The impermanence of Buddha is so profound and simple we cannot fathom it…I have prostate cancer and it was Impermanence slapping me…MU!….I recall the moment with I got the diagnosis and observed my Sense of Self being shocked out of its belief in immutability, in permanence…Why…I was going to live forever…Death would not touch me..Impermanence would not brush me….

It is only death, or being close to death, or the possibility of death that woke Shakyamuni up from his comfort palace…But our alternating consciousness, our self-reflecting conscious that in our day we believe is the only consciousness separated life from death, pleasure from unpleasant, good from bad, and we seek the One that we have divided as a promise of permanent good..permanent life without death..like in heaven…But…can death be separated from life?

Even if we say no it cannot, we imagine death and life being two marble in the same cup…still different…But they are ambiguous…life is death,death is life…But when we separate them…we fear death and we fear life…but we think they are separate so we put live as being something to be attained…

But life/death is unknowable. Reality (life/death) is unknowable because we can only know things, something that exists,and we cannot know death…yet life is death, death is life…so life, as well as death, is unknowable by consciousness…

This life that is death, a death that is life is…Buddha..But Buddha is not something in time or even now…Buddha is a metaphor that points to that which cannot be known in consciousness…beyond consciousness Buddha is…beyond words and concepts of life and death…

The difference between Theraveda Buddhism and Zen is the Zen points ironically…so there is an immediate awakening when you get the ironic joke…Theravada Buddhism wants to explain the joke to you…but even when you get the ironic joke explained…you don’t spontaneously laugh…you just knowing smile…