On "Meeting with Impermanence"

I have just begun reading "Heard by Me: Essays on My Buddhist Teacher" by Shuichi Maida. I've been reading a lot of Maida over the past couple of weeks.

One passage from his essay "Meeting with Impermanence" struck me:

What kind of truth did Sakyamuni discover in this world? He discovered one truth, and he called it 'impermanence'. Impermanence is something you cannot grasp. If you can grasp a thing, it is no longer impermanent. The truth of impermanence is that all existing things are being transformed moment after moment-- that things and our minds are changing moment after moment and do not stay the same for even a second. Thus if there is anything that is fixed, there cannot be any truth of impermanence. This truth can only be described as a flash (28).

Compare Maida's statement with this excerpt from the book "Who's Afraid of Schrödinger's Cat?":

In the quantum universe - and this is the whole universe - every 'part' is subtly linked to every other, and the very identity - the being, qualities, and characteristics - of constituents depends upon their relation to others. It is impossible, except as an approximation, to apply the part of the scientific method that calls for isolating an entity from its environment when one is investigating quantum entities or systems. The part comes to be fully only in the context of the larger whole (298).

"Impermanence is something you cannot grasp," wrote Maida. "If you can grasp a thing, it is no longer impermanent." Quantum physics states that we alter an object merely by observing it. By observing it, we become one with it. By doing so, we have fundamentally changed it and, by extension, it has changed us. "The part comes to be fully only in the context of the larger whole."

Impermanence then does not merely imply that things end, although this is typically - and not unreasonably - the general supposition when Buddhists talk about impermanence. "I will die," we may think. "This tree will grow. That star will burn out." Impermanence, too, refers to a state of being; if our very components are constantly in flux, we too are constantly in flux. Even the "I" in question here changes from moment to moment as our perceptions of ourselves changes depending upon our moods. For example, the confident I is a very different person from the anxious I; the self-perception and other thoughts that accompany that state necessarily change, then, as well.

Maida writes "Impermanence does not allow us to have any fixed opinion, thought, viewpoint, or position" (32). I am, then, very much a different person than the individual who started writing this essay. If that is the case, our concept of self is truly empty as reflected in the Heart Sutra:

Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness; emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness; emptiness itself is form. So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness.

(Yes, I am certainly aware of the problems with quoting the Prajna Paramita Sutra here in a Shin blog, but for a response to that, see this essay by the Rev. Fred Ulrich).

I believe we can - and do - find the same truth of impermanence in both Buddhist scripture and science.