Impermanence & Anxiety

The Buddhist concept of impermanence was something I had difficulty understanding. When I finally understood this concept, I learned how it could help me with my Autism, specifically, the anxiety I often feel regarding change. Understanding Impermanence gave me a new way to negotiate difficult situations which in the past would have become traumatic for me and others.

Transcript

Hello,

It's me,

Joe,

The Autistic Buddhist.

And in this session,

I'm going to speak about impermanence and anxiety.

Of all the Buddhist concepts that I have studied over the years,

Impermanency has been the most difficult to understand.

At first,

I gained a surface understanding of impermanence.

That is,

As we often say in the West,

Nothing lasts forever.

Which is true.

But impermanence in Buddhism has much deeper connotations than that.

It took me a very long time to understand the more fulsome,

Deeper meaning of impermanence.

And in my quest to comprehend this fundamental aspect of Buddhist teaching,

I discovered two things.

The first is impermanence is an active process.

And the second is the beginning is already pregnant with impermanence.

Meaning that the beginning of something,

An event,

An experience,

A thought,

An emotion,

Also includes the emergence of impermanence.

I'd like to talk about impermanence as an active process.

I used to think that impermanence was something that signified the ending of something.

That we should expect that whatever our experience,

Whether internally,

Thoughts,

Or externally,

Environmental,

The experience was time limited.

After all,

It does seem sensible.

For example,

If I start reading a book or watching a movie,

I'm fully aware that at one point I will reach the end of the book or movie.

So when the ending comes,

It's not a surprise.

It would be counterintuitive to think otherwise.

And so for me,

And I assumed many others,

Impermanence was a static point,

A fixed experience,

Like simply saying the end.

And so having reached the end,

The thing,

Event,

Activity stops,

And then something else would begin.

But my study of impermanence within Buddhism taught me something very different.

When I started to understand it,

I found it astounding.

Impermanence is not about endings.

It's about changes.

It is not nothing lasts forever.

It is things are always changing.

And so what we call the end is actually a change from one condition to another.

And this change continues without stopping.

Sometimes we use the phrase,

Nothing lasts forever,

As I just did.

When we say nothing lasts forever,

We are usually referencing that something good or beneficial has come to an end.

For example,

You are having a good time with friends,

And then that time ends.

Someone may say,

We're having such a good time,

And someone else may say,

Well,

Nothing lasts forever.

That is the context many of us are accustomed to.

But in Buddhism,

Nothing is very literally nothing.

That includes pain,

Life,

And much more.

After a difficult situation,

A person may say,

I'm so glad that's over.

But it isn't over.

The condition has just changed.

A fair criticism of what I am saying is,

Well,

Joe,

That is just semantics.

You're just using different words to describe the same process.

Something ending and something changing is the same thing.

I would say that it isn't,

Only because when something ends,

There is no movement implied.

It is the same as saying when something ends,

It is unmoving,

It is standing still.

Whereas when something changes,

There is movement,

Something is changing from one condition to another.

When on a sunny afternoon it starts to rain,

It is not that the sunny afternoon has ended and the rain has started,

It is that the weather conditions have changed.

And this leads me to my second discovery.

The end of something is inherent in its beginning.

And initially,

This concept was very hard for me to understand.

The concept is that when something starts,

It has already begun to end.

This may sound disheartening,

Or even depressing,

The idea that when something positive in your life starts,

It's already ending.

I myself thought the same way.

I thought,

What a terrible way to view the start of something new and exciting.

As soon as I get it,

I'm starting to lose it.

Here's an example.

When I started to go home on a Friday night after work,

I was excited.

The weekend is starting,

The work is over.

And when Sunday night came and I thought about returning to work,

I was disappointed.

The weekend is now over.

But the Buddhist concept of impermanence changed that for me.

The concept of being happy at the beginning and sad at the end became one consistent feeling of understanding.

You may have heard in other sessions that one of my favorite sayings regarding impermanency is,

The temple bells ring out the sound of impermanency.

I love that saying because that one simple statement explains the importance of the Buddhist concept of impermanency.

What that means is that as soon as the bell is struck,

It is already ending,

Or more accurately,

Changing.

When you hear the bell being struck,

The sound does not stay steady for a while and then fades.

It fades as soon as the bell is struck,

Until eventually it fades into silence.

Therefore,

The condition or presence of silence after the bell fades already starts to emerge as soon as you strike the bell.

The sound of the bell is one long change from sound to silence.

So the ending of the bell is already present at its beginning.

Another example,

When you take an ice cube out of the freezer and put it into a glass,

The ice cube starts to melt as soon as it leaves the freezer and continues to melt until the ice cube changes into water.

That process begins as soon as it leaves its frozen environment.

When melted,

The ice cube hasn't ended,

It has changed,

And if you leave the glass of water alone,

It will eventually evaporate into moisture in the air,

Changing again.

So nothing has ended.

I should advise you of a trap that some people fall into when understanding impermanence,

And that is to transform the principle of impermanence into fatalism,

Which is the belief that all things are predetermined and no matter what happens,

You cannot alter the outcome.

Impermanence is not predetermined.

All things are in a constant state of motion.

Therefore,

Impermanence and fatalism are very different concepts.

So let's talk about how that Buddhist principle has helped me with my anxiety.

I have mentioned before that all the medical and mental health support throughout the years has not eliminated my mental health issues.

Despite all the support and my own efforts,

I am not cured.

What all these interventions have done is lessen the impact and the volume of my mental health issues.

And Buddhism has helped me lessen the anxiety,

The fear,

And the behavior of my mental health even more.

Whereas before,

My mental health ran my life,

I am now at a place where I can coexist with it.

Let me give you an example.

Recently,

I was asked to go to a social event.

It was an event with about 8 people.

I had been invited,

People were anticipating that I would attend,

And I thought that I could manage the event fairly easily.

As I got closer to the event,

My anxiety started to increase.

I was able to observe that it would increase to a point that would be beyond my control.

I felt a sense of commitment to the event and the people present.

But mentally,

I knew I was not doing well.

I knew exactly what the negative and anxious feelings I was having meant.

I was aware that I was heading towards a mental health episode,

A breakdown of function and rational thought.

If I had pushed myself to go to the event,

I knew how it was going to turn out.

I would arrive anxious,

My anxiety would increase,

I would feel out of place,

Different,

Hampered,

And tense.

Eventually,

Like a time bomb,

I would explode.

On the day of the event,

I informed the key people at the event that I could not attend,

And I did not go.

There was disappointment,

Of course,

And I would imagine some frustration as well.

After all,

People were counting on my attendance.

I felt bad about not going,

But feeling bad was much better than having a mental health episode,

Ruining the event for me and everyone else.

Should I have known better?

Should I have said from the beginning that I could not attend?

Maybe.

In many cases,

I can anticipate my reaction and declare up front that I cannot go or be part of a gathering.

In other cases,

I can't until I get closer to the event itself.

What has all of this got to do with the Buddhist principle of impermanence?

Well,

Impermanence in these situations helps me in two ways.

With the feelings building up to the event and the feelings I experience after.

As the event builds,

I am mindful that what is happening is not a permanent condition.

I am still anxious and upset,

But because of impermanency where all things are in a state of constant change,

By introducing changes in the situation,

I can change the direction and the outcome.

My mental health is deteriorating.

It is moving in a negative direction.

What change can I introduce to alter the outcome?

How can I change this building energy into something more helpful?

I can remind myself that this situation has already started to resolve itself.

Its ending has already begun.

The beginning of the event already includes its solution.

And knowing that,

I can remind myself that this situation has already started to resolve itself.

The situation will not turn better later,

It is turning better now.

The beginning of the event already includes its ending.

And knowing that it is going to end,

I can choose how it will end.

I am controlling the situation.

The situation is not controlling me.

And impermanence is giving me that control.

The situation will be different five minutes from now,

And even more different ten minutes from now.

Therefore,

I can choose how to behave in the moment,

Giving me the ability to obtain the outcome I want.

Once when I was driving home,

I took a new route.

I was driving fast and suddenly there was a very sharp turn.

I nearly lost control of the car.

The next day,

On purpose,

I took the same route,

But the outcome was different.

I knew the turn was coming,

So I introduced changes to affect the outcome.

I drove slower.

Approaching the sharp turn,

I already knew it was going to turn out different.

The end of the sharp turn was already present as I was entering it.

Another change you can make as an episode builds is to include other people.

If you have someone close to you who understands your situation,

Contact them.

Tell them what is happening.

You are then adding a positive factor,

Changing the outcome further.

Something I like to do is to start recording what I am feeling into my cell phone as if I am explaining to someone else at the other end what is happening.

And in those situations,

I turn my cell phone on and I say,

Joe,

I was invited to this social event.

It starts in three hours.

I am feeling anxious.

I am afraid that something will go wrong.

I am recording this because I want a record of what is happening.

I also ask myself several questions when I notice that my stability is starting to deteriorate,

Such as,

What's not working right now?

How am I functioning?

What am I thinking?

Secondly,

What am I afraid is going to happen?

Thirdly,

What changes can I introduce to change the outcome?

And lastly,

How has the outcome I want already started?

Going back to the example of my event,

Afterwards,

I felt a sense of guilt for having not gone,

And I still do,

But not to the degree I would have felt before.

The guilt isn't as overwhelming as it used to be.

It is much more manageable.

Feeling guilty is not a symptom of my autism.

It is not driven by a mental health condition.

Therefore,

It is much easier to manage.

And impermanence helps me with that as well.

That is how the Buddhist principle of impermanence helps me with my autism.

It gives me a perspective that I did not have before.

In the past,

My perspective was fatalism,

That being that the situation would end badly and there was nothing I could do about it.

There is a Buddhist story that helps explain this.

One day,

A Buddhist monk was getting water from a creek when he heard the bushes rustle behind him.

He turned around and saw a tiger staring at him ready to pounce.

The monk ran until he came to a steep cliff.

The monk thought that jumping off the cliff was better than being eaten by a tiger,

So he jumped.

As he fell,

He was able to grab onto a strong vine and stop his fall.

He looked up at the tiger and then at the rocks below.

At that moment,

He noticed a plump red strawberry hanging on the vine.

He plucked the strawberry and ate it.

This is the best strawberry I have ever eaten,

The monk thought.

What this story says to me is that in the middle of a crisis,

He changed the situation by grabbing a vine.

Now another crisis.

Would the vine hold?

He did not know.

If he would fall or not.

And another decision that changed the circumstances.

He plucked and ate the strawberry and he liked it.

The story doesn't tell the reader whether he survived or not.

And that really isn't what needs to be understood or focused on.

What is,

Is that change is everywhere,

Even in the middle of a crisis.

I hope this session has been of benefit to you and I hope you found it useful.

Once again,

Thanks for listening and goodbye.

Reviews

What a new perspective, thank you! When something starts, it has already begun to end, that includes “problems”, too. Impermanence isnt an end, but a change in the state of being. Thank you!

All of the Autistic Buddhist talks are relatable for us that are on the spectrum and also for everyone else . This session is very helpful . Thanks again Joe ! ☸👍🏻🙏🏻

Great teaching Joe. Thank you. So clear in your explanation.

I love this talk, really practical examples that make it simple to see how impermanence has a place in daily life.

Joe, Do you have another talk on impermanence and life (death)? This has been the hardest change of all to accept or understand!

Awesome talk joe, the way you present ideas is so clear and informative! Thank you! 🙏🏼

Interesting window on accepting impermanence. Thank you, Joe!
Donna