Impermanence -Everywhere

All form, both gross as in a tree, and subtle as in thought, depend upon innumerable conditions and are not the fixed entities that they appear to be. Nothing actually remains the same for an instant. What is perceived to be an unchanging object is on the contrary, an instantaneous, indivisible movement of disintegration and formation, even though this transience is imperceptible. It is in this sense that what is called death is also life, as the ongoing transformation of all phenomena.

 

Nothing exists independently, as its own substance, nature or process, that everything is impermanent. All form and all characteristics are dependent and relational in every regard.

 Death is also falsely viewed as an independent process that results in the annihilation of life. However, if birth and death were independent processes, there would be no relationship between them. Birth would never stop being born and death would always be dying, which is nonsensical. Additionally, if birth had its own nature and process, it would have given birth to itself, which requires it to have already existed. And how can something that is dead produce death? Furthermore, it is contradictory to think of death or nonexistence as existing. Where could nonexistence reside if it did not exist?

 These contradictions can be avoided by recognizing the interdependence of all things and consequently, to see that what arises dependently cannot be inherently created or destroyed. For no phenomenon is ever its own thing to begin with. Instead, each moment, is an unmarked birth and death in an interdependent and impermanent flow of continuation.

Therefore, there is not a separate self with its own cemented mind-body continuity that can be overtaken by a force called death. Thought, feeling, sensation, perception and a body are all vastly interrelational and impermanent, never remaining the same for an instant. The notion that there exists a separate, permanent self above and beyond a vast web of dependent conditions is a fiction. Death, which is merely impermanence, has been here all along. It is like the saying that you never step into the same river twice.

Humans are seen to possess a fundamentally different nature from the rest of the world, but are instead dependent upon it with no human essence left over. Without the conditions of air, water, earth, minerals, plants, the sun, a moon, ad infinitum, neither consciousness nor any human characteristic could appear, including culture, language, human society, and its interrelations. Everything is interdependent with no individual core or substance to be found, just as with fire. The belief in concrete thingness, mistakes the conceptual image of a thing for a real separate thing, mistakes the concept of death for death, the label of consciousness to be consciousness, the image of a me for a separate self.

Using the notion of impermanence, is not to assume it to be an inherently existent entity or process either. Impermanence is also empty of its own nature and does not involve an autonomous operation or autonomous entities that it moves or operates. It is the inability to posit independent phenomena and processes that is the meaning of impermanence.

An understanding of impermanence refutes the idea that separate entities just show up from out of nowhere concretely formed, and then disappear in a final act called death. Things appear to have a separate location and to independently come and go, as well as function. However, when these mechanistic impressions are carefully examined, such appearances, activities, and functions are recognized as relative, dependent relationships with no nature or being of their own. Everything is like a reflection in a mirror, like a movie that appears to contain substantive entities but do not.