Transcience

May 29th, 2025

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” ― Carl Sagan

“Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” – Heart Sutra

“All things must pass.” -George Harrison

It’s springtime. Finally. The trees have leaves, even the walnuts and locusts whose branches remain bare until almost June. There are flowers blooming, although the tulips and the daffodils are fading fast. It is a time of rapid and obvious change. The world seems to be waking up after a long, cold winter. However, it was awake and in motion even then.

Some change makes us sit up and take notice. Some of it is so slow and gradual that we can be convinced that nothing is happening at all. However, everything is transient. The only constant in this world is change.

Sometimes I feel like each day is a lot like the last one. Then, suddenly I become aware that new things are happening. Our four-year-old grandson, Asher, lives with us. Every once in a while, I look at him and it is like seeing a completely different boy. He’s somehow taller or he’s able to ride a bicycle without any help from me. These changes sneak up on me. There is a flash of consciousness, and then I know that Asher has become somebody else, somebody new. The feeling is both exciting and a bit disturbing.

If Asher is constantly changing, then I am too. I occasionally notice that when I look into a mirror and see an old man staring back at me. My beard that was once almost black in color is now mostly white. Most of the hair on my head is long gone. There are lines on my face that have become increasingly deep and rough. Physically, I am not the man I was ten years ago, or even the man I was ten minutes ago. It’s all in flux. I am a shapeshifter like everybody else, like every other thing in the universe.

Am I the same person on the inside? I don’t mean in a physical sense, but more in a spiritual way. Would I even recognize the person who I was when I was in my twenties? What would I have in common with that individual?

There is a Buddhist tradition about the five Skandhas. Skandhas are different attributes of people and things that are continually shifting and evolving. The bottom line is that nothing and nobody has any permanent being. It’s all ephemeral. If that is true, then there is no “Frank” writing this article. Or if there is one, that version of “Frank” will not last.

I would like to think that at the core of each human being there is an eternal soul, that there is something that survives change and even death. If there is such a thing, I don’t think we can perceive it. It is covered up with the Skandhas, veils of illusion. God may know who I really am, but I don’t.

Perhaps, when I leave this world, I will see things as they really are. Maybe, I will even see who I really am. And maybe what I really am is something constantly in motion, a tiny dynamic force that is part of a much larger evolving whole.

That’s not so bad.