Buddhists claim (1) that everything is change, and this flux is without beginning or end, (2) that all things arise and pass away dependent on the force of energy surging forth from other things, which themselves were similarly generated, ad infinitum, and (3) that therefore there is “no-self” or essential unchanging core to anything, since all things are temporary formations of energies that are simply passing through their current states.

No traditional metaphysical system, whether religious or philosophical, comes as close to prefiguring modern physics as the Buddhist one. Contemporary physics works out of an understanding of energy as the generator of all things. Energy is thought to take a broad range of forms – from nuclear energy, gravitational energy, electrical energy, heat energy, chemical energy, kinetic energy, elastic energy, radiant energy, to mass energy. We are told, by no less a source than Albert Einstein, that matter is energy – that the two are essentially interchangeable. The various theories of creation in contemporary physics all point to the energy required to give rise to the universe. The leading theory – the Big Bang – sees the cosmos resulting from a primordial explosion of energy that is still expanding into increasing complexity. Nevertheless, we are told, the amount of energy in the universe is constant. It never changes, even though the forms it takes are constantly changing. The energy of an exploding star is the same as that of a boulder tumbling down a mountain, which is the same as that stored in a carrot, released in the spin of Einstein’s mind or the play of a small child.