Buddhists are wrong about impermanence. One thing is permanent: existence.

As evidenced by my previous post, Buddhists talk a lot about impermanence.

So far as I can tell, in Buddhism nothing is considered to be permanent. Everything arises from causes and conditions. Everything lacks inherent existence, which means existing as and for itself. That’s the nature of emptiness, basically, interdependence. Even emptiness is empty of inherent existence.

Yet…

My experience tells me that even though impermanence rules the roost of existence, there’s one thing that is permanent — the roost itself, existence. This is one of my favorite subjects, closely related to, if not identical with, the classic question, Why is there something rather than nothing?

Except for me that isn’t really a question, but a statement. There is something rather than nothing. Usually repeating those six words, as I just did, doesn’t have much of an effect on me. It’s an interesting thought, a truism, nothing more.

Occasionally, though, an unbidden experience of existence hits me like a Giant Hammer of Awe. I get a mental chill, sort of an existential shivering, as a wordless sensation passes through me that I can imperfectly describe as Holy Fuck, existence exists!

Recently this happened to me as I was reading a New Scientist article about dark matter and dark energy that had a mention of how complex the universe is. After reading those words, I had the same experience I wrote about in “Existence exists” — the cosmic lock to which humans have no key.

What I said in that 2016 post is what I’ll say in this 2026 post, and likely in every post I write on this subject.

Seemingly there’s not much I could add to what I’ve said about this ultimate mystery. Except… what I’m going to add right now.

Which is another attempt to speak about the unspeakable feeling that comes over me when I contemplate the fact that existence exists.

This feeling can’t be produced on demand.

Right now I’m talking about a memory of it, not the feeling itself. For me, it’s a sort of godless grace. When the feeling happens, I’m grateful for the sensation of getting a glimpse of what can’t be known.

At least, I’m pretty sure, not by a human brain. Any human brain. Doesn’t matter if you’re a genius, a mystic, a Nobel prize winner, a poet, a savant, a philosophical mastermind.

I’m convinced that the feeling I’ve talked about in my blog posts is a cosmic lock, not a key. It vaguely points in the general direction of Ultimate Mystery, but in no way does it lead closer to an understanding.

We’re all good little Buddhists, no matter what religion we embrace, or if we reject all forms of religiosity. Because we can’t conceive of anything that isn’t impermanent. Everything we experience comes and goes, even the universe itself, which appears to have been formed in a cosmic big bang.

We speak of eternity, but this is an abstraction for us, as is the notion of an eternal God. No one ever has had a direct experience of eternity, since no one has ever existed for eternity.

But we do experience eternity in one way, because we exist. Existence is eternal. Has to be. No doubt about it. Because if existence were temporary, brought into being by some other entity or force, then that entity or force necessarily existed prior to existence as we know it.

This is why I have no use for God.  Religious believers typically hold that God is, has been, and always will be. God is their vision of eternity. However, if nothing created God, then there’s no need for God, since a more direct explanation is that nothing created existence, as existence is eternal.

There is something rather than nothing. This is the foundation of my metaphysics, my spirituality, my mysticism. The occasional wordless experiences I have of Holy Fuck, existence exists! are likely the closest I’ll ever come to satori or enlightenment. This isn’t an answer to a question, but the realization that no answer is possible.

Existence exists. End of story. Case closed. Perpetual mystery. There’s only one thing that is permanent. Existence. And it isn’t a thing that can be pointed to. It’s nothing and everything at the same time.

Here’s how I ended my Existence Exists post ten years ago. It’s also how I want to end this post.

My brain just doesn’t seem capable of grasping the fact that all facts can be friends with “why?” — except the primal fact of existence. I have the sense that natural selection has given us humans the ability to unravel complex tangles of cause and effect, but NOT the ability to grasp the meaning of existence pure and simple.

Assuming there is such a meaning. Or such a thing as “existence pure and simple.”

Maybe advanced beings from an alien civilization in a galaxy far, far away possess the cosmic understanding of existence exists that eludes me, and seemingly every other member of my species.

But how would we know this, even if we came into contact with such a civilization? I strongly suspect that if an alien being handed me the key to the ultimate cosmic lock, I’d have no idea how to use it.

Or, how to grasp what lay beyond the open door.