“Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers

“‘All conditioned things are impermanent’ — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.” ~The Dhammapada

“Better it is to live one day seeing the rise and fall of things than to live a hundred years without ever seeing the rise and fall of things”. ~The Dhammapada

Dear Friends,

It’s been a while since I last wrote and much is different now. I am reminded daily of annica, or impermanence, one of the three marks of existence. I found out recently that the Pali canon records the Buddha teaching on annica over 100 times. Learning that, I don’t feel badly repeating this theme. The word we translate often as impermanence has a slightly different flavor in Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures.  The root word is nicca which scholar monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu translates as constant and dependable. The prefix a is used to indicate the opposite thus anicca means inconstant or undependable. These words contain the seeds of disappointment and frustration much more than recalling the natural condition of impermanence.

The last reminder from the Buddha before his death was an exhortation to keep impermanence in the forefront of our minds and to remember that everything we see, think, feel, and experience is made of composite things that depend upon the whole universe to support their existence. This includes our thoughts, our bodies, our emotions, all people, all regimes, all ideologies, every bank, every government, and country in the world. They will all change and they will all end. Thanissaro Bhikkhu translates the Buddha’s last words as ‘“I exhort you, monks: All fabrications are subject to decay. Bring about completion by being heedful.’ Those were the Tathagata’s last words.”

The Buddhist worldview sees everything in a constant flux of shifting conditions. I have noticed my tendency to create groupings of years: this was my childhood, spent in this house with these friends, and then this is where I lived as a young adult with these interests and friends. The next phase was as a mother with children growing up in a new town. Each portion of my life is packaged into a manageable chunk, separated by location and time. In reality, there are no demarcation lines, no separation the day we stop being a child, or change the day we turn 21, get married or divorced. We create these mental compartments which we assign time and place to. If we look at our lives, they are unfolding against a fluid and inconstant backdrop. And we share in this unpredictability.

Our bodies, minds, and emotions are constantly arising and passing away and we are powerless to hold back the aging, sickness, and ultimate death of these bodies. We can clearly see that when we focus on the unreliable nature of the world and ourselves, we touch suffering [dukkha] and anatta, or not-self. These three, dukkha, annica, and anatta comprise the three marks of existence or three characteristics. They are basic truths of living in these bodies we cannot control and being part of the system that constantly falls into balance and out of balance. One teacher summarized these three teachings as, Everything changes. It will shake you up and it’s not personal. Buddhist peace activist and teacher, Donald Rothberg recommends reflecting on impermanence for five minutes a day, noting that everything we see, the house, the car, folks in a hurry to get to work, all the infrastructure and everything that meets our eyes is subject to change and decay. It’s all going away—even us.

This understanding can help give us the long lens of equanimity to see how things really are and to unclench from what seems so important, fixed, and permanent. The notion of change and fluidity means that although what we love will change, what we don’t love will change also. As Thich Nhat Hanh points out, we have infinite possibilities because nothing is forever—and we can be part of this wave of change, for the better.

May we all trust our light,

Celia