<<Назад Благородный Восьмеричный Путь – срединный путь

Оглавление

Далее>> Что такое карма?

Перевод

Таблица

Оригинал

Everything is Changeable

What exists is changeable and what is not changeable does not exist.

WE notice how life changes and how it continually moves between extremes and contrasts. We notice rise and fall, success and failure, loss and gain; we experience honour and contempt, praise and blame; and we feel how our hearts respond to happiness and sorrow, delight and despair, disappointment and satisfaction, fear and hope. These mighty waves of emotion carry us up, fling us down, and no sooner do we find some rest, than we are carried by the power of a new wave again. How can we expect a footing on the crest of the waves? Where shall we erect the building of our life in the midst of this ever-restless ocean of existence?

This is a world where any little joy that is allotted to beings is secured only after many disappointments, failures and defeats. This is a world where scanty joy grows amidst sickness, desperation and death. This is a world where beings who a short while ago were connected with us by sympathetic joy are at the next moment in want of our compassion. Such a world as this needs equanimity. It is the nature of the world that we live with our intimate friends who the next day can become our enemies to harm us.

The Buddha described the world as an unending flux of becoming. All is changeable, continuous transformation, ceaseless mutation, and a moving stream. Everything exists from moment to moment. Everything is a recurring rotation of coming into being and then passing out of existence. Everything is moving from birth to death. Life is a continuous movement of change towards death. The matter or material forms in which life does or does not express itself, are also a continuous movement or change towards decay. This teaching of the impermanent nature of everything is one of the main pivots of Buddhism. Nothing on earth partakes of the character of absolute reality. That there will be no death of what is born is impossible. Whatever is subject to origination is subject also to destruction. Change is the very constituent of reality.

The Buddha reminded us that all existing component things are impermanent. With birth, there is death; with arising, there is dissolving; with coming together, there is separation. How can there be birth without death? How can there be arising without dissolving? How can there be coming together without separation?

In declaring the Law of Impermanence or change, the Buddha denies the existence of eternal substances. Matter and spirit are false abstractions that, in reality, are only changing factors (Dharma) which are connected and which arise in functional dependence on each other.

Today, scientists have accepted the law of change that was discovered by the Buddha. Scientists postulate that there is nothing substantial, solid and tangible in the world. Everything is a vortex of energy, never remaining the same for two consecutive moments. The whole wide world is caught up in this whirl and vortex of change. One of the theories postulated by scientists is the prospect of the ultimate coldness following upon the death or destruction of the sun. Buddhists are not dismayed by this prospect. The Buddha taught that universes or world cycles arise and pass away in endless succession, just as the lives of individuals do. Our world will most certainly come to an end before other worlds come into existence. It has happened before with previous worlds and it will happen again. It is simply a matter of time.

‘The world is a passing phenomenon. We all belong to the world of time. Every written word, every carved stone, every painted picture, the structure of civilisation, every generation of human beings, will vanish away like the leaves and flowers of forgotten summers. What exists is changeable and what is not changeable does not exist.’ Thus all gods and human beings and animals and material forms— everything in this universe—is subject to the law of impermanency. Buddhism teaches us that the mind seeks a permanent existence but life creates an impermanent physical body. We take this as life, and then unsatisfactoriness disturbs the mind. This is the source of suffering.

‘The body like a lump of foam:
The feelings like a water bubble;
Perception like a mirage;
Volitional activities like a banana tree;
And Consciousness like jaggery.’

(SAMYUTTA NIKAYA)

<<Назад Благородный Восьмеричный Путь – срединный путь

Оглавление

Далее>> Что такое карма?

Редакция перевода от 01.07.2015 19:45