fact melts away the fear…
Impermanence
by meditative - August 17th, 2011.Filed under: Insights for Mindful Intelligence.
Abstracted from an article entitled “Castles Made of Sand”~ Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D.
These symbols of impermanence- “castles made of sand”- can help teach us about the nature of our own minds. When watching the revealing simplicity of children at play in the sand, these imaginative creations seem to be a singular focus where nothing in their world appears more important than the present moment activity of shaping, embellishing, and protecting them from the encroaching sea or from other children who might threaten them.
Sand castles are not objects of possession- they are symbols of impermanence, and will eventually slip into the sea. Equally impermanent are the affections of young children, even before the tide comes in you may witness the subtle yet gleeful demolition of what only moments earlier had been so deeply revered. Once the tide of their own attachment has turned, children can destroy with joyful abandon what they have carefully created.
This is an important observation about human behavior, which can, of course, be applied to a much wider field of understanding. It points to the remarkable insight that meaning is not something existing inherently in things, but is something projected onto things by the application of human awareness. We make things important by investing them with importance, by placing our attention on them, and by treating them as valuable. Sand castles are not universally important or unimportant. When a person considers them meaningful and pays careful attention to them, they become important. When that meaning-creating enterprise is withdrawn and turned upon a different object, the sand castle becomes instantly insignificant….
Reflect for a moment on the “things” in our lives that are subject to this law of impermanence… and how meaning and value can be attentively ascribed and fleetingly dissolved away as we routinely move on to other “objects of attention”…
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