I mentioned in one of the talks that our physical bodies are replaced totally over a period of time. I got curious and went looking for a reference.
Here’s one:
http://www.contouring.com/chapter1.html
The physical body that each of us possess (or possesses us) is made up of roughly 50 trillion cells. About 30 billion of these are nerve cells. Every day millions of cells throughout our bodies are being replaced. This takes place through the normal process of attrition and
replacement. Indeed 98% of our body is replaced within one year. The remaining cells are replaced the following year. In fact, 10% of all cells in your body are replaced every 3 weeks, 25% of the cells are replaced every 5-6 weeks. The cells that make up our skin is totally new every thirty days. The cells that make up the soft muscle tissue of our internal organs is replaced in two to three months. The liver is replaced within six weeks, while the stomach lining takes as little as four days. Some cells, such as those closely involved in the process of digestion, are replaced as rapidly as every five minutes!
The understanding of how rapidly the body re-creates itself is quite encouraging. In his book Quantum Healing Dr. Deepak Chopra uses the analogy of the body as a river. Just as the river is constantly flowing, full of varying speeds of movement, so do the replacement of cells in our bodies. We are not merely stagnant physical beings that age and ultimately die. We are, in contrast, being ever renewed. Understanding this means realizing that next year you be an entirely different person than you are now. No matter what you do in the next twelve months, at least on a cellular level, you will be an entirely different person.
That’s almost a word for word description given by various Buddhist monks to describe our existence! Interesting isn’t it?
So, think about it, we are not the same person for long … and neither are others around us. Physically or mentally, our existence can at most be described as a constant process, a constant flux (what a paradox!). So the next time we bear a grudge on someone, think about it. Who are we grudging against? The dead cells or the emotions and mental states that fluctuates and has ceased to exist?