impermanence

The Unchanging Truth Of Change

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, Sakyong Mipham, Spirituality, Suffering , , , , 0 Comment

From Turning The Mind Into An Ally

By Sakyong Mipham

The face of impermanence is constantly showing itself. Why do we struggle to hide it? Why do we feed the circle of suffering by perpetuating the myth of permanence? Experiences, friends, relationships, possessions, knowledge-we work so hard to convince ourselves that they will last. When a cup breaks or we forget something or somebody dies or the seasons change, we’re surprised. We can’t quite believe it’s over.

Most summers I conduct a program at our retreat center in the Rocky Mountains. We create a world of tents in a huge meadow-dining tent, meditation tent, sleeping tents. It’s refreshing to live like this, since most of us live in buildings all year round. At the beginning of the summer we put the tents up, and at the end we take them down. After the tents come down and we look into the meadow, we’re always surprised. We feel happy and sad. We’re happy in reflecting back on what occurred during the summer; we’re sad that all the tents are gone. It seemed so real. No matter how many times we’ve done it, at the end of each summer we have the same feeling.

This bittersweet taste marks our lives. The movie ends, our relationship’s over, children grow up. Impermanence is always pounding at the door. Of course, acknowledging impermanence doesn’t mean we get permanence. It means we’re more in tune with reality; we can relax. As we relinquish our attachment to permanence, pain begins to diminish because we’re no longer fooled. Accepting impermanence means that we spend less energy resisting reality. Our suffering has a more direct quality. We’re no longer trying to avoid it. We see that impermanence is a river that runs through life, not a rock that stands in the way. We see that because we resist impermanence, pain and suffering are constants. We realize that pain comes from our desire for permanence.

Contemplation helps us understand profound truths that we rarely consider, even though our life is contained by them. We contemplate these truths to bring about a shift in our understanding of reality, our perception of our life. When, during a meditation session, we hold our mind to the words “Everything is impermanent,” the meaning begins to come through. When we have a glimpse of impermanence, we hold our mind to that realization. In this way we become familiar with a simple truth that we may have overlooked. We begin to live our lives with a deeper understanding.

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Life Is Very Brief

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, Life, Pema Chödrön, Spiritual Writers , , , , , 0 Comment

From: The Wisdom of No Escape

By Pema Chödrön

Life is very brief. Even if we live to be a hundred, it’s very brief. Also, its length is unpredictable. Our lives are impermanent. I myself have, at the most, thirty more years to live, maybe thirty-five, but that would be tops. Maybe I have only twenty more years to live. Maybe I don’t even have one more day to live. It’s sobering to me to think that I don’t have all that long left. It makes me feel that I want to use it well. If you realize that you don’t have that many more years to live and if you live your life as if you actually had only a day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of preciousness and gratitude. Traditionally it’s said that once you are born, you immediately start dying. I remember that in Boulder, every year the Hare Krishna people put up a display of life-sized figures starting with a newborn baby, through all the stages of life. You couldn’t help but identify with this figure getting bigger and stronger, in the prime of life, until the whole thing starts going downhill and the figure is shown getting older, with the final one a corpse. You don’t even know if you’re going to have the privilege of going through that whole process. Even if you do, impermanence is very real.

When you’re depressed, you may say to yourself, “Why bother to sit? Why bother to find out, for my own sake and for the sake of others, what this depression is about? Why does it drag me down? How come the sky was so blue yesterday and now everything is so gray? How come everyone was smiling at me yesterday and now they’re all frowning at me? How come yesterday I felt like I was doing everything right and today it seems I’m doing everything wrong? How come? How come? How come?” If you’re alone in retreat, you still get depressed. There’s no one to blame it on; it’s just this feeling that happens. You ask yourself, what is it? What is it? What is it? I want to know. How can I rouse myself? What can I do that’s not completely habitual? How can I get out of this rut? How do we stop the habitualness of our process? The teachings say, “Well, that’s why we sit. That’s what mindfulness is about. Look carefully. Pay attention to details.”

Remembering impermanence motivates you to go back and look at the teachings, to see what they tell you about how to work with your life, how to rouse yourself, how to cheer up, how to work with emotions. Still, sometimes you’ll read and read and you can’t find the answer anywhere. But then someone on a bus will tell you, or you’ll find it in the middle of a movie, or maybe even in a commercial on TV. If you really have these questions, you’ll find the answers everywhere. But if you don’t have a question, there’s certainly no answer.

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