[Dalai Lama:] We are haphazardly plunged into impermanence. Like the essence of beings, stability of Scriptures is an illusion. Reality slips between our fingers, and we can't hold onto it.

[Carriere:] Does that feeling arise from the certitude that we have of our death?

No, because death is simply a passage from one state to another. It's a matter of a dissolution and recomposition at every instant. The world goes on. Nothing fixed, nothing permanent remains. The Scriptures, venerable and sacred as they are, are relative and impermanent, like all things.
p. 43
The Dalai Lama and Jean-Claude Carriere Violence and Compassion
Doubleday, 1996
English translation of Force du bouddhisme (Editions Robert Laffont-Fixot,1994). Conversations between Bstan-'dsin-rgya-mtsho, Dalai Lama XIV, and Jean-Claude Carriere.

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