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Impermanence, Dependent Arising, and Emptiness
Meditation on impermanence also supports our efforts to understand emptiness. A correct realization of subtle impermanence involves understanding that all conditioned things are in constant change, never remaining the same in the next moment.
What brings about this continuous change? It is the nature of conditioned phenomena; they arise and cease due to their causes and conditions. They do not exist under their own power but are influenced by other factors.
Impermanent phenomena cannot be independent—they are thoroughly dependent on things that are not themselves. People, the environment, and events are not isolated, self-enclosed phenomena. In the case of subtle impermanence, the very cause that made something arise is the cause for it to disintegrate and not remain the same in the very next moment. Being dependent upon causes and conditions in this way, impermanent things cannot possibly exist inherently.
This understanding of causal dependence, in turn, leads to understanding mutual dependence in that effects and causes are posited in mutual dependence on each other. Something is not a cause without the possibility of it issuing forth an effect, and something is not an effect unless it arises from a cause. As noted above, understanding mutual establishment leads to the realization that phenomena cannot and do not exist inherently.
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