Momentary impermanence.

This impermanence presupposes impermanence of moments (kșhana). It is logical to know how any great change in human being or in any other thing, which takes place within a certain space of time, is nothing else but the aggregate of minute changes which occur therein every moment. Thus, every man, everything is ever changing and can never be the same for even two consecutive moments. This is what is known in the Buddhist philosophy as “momentary impermanence.” It is with the support of this principle that the Buddhist seeks to explain any change. The treatise of the great exposition of philosophy says that, a day of twenty four hour has six thousand four hundred millions, ninety nine thousand nine hundred and eighty kșhanas or moments and that the five skandhās or aggregates of being are repeatedly produced and destroyed in every kșhana.

In fact, all things need some sort of motive power to be changed from one state to another. We know that the sword cannot cut itself, and then we may ask, what is the power which makes all things change? Buddha said it is origination, staying, growth and decay and destruction. These are the four characteristics by which all things undergo modification and are subjected to change of themselves in endless revolution.

 The theory of the four characteristics is followed in the following way: (i) Through the origination all things are brought to a state of existence from the future to the present. (ii) Through the staying it makes a thing to stay in its present actual or identical state as soon as a thing emerges by the force of the origination. (iii) Through the growth and decay everything grows and is brought in the state of old age. (iv) And fourthly, through the destruction all things are destroyed. So such is the reason which explains why nothing can continue in the same state for even two consecutive moments in this phenomenal world. In short all things are always changing by the operation of the four characteristics.