Living Into Impermanence

Most of us live much of our lives as if we were in a dream. The teachings of Zen Buddhism are guideposts to help us wake up to the life and the world that is already fully here. These teachings are not meant to be accepted at face value, but rather to be considered and explored. Many of these teachings are both subtle and self-evident.

One of these teachings that I’ve been thinking about recently is the teaching of impermanence—that observation that everything in the universe is in a constant state of change. While many of us might generally agree with this statement, it is actually hard to remember on a day-to-day basis.

We seem to live in a world of fixed objects: the car, the tree, the stars and me. These objects behave in mostly predictable ways. When I put my car in the garage at night, it is always there the next morning. The copper beech tree in front of the Boundless Way Temple always stands in the same place, making leaves in the spring and dropping them in the fall. I count on things to be what they are and to behave according to my sense of how things go.

This works pretty well most of the time. I almost always find my car when I need it and the beech tree is always on my right as I drive out. But there are several problems with this way of looking at the world as a collection of ‘things.’ The first is that these things that seem so solid are actually in a process of falling apart. While this is evident the morning that the car won’t start, it often comes as a surprise.

The car I get into this morning seems to be pretty much the same as the car I got into yesterday. (Though these days I’m not getting in the car very much on any day.) I don’t notice much change. But twenty years from now, whether it is driven or not, the car that works so well now will most likely not be on the road anymore. And though the beech tree may still be standing then, given another hundred years, it too will certainly be gone. And this gradual disappearance assumes the absence of any sudden events like a car accident or a lightening strike or an infestation of beech tree loving insects.

           The world around us is in constant change. Nothing is as solid as it seems. Everything is falling apart and new things are constantly being born. And this is not a problem—unless we’re in the business of trying to hold things together, then it is frustrating and scary. Beginning to remember and see the flow of change around us gives us the opportunity to align with this natural process rather than trying to fight against the way things are. The author and teacher Byron Katie once wrote: ‘You can fight reality, but reality always wins.’

The second problem with seeing the world as a collection of things is that people, in particular, are simply not who we think they are. After many decades of marriage, it is tempting to think that I know who my partner is. She has a name and often behaves in ways that seem predictable. But everything I think I know about her is only a small part of who she really is. And the more I relate to her (or anyone else) from the place of thinking I ‘know’, the less I am actually able to be in relationship with the person that she actually is right now.

The third problem is with the assumption that I myself am a solid thing. Though I can be aware of new wrinkles on my face in the mirror, I mostly think I know who I am. This sense of my stable ongoing identity is useful in making plans and cooking dinner, it can easily blind me to the actually nature of the falling apart and being born that is constantly happening within me.

My encouragement for today (for myself and anyone else who is interested) is to notice change. Can you slow down and look again at the ordinary things of your life? Look for what is different. Allow things to fall apart and see what new emerges on its own.