Again, when Transcience once gets hold of our imagination, we can easily foresee ruins and disasters in the very midst of prosperity and happiness, and also old age and ugliness in the prime and youth of beauty.  It gives rise quite naturally to the thought that body is a bag full of pus and blood, a mere heap of rotten flesh and broken pieces of bone, a decaying corpse inhabited by innumerable maggots.  This is the doctrine called by the Hinayanists the Holy Truth of Impurity.[FN#146]

[FN#146] Mahasaptipatthana Suttanta, 7, runs as follows:  “And, moreover, bhikkhu, a brother, just as if he had been a body abandoned in the charnel-field, dead for one, two, or three days, swollen, turning black and blue, and decomposed, apply that perception to this very body (of his own), reflecting:  ’This body, too, is even so constituted, is of such a nature, has not got beyond that (fate).’”

And, again, Transience holds its tyrannical sway not only over the material but over the spiritual world.  At its touch Atman, or soul, is brought to nothing.  By its call Devas, or celestial beings, are made to succumb to death.  It follows, therefore, that to believe in Atman, eternal and unchanging, would be a whim of the ignorant.  This is the doctrine called by the Hinayanists the Holy Truth of No-atman.

If, as said, there could be nothing free from Transience, Constancy should be a gross mistake of the ignorant; if even gods have to die, Eternity should be no more than a stupid dream of the vulgar; if all phenomena be flowing and changing, there could be no constant noumena underlying them.  It therefore follows that all things in the universe are empty and unreal.  This is the doctrine called by the Hinayanists the Holy Truth of Unreality.  Thus Hinayana Buddhism, starting from the doctrine of Transience, arrived at the pessimistic view of life in its extreme form.

8.  Change as seen by Zen.

Zen, like Hinayanism, does not deny the doctrine of Transience, but it has come to a view diametrically opposite to that of the Hindus.  Transience for Zen simply means change.  It is a form in which life manifests itself.  Where there is life there is change or Transience.  Where there is more change there is more vital activity.  Suppose an absolutely changeless body:  it must be absolutely lifeless.  An eternally changeless life is equivalent to an eternally changeless death.  Why do we value the morning glory, which fades in a few hours, more than an artificial glass flower, which endures hundreds of years?  Why do we prefer an animal life, which passes away in a few scores of years, to a vegetable life, which can exist thousands of years?  Why do we prize changing organism more than inorganic matter, unchanging and constant?  If there be no change in the bright hues of a flower, it is as worthless as a stone.  If there be no change in the song of a bird, it is as valueless as a whistling wind.  If there be no change in trees