Impermanence Meditation

Nothing stays the same. Regardless of what is taking place in your life, "This too shall pass." Life is a series of ever changing moments. Embrace it all.

Transcript

Relax your jaw and relax your shoulders coming into this space,

Coming into this body,

Breathing deep into your belly,

Impermanence where nothing stays the same ever,

Just like one breath right after the other,

Different.

You can imagine clouds floating by and as clouds form and shape as they move on they shift and change.

Nothing stays the same.

To be alive is to change forms,

A state of dying away in order to be renewed.

This is of the body and of the mind.

Notice how you have changed over your life.

You may not remember but there was a time right when you were born,

You were not walking,

You were crawling.

And there was the moment in time when you stood up and you took a step.

And from that moment on you were no longer crawling.

Experience that with yourself as you can imagine yourself being that infant crawling,

Standing up,

Walking.

A state of impermanence was happening right then.

As you continue to walk you find yourself running,

Moving in ways you've never thought before.

Then perhaps you took dance classes or you played a sport.

So long ago was the moment when you were crawling.

We know our physical form changes as we progress through life.

Our thoughts and beliefs are the same way.

By examining our systems we can discover if we are clinging to the past knowledge,

Creating behaviors of reaction rather than living in the wisdom of present state awareness.

Nothing stays the same ever.

Whatever situation you are going through,

This too shall pass.

Whatever pain your body may be feeling,

This too shall pass.

The Buddha referred to life like a river.

It is progressive.

It is movement.

It is successive series of different moments all joining together to give the impression of one continuous flow.

But in reality it's a series of moments.

One right after the other ever changing,

Flowing over a rock,

Becoming shallow,

Becoming deep,

Turning,

Hitting a branch,

Splitting off from each other.

The river is never exactly the same in any two moments or any two places,

Just like life.

There are similarities within our day to day process.

As we inspect each moment,

However,

We can see that every moment is different because you are different.

I am different.

As we continue to move through space and time,

We recognize the body changes and so does the awareness of truth or at least the perception of truth.

As we learn one thing,

We find something else out and suddenly that changes.

As you were an infant crawling,

Perhaps you had that thought that you would be crawling forever until you stood.

Then suddenly your paradigm changes and no longer are you the same.

Every day we just take one breath and then we take another breath and another breath and another breath and another and another and another.

And every day we take one step and another step and another and another and another.

It may seem like it's continuous breathing,

But it's just one breath,

One right after the other.

We may consider ourselves walking,

But it's just one step right after the other.

One step and it falls away to another step.

One breath and it falls away to another breath.

Take a breath.

As you feel yourself breathing again,

Then let that breath fall away into your next breath.

Perhaps you've seen as you were driving or visiting someone on the farm,

You've seen a fence or a gate that was filled with rust.

So bring into your mind this gate,

But instead make it brand new,

Make it shiny.

See it as clear and clean.

In your mind's eye it is strong and bright.

As the days pass,

It's still bright and shiny.

As the weeks pass,

As the months pass,

As the years begin to pass,

The shine becomes to become a little more dull.

Rain,

Heat,

Light,

The elements.

And you begin to see rust coming upon this gate.

The patina of our life shows up in our life,

Experience.

The scars we accumulate both physically and emotionally and spiritually,

Making us who we are.

Strong,

Still strong.

This gate filled with rust perhaps,

But has the ability to do its job.

Filled with character.

Let this scene just simply flow away from you and disappear into a mist.

As you find yourself gazing up into the sky,

You see a cloud.

Big,

Beautiful,

Puffy,

White cloud against the deep blue sky.

Notice that cloud and notice what it looks like.

Perhaps you see an animal or a building.

What do you notice?

Just allow yourself to see that.

And this cloud moves through the atmosphere and begins to change and shift and shape about and it becomes something else.

Impermanent.

What does it become now?

As you notice that,

Let the shape now just change to beautiful white puffy clouds against the deep blue sky.

We,

Like the clouds,

Are forever changing.

Every moment,

Every day,

Every breath,

Every new awakening,

Every new awareness,

We change.

In your mind's eye,

See a beautiful pond or a lake.

As you image this beautiful,

Serene space,

The mirroring of the water on the lake,

In your hand you feel a pebble or a rock.

And experience what that feels like in your hand.

As you take that rock and toss it into this body of water,

You watch the ripples surrounding where that rock went into the water.

And you see the ripples very strong at first.

As you can imagine,

The rock sinking deeper and deeper into the water.

As you watch these ripples,

Now becoming lighter,

Smaller.

Impermanence.

What was once chaos,

The rock being thrown into the pond,

Has now become calm again.

As you notice,

The waters along the pond are now calm.

Life changes.

Waters of chaos become calm.

The impermanence of life,

Like one breath falling into the next,

Every breath different than the one before,

Just like life.

Taking a deep breath in and a relaxing breath out.

Reviews

Thank you for this meditation, you put everything into perspective.
I also love your 1 minute meditation.
I wish you would produce more meditations. I like the way you think and how I feel after doing your meditation's!
Namaste.

Wow! Simple yet profound wisdom.....particularly relevant as we get older, I think! 🙏🎈🎈

Really nice. I will do this meditation regularly in my exploration and acceptance of impermanence.

This is a fantastic way to visualise impermanence and meditate, 🙏🏼 thank you

Such a beautiful voice, very soothing. Thank you

Thank you. I lost a very good friend this week. This helped me very much.

I finally listened to it enough times to hear every word, now to remember to live the wisdom expressed. Thanks 🙏🏼

Perfect, just what I needed. Namaste

Excellent meditation on impermanence. Thank you.

Excellent. Thanks

Good analogy - Thank you for sharing

Beautiful reminder. Thank you

It's challenging for me to find guided meditations that I like. This is fantastic.

Beautiful...felt like a poem... thank you!🌺

Excellent transient life meditation, thank you 🙏🏻

the teacher sounds like an US senator. easy to understand. nice take on impermanence