"The Porcelain Lotus"
The funny thing about being mindful of impermanence is that it doesn't last. One minute we can be sitting with the breath, reflecting on how it's ebb and flow is a microcosm of our own lives, and the next we are assailed by what to have for dinner, or the cute guy in the office (hey, there are a lot of cute guys in my office) as our days like waves break gently, over and over again, upon the shores of samsara. If we chose to, we can see impermanence all around us. We can loose our jobs, our health, our loved ones, even our lives at any given time. Like a porcelain lotus left on a high, windy ledge, all that surrounds us, all that we see as fixed and lasting is precariously placed, and uniquely all the more precious because of it.
This was recently brought home to me most poiniently when my partner and I of three years decided that we were moving in separate directions, and it was best to call it a day. Now I'm not going to lie, it hurts a lot right now. We all know how it goes - 24hrs or so of shock, followed by the misguided, naively optimistic hope that you can intellectualise the slow throbbing agony away (yeah right, you first professor). Interspersed with this are your usual bouts of crying, neausia, numbness, repeat ad infinum. For me they are usually in that order, but occasionally in variety of previously unthought of combinations, an interesting experience to say the least. Throw in a paradoxical sprinkling of elation, vigour and other forms of bubbling effervescency, and that is a fairly accurate picture of the first 48 hours. But the really bizarre thing is, my practice and the teachings of the Buddha have never been more than a deep breath away from me at any given point. All that is required of me is to sit with each emotion as it arises and as Vidyamala says, respond but not react to it. The famous sutta of Kisagotami and the mustard seed medicine that would bring back her dead child (the catch was that the seeds had to come from a house untouched by death) has been of great comfort these few days. In addition to that, I'm currently being mindful of the Sutta of the Two Darts, explaining how when we experience pain (the first dart), we tend to heap our own suffering upon it (the second dart, and let's be honest here, we rarely stop at just the two...) All these teachings are of immeasurable support, and understandably deepen my faith in the Three Jewels. That being said, time and time again I still find myself aimlessly wondering into rooms in my house, and finding an old bus pass or other reminders of less trying times, I'm suddenly reduced to a blubbering, tear-streaked mess once more...
We can know something intellectually, but how deeply do we REALLY know it? REALLY feel it down to our very core? Something as abrupt and unfamiliar as this is always going to bring us a little closer to the true nature of reality than we are usually comfortable with. Which is really ironic, given how our practice and study is designed to help us pierce the veil of ignorance, cast aside the Ray-Bans of delusion and on tip-toes, peak into the pantry of existence itself. Yet when given the opportunity to bring ourselves face to face with the reality of life, with a shudder (and in my case, a fist full of soggy tissues) we wince away shielding our eyes, fearful for what those metaphorical shelves may hold.
Bhante (Sangharakshita) once said that "all fear is a fear of death", and the more I reflect on this, the more I find it to be so. That all phenomena are subject to change, and can be taken from us at any time IS scary, but did we ever trully "own" them in the first place? To quote everyone's favourite drummer in the film "Wayne's World" - we fear change. That all phenomena change illustrates that they are inherently empty of a fixed self, and cannot last. But if all things in this world are fluid, are empty of a fixed self, then the demarcation where I end and you, dearest reader commence, begins to blur. It is in that blurring of personal boundries that we can start to trully connect with others, breaking down the walls of "self" and "other" - and THAT is the point where true, unbiased love and spiritual friendship begins to blossom. If I am forever subject to change, then so are you - neither of us will trully ably to control or barter with samsara, and none of us will be able to prevent the inevitables changes in life that brings about old age, sickness and death. Again, in a poem of Bhante's, he muses: "Life does not belong to us, we belong to life. Life is King." Ironically, its our pain, trials and tribulations overcome that unites us, puts on on an even keel with each other, much more so than our victories or achievements. In the game of life, not everybody "wins", but at some point everybody hurts. Just ask Michael Stipe.
We are all in it together, not as individual units isolated and separate, but as one great, mailable, beautiful throng of flux and impermanence. And with this sense of oneness, of interconnectivity, comes a softening of the heart, the chance, to quote a good friend, to relax, trust and open. Open up to the possibilities that surround us every day. To laugh, to cry, to be born anew. It is our gift, not our curse. It is, to coin a phrase, our daily Metta-morphosis! Even this very sentence can only be read this way once - try it, go back to it and read it again. You are a different person than you were five seconds ago, and I love you all the more for it...
Yours, impermenantly,
The Dharma-Farmer
This article was motivated and inspired by me trying to dry my eyes and see through the pain to my actual experiences, the process of which was facilitated in no small part by Vidyamala's life-changing talk entitled "Dying to Live" (available on www.freebuddhistaudio.com). May any merit gained in my writing thus go to alleviate the suffering of all other sentient beings.
The funny thing about being mindful of impermanence is that it doesn't last. One minute we can be sitting with the breath, reflecting on how it's ebb and flow is a microcosm of our own lives, and the next we are assailed by what to have for dinner, or the cute guy in the office (hey, there are a lot of cute guys in my office) as our days like waves break gently, over and over again, upon the shores of samsara. If we chose to, we can see impermanence all around us. We can loose our jobs, our health, our loved ones, even our lives at any given time. Like a porcelain lotus left on a high, windy ledge, all that surrounds us, all that we see as fixed and lasting is precariously placed, and uniquely all the more precious because of it.
This was recently brought home to me most poiniently when my partner and I of three years decided that we were moving in separate directions, and it was best to call it a day. Now I'm not going to lie, it hurts a lot right now. We all know how it goes - 24hrs or so of shock, followed by the misguided, naively optimistic hope that you can intellectualise the slow throbbing agony away (yeah right, you first professor). Interspersed with this are your usual bouts of crying, neausia, numbness, repeat ad infinum. For me they are usually in that order, but occasionally in variety of previously unthought of combinations, an interesting experience to say the least. Throw in a paradoxical sprinkling of elation, vigour and other forms of bubbling effervescency, and that is a fairly accurate picture of the first 48 hours. But the really bizarre thing is, my practice and the teachings of the Buddha have never been more than a deep breath away from me at any given point. All that is required of me is to sit with each emotion as it arises and as Vidyamala says, respond but not react to it. The famous sutta of Kisagotami and the mustard seed medicine that would bring back her dead child (the catch was that the seeds had to come from a house untouched by death) has been of great comfort these few days. In addition to that, I'm currently being mindful of the Sutta of the Two Darts, explaining how when we experience pain (the first dart), we tend to heap our own suffering upon it (the second dart, and let's be honest here, we rarely stop at just the two...) All these teachings are of immeasurable support, and understandably deepen my faith in the Three Jewels. That being said, time and time again I still find myself aimlessly wondering into rooms in my house, and finding an old bus pass or other reminders of less trying times, I'm suddenly reduced to a blubbering, tear-streaked mess once more...
We can know something intellectually, but how deeply do we REALLY know it? REALLY feel it down to our very core? Something as abrupt and unfamiliar as this is always going to bring us a little closer to the true nature of reality than we are usually comfortable with. Which is really ironic, given how our practice and study is designed to help us pierce the veil of ignorance, cast aside the Ray-Bans of delusion and on tip-toes, peak into the pantry of existence itself. Yet when given the opportunity to bring ourselves face to face with the reality of life, with a shudder (and in my case, a fist full of soggy tissues) we wince away shielding our eyes, fearful for what those metaphorical shelves may hold.
Bhante (Sangharakshita) once said that "all fear is a fear of death", and the more I reflect on this, the more I find it to be so. That all phenomena are subject to change, and can be taken from us at any time IS scary, but did we ever trully "own" them in the first place? To quote everyone's favourite drummer in the film "Wayne's World" - we fear change. That all phenomena change illustrates that they are inherently empty of a fixed self, and cannot last. But if all things in this world are fluid, are empty of a fixed self, then the demarcation where I end and you, dearest reader commence, begins to blur. It is in that blurring of personal boundries that we can start to trully connect with others, breaking down the walls of "self" and "other" - and THAT is the point where true, unbiased love and spiritual friendship begins to blossom. If I am forever subject to change, then so are you - neither of us will trully ably to control or barter with samsara, and none of us will be able to prevent the inevitables changes in life that brings about old age, sickness and death. Again, in a poem of Bhante's, he muses: "Life does not belong to us, we belong to life. Life is King." Ironically, its our pain, trials and tribulations overcome that unites us, puts on on an even keel with each other, much more so than our victories or achievements. In the game of life, not everybody "wins", but at some point everybody hurts. Just ask Michael Stipe.
We are all in it together, not as individual units isolated and separate, but as one great, mailable, beautiful throng of flux and impermanence. And with this sense of oneness, of interconnectivity, comes a softening of the heart, the chance, to quote a good friend, to relax, trust and open. Open up to the possibilities that surround us every day. To laugh, to cry, to be born anew. It is our gift, not our curse. It is, to coin a phrase, our daily Metta-morphosis! Even this very sentence can only be read this way once - try it, go back to it and read it again. You are a different person than you were five seconds ago, and I love you all the more for it...
Yours, impermenantly,
The Dharma-Farmer
This article was motivated and inspired by me trying to dry my eyes and see through the pain to my actual experiences, the process of which was facilitated in no small part by Vidyamala's life-changing talk entitled "Dying to Live" (available on www.freebuddhistaudio.com). May any merit gained in my writing thus go to alleviate the suffering of all other sentient beings.
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