No Going Back

 

09.04.2020 NO GOING BACK We have a saying where I’m from: If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes and it’ll change. Perhaps you say it where you live too. Somehow it’s not difficult to see the impermanence of weather, but when it’s a difficult state of affairs, or an unwelcome emotion, it can feel like it’s here to stay.   As the pandemic rages on and people’s lives are turned upside down, it’s harder to see that this too will change. We talk about “the new normal,” as though our world were predictable, reliable, and permanent.   Buddhism, of course, reminds us that everything is impermanent. No matter how hard we try to hold on, there is nothing to grasp. But as Thich Nhat Hanh explains, impermanence also makes everything possible: “If a grain of corn were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat.” Without impermanence, there are no grandchildren, no new adventures, no changing seasons.   Sometimes we temporarily make our peace with impermanence while still deceiving ourselves with the thought that things will eventually return to the way they were. In an opinion piece for The Globe and Mail, “The life you thought you were going to have is gone,” Lori Fox names the truth: there is no going back — there never was. Fox says about this time of coronavirus: “We are allowed to be anxious and afraid right now. We have lost a world. You’ve got permission to grieve. But in doing that, we might ask if the world we have lost is really as good as we remember, if it was serving the life we hoped we would have.”   Each of us will have our own answer. Regardless, impermanence isn’t negotiable. Make no mistake, the Buddhist teachings aren’t telling us to give up or give in; rather they are inviting us to let go of grasping to a nonexistent solid self or world. As Ajahn Jayasaro points out, “It’s through the happiness of letting go that the mind becomes brave enough, and has the power, to penetrate the way things are.” —Tynette Deveaux, editor, Buddhadharma

Looking Deeply With the Three Dharma Seals: Impermanence, No-self, and Nirvana Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that by looking deeply we develop insight into impermanence and no self. These are the keys to the door of reality. We are often sad and suffer a lot when things change, but change and impermanence have a positive side. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible. Life itself is possible. If a grain of corn is not impermanent, it can never be transformed into a stalk of corn. If the stalk were not impermanent, it could never provide us with the ear of corn we eat. If your daughter is not impermanent, she cannot grow up to become a woman. Then your grandchildren would never manifest. So instead of complaining about impermanence, we should say, “Warm welcome and long live impermanence.” We should be happy. When we can see the miracle of impermanence our sadness and suffering will pass.

Free from the Burden of Holding On What do you cling to? Let it go, says Ajahn Jayasaro, and you’ll discover something profound. We look for refuge, for something that is stable, permanent, happy, but we seek it in that which is impermanent and unstable. There is nothing wrong with body, nothing wrong with feelings, perceptions, thoughts, seeing, hearing, tasting, all these things. Those things are just that way. But problems arise when we demand, hope, crave for those things to provide that which they cannot provide. What we desperately seek are permanence, happiness, and stability, and those things can only be found in freedom from attachments, from penetrating the four noble truths.

Impermenance is Buddha Nature Change isn’t just a fact of life we have to accept and work with, says Norman Fischer. To feel the pain of impermanence and loss can be a profoundly beautiful reminder of what it means to exist. In truth, impermanence isn’t later; it’s now. The Buddha said, “All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing.” Right now, as they appear before us, they have that nature. It’s not that something vanishes later. Right now, everything is in some way—though we don’t understand in what way—vanishing before our very eyes. Squeezing uncomfortably through the narrow doorway of now, we don’t know whether we are coming or going. Impermanence may be a deeper thought than we at first appreciate.

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