Buddha Taught Everything is Impermanent + Everything Changes.But Buddhas teachings arnt impermanent?

ashcatman

Buddhas Teachings are still around from 2500 years ago.
The Buddha clearly stated that EVERYTHING is impermanent.He didnt say only some things are, so we cant pick and choose what is impermanent. He says EVERYTHING is. But the teachings itself are still around and you could say that the teachings havent changed either. And if they have changed over time then that is proof that Buddhism is all just opinions and no one knows what real buddhism is.

He says that nothing lasts forever. But again buddhas teachings might spread even more and therefore could be around forever and ever. Whos knows? EVERYONE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD COME BECOME A BUDDHIST. (even if we dont live to see that day.

But what are your thoughts on this guys?
Is everything really impermanent. What about Impermanance itself. Wouldnt that be 'permanent' if it were true?
Or is impermanace impermanent?

Fell

Everything is impermanent. Buddhism is also impermanent. Basically, everything changes and is in a constant state of fluctuation. It's not really that big of a deal that Buddhism is impermanent either. Considering Buddha himself didn't even expect his teachings to last.

As far as the idea of impermanence being impermanent, well that is very confusing. I think the idea is that nothing is absolute(even though the word "nothing" is an absolute term). Is your head spinning yet? Mine is

Here is my official take on it:
Everything changes and simultaneously nothing REALLY ever changes.

ashcatman

Here is my official take on it:
Everything changes and simultaneously nothing REALLY ever changes.

Agreed

NOTaGangsta

Read da commentary on da Diamond Sutra by Master Hsing Yun homeboys!

NOTaGangsta

Although, the Buddha taught specific methods so we can actually help ourselves. Instead of getting lost thinking about metaphysics.

Talisman

The Buddha didn't think his teaching would last more than 500 years according to one sutta.

Impermanence is not a "conditioned phenomena." Impermanence is a way of describing "conditioned phenomena." Such as "all conditioned phenomena are impermanent."

For example, lets say, "all cherries are red," but is red also red? It is a meaningless inquiry. Red is not a "thing" that can be said to have a color. Red is just a way of describing something. Do you understand?

Jeffrey

The buddha nature is not conditional and thus not impermanent.. It is outside of time and space and thus permanent or impermanent does not apply. The dharma does not exist nor does it exist. But it is not other than these two. The light of stainless wisdom that banishes the darkness due to attachment to the sense desires.

A storm is not permanent but it always comes back. A river may be dry in the summer but when the rains come it fills up with water. It is like the heart. Have you found that you felt desicated for a time only to fill up again?

Normally we feel up with conditional things we grasp at and find them ultimately self defeating and unsatisfying. But when we fill up with the wish for enlightenment and compassion for all beings...that is a tree that grows stronger even as its fruit drops, is consumed, and rots.

Mountains

I don't think it's permanent, since it's pretty much a sure thing that the sun will go supernova and the earth will cease to be in a few billion years. And it's highly doubtful that human kind will still be around by then anyway. So no, Buddhadharma as we know it isn't permanent.

newtech

Hello Ashcatman.

This is a hard topic unless u see it throw the perspective of dependent origination.

From ignorance as condition, formations arise, then consciousness arise,name and form, six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, existence/being, birth and finally aging/death/pain/suffering/grief.

"Impermanent are all COMPONENT things,
They arise and cease, that is their nature:
They come into being and pass away,
Release from them is bliss supreme."

Thats Impermanence (Anicca). With this - comes that - without this- that doesnt come.

By letting go of every link of dependent origination, every condition, and finally letting go of the last condition, ignorance, u experience the unconditioned, nirvana.

Thats what the buddha mean with that concept.

With metta.

Spaceless

The Buddha didn't think his teaching would last more than 500 years according to one sutta.

Impermanence is not a "conditioned phenomena." Impermanence is a way of describing "conditioned phenomena." Such as "all conditioned phenomena are impermanent."
For example, lets say, "all cherries are red," but is red also red? It is a meaningless inquiry. Red is not a "thing" that can be said to have a color. Red is just a way of describing something. Do you understand?

Buddha replied to a query of his disciple then that the buddha dharma will only last for 12000 years, as living beings's is gradually undergoing great suffering that prevented them to appreciate their "permanent" metta.

tjampel

The teachings whatever the words may actually be are only important in terms of how they operate within your mind. The interaction of your mind with words is not only impermanent; it's completely different for every practitioner; no two practitioners have the same understanding of the teachings, since understanding is governed by both karma and klesha. Thinking of the teachings as something fixed and inviolate is foolish, since they exist dependently and their meaning is entirely dependent on how they are understood.

So, your ability to be inspired by the teachings and to further understand how the teachings are incredibly relevant to your life, in this moment (by really analyzing the teachings about suffering first and then about its causes, cessation, and the means to accomplish this), and your ability to then generate a sense of urgency, diligence, conviction, faith, joyful effort, vigilance, meditative equipoise, and concentrations---all of this depends on everything you've done up to that point where your life and "the dharma"intersect. The dharma YOU encounter is personal; the tenets that YOU form, that inform your actions and experience, are YOUR tenets, no matter what tenet system you follow. Saying you practice Zen doesn't mean you have Zen tenets, Zen mind, Zen anything. It means you know the word Zen and maybe practice at a place that has the word "Zen" in it and maybe have a teacher who is referred to as a Zen Roshi or Sensei. Your mind may be completely wild, all over the map; your understanding of your mind may be nonexistent, and your ability to understand the instructions of your Zen teacher my be nil.

If beings start living for 1000 years and up and generally die because of an accident rather than disease or old age (or maybe suicide, when they get tired of the game), how relevant will the dharma be then? Just as relevant for a small number of beings but probably very ignored by the vast majority who inhabit the world at that time, who may find references to sickness and old age a bit quaint and "like your head is on fire" unfathomable, since they have absolutely no sense of urgency. This is a reason that the Buddha had the foresight to explain that the dharma itself does degenerate over time as its relevance to people's life shifts and, in this case, wanes over time.

Anyway we DO have the teachings today. You have incredibly good access to them; plenty of qualified teachers, and some leisure time and the fortune to live in a place where you have the ability to practice without interference (well, depends where you live I suppose). So...make your lives meaningful.

Daozen

Everything changes except change itself.

Cloud

You could say that things are impermanent, or you could say that impermanence is the force of change itself.

What the Buddha described is the nature of everything. Impermanence and Not-Self apply to everything that has ever been or will be, and Dukkha applies to mind/experience except liberated awareness.

If everything has always changed in our experience, for what reason would we ever suspect that that would change? It would be the purest speculation on our part. It's the fundamental fact of existence, and it's also the core to understanding our predicament.

("The only thing that stays the same is everything changes.")

YoungBuddhist

Everything is always dying and being reborn, everything changes. Our own Karma always leads to the change we experience, whether it be good change or bad (although good and bad are just labels invented by our own minds). The teachings are always changing based on who is learning them- a hundred people hearing the same teachings will have a hundred different interpretations of those teachings, no matter how precisely they are taught.
I believe impermanence is permanent.
I also believe impermanence is impermanent.
Oh Buddhism, how I love your contradictions

pegembara

The Dhamma is always there with or without Buddhist teachings.

"Monks, whether or not there is the arising of Tathagatas, this property stands — this steadfastness of the Dhamma, this orderliness of the Dhamma: All processes are inconstant."

Dhamma-niyama Sutta

Cloud

Right, and we distinguish between Dhamma as meaning nature-of-everything... and the Buddha's Dhamma (teachings). The one is simply the way things are, the other we're fortunate to have until it's forgotten.