aside by anything that comes after. A pot, a thought, a world, each arrives and departs, and each can be undone by the moment that follows it; what is real in this strict sense is what no later moment ever cancels, the ground on which the comings and goings appear and into which they sink. So sat is not one more thing that happens to last; it is that by which everything else is known to be present at all, the abiding in which time itself rises and rests. To call the Self sat is to refuse it any beginning or end and to mark it as the one thing that is never negated, while all that is born and passes is, by just this measure, not the final real.

Sri Sankara, framework of the real as trikala-abadhita and nitya (Brahmasutra-bhasya and Upanisad-bhasyas); the standard Tattvabodha exposition of sat as kalatraye'pi tisthati (Swami Dayananda Saraswati; Swami Paramarthananda)

The crux

When the Self is called being, does that mean it lasts a very long time, or that no moment can ever cancel it?

Calling the Self sat, that which abides through past, present, and future, points to what about it?

That it endures far longer than other things, though it too began at some point
That it is never negated by any later moment, the ground on which all that comes and goes appears
That it is fixed and motionless, unlike the changing mind
That it will continue without end into the future, however it started

Show the answer

That it is never negated by any later moment, the ground on which all that comes and goes appears. The measure is not how long a thing lasts but whether anything ever cancels it. A pot, a thought, a world arrives and departs and is set aside by the next moment. You are called sat because you are what no moment negates, the abiding in which the comings and goings themselves appear.

What abides through all three times

You were just told that your own nature is being, consciousness, and bliss. Now each word is opened in turn, and the first is being, sat. And being is given a single mark: that which stays through the three times, through past and present and future alike.

Hearing this as longevity, as if the Self simply outlasts everything else, misses the measure. Everything you can point to, a pot, a feeling, a whole world, comes into view and then goes, and each is undone by the moment that follows it. What this passage calls real is what no later moment ever cancels, the steady ground on which all the arrivals and departures play out. Time itself rises and sets within it. To call you sat is to say you are not one more thing that happens to last, but the very abiding in which lasting and ending are seen at all.

So this small definition quietly draws a line. On one side stands all that is born and passes, and by this exact measure it is not the final real. On the other stands the one thing that is never negated, and that is named as your own being. The path of this text is to keep walking back across that line, away from everything that comes and goes, toward what was abiding the whole time.

Among everything you call yours, is there anything that has never once been absent: the one thing no moment has ever cancelled?

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