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The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects - Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden

The tangible world is movement, say the Masters, not a collection of moving objects, but movement itself. There are no objects “in movements", it is the movement which constitutes the objects which appear to us: they are nothing but movement.

 This movement is a continued and infinitely rapid succession of flashes of energy (in Tibetan tsal or shoug). All objects perceptible to our senses, all phenomena of whatever kind and whatever aspect they may assume, are constituted by a rapid succession of instantaneous events.

 Each of these momentary happenings is brought about by manifold causes and multiple conditions acting together. Here one should not think that the event is distinct from these causes and conditions. It is these which, together, constitute the event. Apart from them there is no event.

 This word event must not be taken in the sense in which it is understood in ordinary language, that is to say as meaning a fact of exceptional importance as when one speaks of a "historical event". Event here means "something which happens". These "somethings" arising instantaneously and in series, these rapid flashes of energy are sufficiently like one another during the series to remain imperceptible to us, then suddenly occurs, in this series of moments, a different moment which catches our attention and makes us think that a new object has appeared.................

There are two theories and both consider the world as movement. One states that the course of this movement (which creates phenomena) is continuous, as the flow of a quiet river seems to us. The other declares that the movement is intermittent and advances by separate flashes of energy which follow each other at such small intervals that these intervals are almost non-existent.................

"Nothing can remain, not even for a single moment, without acting. Everything is compelled to do so by the very nature of the elements of which it is composed (by the natural functions of its being)."........................................

"Men are accustomed to state "is" or is not” but for him who perceives wisely and according to the truth how all things are brought about in the world, for such an one there is no ,”is not”. And for him who perceives wisely and in truth how the things in the world perish, for him there is no "is". ( Or more exactly, in Tibetan there is no "existence" (yod), there is no, “non-existence”, (med)-Asti and nasti in Sanskrit-both are denied)

 "Everything is, is one of the extremes, nothing is, is the other. I teach, between the two, the truth of the Interdependent Originations." (Samyutta Nikaya).

  That is to say that everything which exists depends, for its existence, on the existence of other things which produce it or which support it, and that the existence of that which exists ceases when the causes or the conditions which support it themselves cease. Thus, all existence is relative