Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics by Dalai Lama

Author:Dalai Lama
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

20

Positing Subtle Impermanence

IN GENERAL “impermanence” is posited on the basis of whether something undergoes change, and conditioned phenomena are subject to change owing to their causes and conditions.347 So if something has causes and conditions, it is subject to change, and if it does not have causes and conditions, it is not subject to change. [384] The fact of such conditioned phenomena being subject to change is primarily a function of the productive causes that produce them. As such, all conditioned phenomena continuously undergo change without remaining static for even a single moment. For example, owing to the change of a tree’s leaves, they fall to the ground with the arrival of cold in winter. It is not that they transform spontaneously, but rather they transform each day and week until in the end they fall to the ground. Those leaves that transform over many days do so naturally through merely being established. Therefore they transform moment by moment, and even though the eye does not see it, in reality they continuously transform. If subtle change did not exist moment by moment, then coarse transformation also could not arise.

With respect to how the four characteristics of conditioned phenomena are understood, the Vaibhāṣikas, for example, assert that when the three characteristics of conditioned phenomena — arising, enduring, and disintegrating — illustrate the conditioned nature of something, such as the form aggregate, they do not do so on the basis of something arising and so on. They do so by way of demonstrating that the given phenomenon possesses characteristics such as arising that are distinct from it. Therefore they don’t assert these characteristics to be the action of arising and so on, but rather as substantially real, distinct entities that are the agents that generate, that endure, and that disintegrate. So although these four characteristics do exist simultaneously for conditioned phenomena, such as a material entity, when they occur on a specific basis, they maintain that first the action of arising occurs, next [385] enduring, then decaying, then the action of disintegration occurs in a sequential order. As for the four characteristics of arising and so on themselves, as mentioned earlier, they do not view these in terms of the action of arising and so forth. Rather they posit these in terms of substantially real, distinct entities that are the agent of generation, the agent of endurance, the agent of decay, and the agent of disintegration. Furthermore they interpret “conditioned phenomena” in terms of “produced through the aggregation of causes and conditions,” that is to say, in terms of activities associated with active agents. For example, the Treasury of Knowledge Autocommentary states:

Here owing to arising it generates that phenomena, owing to enduring it causes it to abide, owing to decaying it causes it to age, and owing to impermanence it causes it to disintegrate.348

Explanation of the Treasury of Knowledge states:

Here they assert the characteristics of conditioned phenomena are by nature different substances.349

Therefore those characteristics are not posited in terms of extremely short moments.

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