Impermanence in Buddhism

From: Mike Perry (mike@alcor.org)
Date: Sat Jul 20 2002 - 14:34:41 MDT


 From the message of Michael F. Dickey yesterday, commenting on the notion
of "impermanence" in Buddhism:

>Transient things do not only include the physical objects that
>surround us, but also ideas, and -in a greater sense- all objects of our
>perception.

This strikes me as overblown. The decimal expansion of pi is, in some
sense, permanent; the digits could be recomputed even if every record of
them was lost. So there are things that can be considered "permanent" in a
way that appears to contradict a central tenet of Buddhism. One reason I am
not a Buddhist, even though, like many others, I do have respect for many
of its features.

Mike Perry



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