Chapter 10 Chapter 1 Artificiality and Impermanence-4

In essence, combined action is timed - it has a beginning, a middle and an end.The book didn't exist before, it seems to exist now, and eventually it will dissipate.In the same way, the self that existed yesterday - that is, you are different from the self that exists today.Your bad mood has improved, you may have learned something, you have new memories, the scrape on your knee has healed a little.Our seemingly continuous existence is a series of beginnings and endings bounded by time.Even the act of creation requires time: the time before existence, the time of making existence, and the time when the act of creation ends.

Generally speaking, those who believe in an omnipotent Creator do not analyze their concept of time, because everyone assumes that the Creator is independent of time.To attribute everything to an all-powerful and omnipresent Creator, we must take time into account.Either this world has always existed (then there is no need for Genesis), or it did not exist for a period of time before Genesis, and Genesis needs a continuous time.So since the Creator (let's say God) obeys the laws of time, he must also change, even if the only change he ever made was in creating the world.An omnipresent and eternal God cannot change, so it is better to have an impermanent God who can answer prayers and change the weather.But as long as God's actions consist of a series of beginnings and endings, he is impermanent, in other words, uncertain and unreliable.

Some people may think that if all the people on the earth die, God will continue to exist.So this is based on the assumptions made at this point in time.In other words, there is now a "hypothesiser".Siddhartha would agree that as long as there are "hypothesisers," there is a God; but without the hypotheses, there is no God.If there is no paper, there will be no book.If there is no water, there will be no ice.If there is no beginning, there will be no end.The existence of one thing is so dependent on the existence of other things that nothing is truly independent.Because of the interdependence of things and things.If one component (such as a pair of table legs) is shifted even slightly, the integrity of the whole is altered and destabilized.As much as we think we can control change, in fact it is mostly impossible because there are too many influencing factors that cannot be detected.Also because of this interdependence, everything inevitably disintegrates from its present or original state.In every change there is an element of death.Today is the death of yesterday.

Most people accept that all living things will eventually die.However, our definitions of "everything" and "death" may be different.For Siddhartha, life refers to all that is, not just flowers, mushrooms, human beings, but everything that comes into being or comes together.And death refers to any disintegration or deconstruction.Siddhartha had no research grants or research assistants, just hot Indian dust and a few passing buffaloes to bear witness to.In this way, he deeply realized the truth of impermanence.His realization is not as amazing as the discovery of a new star, nor is it used to make moral judgments, launch social movements, or found religions, nor is it a kind of prophecy.Impermanence is purely a simple fact.It is very unlikely that someday something that was suddenly combined will suddenly become constant, and it is even more difficult to imagine that we can prove such a thing.But today, we either worship Buddha as a god, or we want to use technology to prove that we are better than Buddha.