Mujō: change and impermanence

Mujō means impermanence. In Buddhist usage, things that depend on causes and conditions cannot remain unchanged. These are called conditioned phenomena: the phrase shogyō mujō states their impermanence. Bodies, feelings and surroundings change, so the idea reaches beyond an object eventually breaking.

Impermanence can be discussed at different timescales. A life ending illustrates change across a longer span. The doctrine of momentary cessation instead understands each instant as arising and immediately passing away. Growth and ageing offer familiar observations; momentariness is a philosophical explanation of how change occurs.

Buddhist accounts connect suffering with attachment to unstable things. A person may want a body, relationship or pleasant feeling to stay as it is, although change continues. Impermanence is connected with teachings on suffering and the absence of a permanent self; it helps explain why ordinary experience cannot offer lasting security.

Impermanence includes birth, growth and improvement in difficult circumstances as well as death and decline. Hongwanji’s explanation uses these examples to connect a changing world with the value of action during a finite life. Impermanence can thus provide a reason to value time.

The thirteenth-century teacher Dōgen invokes the impermanence of human life in the Eihei kōroku to urge monks to practise zazen without wasting time. Sōtō Zen’s present-day explanation connects the passage with sustained practice now: an uncertain lifespan makes the present an opportunity for practice. The teaching addresses a particular monastic setting.

The Tale of the Heike opens by linking the sound of the Gion Shōja bells with impermanence, then tells of the Taira family’s rise and fall. An early form existed by the beginning of the thirteenth century. Retelling and copying brought additions and revisions, producing different versions. Political power and individual lives both change within its narrative.

In the Heike episode about Atsumori’s death, Kumagai Naozane pursues a splendidly dressed enemy, then discovers a boy his own son’s age. He wants to spare him but kills him as fellow soldiers approach. A flute on the body recalls music heard that morning. The story turns pursuit of military success into grief over a young life and connects Naozane’s later vows with it. The National Archives also presents a commentary offering a land dispute as another explanation: the literary sequence is not proof of his historical motive.

Kamo no Chōmei’s Hōjōki, completed in 1212, begins with a river that keeps flowing while its water is never the same. It describes fires, earthquakes, famine and social insecurity, alongside life in his small hut at Hino outside Kyoto. The flowing river joins continuity with change; houses and the city make human instability tangible.

Hōjōki describes a whirlwind in the fourth month of 1180. Large and small houses along its path suffer damage; some collapse, while others retain only beams and pillars. Roofing and possessions fly into the air. Blown-down fences merge neighbouring spaces. The familiar dwelling abruptly loses its security, giving a concrete scene to the work’s theme of impermanent people and homes. This disaster passage alone does not establish why Chōmei later took religious vows.

Hōjōki does not end by simply finding a peaceful home. Chōmei asks whether loving his grass hut and clinging to quiet have themselves become obstacles to Buddhist practice. He questions his own mind, receives no answer and ends with two or three invocations of Amida. The hut offers distance from worldly life but also becomes an object of self-examination. Leaving the city has not automatically removed attachment.

In Essays in Idleness, written around 1330, Kenkō looks beyond flowers at full bloom or a moon in a clear sky. He also attends to budding branches, a garden scattered with fallen blossoms, and longing for the moon through rain. Attention shifts from a perfect moment to the changing states around it. Transience and incompleteness can become objects of appreciation.

Hōjōki and Essays in Idleness were written in medieval Japan, but surviving books may be later editions. Kyoto University’s early movable-type Hōjōki was printed during the Keichō era, 1596–1615. Its opening carries the medieval river passage into an early modern printed book. Words can be copied and republished while paper, layout and readership change.

In the twentieth century, Kobayashi Hideo’s wartime essays on the classics included Mujō to iu koto, keeping impermanence within literary criticism. Religious uses also remain specific. Hongwanji-ha’s service on bringing cremated remains home includes the Letter on White Ashes as a reflection on mortal life. A modern Tendai sermon instead connects impermanence with valuing time and caring for others.

Kobayashi Hideo recalls looking at leaves and stone walls on Mount Hiei when a passage from Ichigon hōdanshō suddenly returned vividly to mind. In a 1981 study, Shintarō Ogami connects this experience with Kobayashi’s view of history: remembering matters more than treating time as a line extending from past to future. This is one critical interpretation of impermanence, rather than a substitute for Buddhist doctrine or evidence of a universal Japanese response.