All polarities, such as arising and passing away, mental and physical, thing and eternal present, are of course only concepts. Every stick has two ends. Nagarjuna deals with this with his tetralemma that discards all possibilities: this, that, both, neither --to take us beyond duality. But then, "beyond" is just a concept. So what to do? When Ramana Maharshi was asked which was true, free will or predestination, his answer was, and this applies to all dualistic pairings, "Go to the root of both."