change?

If something has an essence -

How can it ever change

Into anything else?

A thing doesn't change into something else -

Youth does not age,

Age does not age.

If something changed into something else -

Milk would be butter

Or butter would not be milk.

Were there a trace of something,

There would be a trace of emptiness.

Were there no trace of anything,

There would be no trace of emptiness.

Buddhas say emptiness

Is relinquishing opinions.

Believers in emptiness

Are incurable. 

~ Nagarjuna

from Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime

translated by Stephen Batchelor 
art by klimt