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
art by klimt
with thanks to http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/
