Anitya in Buddhism refers to impermanence or change. The word “change” in English simply means to make different. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus argued that everything in the universe changes. This relates somewhat to Buddhism but not entirely. For a Buddhist, everything is anitya but with the proviso that only what is composed or conditioned is anitya. The unconditioned does not change, in other words.
Logically, this means that change is relative to the unchanging or nitya. This further means that it is by the unchanging that we come to know the changing or anitya including its limitations, for example, anitya had no effect on nirvana.
Turning to Zen, we could even say that whereas our thoughts are always changing the essence or substance of thought is nitya — it does not change. This is like the ocean with its ever changing waves and wave patterns—but it’s all H2O which doesn’t change otherwise water would not be water as we know it.
If, like the Buddha, we awakened to the absolute declaring, “This universe is an illusory appearance, being only thought,” we have verified this from the standpoint of having personally realized nitya, this being the same essence or substance that makes up thought. We are not guessing but see everything, including our thoughts, as compositions of absolute essence. A truly marvelous unified field theory you could say!
Western science has not the slightest idea what the essence of the universe is, and certainly no idea what thoughts are made of. Their world is bound to spacetime. That’s it. It is a world that is limited to the senses and mind/thought (manas).
Some scientists are also like wardens who take enormous pride in studying and understanding the sensory prison, but also making it more secure. But the wardens are also in the same prison as the prisoners. Neither can escape in which even death is not an escape.
For those like the Buddhas who have escaped from the prison by intuiting the essence of thought; looking back, it turned out to be an illusory prison, a composition of essence or tathatā which is nitya and everlasting.
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