we understand ourselves as special instances of self-existing things that are nonetheless subject to the ravages of time and change

If I self-exist, how can I change?

How could I die?

For that matter, how could I have been born?


This is the simple contradiction that Nagarjuna uses to deconstruct self-being. That all phenomena appear and disappear according to conditions means that our usual way of perceiving the world as a collection of separately existing things is a delusion.


--- from "Awareness Bound and Unbound" by David R. Loy