So,
Today's topic is the first of the series this week on change.
This talk is entitled,
Seeing Impermanence.
And what's so extraordinary about this practice is there's really never a lack of material.
Life is this beautiful tragedy,
You know.
Years ago,
I heard a teaching on the 10,
000 joys and the 10,
000 sorrows.
That's such a captivating phrase,
The 10,
000 joys and the 10,
000 sorrows.
Life is like that.
And of course,
The mind has been conditioned to want to increase the number of joys and diminish the number of sorrows,
Right?
But joy and sorrow are in the fabric of our existence.
It's just part of the tapestry that is life.
And what I've noticed in daily practice,
Sort of the fruits of daily practice,
Is that when the winds of change blow in,
There is a meeting of the change that is calm.
You know,
It's calm within my body,
An ability to meet it.
The frame is sort of like,
Oh,
Oh,
This too.
And all the sensations of not liking may be there.
Disappointment and fear all may be there.
But the pull to follow the feelings and the emotions,
That isn't there.
It's just seeing.
Seeing change.
And most of us in this Zoom room,
Most of us live close to nature.
And those who live in the Rocky Mountains,
You know,
We've experienced that we can have all four seasons in one day.
It's not uncommon here.
Change is always happening,
Like a weather system,
Like the weather systems of the Rockies.
And often our experiences of change are unconscious.
You know,
We're not experiencing them.
And without practice,
We're led around by our thoughts and the feelings and emotion that inform the thoughts.
And we act on those feelings and emotions,
Those thoughts.
And just to say that thoughts aren't bad.
I mean,
So much beauty has come from thinking.
Poems and art and the innovation,
Even the way in which we're meeting on Zoom.
This is all part of thinking.
They were all thought up.
So thoughts are not a problem.
We just don't have to believe every thought that arises in our experience.
And we don't have to follow every thought that arises.
When we sit and practice,
We begin to see that everything,
Everything is arising and disappearing.
An itch arises in your foot,
Or there's a tickle in the back of your neck.
And if you begin to watch it,
It disappears as spontaneously as it arose.
Sounds come and go.
You know,
Construction may be happening down the street.
And as you're thinking about,
Well,
Where can I sit where I won't be disturbed?
Or should I maybe put some earplugs in?
All that can be happening.
All that thought can be occurring.
And then the sound ceases.
The construction stops.
There's no need to do anything.
If we pay attention,
You can even start to notice the arising of thinking.
You can be following your breath with the intent that you see the arising of a thought and you can come to see it.
And it bubbles up from nowhere.
There isn't some master thinker inserting a thought.
The teachings of the Buddha are really about to see and to feel and to be in the current of change.
To be in the current of change.
And this gives us some agency to shape how we experience and how we're in the world.
Certainly most of us can't change the world dramatically.
But we can change our immediate world.
We can change ourselves.
And the practice has a lot to do with understanding change and finding a way to harmonize with it and work with it so that we can cultivate ourselves.
We're developing ourselves to become better people.
And by that I mean to prepare ourselves for this world so that we're resilient.
That we're open-hearted and not clinging or being hostile in the world.
And it's powerful to work with the changing nature of this world.
In Vipassana practice,
We're working with change and the changing nature of our world all the time.
To enter in what the Buddha was emphasizing,
To really observe change,
Means that we're no longer swayed by it or caught in it or seeing reality through the lens of our concepts and our ideas and our stories.
What is constantly changing is how we perceive or see the world changing.
Our stories come out.
They arise and pass with how things are occurring in our life.
So in the midst of change and flow is this movement of story making,
Of concept making.
And change is just happening and then we insert all of this meaning.
So how do we just rest without adding on?
How do we get into that resting where it's just change happening and we're not caught?
The Buddha taught that because it's liberating to flow with change,
This is like where freedom is found.
We train in this way of practice,
Of meditation.
This is the core insight of the Buddha's teaching over and over again,
To see in constancy,
To see change,
To see impermanence.
This is the core teaching.
And one of the reasons Buddhism puts such a strong emphasis on being present,
Having present moment attention is that this is where change happens.
If we're thinking about the past,
Well,
The past is not changing anymore,
Except in how we remember it.
And the future doesn't really exist to change.
It's a projection of our imagination.
But the present moment is where we can see change.
This is where the river of change flows.
When the Buddha died,
One of the first statements someone said,
It became a funeral chant for Buddhism.
And I will say it in Pali,
And then I will repeat it in English.
Pali being the original language.
Anicca Vata Sankara Upadhiwa Dhammino Upacitu Aniruddhanti Tesa Mupa Sukho And this translates to all things are impermanent.
They arise and they pass away.
Those who see deeply into this truth experience happiness.
And this is a chant that we do to this day in practice,
Particularly on retreat practice.
And the happiness that's being described isn't experienced as being like total delight and happy all the time.
It's a deeper happiness,
A contentment or an intimacy that we are in touch with what what's real in our world.
Even if the world is full of suffering,
Which it is,
And we may not be happy in relation to the suffering,
But there can be a feeling of rightness to it.
Yes,
If this is happening,
This is what's happening in the world.
I want to be present for it.
We want to know it.
It's right to be aware of it,
Even if it's painful.
Even if it touches something in our hearts that hurts.
To have that capacity to say this is what's happening.
Yes,
Let's be present for it.
Let's breathe with it.
Let's see it.
So I'll pause here.
And I thank you for your attention and consideration.
This practice of change.
