The Sublime Essence
“All phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow —
like dew or a flash of lightning.
Thus should you contemplate them.”— THE BUDDHA, the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra)
Reality is an ever-changing flow.
Nothing ever stays the same.
Impermanence is absolute, not partial.
To preach detachment toward people, situations, and objects still endows these concepts with a supposed independent existence — however limited.
This, in my view, risks clouding the insight that the word impermanence is truly meant to reveal —
Which is that, in truth, there are no such things as separate entities at all,
never have been, and never will be.
That is precisely what the Buddha taught — All phenomena are like a dream, an illusion, a bubble, a shadow.
Gain and loss have nothing to do with what is actually happening from moment to moment —
only with what we believe is happening.
It is our attachment to ideas — not to what is —
that holds us captive in the endless cycle of suffering.
The only antidote to this state of confusion is to see the illusion for what it is,
and let the light of this discovery
unveil the silent truth behind the appearances.
In essence, there have never been separate “things” or “people” to gain or to lose,
nor anyone who could ever have, or lose, them — not for a single moment —
The totality of this world is but a mirage,
born of God Himself —
the great ocean himself, rising as a multiplicity of waves to taste His own salt.
The word God seams to be problematic to many.
To me, it is the least confusing of all words —
for what it refers to is the only imperishable reality,
the only truth that is total and cannot not be —
and therefore can never be reframed:
the Infinite Presence, the Great Mystery
that both sustains — and is —
the totality of this universe as it is.
What other word could I use to point
to this mystery at the heart of existence —
so obvious, so omnipresent,
yet so desperately ignored?
God is love.
This very moment is pure, unconditional love.
There is no higher realization in this life
than to recognize that divine essence
alive and radiating within each of us,
and within every being throughout the universe.
Gain and loss belong to the ripples on the surface of the Timeless —
that which transcends all limitation,
all sense of lack,
and the very ideas of birth and death.
That pure essence is unique,
beyond time, space, form, and identity.
It is unborn and immortal —
Faceless, yet appearing through infinite faces —
quiet in appearance, yet speaking through all beings in the universe.
IMF - La Cathedrale Verte, Lausanne 7 November 2025
