nrose619 wrote:I have a philosophy club at my school and in today's meeting I said that almost everything is impermanent. One person disagreed saying that the law of gravity is permanent it was always here and always will be. I said gravity is dependent on mass therefore it is not a permanent self sustaining force/thing. Also, what about in dead space where there is an absence of gravity? He continued to restate that it's a law and has been scientifically proven therefore it is permanent. We both kinda ended up in a dead end. Any thoughts on this?
Here's my two cents. The Buddha says in many places that "all fabrications are inconstant" (sabbe sankara anicca
) (e.g., SN 22.90
). Anicca simply means inconstant; and in terms of compounded phenomena, particularly in reference to the five aggregates, it implies change and lack of self (because whatever is inconstant and subject to change isn't fit to be called 'me' or 'mine'). If gravity isn't a compounded phenomenon, then it, like nibbana
, would be nicca
If, however, gravity is a compounded phenomenon, then its existence can technically be infinite (i.e., lasting as long as the duration of the universe) as long as the conditions for its continuation are present since it's logically possible that "when this is [indefinitely or for very long cosmological periods], that is [indefinitely or for very long cosmological periods]." Gravity itself is inconstant and changes in the sense that it depends on the mass and distance between to objects; and its existence and constancy as a universal phenomenon depends on the universe being exactly as it is, which may not be the case in for other universes, if they exist, or the fate of this universe when it ends.
So I'd say that, from one point of view (that of the experience of gravity), gravity is inconstant, and its perceived constancy in the other (as a universal phenomenon) depends upon certain conditions that themselves are potentially inconstant, which is consistent with the Buddha's statement that "all fabrications are inconstant." And if gravity isn't a compounded phenomenon, then its constancy doesn't contradict the the Buddha's statement that "all fabrications are inconstant."