But just why is everything impermanent and in constant change?
The answer has to do with what might be called
the flip-side of anicca: pratityasamutpada,
or, technically, “interdependent origination.”
More simply: everything changes because everything is interrelated.
Everything comes into being
and continues in being
through and with something else.
Nothing, Buddha came to see, has its own existence.
In fact, when he wanted to describe the human self,
or the self/identity of anything,
the term he used was anatta,
which means literally no-self.
We are not “selves” in the sense of individual,
separate, independent “things.”
Rather, we are constantly changing
because we are constantly interrelating.
~ Paul F. Knitter
Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture
at Union Theological Seminary in New York
with thanks to love is a place
