Worldly cause-and-effect takes place in space and time, and whatever exists in space and time is characterized by impermanence. Yesterday, you were not here in this hall; today you are here listening to me; after the talk today you will be gone. When we experience this as individuals, we are experiencing impermanence. This sense of change also gives us a sense of continuity in our lives. But as the days go by, our lives are also coming to a close, day by day. So impermanence is essentially this progression from birth to death, from existence to non-existence.

To experience impermanence we must exist in the space-time continuum. Our sense of space can be great or small--we can sense a multitude of spaces or a very limited space. The difference is the key to how we experience the workings of causes and conditions. These various factors coming together and dispersing give us a sense of time. The very fact that the different aspects of our lives shift, alter, and transform, results from these causal relationships. The workings of causes and conditions, which take place in space, are inseparable and imbedded in time, so we experience time and space together. As I said before, the world is what comes together in space-time, and this experience of constant change is impermanence.

Simply put, world-transcendence is freedom from worldly cause-and-effect, freedom from suffering in time and space. The awakened ones--arhats and buddhas--are no longer fettered by time and space, therefore not influenced by the suffering which impermanence brings. For this reason the state of world-transcendence is a state of liberation.

How do the worldly and world-transcending realities relate to the Four Noble Truths? Worldly cause-and-effect encompasses the first two noble truths of suffering and the origin of suffering. Suffering is actually an effect of living in time and space, and its origin is our ignorance as to the true nature of living in worldly reality.