Many people equate impermanence with suffering.  However, suffering is what occurs when our ego clings to something.  The truth is that whatever we cling to, or don’t for that matter, is not permanent and will change.  When we cling to something and it changes, this is what truly causes suffering.  So can we say that even though attachment is suffering, impermanence is one of the legs that it stands on?  Not really.  The reason is because it is our belief that things ARE permanent that causes suffering.

Although impermanence is not a leg for attachment to stand on, it is, in fact a leg for enlightenment to stand on.  Without impermanence, our view could never change and we could never touch ultimate reality.  Without impermanence, life itself is not possible.  How can we grow up?  How can there be change in the world?  Hope itself can’t exist without impermanence.

There are three views of impermanence, each deeper than the previous, that lead us on the path.  The first is the obvious, outer view that we all can see.  Birth, sickness, old age, death.  These are obvious views and proofs of impermanence.  This is obvious to all, but lets take a look at a couple of ‘less obvious’ things.  Confucius once said, while looking at a river that it “is always flowing, day and night.”  When the river flows there is impermanence.  The flowing water slowly erodes the rocks and the land.  It moves the leaves and debris in the current and obviously the water itself moves.  The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus said that you “can never bathe twice in the same river.”  How can this be true?  If you bathe in the river even one second later, the water is not the same.  Because what is a river if not the water.

This is true for our own existence as well.  We change moment to moment.  Every moment we are different from the moment before and different from the moment to follow.  Our thoughts and ideas are not the same.  Our feelings and sensations are not the same.  Our concepts aren’t the same.  Even our physical bodies aren’t the same.  It’s widely known that we are losing cells and growing new replacements all the time.  Our existence is never constant.  Our existence is somewhat like a movie, made up of individual frames that are different than all the other frames, but when played in succession with sufficient speed, appear to be solid.

And yet, we fail to see what’s right in front of our face.  We see death all around us and don’t believe that we will die.  Intellectually, we know, but deep down, we all cling to life as if it’s the last rescue ship from the Titanic.  We fail to grasp that there is nothing we can do because we see ourselves, our physical body, as something that will never leave us.

The second view is understanding from insight, from the intuitive, the direct seeing of the nature of things.  This is when we are able to break things down through careful observation and begin to see the individual frames, or small groups of frames, instead of seeing the whole movie.  This is accomplished through the practice of meditation.  As we watch our thoughts, we begin to see the small, individual components instead of the long, drawn out mental play that we normally perceive.  As we continue to observe our thoughts more closely and gain a better understanding, we can then broaden our observation and see that what happens in our minds follows the same patterns that occur outside of it.  With deep meditation, we begin to see all phenomena as being in flux.  We begin to see the lack of consistency in everything.

Finally, there is the way in which seeing impermanence can lead to liberation.  As we begin to see impermanence more and more clearly, we begin to see that there truly is nothing that we can cling to. Our habit of attachment is challenged and, after awhile, we begin to relax and become more comfortable with this.  We begin to see that things don’t fit into our little boxes, our ways of categorizing them.  They are much more fluid and in flux than we ever imagined. They are, as Suzuki Roshi once said, ‘Not always so.’

When we come face to face with impermanence in such a dramatic way, it begins to open us up to complete awakening.  Final liberation can occur when we can drop our most deeply held constructs of reality.  Totally letting go of this attachment is said to bring ‘The Great Happiness’ which is the only happiness that can ultimately be reliable.

OK…so let me now take a stab at some of the e-mail I’ll get from this post:

Dear Meditator Dude,

That was an interesting little post.  Lots of stuff about enlightenment and ultimate happiness and liberation and such.  That’s all cool, but what about something for me.  I’m nowhere near talking about enlightenment or liberation.  Hec, I’m not even sure I am a Buddhist yet.  How does all this relate to me?  I mean, wasn’t there something in the title about ‘Relevance here in the 21st century?’  If you wouldn’t mind, bring it down to the day to day for me. k?  k.

Sincerely,

Beginners Mind

Dear Beginners Mind,

You make an excellent point, so let me see what I can do for you.

We talked earlier about clinging.  That our big problem with impermanence is our unwillingness to accept it and to try to cling to things the way they are at a particular moment.  Well, as with most things, this is not only a problem we encounter following the path, but a problem we encounter in day to day life.  We just may not realize it as much.

We all have memories, little stories in our head about things that have happened.  This is cool, until we begin to give them way more solidity than they need.  For instance, once I remember that Mary did something that wasn’t very nice to me.  Now I always regard Mary as a bad person.  Maybe not even consciously, but we hold on to that memory and make it solid.  We have taken it out of it’s scope of time, and made it solid.  It’s no longer that ‘Mary did something that wasn’t very nice ONCE’.  We have clung to the story,and it has turned into ‘Mary is not a nice person.’  When we do this, we have completely colored a situation before it even occurs.

This stems from egos need to be in control and protect itself so it clings to something like a rock that it can use as a base to build on.   We take the memory of the way things appeared to be at one particular point in time, and made them solid on a permanent basis.  Ego will often even begin to add in a motive as to WHY someone did X or WHY Y happened.  We are now running into ego’s pure fantasy, cooked up to support it’s perception of the memory.  The more details and reasoning that ego adds, the more solid the memory appears and the easier it is to cling to.

But we must remember that it was just a thought.  It was our perception of a particular moment in time.  The moment was impermanent, actions were impermanent, the whole thing was impermanent.  Now we don’t have to try to erase the memory from our minds as a negative.  We simply need to recognize it for what it is.  We need to recognize when we are acting based on our clinging to it.  We have to take the story, give it an ending and be done.   ‘And they lived happily ever after’ is a good one, but doesn’t always fit.  Hmm…let’s see.  How about, ‘But things changed and life went on.’  That one seems like it would work most of the time.

This is not something that is limited to memories of the past.  Our thoughts of the future fall in the same boat.  We have an idea in our heads about how something will or should happen and we cling to that thought.  Instead of letting go and allowing things to happen, we try to push, mold and force our thoughts and ideas that we have solidified onto the situation.  Again, this leads to disappointment and suffering. We need to approach with an openness that includes very little in the way of pre-concieved notions, whether based on our memories of the past or ideas of the future.

Whether we are searching for enlightenment, an easier walk through this life or just an easier walk through this day, attempting to drop our clinging is always beneficial.