The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

elements, to dissolve into the corporate entity, then
there was no law holding that the place of birth and
rebirth need be no other than here. It was an accident,
an utterly senseless accident, that Kiyoaki and Isao
and Ying Chan had all appeared beside Honda. If an
element in Honda was of exactly the same quality as
an element at the other end of the universe, there was
no exchange procedure, once individuality had been
lost, whereby they could purposely come together
through space and time. The particle here and the
particle there have precisely the same significance.
There was nothing to keep the Honda of the next
world from being at the farther side of the universe.
When, after the string has been cut and the beads
scattered on the table, they are strung in another
order, the one indestructible rule, provided no beads
have fallen under the table, is that their number must
be as before.
Eternity does not come into being because I think I
exist: Buddhist doctrine now seemed to Honda
mathematically sound. The self was the order of
beads determined by the self and therefore without
validity.
These thoughts and the almost imperceptible
decay of the flesh went together like the wheels of a
cart. It was all right, even pleasant, to put the matter