Insight- Impermanence
by meditative - March 29th, 2010.Filed under: Insights For Mindfulness Training.
To see clearly is to see the world as ever changing… moment to moment.
As you look, the more closely you observe, the more you realize that everything you look at is in change.. seeing changes- hearing changes- smelling, tasting, and physical sensations are changing- all the experience in the body and mind – all the experience of the senses. It seems solid, but this is illusory. Our life’s moments, experiences, sensations, and thoughts are really a process of change.. of continual manifestation & transformation as conditions change moment to moment.
The very nature of impermanence is that nothing can remain the same in two consecutive moments- neither a human, a cloud, etc.- and this applies to everything. Conditions change and so does the manifestation of those conditions, as well as the continuation of the manifestation a universal cycle.
Things don’t last… and it’s our attachment to them being in a certain way that causes us suffering.Our attachment- our clinging doesn’t stop things from changing- things are impermanent, and attachment doesn’t work. Then, there must be some other way. As most all of us have heard at one point or another in our lives,we need to learn to just flow with things.
The nature of our being- the mystery of our being is all about change.Any attempts to avoid what is uncomfortable and to attach to what is comfortable is a process of separation. Many of us Westerners are stuck in the notion, the false duality of subject (“I”) and object (“experience”).We are one with all that we experience- good and bad- painful and joyous- as Zorba the Greek called, “the full catastrophe.” As InterBeings, one cannot separate one’s “self” from one’s experience.“Self” is merely a concept neither completely defining who or what we are as continually manifesting human beings.
Our suffering in life mainly stems from our emotional reactions to the experience or to the change itself.As we have discussed before, these reactions involve patterns of emotions and behaviors formed by conditioning, and that run automatically when they are triggered by internal or external events. For many, they are self-perpetuating mechanisms. Impermanence really touches our understanding of presence… it is the direct knowing that all experience is “groundless” and ever changing; it simply arises and subsides, and what arises is not separate from awareness. Presence is resting in this awareness. When we let go of our attachment of the “I” or “self” separate from our experience, and all of our reactions,we are left with only pure experience.When we become enlightened and calmly abide with purposeful attention to our changing experiences,we are present and can fully know the intention of our moments.
What happens when you let go of controlling your projection of permanence… of security… and of your own eternity? As simply stewards of our minds- of our bodies- and of our lives the quality, the fullness of one’s experiences is conditional upon how one’s stewardship is embraced.