BECOMING

In the recent posting ON THE MOVE, the point was made that everything is in constant motion, forever in a state of flux, ever changing, always becoming something else.  The implication of this is that nothing ever arrives anywhere, that there is no completion of anything, including ourselves.  We, in this sense, are approximations.

Another word for this is “becoming.”  The Sixth century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Hephesus contended that nothing in this world is constant except change and becoming, an idea picked up by the Nineteenth Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 
Nietzsche wrote that Heraclitus "will remain eternally right with his assertion that 'being' is an empty fiction," which is to say that "becoming" does not produce fixed entities such as being, subject, object, substance, thing.  Such false concepts, Nietzsche said, are the mistakes which consciousness and language employ as a way of interpreting the chaos of the state of “becoming.”

The view of Heraclitus and Nietzsche is in direct contrast to Parmenides, another Sixth century BC Greek philosopher, who believed that the “becoming” that we perceive with our senses is deceptive, and that there is a pure, perfect and eternal being behind “becoming,” which is the ultimate truth.

In Vedanta this pure, perfect and eternal being that is behind “becoming” is called Brahman, the realization of whom is the purpose of life.  The realization of Brahman is the finish line, so to speak.  Hence, the assertion that nothing ever arrives anywhere is false.