Page 22 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

years or a few days, or a few hours — even a few minutes. This is
one very important aspect of Perfect Vision as applied to

mundane things, i.e. seeing, clearly and steadily, that everything
is impermanent, everything transient, and that you cannot hold
onto anything for very long, at best only for a little while, and in

the end have to relinquish it.

(iii) Conditioned Existence is Devoid of True Selfhood. This is a
rather difficult and abtruse aspect of Perfect Vision that needs a
whole lecture to itself. All that can be said at present is that

nowhere in conditioned existence, or in ourselves as
conditioned, do we find true being, true individuality, or reality

of any sort. If we just look at ourselves we become aware, very
often, of just how empty, unreal and hollow we are — that our
thoughts are not real thoughts, our emotions not real emotions.

We do not feel real, genuine or authentic within ourselves. We
shall not, in fact, find genuineness, or authenticity or true

selfhood on the level of the mundane or the conditioned at all,
but only on the level of the Unconditioned Reality.

(f) Karma and Rebirth
This doctrinal category, or expression of Perfect Vision in

conceptual terms, is presented very vividly, sometimes almost
pictorially, in the Buddhist Scriptures. There it is said of the
Buddha and other Enlightened Beings that, on the eve of their

Enlightenment, they saw passing before their eyes a great
panorama of births, deaths and rebirths, not only of themselves

but of other living beings in fact, of all living beings. Tracing the
whole process of karma from One life to another, they saw very
clearly

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