Day 32 of 365: Five Relationships

Today's contemplation was a continuation of yesterday's contemplation of fire and firewood.  Instead of looking at the cause and effect relationship, Nagarjuna analyzes the five possible ways fire and firewood could be related to one another.

The firewood itself is not the fire,

There is no fire that exists apart from the firewood,

The fire does not possess the firewood,

The fire does not support the firewood, 

And the firewood does not support the fire.

The first two lines are considering the possibility that fire and firewood are the same and different things, respectively.  How could fire be the same as the thing it burns?  And, if they were different, then you could have fire without firewood and vice a versa.  The last three verses imply that fire and firewood are different entities which again cannot be the case.