Jeremiah 10:15 Meaning They Are Vanity

Moha: Delusion Delusion is the blindness at the root of unskillful action. The figure is finished work: plated, dressed, nailed upright so it will not topple, and every step of that labor was guided by hands that could not see what they were making. Craft this good, spent on a block of wood, is a careful coat of paint over a crack in the wall.

Vipallāsa: Inverted Perception Perception turns things around, and taking what has no self as a self is one of its standard flips. Standing before the carved figure, the eye reports a lord who watches and answers, while the thing itself stands mute and travels on somebody's shoulder. The error sits in the looking, so a finer idol will never correct it.

Saṅkhāra: Fabrication Fabrications are things assembled out of parts and conditions. "A work of" gives the whole case away: silver hammered from Tarshish, gold out of Uphaz, the smith's fire, the tailor's blue and purple, and nails to hold it all steady. Whatever is put together comes apart, the way a house eventually gives back every board it was built from.

Asāra: Without Heartwood Sāra is the hard core inside a tree, and these have none. Cut the image open and no lord is found inside, only the same timber the axe carried out of the forest, now shaped and gilded and worth less than the tool that felled it. Peel a plantain trunk sheath by sheath looking for the core and you reach the end with empty hands.

Anicca: Impermanence Everything put together falls apart. When the appointed time arrives, the gilding blackens and the nails rust, and the figure that always had to be carried gets carried off by whoever comes through the gate. Nothing needs to strike it down; the ending was fitted into it on the day it was made.