Impermanence

All things are impermanent; this is, perhaps, one of the most central principles in Buddhist thought. Every “thing”, every little piece of form that exists cannot last. Our possessions get disposed of, they get recycled, turned into other items or are left to decompose back into the earth. As for ourselves, eventually our bodies will cease to function and they will change too, like the things we cling onto in life, we will decompose, and head back into the earth. Mountains will be eroded, and the oceans themselves are already part of a continuous cycle of change. And all of this occurs on a seemingly permanent world which one day will vanish also, when it is engulfed by the sun.

This is how time is created, time only exists because physical form exists, and it would not exist otherwise. If all were nothing but a vast emptiness time would not exist, how could it? I heard somebody say the other day that time is infinite. And my immediate reaction was that this was wrong, but it has taken me two days to figure out why, time cannot be infinite, because it is intrinsically tied up with the physical world, with the “things” we were talking about above, they are impermanent, just as all the physical form of the universe is impermanent, therefore, so is time.

But all things are binary and everything has its opposite, this is true as far as it goes as every opposite is intrinsic to the definition of the thing anyway. And this is certainly the case with the universe. I have mentioned the physical world of the universe, which is a suitably mystical sentence, but the universe is also made up of this binary definition. There is the physical side of the universe and the empty side of the universe. That is the side that everything exists in, it is the space in which the planets and galaxies move, and it is eternal because it is empty.

Imagine and maze, and ask yourself, what defines it? Is it the walls that make the maze, or is it the empty space in between them that allows you to walk through it? The answer is both, I think, although these things are opposites they are also dependant on each other for shape an definition. Which leads me to wonder, are there really such thing as opposites? Or are all opposites just there to give the universe shape.