Ledi Sayādaw, A Manual of the Excellent Man:
- In the ultimate sense, however, new psychophysical phenomena arise only after the old phenomena have perished, which is death. This constant perishing of phenomena is also called cessation (nirodha) or dissolution (bhaṅga). It is only when one discerns the ultimate truth of this cessation of phenomena that one gains insight.
- The yogī perceives that all the nāmas, rūpas which manifest themselves at the moment of seeing, hearing etc., are undergoing instant dissolution and are, therefore, transient.... When the yogī comes to the bhaṅga stage, during the interval of one cycle of rising and falling, numerous moments of dissolution will be seen to flit by. The material body of rising and falling, being subjected to incessant dissolution is indeed not permanent.
- The Buddha taught his disciples that everything that exists at the material level is composed of kalāpas. Kalāpas are material units very much smaller than atoms, which die out almost immediately after they come into being.... The life-span of a kalāpa is termed a “moment,” and a trillion such moments are said to elapse during the wink of a man’s eye.
- Every moment, masses of subatomic particles — kalāpas — within the framework of the body, arise and pass away, arise and pass away. How do they arise? The cause becomes clear as you investigate the reality as it is without influence from any past conditioning of philosophical beliefs. The material input, the food that you have taken, becomes a cause for these kalāpas to arise. You will also find that kalāpas arise and pass away due to the climatic atmosphere around you.
- The meditator discerns the five khandhas, in the past, present, and future both internally and externally and seeing only the passing away and ceasing of them he applies the three characteristics one at a time. At the time when a meditator takes matter as an object and sees it passing away and knows that it is impermanent; this knowledge of impermanence of an object is called insight knowledge.
(i) Is it really true that mind (nāma) and matter (rūpa) are discrete, momentary things undergoing incessant dissolution?
(ii) Is it really true that matter is comprised of momentary kalāpas which undergo incessant dissolution?
(iii) If so, how do you know this to be true?
(iv) If not, can "insight" into conceptual fictions really be considered insight at all?