CHANGE

1. Impermanence is central

We will no doubt all agree that the notion of change, or impermanence (anicca), is central to the Teaching of the Buddha. We are told repeatedly, in the oldest texts as well as later ones, that attachment to the impermanent results in woe. Purity, desirelessness, freedom from unhappiness in all its forms -- in short, full enlightenment -- is achieved by non-attachment. Non-attachment is inseparable from perception of impermanence. And conversely, it is through failure to perceive impermanence that beings continue to cling to this and that. Thus we remain mired in the slough of greed, hatred, delusion, and misery .

But what exactly can all this mean? For it is plain from the start that we already perceive impermanence, all of us. I see a sheet of white paper gradually fill with black marks. I hear various sounds (chirps, hums, gurgles) begin, endure for some time, and then fade. I perceive bodily percepts (warmth, a faint giddiness, an itch) change in character or cease altogether either rapidly or slowly. I think a succession of thoughts, images, ideas. All manifestly impermanent. And all of this is, undeniably, perception of change. "But," it must then be asked, "if you're so perceptive why aren't you enlightened?" So it is clear at once that the Buddha's Teaching, if it means anything at all, must mean something other than this by the term "perception of impermanence." What is that "other than this?"

The usual reply -- the answer we find in almost all accounts of Buddhism, both popular and scholarly -- is to the effect that this perception of change is merely conventional (sammuti). There is a higher, or ultimate (paramattha) truth, a perception other than this which we must develop: not only do things change; they always change, i.e. they are in flux. By "flux" is meant either of two essentially equivalent ideas. "Pure flux" asserts that all things always change: they do not endure unchanged for any time whatsoever. "Impure flux" holds that just as matter is composed of basic units, known as atoms, so too, time consists of basic units, known as moments. These moments are the rate at which everything changes. They are, it seems, extremely brief. Various figures are bandied about, but a common one is 176,470,000,000 moments (more or less) "in a single flash of lightning." With such phenomenal speed material phenomena whiz past our awareness. Mental events, it seems, occur about seventeen times faster.

Clearly, only enlightened beings could hope to perceive such a flux. We commoners must live out our lives in blissful (or not-so-blissful) ignorance of this truth. Nevertheless we can hardly refrain from trying to imagine what the world must be like when everything -- everything! -- is seen to change and flicker and dance about always, and in all ways, with such incredible rapidity that its very reality seems to be at best merely tenuous. Yesterday I wrote some words, black marks on white paper. Today that paper melts into an evanescent and fluctuating whirl. No longer white -- no longer even rectangular (for both color and shape now change ceaselessly) -- it seems indefinable, perhaps even impalpable. And those black squiggles, now illegible, are no longer meaningful or, the same thing, they contain all meaning, O paradox!

The wall, once so solid and immobile, now resembles a broiling impasto, as vermiculative in its ceaseless and pervasive mutations as a seething mass of maggots shrouding an overripe corpse. And this chair, once so firm and supportive: how is it that I don't now plunge through its insubstantial flimsiness to fall endlessly down some unutterable abyss? Could this be the perception we are admonished to strive for, as being valuable above all else? In such a world how could we even brush our teeth, let alone experience the unalloyed bliss of non-attachment? Before such a vision we can readily develop a sympathy for the view, sometimes encountered, that enlightenment may be all very well and good as a future aspiration, but not now!

Of course it might not be that way at all. Imagination is not reality. A perception of universal flux might be but a gentle rippling of the surface, so to speak. A sort of universal vibration more akin to, say, a mild acid trip than to the demented visions of a psychotic madman. This would be a vast improvement over the former conceptualization, to be sure. But it is not at all clear that it would be an improvement over our everyday perception, however drab and mundane and conventional that perception might be.[2] But even if we allow that it is (as we are assured) quite free from any such disquietude as arose when we tried to imagine what perception of universal flux might be like, and even if we allow that such a perception might be (in some way) beatific, yet as a vision of reality it is still unsatisfactory.

It is not just a matter of declining to accept that perception of impermanence is co-extensive with a disdain for common sense. More importantly, the Buddha proposes, does he not?, that perception of impermanence stands in an organic relationship with relinquishment (as does non-perception of impermanence to attachment). And leaving aside (for now) the question of whether flux is a valid concept in its own right we still must ask: In what way is this notion holistically connected to letting go? After all, an ordinary person, even were he to assent to the doctrine of flux, would not thereby see (even conceptually) a connection with the ideas of attachment and unhappiness. This is demonstrated by the many non-Buddhist thinkers, from Heraclitus to Henry Burlingame III, who are in exactly this position. Of course one can argue a connection. But the fact that an argument is needed is already evidence that the connection is more a matter of reasoning than of self-evidence. And however reasonable the argument may seem it is still an argument.

This is in striking contrast to the notion of conventional or "everyday" change. Even an ordinary person (let alone an enlightened one) can readily see how that notion is connected to attachment and woe. No argumentation is necessary (for who has not loved and lost?), albeit he might not thereby see the way to free himself from such attachment, or even wish to do so. When non-Buddhists write about impermanence in its "everyday" sense it is common for them to conclude their remarks with cries of "Alas!" and "Alack!" however much they may then increase their distress by advocacy of strategies of attachment and indulgence -- "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," "Eat, drink, and be merry...," and so on.

To give a concrete example, if I accept that this concrete slab (which is dear to me) is changing "all the time" there is in that no arising of anxiety. My ownership is not thereby affected. Nor is there any a priori reason why this belief in (or even perception of) flux should induce in me an attitude of relinquishment. It could as well lead me to cling all the tighter. If, for instance, I were to choose to regard this concrete slab as "always changing" then that very "always" could lend it (in my eyes) a sort of backhanded permanence which discrete change would not. But suppose I see that my slab could be broken or stolen, that it must be polished and protected, and that in any case it will inevitably be destroyed like all concrete slabs before it. Then it is clear at once, to enlightened and unenlightened alike, that attachment to such a thing must lead to disappointment. And, on a subtler and more immediate level, the awareness that this is so must necessarily produce in me a present apprehension of that disappointment even though the concrete slab may now be undergoing no apparent (or even actual) change.

The common man may neither wish to nor be able to apply the observation of discrete change to the generality of his experience. But he is certainly capable of applying it at least to the specific case, and may even succeed thus in freeing himself from a debilitating dependency on concrete slabs. But however much he may strive to apply a belief in flux to his experience, it will necessarily remain separated from that experience by a gulf of rationalization. For flux differs from discrete change not only in that its connection to dissatisfaction is (at least for you and me) a matter of concept, not of percept, but also in that its relation to experience itself is ultimately a matter for conjecture.

2. The usual argument for flux

The usual argument for flux runs like this: We can see that comparatively major changes (the manufacture and eventual destruction of my concrete slab, for example) occur infrequently. Subsidiary changes (e.g. cracks; chipping around the edges) are more common events. Minor changes (scratches on the surface, accumulation of dirt) can be noticed yet more often. It is easy enough to perceive in this progression a principle: less significant changes tend to occur more frequently than more general ones. There is the temptation to leap from this to the notion that below the threshold of perception changes are occurring, though we cannot observe them, with yet-greater frequency. It requires only one further extrapolation to reach the conclusion that ultimately (as opposed to merely conventionally) everything is changing, on an atomic level, all the time: flux. And, it is explained, it is because we fail to see this truth that we form attachments to the impermanent, thereby exposing ourselves to misery.

It is seen at once that this argument (which is certainly reductio, if not ad absurdum) bases itself upon the observation that things change at diverse rates, subsidiary changes occurring more frequently, and that it concludes with the view that things change at the same rate, constantly. Not everyone will accept a conclusion which contradicts its own premises, but those who will do so once must be prepared to do so twice. For the whole purpose of this double extrapolation from observed discrete change to hypothesized continuous change -- based as it is upon analogy rather than upon necessity -- is to then use this very flux as an explanation of that same discrete change. Manifest discrete impermanence is taken as the gross outcome of the extremely subtle hypostasized changes that constitute a Reality as yet hidden from our perception. Flux is thus conceived as a sort of primordial essence.

The histories of science and religion are littered with the failed remains of similar efforts to discover such a base. The 19th century scientific notion of an all-pervasive "ether" and the Christian concept of an all-pervasive "God" are examples. All such essences are self-contradictory, flux no less than the others. Out of uniformity we can never arrive at the diversity of the world we actually experience.

If everything changes at the same rate then how is it that we are aware of slow and fast, and base our lives upon this perception? Ketchup pours slowly, but a shooting star flashes across the sky. Are we to ascribe this to a misperception of reality? Do meteors fall slower for enlightened beings? Does ketchup pour faster? But if an enlightened being perceives different rates of change he cannot also perceive continuous universal change. If some things change faster then necessarily there must be some moments (if we insist upon this concept of "moments") when other things do not change at all. Therefore if we posit a relationship between constant and variable change then that relationship is necessarily self-contradictory. However, if the relationship is severed then either the notion of flux must remain divorced from the realm of experience or else we must suppose a world in which continuous and discontinuous change are operative independently -- a schizoid world!

Rather than such an impossible world, some -- particularly those inclined towards mysticism -- prefer none at all. They assert an essence -- the Absolute, the All, or some other capitalized Concept -- and deny the mundane lower-case reality which is our common lot. They find flux a handy and simple garb with which to conceal naked reality. After all, if everything is always changing then how could such evanescent ephemerae have more than an inferred or second-hand existence? Is not Ultimate Reality -- a really real Reality -- to be found by perceiving flux, or even by going beyond it?

Yet however much the evidence of immediate experience is denied, the world continues to exhibit, in the face of our will, the characteristic of resistance. Therefore, to lend support to the denial, recourse is sometimes had to a willful misreading of the texts, and in particular of the doctrine of not-self (anattá). After all, it needs but a slight familiarity with the Suttas to recognize their major concerns. Conceit, (mistaken) concepts of immutability and essence, the will to possess -- these, and not a mere denial of the self-identity of the various things in the world ("a rose is not a rose is not a rose") are their recurrent themes. The relevance of the notion of selfhood, and of the Buddhist response to that notion, is made clear in verse 62 of the Dhammapada:

"I have sons! I have wealth!"
Thus the fool concerns himself.
He has not his very self.
Whence sons? Whence wealth?

3. The structure of time

The doctrine of flux is often associated with the notion that time consists of particles ("...at this point in time...") which move sequentially past something known as "the present." While only one point (or "moment") "at a time" is co-synchronous with "the present" (a concatenation of concepts reminiscent of a tangle of rusty barbed wire) other points, equally real, exist in the past and the future. This is sometimes extrapolated to an extreme in the simplistic notion that we can perceive only "one thing at a time" -- as if things were incapable of appearing within a context. In this model time is often compared to a river, and the various phenomena of experience to floatage.

However, if we understand time to be not a thing within (or upon) which all other things exist, but a characteristic of phenomena, then confusion need not arise. Things exhibit, variously, the qualities of blueness, of clangorousness, of sweetness, of pungency, of warmth, or of calmness (to name but one quality perceived through each of the senses). But we do not suppose (unless we are Platonists) that there are therefore universal qualities, "Blue," etc., from which these various characteristics are derived. Why, then, need we assume that temporality (or, the same thing, impermanence) is different?

True, it is universal, unlike all other qualities.[4] But it is not thereby any the less a quality inherent to phenomena rather than something imposed externally. The notion of time being external to phenomena, of things existing in time, brings us back to the search for some basic essence ("Time is Nature's way of preventing everything from happening all at once.") which is simultaneously both within and outside the range of human experience. Such a model is not merely suppositions but pernicious.

When such notions are set aside we shall be able to see that there is a basic and observable temporal structure to experience: it is organized hierarchically. This has already been implied in the observation that subsidiary changes occur more frequently than general ones. Things exist not in isolation but against a background of what they are not. For as long as we differentiate between a figure and its background the figure remains itself. Each figure greater than a point (a perceived point, that is, and not the ideal and suppositious points of mathematicians) is necessarily a construct of subsidiary components, for each of which the figure serves as background. And each background is in turn subsidiary to and defined by a yet more general level of experience. When change occurs it does so on a particular level of generality, and against a background of non-change at the next higher level.

Thus, a song is a sequence of notes of defined intervals. The notes change, but the song (which is the context within which the notes are characterized) remains the same song until it is finished. It would be meaningless to say, as the notes follow one another, that the song is changing. Our very sense of what a song is is that it is, precisely, an organized sequence of notes. It is because the notes change (and not their organization) that there is a song at all, let alone the same song.

Change always occurs at a specific level of generality. But at any level the change is total: what is ceases to be and is replaced by something else, or by nothing else. But on the next higher level there is no change at all: what is remains what it is until it ceases to be what it is. If the song is part of a more general performance then we can say that though the song has ended and another has begun there is still the same concert, for the concert is the background to the songs. The note is finished but the melody lingers on. The song is over but the concert continues. The concert is concluded but there is still the fag end of the evening to go. How long "the present" lasts depends upon our perspective. It is for this reason that in common language there is quite properly a plasticity in the scope of the word "now."

The present can mean this very second (the nick of time), the next sixty seconds (while this song -- "The Minute Waltz" -- is playing), today ("What a difference a day makes..."), a season ("Summertime, and the livin' is easy..."), or even the last million years or so ("In comparison with the Tertiary period, then, the Pleistocene is marked by..."). How long "now" lasts depends on its context, and context is a matter of perspective. It is only against a background of sameness that change can be perceived. This is "change while standing" -- thitassa aññathattam, A. III,47: i,52. Without difference we cannot speak of change; but without steadiness how can we speak of difference? Change requires non-change as its background, as what it is not.[5]

Again: this sentence remains "this sentence" and not "a different sentence" until such time as (within the terms of experience of it) it ends. It remains "this sentence" even though its subsidiary parts, namely the words which comprise it, arise and cease in an organized sequence as experienced entities. And even though that sentence has now come to an end, has ceased utterly, has been replaced by another sentence, namely this one, yet this is still the same paragraph, specifically the eighth paragraph of the third section of an essay called Change. And on a yet more general level, until it demonstrates its own title by concluding, this essay will remain the same essay, Change, even after this paragraph has come to an end. To wit:

Since on each higher level of generality there is no change at all we can say that from a point of view within any one level the next higher level is eternal. Or, better, extra-temporal. Just as change is perceptible only against a background of non-change, so too impermanence (temporality) is perceptible only against a background of extra-temporality. But that extra-temporality exists only in relationship to its less general foreground, and it is thus not independently extra-temporal. Its extra-temporality is due entirely to a particular point of view. And since points of view are invariably temporal, that extra-temporality will cease and be utterly ended when the perspective of the experience changes and no longer gives support to eternality. Thus, the extra-temporal exists only with temporality as its condition -- a point to which we shall return.

Absolute eternality -- eternalness quite independent of any point of view -- is another matter. All that can be said is that, since experience necessarily requires a point of view, absolute eternality is outside the realm of any possible experience. It is inherently unknowable, unrealizable. But it would be a mistake to go farther by raising questions of its "existence." This is all that can be said of absolute eternality, but it is not all that can be said of the desire to discover an absolute eternality. Since this desire is bound up with the inability to understand what is meant by "perception of impermanence" we shall have much more to say about it in the course of this essay.

In normal experience we are skilled at skipping between points of view based on different levels of generality. So accustomed are we to these leaps that we seldom notice the transition. In developing a reflexive attitude we can become skilled at not so leaping, or at least in looking when we do. It is in reflexion that the hierarchical is seen to be fundamental to experience in ways that our primitive examples do not illustrate. But to everydayness this relative extra-temporality may seem paradoxical, inasmuch as its very existence is entirely dependent upon there being a temporal foreground. We expect our eternities to be made of sturdier stuff. We expect them to be absolute. It is disconcerting to find that every eternity exists dependent upon its temporal foreground, without which it would simply cease to be eternal. To be extra-temporal, then, is a quality which inheres in a thing (by virtue of endowment) now. It is eternal at this minute. In other words, a thing can be eternal, but only until it comes to an end.

Thus, if one adopts the point of view of the notes, the song is eternal. It does not merely outlast any particular note (for by that reckoning it would be merely temporal); it is on an entirely different plane of being than the notes. The song is what the notes are for: it is only by virtue of there being a song at all that the notes can be characterized as notes. Were there no song then the individual sounds could not be regarded as music: there would be no notes. In other words the note qua note exists only by virtue of the song, which is the note's purpose in life.

Things always appear in a context, however rarefied. It is this context which allows us to distinguish "this" from "that." In order, then, to identify a thing, to "name" it, we must know (among other things) what it is for. Therefore the song is necessarily on a higher level of being than the notes, and cannot be regarded as having the same sort of temporality. (The door will also outlast the notes, but we do not therefore say that from the perspective of the notes the door is eternal. No, for the door is unrelated to the notes, not part of their noteness.)

Of course, the song is extra-temporal only from the point of view of the notes. From the point of view of the song itself it is the concert that is extra-temporal. (Extra-temporal, that is, within the hierarchy we have constructed here. We should observe, though, that this hierarchy -- notes, song, concert, evening -- is but one of numerous possible hierarchies, many of which could exist within an experience simultaneously, cutting across one another at various junctures.) And from the perspective of "an evening on the town" the song may seem interminable, but it would never seem eternal. From this perspective it is but one feature, to be followed by others, as notes are features of the song.

The song could cease to exist only when the next more immediate level (the notes) ceases to exist. As long as there are notes from which there could be that point of view the song must endure. But when the song ends there is no longer the possibility of regarding its non-existence from the viewpoint of the notes. In this sense the song is (always from the viewpoint of the notes) quite beyond temporality.

But observe that although in this example the background[6] (the song) actually does last longer than the foreground (the particular notes) this is not always the case. If a thing exists or an act is performed for some purpose, then that purpose is (from the viewpoint of the thing or the act) extra-temporal regardless of how long it endures "by the clock." If we do something merely for the pleasure of doing it, then even though the pleasure lasts not a whit longer than the actual doing, nevertheless from the point of view of the doing the pleasure is extra-temporal. It is endowed with a substantiality which the action does not possess. And it is "the point of view of the doing" that we normally adopt while involved in an activity .

"The eternity which man is seeking is not the infinity of duration, of that vain pursuit after the self for which I am myself responsible; man seeks a repose in self, the atemporality of the absolute co-incidence with himself."[7] As soon as a thing is taken up as being "this, my self" it is immediately accorded the status of being what everything else is for. It is thus regarded quite literally as extra-temporality personified.

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Footnotes:

2. "Most of us want some kind of deep, marvellous and mystical experience; our own daily experiences are so trivial, so banal, so superficial, we want something electrifying. In that bizarre thought of a marvellous experience, there is this duality of the experienced and the experience. As long as this duality exists there must be distortion...." -- J. Krishnamurti, The Impossible Question (London: Penguin Books, 1978), p. 75. [Back to text]

3. F. L. Woodward's translation of this passage -- Rúpam (etc.) bhikkhave aniccam dukkham viparinámadhammam atthisammatam loke panditánam aham pi tam Atthíti vadámi -- in vol. 3 of Kindred Sayings (London, Pali Text Society,1955) entirely misses the point. [Back to text]

4. Spatiality can be present in any single-sense experience (and a fortiori in any multi-sense experience), but it need not be. It is thus actually not entitled to its privileged position alongside temporality ("the space-time continuum") as a universal characteristic. Anguish, for instance, is not spatial, though it is certainly temporal. In this limited sense we can say that it is time that is of the essence. (By the way, according to The American Heritage Word Frequency Book, compiled by John B. Carroll et al., the word "time" is the most commonly used noun in modern English.) [Back to text]

5. The relationship between particularity and rate of change is such that in some hierarchies we can arrive at a level of immediacy wherein change is so rapid that it is apprehended only irrationally, as a blur. No doubt with practice the threshold at which perception of discrete change degenerates into an indiscriminate blur can be lowered, but it cannot be eliminated any more than one can eliminate a horizon by running towards it, however fast a runner one may be. [Back to text]

6. The use of the terms "figure," "background," etc. are here given a more restricted meaning than their equivalents in Gestalt psychology. In Gestalt the figure is not necessarily "for" the ground; it is merely that part of experience which receives primary attention. Though ground may validly be understood thus, our present interest makes it convenient to use terminology with a more restricted meaning, wherein the background is the "for"-ground. [Back to text]

7. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (London: Methuen, 1957), trans. by Hazel E. Barnes, pp. 141-2. [Back to text]