Prince Siddhartha sat on a patch of kusha grass beneath a ficus religiosa tree investigating human nature. After a long time of contemplation, he came to the realization that all form, including our flesh and bones, and all our emotions and all our perceptions, are assembled — they are the product of two or more things coming together.
When any two components or more come together, a new phenomenon emerges — nails and wood become a table; water and leaves become tea; fear, devotion, and a savior become God. This end product doesn’t have an existence independent of its parts.
Believing it truly exists independently is the greatest deception. Meanwhile the parts have undergone a change. Just by meeting, their character has changed and, together, they have become something else — they are “compounded.”
He realized that this applies not only to the human experience but to all matter, the entire world, the universe — because everything is interdependent, everything is subject to change. Not one component in all creation exists in an autonomous, permanent, pure state…thus Siddhartha discovered that impermanence does not mean death, as we usually think, it means change
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
Leave a Reply