WHAT BUDDHA FOUND

Without a single scientifc tool, Prince Siddhartha sat on a patch of kusha grass beneath a fcus religiosa tree investigating human nature. After a long time of contemplation, he came to the realization that all form, including our fesh 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 phenome-non 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 every-thing is interdependent, everything is subject to change. Not one component in all creation exists in an autonomous, per-manent, pure state. Not the book you are holding, not atoms, not even the gods. So as long as something exists within reach of our mind, even in our imagination, such as a man with four arms, then it depends on the existence of something else. Thus Siddhartha discovered that impermanence does not mean death, as we usually think, it means change. Anything that changes in relation to another thing: even the slightest shift, is subject to the laws of impermanence.