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The Joy Of Impermanence by Peter Morrell

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The Joy Of Impermanence
by Peter Morrell



According to the great Zen masters of old the secret essence, the most fundamental truth is knowable only through direct insight and cannot be expressed in words. Thus the adage: 'Those who know remain silent; those who speak do not know'. But we can say some things about the world and the nature of life which can be expressed in words and which do still have profound meaning. Such as the illusory nature of the world and the ultimately transient and flimsy nature of that which seems to us to be so solid and real. That external reality is much more like a mirage than something concrete.

Today I had a very strong and persistent feeling of the illusory nature of the world and a sense of impermanence so strong and which never left me all day. I truly had the feeling that the world is illusory, that our time here is so short and a very elongated sensation of the nature of time. A sense of not being embedded or anchored in this world but only in the mind. That mind is supreme and eternal and everything else is just fleeting change and transience of little consequence. We come with mind, we leave with mind, it is our only constant. Essentially that is all we are, a bundle of simple things: consciousness, desires, aversions and good and bad karmic seeds.

This strong feeling seemed to be sustained even further by thinking and dwelling upon it. In two ways I seemed able to sustain it. Firstly, by looking at each object and asking if it was ultimately real and indestructible. Nothing fits that definition and so each component or substance can be scrutinised and shown not to be a permanent indestructible entity, but to exist solely as a product of other phenomena or component parts. Secondly, I sustained my sense of impermanence by recalling that moment by moment things die and disintegrate of their own accord. Every second is new and different from the one it follows. And every second that is the case. In this way we can come to regard the solid and permanent appearance of the perceived world is an illusion.

Thus the world and all its component parts do not persist for very long. Even mountains crumble into the sea. Even our parents and most dearly loved friends die and disappear and we never see them again. Only mind, consciousness, persists and goes forward. Thus by hewing to impermanence, and a close inspection of the flow of events and our reactions to them we gain glimpses of deep truth.

The reason that Buddhism in general and impermanence in particular, might be regarded by some people as a frighteningly nihilistic philosophy, is probably that it somehow implies that mind, consciousness, is also equally as transient and impermanent a thing as substance. Maybe we extrapolate from the external physical world to the internal world of mind and transfer the qualities from one sphere to the other. Maybe we project onto mind the characteristically fragile features and properties of matter. But as soon as we posit that mind is NOT a transient entity, but that it stands supreme, goes forwards and is eternal, then immediately we have in our hands a far more joyous and uplifting, affirmative philosophy and one we can use as a tool to transform our life, even on a daily basis. Knowing this and taking it as our beacon we can delight in the joy of life.

We suffer the feeling of sadness and loss when we realise that things are transient. We feel attached to them and their external loss offends us internally. The loss of anything causes us to experience a subtle form of pain, a sadness, and the sadness increases in proportion to one's attachment. Loss of what we hold the dearest causes deep and often lasting grief. But things change and fall apart; nothing endures and we experience pain and loss as part of the natural order of things. Knowing the impermanent nature of phenomena helps us to gain a more profound grasp, eases back our attachment to things and enables us to prepare for loss that is inevitable. We can then ease back our clinging to anything. It becomes a life path.

The lesson of impermanence is chiefly that being composed of desires and aversions, we so easily and unwittingly become attached to those things we love. Their inevitable loss causes pain and sorrow. We have no power to control such events. All we can learn to control is our own internal responses and our general response to the world itself. The more deeply we cling to things the greater will be our sorrow when they take their inevitable leave of us. Thus to live a sweeter life we can be mindful of this and strive to reduce our attachment and to cultivate non-attachment. That is the meaning of Tsong Khapa's powerful but elusive phrase: 'without cultivating the definite thought to leave cyclic existence how can one begin to negate enjoying the sensations of embodied existence?'

Finally, we can say that the moral basis of Buddhism is always in accord with karma. Doing good and avoiding evil has no point except to avoid causing future suffering. Arguably there is no other sound basis for morals or ethics. To avoid causing suffering to self and others is the fundamental basis of a Buddhist life. Thus to live mindful of impermanence and in tune with not causing suffering is to live a truly Buddhist life. To then add joy and delighting in the joy of others and some compassion and pity for the myriad suffering beings, and this then comprises a very enjoyable and meaningful way to live. Then perhaps we can begin to regard not just a ten year stretch of our life as a gift we should be grateful for, but that each hour, each minute, nay each second, as a blessing we sometime earned and for which we can be truly grateful.

Source

By Peter Morrell
homeoint.org