Edited / I will be posting a new drawing soon
Impermanence, life’s unpredictability and change and enjoying the good that lasts……
“Panta rei / Everything flows” Heraclitus
“We should not complain about impermanence,
because without impermanence, nothing is possible.” Thich Nhat Hanh
“To live on this shifting ground, one first needs to stop obsessing about what has happened before and what might happen later. One needs to be more vitally conscious of what is happening now. This not to deny the reality of past and future. It is about embarking on a new relationship with the impermanence and temporality of life. Instead of hankering after the past and speculating about the future, one sees the present as the fruit of what has been and the germ of what will be.” Stephen Batchelor
“If we can be open…we find that life’s unpredictability is full of interesting and invigorating challenges. These challenges engage us in unexpected and unanticipated ways and allow for the freedom of unscripted responsiveness….” Mark Epstein
The idea for today’s post came to me after a brief conversation in a shop I visit weekly. The person there greeted me as usual and asked “How are you?” to which I joyfully responded “Fine”. To my surprise they commented on how it would be more precise to say: “I’m fine, right now, but I don’t know what might happen to me tomorrow”. I was initially taken aback, and then I inserted some humor into our casual brief chat, but afterwards I gave it some more thought and pondered on impermanence and continuity, and whether it is helpful to go about one’s daily life in constant dread of all the bad things that might be awaiting us at every corner. In reality unless we’re living in a war zone the risk of being run over by a car or something of the sort happening to us would probably be relatively low. And this comes from someone who has been hit by a car and has come out of the experiences alive and relatively unscathed. This mental process eventually led to this post.
Of course, it is true that bad things happen to people all over the world every day and that impermanence and change are an inherent part of living on this planet. Nobody really knows whether they will actually wake up the next day. There is also a lot in life that we have no control over, from wars to the destruction of the natural environment to heart attacks and a myriad of other things that happen to us through the course of our life. Also, nothing really stays exactly the same even if on the surface people and things may seem the same over maybe short periods of time. But it’s good to remember that there is also the impermanence of pain, and that many changes are also positive and highly desired. Without change and impermanence there would be no possibility, no change, no growth, no learning, no recovery.
One of the basic teachings in Buddhist philosophy is impermanence and that by recognising this we can deal with change and human suffering with more ease and grace. Of course it is difficult for humans to accept both change and death, and it requires practice. But by practising acceptance of this fact we can better appreciate each moment of life, and maybe make the most of it to the extent that we can. It shakes us out of our habit of taking life for granted, which is only available in the present moment, and it also increases our sense of gratitude. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk, peace activist and poet write: “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence. If we are in good health and are aware of impermanence, we will take good care of ourselves. When we know that the person we love is impermanent, we will cherish our beloved all the more. Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us and inside of us. When we practice mindfulness of impermanence, we become fresher and more loving.”
Science also demonstrates that change is inherent to life. Some time ago I read a blog by an undergraduate student doing research, whose name I can’t recall, in which she said something along the lines of it being important to approach everything even research from a perspective of impermanence because as she explained the goal was not to maintain any status quo of rigid certainty, but to do work that would aid change and transformation. Through advancements in technology and medicine and scientific observations we now know that change takes place in our bodies every minute. Consider all the activity taking place in our bodies and organs as we obliviously go about each day. Something like 330 billion cells are replaced daily, and in about 90 days 30 trillion will have replenished, which is the equivalent of a new you. Consider the millions of synapses coming into being even as they disperse every moment. In describing the brain in his book, Neurodharma, Rick Hanson writes: “Like the mind, the brain is impermanent: Each day, hundreds of new baby neurons are born in a process called neurogenesis, while other brain cells die naturally. There is ongoing rebuilding of existing connections between cells and structures within cells. New synapses form, while less used ones wither away. New capillary tendrils— the tiny tubes that supply blood to our tissues— grow and reach into particularly active regions to bring them more fuel. Individual neurons routinely fire many times a second. And molecular processes cascade like falling dominoes over the course of a single millisecond….”
On the other hand, we do experience a sense of stability and continuity within constant visible and invisible changes that take place in our bodies, our identities, our sense of self, our circumstances, our relationships, our natural environment. My son and his girlfriend stayed with us for a while over the summer and we looked at old photo albums. Everyone had changed, parents had aged and kids had grown older and much bigger, and grandparents had died. And yet it was also true that most people were still alive, some aspects of their personalities had not changed, and there was continuity in their identity and life story. In one photo I saw that our front patio was full of pots of plants. Now it is empty and some of the many potted plants I had when I moved here have died, but most of them have taken roots in the garden. They have transformed into bushes and tall trees. Places visited in the past are still there. Cities have probably grown bigger and denser and the beaches in the photos have undergone subtle changes over the years, many due to more recent environmental changes, but they are all still in place, recognizable, familiar. Even our house, which has gone through change, some inevitable deterioration and restoration over the last twenty six years, is still here, providing us with shelter and accommodating our changing needs. It is in some sense both the same house and a very different one.
In an article with the title, Enjoy the Good that Lasts [https://www.rickhanson.net/enjoy-the-good-that-lasts/], Rick Hanson writes: “Look around and see things you like that were here yesterday – and maybe here many years ago as well. For me writing, this includes a desk, a collage on the wall that I made a long time ago that continues to guide me, and trees and hills seen through a window. As you look around, recognize the relative stability of so many things. Sure, most if not all will pass away eventually – the universe is nearly 14 billion years old, so “in the long run” ………. but for all practical purposes, there is so much lasting good literally within reach of your hands and feet right now. …… Allow a natural sense of reassurance, perhaps relief, to emerge. Perhaps a calming, a relaxing, a sense of the security of those things that are stable. Notice anxious doubts if they come up, and let them change and pass away, knowing that the future will be whatever it is but meanwhile whatever good that is true is really actually true right now. …..
Consider people in your life and the good that’s lasting there…. Consider the good in your past. It will always have been good, even if it is here no longer. Your own accomplishments, personal disasters avoided, crazy good fun times with friends, the ripples of your own sincere efforts large and small – nothing at all can ever erase what actually happened. How about the durable good inside you? Talents and skills, moral values, neat quirks, so much knowledge: it’s all real. Enjoy the felt recognition of it…”
And yes, we now know through science that life might eventually after billions of years become extinct on this planet. Then even the natural laws and the nature of things will not be true anymore. In relation to this, physicist Brian Greene says that we believed that if we uncovered more of how the universe works we would be touching something that was always true. … He explores the degree to which even this is true or ultimately has any purpose in the absence of human beings, or in the absence of a life form that can contemplate a deep equation or Einstein’s theory of relativity, for instance. He says that he eventually came to grips with this level of impermanence by realizing that instead of grasping for future certainty it was wiser to focus on the here and now “as that is the only place in which value and meaning can actually have an anchor.”
And meanwhile, we can still trust in the nature of things and the natural laws we are aware of currently, in the web of life, in the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, in nature, in the present moment and in all that makes us humans, and in our instinctual clinging on to survival in order to see the sun rise yet another day, I watched a film with many women behind the scenes recently: Where the Crawdads Sing. Amongst its many themes there was this central theme of survival running through the whole story, of our own and other species’ biological drive, inner mandate, in some sense, to live against all odds even in dangerous or hostile environments. And we can still trust in love and in our wishing wellbeing to those we love, and hopefully, to all humanity, in our putting in some effort every day despite and inspite of it all. We can remind ourselves to live more in the now, not necessarily in a timeless, mystical now, but to quote Stephen Batchelor, to view / experience the now as “an unflinching encounter with the contingent world as it unravels moment to moment.”
I will end this post with another extract from Rick Hanson’s article mentioned above:
“See the durability of life itself. It’s been going on locally on our planet for at least 3.5 billion years. Things have changed and will change, and I am not trying to minimize bad changes, especially those involving human hands. Still, life will keep going in one form or another as long as the Earth keeps going (which should be at least a few more billion years, until our sun gradually expands and BECOMES a red giant, swallowing up Mercury, Venus, and us – but that’s a while from now)…….. Enjoy it all. The more we recognize impermanence, the more we can take refuge in the good that lasts.”
Also, I’d like to share a few things I’ve engaged with this last week.
Rick Hanson, PhD, talks about trust and its roots in our early years, mistrust and healing, the inevitability of change in people and circumstances, and finally, things we can deeply trust like love, life, the present moment, our own and other people’s natural goodness, the nature of things. So, the topics of the talk are to some extent related to some of the ideas in the piece I’ve written above [https://www.rickhanson.net/meditation-talk-trust-mistrust-and-deep-trust/].
Physician and auhtor Dr. Gabor Maté talks about the nature of addiction, trauma, and illness in a toxic culture, which is often at odds with true healing, the denial of children’s developmental needs in the culture, as well as the adult needs for connection, belonging, authenticity, autonomy, meaning, mastery, actualization, etc, and more, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEpD2o6MZOk