granite boulders

I am sitting amongst granite boulders, in the wonderful landscape around Hampi, in Karnataka state, India. The afternoon sun has warmed the honey coloured rock, and that warmth is seeping into me. My being feels molten, like honey, warm and sweet.

Feeling these boulders, their rough solid texture, they seem timeless, as if they have been here for all of eternity. And yet, looking around, here and there I see a boulder split in two, cleaved as if by a mighty axe. And seeing this, I realise that even these boulders, solid though they seem, are subject to change. They too are not permanent in their form. Their lifespan might be measured in thousands of years, or perhaps even millions of years, but they are also changing: falling apart, being worn down, eventually washing down to become soil in the rich paddy fields below. And then I guess, being slowly compressed into the earth, perhaps to be reheated and turned once more into solid granite.

Everything is undergoing change. No form is permanent. And I guess if I could see in enough detail, the boulder on which I am sitting would appear slightly different to the way it did yesterday, and tomorrow it will be slightly different again, perhaps just one grain worn off it somewhere, a little piece flaking away in the heat of the sun. But one thing is for sure, it is changing.

And it is the same with us. Whoever I think myself to be today, it is not the same as I was yesterday, and tomorrow there will be someone different here. We make a story out of our life, and in that story there is continuity, a character. But that character is fictitious. And if we were to know the truth, it is that I only exist in this moment, and in the next moment I am gone and something new has come into being. Just like these granite boulders, we are ever changing, ever new.