Johnny Cash visits the doctor

Welcome back to the second part of our discussion on ‘cause and effect’. Today, let’s compare and contrast this principle as it is presented in science and the Buddha Dhamma. 

Imagine the following scenario. The late Johnny Cash (if you don’t know him, he was a famous Country singer and died in 2003) goes to the doctor and says: ‘I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel….’ 

Okay, joke aside, this line is from a song he sang shortly before he died. This fact is not directly relevant to our article, but it serves as an excellent example to further explain the concept of anicca. If you have listened to that song, you might remember the voice of Johnny Cash when he recorded it. It was extremely brittle, smokey and dark. The voice of an old Johnny Cash. Or, as we tend to perceive it, an ‘old voice’. After all, his voice had gone through a lot during his life. A habit of smoking, which he picked up at the very young age of 12, did nothing to help the constant exertion of singing on his voice. Together, they took a toll on his voice. 

What is your take on what I have just explained above?
Well, you might agree with me just now, but when you have thoroughly understood the concept of anicca, you will most likely disagree… I never thought I’d say this someday, but let me assist you to disagree with me! 

In the previous article, I asked you the question: Where is our voice when our mouths are closed and we don’t speak? As our conversation developed, we concluded that it makes no sense to pose such a question, because ‘the voice’ is a manifestation of the Cause and Effect principle; it manifests as specific causes come together.

Let us revisit the mechanism that leads to the formation of a voice. It would be better to think of a voice as a vibrational pattern. When we open our mouths to form a word, a sentence, or to make a sound, this vibrational pattern emerges as the relevant causes (airflow from the lung, vibrating vocal cords, etc.) come together. If there is no airflow, there cannot be a voice. Likewise, without proper (intact) vocal cords, the voice cannot form. Depending on how these causes (and possibly many more, such as how we articulate our mouths) come together, the effect will originate and manifest a voice. But this effect that is ‘the voice’ is not a separate entity independent of its causes. Instead, the voice is the combined and resultant effect of all of the causes coming together in a specific arrangement. It is important to note that the effect is not one or more of, or even all of the causes themselves, but rather the net effect of their participation and contribution.

Here is more evidence to prove that to you: The air used to produce our voices right now, for instance, is not the same air we used the day before or even a few moments before. It is a new supply of air, taken in by the lungs in the last in-breath. But how about the vocal cords? Surely, that is the same as the one used previously? Some of our readers might still perceive it this way, but I’m sure a few will have begun to realise that it is not quite so. You get yourself brand new vocal cords every moment! Once again, try to think how that is so. Like the voice, the vocal cords are also manifestations comprising the net effect of all contributory causes. Causes can include bacterial action, temperature, humidity, tissue damage, etc. Therefore, the causes that manifest the voice are brand new every time a voice emerges, don’t you think? What manifested in one instance originated due to the causes present in that instance. In contrast, in another instance, there would be yet another combination of new and independent causes that manifest their own effect.

Then, what sense does it make to ask: ‘What happened to your voice overnight?’
Since the voice spoken with the day before was only a manifestation of the causes present in that instance, it was not a separate entity that existed over time. If we fail to comprehend this, we perceive that there is an existing entity, a fixed ‘voice’ that is more than the combined effect of the causes coming together. Due to this delusion, we perceive that the causes are entities which effectuate an effect – yet another entity which is independent of the causes in as much that it can exist even once the causes have ceased to exist. Please take a moment to revisit the example of the child and its parents, which we discussed last week.

Only when we assume this, in other words, when we believe that an existence separate from the causes is possible and is what truly happens, would we ask a question such as this: ‘What happened to your voice?’ 

That is the crucial point that we need to understand. 

Permit me to elaborate on this concept one more time, in slightly different words: If the causes that manifested a voice in a previous moment (the air that was used by the lungs, the constitution of the vocal cords, the current that was running through the nerves down to the vocal cord, etc.) were entirely different than the causes that come together in the present moment, and if there is no separate ‘voice’ that was hiding somewhere during the night to which something ‘could have happened’, then is it sensible to argue that the vibrations that were there previously have any relation to the vibrations that happen in the present, or that they have a particular relation that qualifies them to be referred ‘a voice’ that exists over time and changes from one moment to the next? Is there any particular link between these two vibrations that makes it eligible to be considered part of ‘an entity’? In reality, these two vibrations are as related to each other as they are to any other vibration or just about any natural phenomenon. The voice you used yesterday is as much related to the voice that I use today as it is related to the voice that you use today. Let’s go deeper and think thoroughly. You will understand that even the timing I have chosen (yesterday and today) is arbitrary and that, in reality, it makes no sense to say that an entity of a voice exists even today, for an hour, or the duration of one spoken word. Even when we utter the word ‘Newspaper,’ the air used to create the sound pattern of ‘news’ is not the same air used to create the ‘paper. ' The causes are different, and as different causes come together, naturally, the effect is different. 

However, instead, we perceive that a certain quantity of causes (which themselves we perceive as entities) have given rise to a new entity, a voice that ‘was born’, and then we feel that subsequent causes have now affected an existing entity, causing it to ‘change’ and ultimately, sooner or later, decay and die. On a side note, here's a point we will revisit in a future article to discuss more thoroughly: What do our readers now feel is the relevance of ‘time’ in a world where entities are merely products of deluded perception? That is one to ponder over a nice cup of tea, coffee, or your favourite beverage as you bid the weekend farewell.

Let us come back to Johnny Cash. When you listen to his song ‘Hurt’, do you not feel that you are hearing ‘an old voice’? In other words, you will probably feel that there is ‘a voice’ that is ‘old’. How old then was that voice? Was it 70 years old? Did it undergo a lot of changes? After all, a voice is merely the perceived effect of the vibrations emitted at that moment, is it not? Well then, how old was that vibration? I hope these questions serve as food for thought.

In reality, the voice manifested the specific arrangement of the causes present in an instance. Therefore, it is always a new voice, but its qualities are not the same as the ones that manifested before. If we were to send that song on an LP (the popular phonograph sound storage medium before cassettes became mainstream) across the universe and aliens would find and play it (this is just a hypothetical example, of course), they would not feel that it is an old voice, would they? So, is ‘oldness’ an objective characteristic of that phenomenon?

I hope our readers are beginning to make sense of the reality of anicca now. As a consequence, you will also be able to understand the concept of dukkha: it is our perception of fixed entities where there really aren’t any (but merely manifestations), the perception of an entity called ‘voice’ that was born, existed for a while and underwent changes from year to year or day to day, or word to word or even moment to moment. These are all to do with the perception of an entity called ‘time’ that acts as a medium for change to occur and is said to flow incessantly, to which we will come back in a subsequent article. 

If you remember last week’s example of ‘me getting a sore throat’, it is that misperception that makes us feel that ‘something happened to your voice after you became sick’, ‘your voice left you’, ‘your voice sounds weird or distorted’ and so on, which is what we feel when we are ignorant about the fundamental nature of all manifestation – the nature of anicca. 

It is interesting that even we modern humans, equipped with scientific knowledge and intelligence, even the doctors around the world (when we fall sick with a sore throat) perceive: ‘your voice is distorted’. That means they perceive an entity separate from its causes; they perceive that there is a complete, finished, and fully formed voice. In reality, the voice we perceive is constantly in the making but never made. That is why, as soon as the causes disperse or pass away, the effect can’t stand on its own and, therefore, does not manifest anymore.

We must be clear, however, that even an Arahant would say and use words similarly. Also, if he had known me before my illness, he would have a memory of ‘that manifestation’ (vibrational pattern or voice) in that instance, and he would, therefore, very conveniently recognise that ‘the qualities of these manifestations are very different from each other’. However, he does not perceive that these qualities belong to a fixed entity of ‘Daniel’s voice’ and that this entity has changed overnight. As we have discussed, and you would undoubtedly agree with me, where would that voice have been overnight while my mouth was shut? Hiding somewhere inside my throat, such that bacteria could take hold and damage it?

 What really happened was that a new set of causes manifested a new voice. Before I went to sleep, when I was still healthy, the air and the vocal cords (which are also not a fixed entity but an arrangement of causes interacting with each other) came together to manifest a vibration, and the same happened today. However, the vocal cords manifesting the following day are also affected by the sore throat illness. Therefore, when new air and infected vocal cords come into contact today, the effect is perceptibly different, and the quality is different. However, it would be wrong to say that “yesterday’s good voice has changed and has become today’s bad voice.”  

It is due to the misperception of this nature that we perceive fixed entities, and we perceive the birth of entities, the ageing of entities, their decay and death. 

Let us now go another step further in our exploration. So far, I have explained to you that what we are used to perceive as ‘a fixed entity’ called a ‘voice’, as far as the external reality is concerned, is simply a vibrational pattern. Therefore, can we say that there are such things as ‘male voices’ and ‘female voices’? Indeed, we can agree that not all voices sound the same. Why is that? That is because the underlying causes are not the same: the geometry and shape of the vocal cords, as well as the air (if we use, e.g. helium gas to speak, a different manifestation will occur), can differ from person to person, situation to situation. Therefore, depending on the causes that come together, different emerging qualities will manifest, which we can refer to as a ‘male voice’ or a ‘female voice’ in conventional language. However, the problem comes when we take ‘maleness’ and ‘femaleness’ as fixed properties of an entity, such as the voice. Then, we start to believe that a voice inherits the quality of femaleness due to its belonging to the body of a woman, and the same applies to maleness. In my hometown, there was a man (let’s call him Peter) who would dress up as a woman. Anyone who did not know him would perceive there to be ‘a woman’ and therefore expect of him all the qualities that a woman possesses. When Peter spoke, some felt something was ‘very wrong’ with ‘him’ and that what he was doing was unnatural and against God’s wish. Surely, if something is against God’s wish, as the creator and orchestrator of nature (as some believe), nothing that goes against his wish could ever happen as he would have the power to stop it or not let it happen in the first place. The feeling that ‘this voice does not fit its owner’ is due to the perception of entities imposed in our own minds, such as the perception that there is a ‘male voice’ belonging to a ‘female person’. Unlike in Peter’s case, there are times when a man’s natural voice sounds ‘female’ or vice versa. In such instances, are we to presume that God got it wrong or that nature got it wrong? A more scientific explanation would be that this is not an objective defect of nature, as nature itself is perfect!  Therefore, due to ignorance of the nature of nature, we set our expectations on nature, for which we are punished in return.

In the same way a ‘voice’ is only a name for manifesting qualities (for example, a vibrational pattern with specific frequencies), what about a sound emitted by a car? Is a car's sound not just a vibrational pattern travelling through the air? We can apply the same contemplation to the sound of a machine, too. So then, do those sounds really belong to their sources? Is there really such a fixed machine or car sound? In fact, when someone speaks, are they actually using their voice, or is what we refer to as a voice merely something we perceive in our minds upon processing the vibrational patterns emitted by their mouths? And if so, what does your voice sound like… or is it silent?

Due to our ignorance of the principle of anicca, we start to perceive entities such as ‘the voice of a woman’, ‘the voice of a man’, ‘the bonk of a drum’, ‘the vroom of a car’, ‘the rumble of a truck’, or the ‘pitter-patter of rain’. Some of them are pleasant to us, whereas others seem very unpleasant. However, as far as nature and air as the medium are concerned, these are all simply vibrational patterns. That means the happiness we feel from listening to a song never comes through our eardrums! I remember that, years ago, when I had trouble falling asleep, I had to resort to listening to recordings of rain. But listening to cars, traffic, and other people's snoring would cause me great distress! Now that I understand the nature of anicca, I can sleep without concerning myself about how pleasant or unpleasant the noises I hear are, provided, of course, that they are not too loud, because anicca teaches us to think in harmony with nature, to see nature the way it really is. This is one of the Buddha's gifts: a good night’s sleep independent of the conditions. More generally, he gifted us the gift of unconditional happiness. May you all attain unconditional happiness!