Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales
If we consider the idea of an existence of permanence and eternity, it becomes ridiculous. At which point would it become fixed? At conception, one year, twenty, fifty? How could existence be fixed? We would become frozen in time and space.
Impermanence and death are the emptiness of form. Impermanence and death are change. I could reiterate the suggestions made in the chapter ‘Sky Mind’ – of life without emptiness as life without death and change.
The food in our gut would not break down, but remain solid – forever. Breathing, and circulation would cease because breathing in could not die to allow breathing out to be born. We would only be able to see whatever person or thing we happened to be looking at in the moment that dying stopped. There would be no more flow of communication as one phrase died to allow the birth of the next. We would not be able to move, because the position we found ourselves in could not cease to allow a new one to arise.
Life-without-death would mean that it was always today and never our birthday. The spring daffodils would remain resplendent, but the summer roses would never grow and blossom. Our children would not be able to grow up and become independent, because their childhood could not end. We could no longer enjoy music, as the sound of one note could not die to allow the birth of the next. The sick would be trapped in their pain and infirmity without the promise of a cure, relief and a better quality of life.