The Six As-Ifs
The closing verse of the Diamond Sūtra gives six similes for every conditioned thing — everything made, everything that arises and passes. In Kumārajīva's Chinese it is six characters long enough to become a nickname: 一切有為法，如夢幻泡影，如露亦如電，應作如是觀. Tang Yin shortened it further, to two words he wore as his own Buddhist name: 六如 — "the six as-ifs." Below is a small shrine room for each.
- 如夢 — As a dream
- Vivid while it holds you, and gone the moment you try to describe it to someone else. A dream doesn't need to be false to be temporary — it only needs to end.
- 如幻 — As an illusion
- A conjuror's trick: real light, real motion, arranged to show you something that isn't quite there. The illusion isn't a lie about the world; it's a demonstration of how easily the world can be arranged to fool you.
- 如泡 — As a bubble
- Round, complete, perfect for exactly as long as the surface tension holds. Nobody grieves a popped bubble — it was never going to last, and that was never a flaw in it.
- 如影 — As a shadow
- Shaped entirely by something else, and gone the instant the light changes angle. A shadow has no substance of its own to defend.
- 如露 — As dew
- Beaded on the grass at dawn, burned off by nine o'clock. Dew doesn't fail by evaporating; evaporating is the whole shape of what dew is.
- 如電 — As lightning
- There and gone in the same instant you notice it — and yet it lit the whole sky while it lasted. Brevity and brilliance, in the one stroke.
None of the six is a complaint about impermanence. Read together, they're closer to an instruction: look closely at things while they're here, and don't mistake their passing for a failure to last. That's most of why this little hut is built the way it is — pages that don't track you, don't autoplay at you, and don't pretend to be permanent. They're just here, for now, the way dew is.