Meditation on Impermanence
Then secondly, Impermanence. I won’t explain this because you all know already.
We can all say, ‘Oh, Life is impermanent’, but we don’t really know it much.
You can say you met someone yesterday, you had lunch or diner together and then you said, ‘See you tomorrow’.
But we don’t really know, so that is grasping at permanence, even though we don’t know exactly how our situation will change.
When you know that, you don’t need to meditate on Impermanence any longer.
This is very important to help your practice.
There are two kinds of Impermanence – real, subtle Impermanence, and result or gross Impermanence.
The second one is like the seasons; we know that summer will come after winter, that in summer everything is green and then in autumn it slowly goes yellow and then in winter it is dry and grey.
That is an example of gross Impermanence.
Or we know that we are born and we will die.
But for subtle Impermanence, look at yourself, at how you change from moment to moment.
This is very difficult, we don’t know it.
For example, last year you were angry with someone and you keep that this year, but if you think and check, how did Life change over this time?
We can easily think, ‘Yeah, yeah, everything is changing’, but we don’t really know it, so we still grasp at Anger.
We don’t understand subtle Impermanence.
If we had understood then Anger would be like visions; it would come and go and not stay long.
Usually we talk about Nang-wa1, external vision, and then we say that the internal visions are the Lama.
There is a good story:
When Tapihritsa was Enlightened, he came to Nangzher lödpo and explained how to practise.
So Nangzher lödpo asked him who his Teacher was, and Tapihritsa replied: ‘My Teacher is normal vision’.
He said that because normal vision shows us everything – Impermanence, how things are changing, how they are empty.
So we should check what is changing outside and then you can think about how Life changes inside, too.
