Part 2: Impermanence – Awakening Through Insecurity

From the view of the separate self, this existence is inherently uncertain, and we are profoundly vulnerable. Our habitual reaction to insecurity fuels separation, and limits our capacity to live and love fully. This talks explore the blessings of wisdom, love and freedom that naturally arise as, instead of resisting, we learn to open directly to the insecurity of impermanence.

Transcript

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The last class we had together was on impermanence and we're going to continue that reflection tonight.

This is part two.

And it feels like a real live one for me in a very personal way.

I've just been watching,

Witnessing over this last decade the growing awareness of mortality,

How everything's changing,

Loss,

Life.

And the more close in that awareness that reality is everything comes,

Everything goes,

The more I'm like very,

Very close into that,

The more pure and free my heart is.

I feel more sincere and loving.

There's this direct link between really getting mortality and really having the freedom to love unconditionally.

I mean,

Think of it if we're knowing we're about to die,

Wouldn't a lot of the conditions we place around our loving just kind of fall away?

Can you sense that?

So a basic principle in spiritual life is that we really need to face reality,

Face the truth of mortality and of loss in order to live and love fully.

It's just a basic principle that incarnating and disincarnating,

I don't know if that's a word,

But that's kind of how life goes.

So it has to do with facing that reality.

And hand in hand with that principle is another very real one,

Which is we are deeply rigged to avoid pain,

Including the pain of reality,

Of facing reality.

So you see our predicament here,

Right?

Okay.

So it's an odd combo that we have this consciousness that's self-reflexive,

Which means that we can bear witness to our existence and how it comes and goes.

And as I mentioned,

We have this wiring to do whatever we can to avoid facing that.

And one of my favorite stories is where a sultan is in his palace in Damascus and this beautiful youth who is his favorite rushes into his presence and cries out in great agitation that he must fly at once to Baghdad and implores to borrow his majesty's swiftest horse.

And the sultan says,

Why are you in such a haste to go to Baghdad?

And because the youth answered,

As I passed through the garden of the palace just now,

Death was standing there.

And when he saw me,

He stretched out his arms as if to threaten me and I must lose no time in escaping from him.

The young man was given leave to take the sultan's horse and fly.

And when he was gone,

The sultan went down indignantly into the garden and found death still there.

How dare you make threatening gestures at my favorite,

He cried.

But death,

Astonished,

Answered,

I assure your majesty,

I did not threaten him.

I only threw up my arms in surprise at seeing him here because I had a tryst with him tonight in Baghdad.

It's natural and healthy to try to control and manage certain domains of our life.

You know,

It's natural that we try to manage our finances and manage things at work and manage our diet and exercise and things in the tasks on the home front and so on.

That's really natural and wholesome.

And suffering exists when that dread of death,

The existential fears,

Are so strong that they lead to chronic controlling.

So this is in a way we're kind of looking at how much am I caught in chronic controlling versus the natural managing we do to navigate.

And there are signs of it.

I mean,

Signs are our body's tense a lot,

We're controlling,

We're tightening against,

We're armoring against what's around the corner.

Our minds are obsessing,

We're constantly trying to figure something out or come up with a solution even when there's not even that much to figure about.

We're just figuring things out.

Have you noticed that?

Going through the day and this is just turning on things.

And then of course judging,

Aggressing,

Over-consuming,

These are all ways of signs of over-control.

And when we're in an ongoing mode of it,

We're never relaxing.

Another favorite story is Colorado National Parks.

A few years ago there were a lot of bears and so they put up some signs and some guidelines and they advised people to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert but not startle the bears unexpectedly.

They also advised carrying pepper spray in case of an encounter.

And they also said it's a good idea to watch for fresh signs of bear activity.

They end it like this.

People should recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings.

Black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possible squirrel fur.

Grizzly bear droppings have little bells in them and smell like pepper spray.

So we know what it's like when we're just constantly trying to prepare and defend and protect and make things work out.

And what's going on is our… not only are we tense in our body,

Our heart gets contracted.

When we're in that defender aggressive mode,

Our heart gets really contracted,

Our mind gets really small.

We're the opposite of open-minded and we actually don't have access to our natural intelligence.

We are not as smart when we're in fight-flight-freeze.

We're not at all creative.

Now there are… when we take it from the individual and look at the collective,

There are huge and painful consequences to over-controlling as a collective and in a cultural way.

And you can see it that it's kind of the shadow,

The masculine shadow that the aggression that's used when there's a fear of death and rather than facing and processing that fear,

It goes into aggression.

In other words,

It gets projected.

Other is bad,

Must kill other.

Okay?

It's trying to fight death.

But what happens is that there's a real deepening of a sense of separation of us-them mentality,

Tribal mentality.

So in cultures including our own,

That really are not very good at facing the existence of fear,

That are very much over-consuming and over-attacking,

There's huge consequences.

There is the rampant racism we find in our culture making the other less and bad.

There's a degradation of woman,

The female,

Because the female archetype represents nature,

Living and dying nature.

We get born from a woman.

So it connects us to that out of control wilderness.

So women in cultures have predominant patriarchal kind of ruling,

So to speak.

Women are degraded.

The body is degraded.

The religions in patriarchal societies are aiming to have us leave our body,

Transcend and get to some other place,

Heaven,

Nirvana,

Whatever.

But there's a putting down of the temporal.

There's a fear of it,

A trying to get away from it.

So I am putting it out that way because everything that we explore individually in terms of not being as controlling and opening to what's here is what has to happen in a societal level for us to begin to heal the really big wounds that come from violence.

What spiritual training aims to do is to cultivate this capacity to let go of all the controlling,

To be more.

And it doesn't mean that we're not supposed to take care of business,

But can we let go of excessive controlling?

Suzuki Roshi teaches that this renunciation,

The saying,

Okay,

I don't need to be so defended or I don't need to aggress,

He says,

This renunciation doesn't mean giving up things of the world.

It means accepting that things come and go.

Does that resonate for you?

So this isn't about,

Oh,

Don't enjoy this or don't protect yourself from harm if somebody is causing harm.

This is about getting it when we're locked into excessive controlling,

Excessive aggression,

Judging,

Consuming.

And renunciation means really accepting this coming going life and the intense emotions that come with it,

Being with.

So this is one description of the evolution of consciousness,

That we gain this capacity to get out of fight-flight-freeze where we're over controlling and fixated on it and have access to that part of our being,

Our brain,

Our heart,

Where we can actually let go and let be and open to this living-dying world.

In Buddhism,

Impermanence is one of the three characteristics of existence.

The three characteristics include suffering,

Meaning that we are discontent.

As long as we feel separate,

As long as we believe in a separate self,

We're going to be discontent and grasping and pushing away.

The second of the characteristics,

Impermanence means that everything is changing,

Which is why we're discontent.

There's nothing we can hold on to.

There's nothing we truly can control.

And then the third characteristic is,

And there's really no one,

No entity to do the controlling,

That if we look deeply,

If we get really,

Really quiet and present,

Really quiet,

Then that sense of a self,

Of a character moving through time dissolves.

And there's an enormous sense of oneness and freedom that comes with that.

So those are the three characteristics.

And the Buddha taught that if you totally get impermanence,

Okay,

If you have a direct experience of this ever-changing flow,

Everything else is revealed.

So let me just ask you for a moment to check that out.

We'll just do a brief dipping in,

Okay?

Just close your eyes for a moment.

And here's the inquiry.

What does it mean right now to open to the living flow,

To directly experience impermanence?

What does that mean experientially?

What makes it possible to open to the living flow right now?

And right now,

Again,

Now,

Right here,

What makes it possible?

What are the conditions that have to be in place?

I invite you to keep checking this out,

But you can open your eyes if you'd like.

And let me ask you,

What has to be in place?

What are the conditions for truly opening to this aliveness?

What do you notice?

Anyone?

Just raise your hand and I'll repeat what you say.

Yeah.

Okay,

So the response is allowing everybody to be who they are.

So when I have you close your eyes and say,

Open to the living flow,

Then your mind goes to,

Okay,

That means allowing other people to be who they are.

That would be true when you're in engagement.

What has to be in place if you're just paying attention inwardly?

Because that's an idea of other people there.

That's a really important extension,

But I want to start with the simplest level,

Just to turn inward and open to the living flow.

Let go of striving.

Exactly,

No striving.

Yeah?

Trusting that you're safe.

Say it a little louder.

Being fully present.

Yes,

Being fully present.

These are all good,

Yeah.

Death?

So you have to face death because as you go inward you're facing the passing of things.

Is that what you meant?

Yes.

You have to face that fear when you know you're not in control.

By the way,

These are all elements,

Yeah.

You have to sense space.

You have to sense that it's all happening in space.

Right.

Much larger than our idea of a little self here.

Yep.

So I'm going to bring these in.

Oh yeah,

Please.

Have your mind and heart open to new people and experiences.

Yes,

And that's the same kind of response that in order to open to living flow when we're in engagement with others,

That's exactly right.

Both of you brought that up.

Just to begin with as the groundwork,

To open to the living flow,

To really have a direct contact with what's called radical impermanence.

Okay.

You need to let go of all striving or controlling.

If you're trying to control,

You tense and you pull away from the living flow.

And you have to be present.

You have to be embodied.

You have to be in your body.

You can't open to the living flow if you're thinking about it,

Right?

So you can't have a film of thoughts separating you from this wildness of this living reality.

So I want you just to keep in mind those two elements.

Not controlling and not being in your head,

Being in the aliveness that's here.

Okay.

And we're going to keep exploring.

Now the deal is that our primary strategy for controlling us humans is what?

What's our major number one strategy to control the universe?

Anybody?

Yes.

Thinking.

Thank you.

Very good.

But we all know it.

It's like that's how we leave every day.

We leave this living river of experience and we go into our mental control tower,

Right?

So that's what we're working with.

And thinking is absolutely necessary for survival.

And this isn't a diatribe against thinking.

It's just saying the over-controlling,

The addiction to thinking is what keeps us from that radical impermanence,

That living flow that's always here.

And we know how it goes.

We know how we might have something go on around us with another person rather than feeling our hurt or anger.

What happens?

We start spinning,

Right?

Dave Barry had a good description.

He says,

"'If you ever experience a medical symptom such as itching,

You can go to the Internet and with just a few mouse clicks you'll discover the reassuring truth.

There might be a worm in your brain.

' Really,

Medline Plus,

If you go there,

Itching can be a symptom of a condition called visceral larva migraines,

Literally a worm in your brain.

Another symptom of brain worm is,

And this is a direct quote from Medline Plus,

Irritability.

So next time you have itching or irritability,

Just think brain worm.

" In the last class I gave the kind of metaphor of instead of opening to the river or to all the currents and the sea,

We create a little tidal pool and we surround it with lots of rocks so that we're really protected from the free-flowing current.

We separate ourselves and it gets stagnant and stale and we lose touch with the aliveness,

The mystery,

The magic.

So the truth is we all do that some.

We all do some escaping.

And for most of us,

As hard as we try to shield ourselves,

Reality does break through.

I mean,

You wouldn't be here unless something in you sensed a vastness and a mystery and a fear and a beauty that's much larger than the cocoon we try to keep ourselves in.

You wouldn't be here.

You wouldn't be listening if you're listening to a podcast.

Unless reality had already broken through some.

So at times we get rudely awakened.

You know,

We might have a car accident all of a sudden and everything's changed in a moment or somebody we love,

You know,

Ends up being diagnosed and doesn't have long.

Or natural disaster.

Something can happen.

One story I've shared over the last few years,

One woman who was diagnosed with,

I guess,

Fourth stage breast cancer and she had a little over a year to live,

Maybe a two-year-old daughter,

And her mantra became,

No time to rush.

So you understand that reality breaks through at times.

And it's painful and it's scary and it's also welcomed in a way because we know this is real and we want to respond to what's real.

We have also the more ordinary mini-awakenings when life doesn't cooperate and all of a sudden the whole way we thought things were going to play out,

Suddenly the rug is pulled.

And that happened to me.

A number of you already know this.

Last Friday I was two hours away from going to the airport to go teach at Kripalu.

I think there were like 240 people signed up for the workshop and I had everything packed and ready and I took my dog for a walk and in the middle of that walk got a back spasm.

I was really far from the road.

I had also been kind of a little far from my body while I was still walking or,

You know,

I was kind of thinking ahead and planning.

So I got this back spasm and it was really immobilized.

Had to cancel last minute.

Some of the people had come,

Got one note,

Somebody had come,

Driven eight hours only to go to Kripalu and have to turn around and leave.

And of course my life changed in a moment from on my way to teach to absolutely immobilize for almost 48 hours really.

It happens.

And I know for myself it was incredibly unpleasant yet there was this realness in it and there was also a message much like that no time to rush message which really is pause,

Slow down,

Create more space or else my body rebels.

I see it in retreats not only for myself that when we walk half as fast we notice twice as much.

When we slow down we start re-entering the river of aliveness.

We start taking it in.

A retreat story.

After completing a nine day Vipassana retreat Dave turns up for work at the zoo.

Seeing how chilled out Dave is the head keeper puts him in charge of the tortoise enclosure.

Dave slowly walks over to the cages.

Because you know at these retreats in case you don't know by the middle towards the end you end up walking very,

Very slowly.

And it's a walking meditation.

It's very,

Very slow.

You slow down in a lot of ways.

So at lunchtime the head keeper checks on Dave only to see the cage door is wide open and all the tortoises are gone.

He runs up to Dave and says,

What happened with the tortoises?

Well said Dave very slowly.

I opened the tortoise cage door and it was like whoosh.

Okay so we have the rude awakenings and we have the day to day ways that things break through and we kind of get stopped in our tracks and we remember in some deeper way what matters to us.

That's kind of what happens.

But also what happens is we forget quickly.

So unless we have an intentional way of turning directly towards this truth of impermanence we can go off into a trance for days,

Months,

Decades where we are really not aligned with what the heart most cares about.

So it becomes a critical element on the spiritual path to on purpose pay attention to impermanence.

And the rest of this talk is really three different pathways of remembrance that many people find totally change their lives.

And the first path is that we on purpose or intentionally face our fears,

Face where we sense loss or know that loss is on its way.

And this is sometimes described in Asia as the charnel ground practice.

So charnel ground are the above ground burial sites in Asia where corpses are left to decay naturally and with the help of scavengers and the elements.

And the Buddha encouraged students to meditate in charnel grounds.

Now can you imagine that?

This is the instruction,

Go meditate in charnel grounds.

Why would that be so?

That when we really pay attention to the reality that these bodies die,

They decay,

They end up going back into the elements,

When we pay attention to that and get in touch with the fear that is there rather than blocking it we can process it,

Digest it.

If we are not facing it that fear blocks us.

It actually has a certain kind of control over our life experience.

There is a blog author and he writes,

Durga's Toolbox,

That's the blog.

And he describes himself as having this huge PTSD type terror to any stories about abuse of disabled people.

And he'd hear a story and absolutely freeze,

Go into a real sense of terror.

And this was his charnel grounds,

Okay?

This is the fear for him.

And here is how he put it.

He said,

His fear is when I am dead who will protect my vulnerable trusting son from abuse?

Each of us has something,

Usually a bunch of things.

But this was his.

This is his way of practicing with that fear was little bits at a time.

It's not necessarily wise to go plunge right in,

But little bits at a time building this muscle of tolerance.

And you can do it in all sorts of ways because what we are developing is affect tolerance.

That's what Western psychology calls it.

We are developing this courage to be with what's actually here.

And so we can use whatever helps us.

Sometimes for some people the hand on the heart allows us to start being more with what's inside us or imagining the embrace of the beloved,

Some spiritual figure,

Some loved one holding us or actually being with a loved one as we face what's difficult.

But if we don't face it,

The fears of loss,

Those fears control us.

One woman just as an example lost both parents when she was really young and her husband who was about mid-sixties had a very weak heart.

So it was kind of living on an edge.

And so for her it brought up real terror,

The terror of abandonment,

That her husband would die.

And so her way of facing the charnel grounds,

Being in the charnel grounds,

Was not to go right into imagining into losing her husband.

That was too much.

So she would take little pieces of what came up,

The feelings of aloneness or loneliness,

Are also what would bring up her fear was when she'd get lost because she felt as a young child she felt lost with her parents gone.

So she'd work with that.

She'd sometimes drive and realize that she wasn't sure where she was and that would be the time she'd open to the charnel grounds.

And she found that bit by bit she could actually start breathing into where the fear was and saying,

It's okay,

I'm here,

I'm here,

Until she could start reckoning with the fact that it was probable that her husband would predecease her and start opening to it in a way that she could talk to him about it,

Which increased their intimacy in a way she couldn't have imagined.

So her fear was of loss,

But by facing it she had more connection.

Just to say you can't will yourself into the charnel grounds,

But you can have a kind of willingness.

Just have that be your intention.

And then a real kindness.

One teacher,

Srinur Sargadatta,

Says that the mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it.

The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it.

So our minds create this fear and separation.

And the fear is a real living fear but the heart,

When we bring in the heart,

We have room.

We can hold that fear.

So not facing the charnel grounds takes energy.

And it blocks not only the fullness of loving,

But also the ability to love.

There's a wonderful story about Kafka when he was an old man.

He'd spent time in a park and one day a little girl walked by him.

Tears were running down her face and it turned out she'd lost her doll.

And he said he'd look around,

But he couldn't find it.

He said to her,

Come back again and I'll check some more and see if I can find it for you.

A few days later the little girl returns and Kafka is there but there's no doll.

But there is a note and he reads it to her and it says,

I've gone off to travel around the world.

Please don't worry about me.

I'm fine.

So the girl is somewhat relieved and she returns to the park every week or so and Kafka is always there with a note from the doll and the girl is too young to read initially so he starts telling her about the doll's adventures.

Okay,

So time goes by and Kafka was much sicker and he went to the park one last time and this time he brought a doll and he handed it to the girl and said that the travels had really changed her.

But some years later when the girl was a young woman she found and read a note that had been rolled up and placed in the doll's hand.

And this is what it said,

You will lose everyone you love but the love will always return in new forms.

We fixate our love on particulars and it's a beautiful thing to feel the loving that's possible that connects us but the loving is timeless.

It's always there,

Always accessible and if we can face the grief and fear that surrounds loss of the particulars we become available to the love that really is living through and connecting all of us all the time.

It's quite a mystery and quite a bit of magic to it.

So again with this title pool we're kind of opening to the currents and knowing that means that we have to experience the currents of loss but what comes with that is a sense of belonging not just to a title pool but really to the whole vastness of this moving ocean of life and to the mystery.

We go from thinking we know things,

You know,

That kind of certainty that people can have to really… if we're really present we get it that we really don't know.

It really is a mystery.

Share with you a story called The Heart Remembers that was written by… it's a true story a surgeon shares,

Heart surgeon,

And start this way.

A woman's crying,

Oh my God,

David,

No.

This woman had seen the bright lights headed straight for their car and as the squeal of the tires struggling to grip the road became one with their own shriek of helpless terror.

She knew she had lost her husband forever.

Moments before the car came crashing through their windshield the couple had argued over something silly and had been sitting in resentful silence.

They had these little scruffles before but unlike their previous skirmishes this time there would be no opportunity to apologize and reconfirm their love.

Three years after the accident Glenda sat with me in a dimly lit hospital chapel.

At her request I had arranged a meeting between her and the young man whose life had been saved by the gift of her husband's heart.

The heart recipient and his mother were almost a half hour late for the meeting and I was ready to suggest to Glenda we leave.

The issue of recipients meeting donor families is a sensitive one and I understood why the man may have changed his mind.

As I stood and took Glenda's hand she said quietly,

No,

We have to wait.

He is here in the hospital.

I felt him arrive about thirty minutes ago.

I felt my husband's presence.

Please wait with me.

Glenda is a practicing family physician.

She is well versed in bioscience and as I do admires the rigor and healthy skepticism of modern science.

Now however the power of something that transcends what science calls common sense was tugging at her heart.

David's heart is here she added.

I can't believe I am saying that to you but I feel it.

His recipient is in the hospital and at that moment the door opened and a young man and his mother walked hurriedly down the central aisle of the chapel.

Sorry we are late said the young man with a heavy Spanish accent.

We got here half hour ago but couldn't find the chapel.

After introductions and awkward attempts at humor about a heart to heart meeting between the young wife and her husband's heart the usually shy Glenda blurted out,

This embarrasses me as much as it must embarrass you but can I put a hand on your chest and feel his I mean your heart?

The young man looked at me and then his mother put his hand to his chest and finally nodded his head.

As Glenda reached forward he unbuttoned his shirt,

Took her hand and gently placed it against his naked chest.

What happened next transcends our current view of brain,

Body,

Heart and mind.

Glenda's hand began to tremble and tears rolled down her cheek.

She closed her eyes and whispered,

I love you David.

Everything is copacetic.

She moved her hand,

Hugged the young man to her chest and all of us wiped tears from her eyes.

Glenda and the young man sat down and silhouetted against the stained glass window of the chapel held hands in silence.

After a while the young man's mother told me,

My son uses that word copacetic all the time now.

He never used it before he got his new heart but after his surgery it was the first thing he said to me when he could talk.

I didn't know what it meant.

He said everything was copacetic.

It's not a word I know in Spanish.

Glenda overheard us her eyes widened.

She turned towards us and said,

That word was our signal that everything is okay.

Every time we argued and made up we would say everything is copacetic.

Our discussion about a magic word seemed to reveal a code of the heart within him stimulated the young man to share story after story of changes he experienced following his transplant.

Described by his mother as a former vegetarian and very health conscious he now craves meat and fatty foods.

A former lover of heavy metal music he now loves fifties rock and roll.

He recorded recurrent dreams of bright lights coming straight for him.

Glenda responded almost matter of factly that her husband loved meat,

Had played in a Motown rock and roll band while in medical school and that she too dreams of the lights of that fateful night.

When we really open to the grief of loss we are opening into a mystery.

You are with a person as they are dying.

They will pass and there is this wonder where did he or she go?

We don't understand.

The mind or the brain can't understand.

So this portal that we have right here to practice with of impermanence opens us into the most profound mystery and sense of aliveness and unconditional loving.

Okay so we have only named one pathway.

Let me check the time here.

We will go through them.

I think we will have time.

So that is the charnel ground that we just face it.

We face and feel and open to what is difficult.

The second one is in the midst of daily life coming back into the moment and remembering these moments matter.

As soon as we come into the moment we can again feel the flow of life.

So how do we do that?

I mean it is John O'Donoghue,

Poet and philosopher I quote a lot,

Said we are so busy managing our life so to cover over this great mystery we are involved in.

How do we pause?

How do we open to the moment?

Part of the way our brain is designed is when things feel familiar we just glaze over.

We don't really pay attention.

So when we are brushing our teeth or going to get the mail or whatever it is it is very easy to be in a trance and yet the truth is you can never step in the same river twice.

It all can be fresh.

There is a Zen teaching to do one thing at a time.

Now how many of you have had the experience of being on a phone call and also ordering something online,

Shopping online or getting rid of email or cleaning the house while you are on the phone or I won't say some of the others but you know you do it,

Right?

We multi all the time.

So when Zen teacher in New York put it this way he said,

You know,

When you eat just eat.

If you are in the garden,

Gardening just garden.

If you are reading just read.

Just one thing at a time because that opens you into the living flow.

Now that Zen master happened to be one day was in the teacher's dining hall and one of the novice students came in and saw him eating and reading the newspaper and he confronted him.

He said,

Roshi you said that when we eat we should just eat.

When we read we should just read.

And the Roshi said yes.

And when you eat and read just eat and read.

So some of you know about Zen mind,

Beginner's mind.

Suzuki Roshi wrote it's a classic wonderful,

Wonderful book.

But the understanding of beginner's mind is essential if you want to open into this portal of impermanence.

Beginner's mind,

The mind of the expert closed already knows things,

You know,

Already certain.

The mind of the beginner,

Some just described into bedding tradition as a child of wonder,

Really open,

Curious,

Interested and present.

So one of the strategies for waking up to the flow in the midst of daily life is beginner's mind.

It's just this is the first time I've ever experienced this,

Whether it's brushing your teeth or whether it's going for a walk or eating a bite of ice cream or listening to the rain.

It's the first time ever.

Beginner's mind.

Now a flip of that which is equally powerful is to sense this is the last time I'm ever going to do this.

The very last time.

From T'kela Mockingbird,

Until I feared I would lose it,

I never loved to read.

One does not love breathing.

Do you understand?

It's these simple things.

Feeling the breath,

Looking at a new blossom,

Looking at our child,

Hearing the rain.

Can we move through the spring and let it be the first time ever or the last time ever and have that radical presence so that we can enter the flow?

Ajahn Chah,

A wonderful Buddhist monk who many,

Many of the Buddhist practitioners in this country were inspired by his lineage,

A forest monk,

Monastery,

Thailand,

He would do this.

He would have a glass that he really,

Really liked.

He used it all the time.

He'd say,

I love this glass.

It holds the water admirably.

When the sun shines on it,

It reflects the light beautifully.

When I tap it,

It has a lovely ring.

Yet for me,

This glass is already broken.

When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters,

I say,

Of course.

But when I understand that this glass is already broken,

Every minute with it is precious.

This is the power of remembering impermanence.

There is a cherishing when we really get it that this life is fleeting.

I think it's most easy sometimes to sense it with each other if we really get it.

Thich Nhat Hanh shares a practice I first did now.

It's probably about twenty years ago.

He did it at the end of retreats where he'd have two people stand face to face with each other and they'd both say namaste,

Which means I see the divine in you,

And then hug.

With the first breath,

You reflect,

I'm going to die.

The second breath,

You're going to die.

Then the third,

And we have just these moments,

These precious moments.

Can you imagine bringing to mind someone that you love and really stepping inside that understanding that we have just these moments?

Because someday it will be an actuality in time.

And if you let that someday be right now,

Your heart will break open into the purest unconditional loving you've ever experienced.

Okay,

So the first one is eternal ground,

Sensing where we really are holding a lot of fear about what's to come,

About loss.

The second is in the moments,

Listening to the flow,

Reflecting on beginner's mind,

Or that this might be the last moment.

The third domain is actually meditating on radical impermanence in the moment.

So we get it,

This life is always moving.

We can see it in the broad sweeps.

We know that winter is gone,

We know early spring is gone,

Our childhood is gone,

For some of us the time for bearing children and raising children is even gone.

Twentieth century is gone.

Most of this day is gone,

Right?

We know everything is moving.

We know that the stars are moving and the nucleus of an atom inside that,

The particles are moving.

Everything is moving.

We get that conceptually.

Can we get it in an embodied way in this moment?

So we're going to practice for a moment with that,

The embodiment,

That direct,

Contactful realization of radical impermanence.

You'll remember at the beginning of this talk the story of the sultan,

The controlling,

The planning,

The figuring,

And then what does it really mean to open to this living flow?

And you can ask that question again right now.

What does it mean to let go of all thoughts and ideas and without controlling anything just open to what's here through the senses,

Maybe opening to the sounds,

The symphony of sounds.

There's nothing to do.

Sounds appear and disappear spontaneously.

With listening,

Can you sense how everything is changing,

Moving,

Appearing and disappearing?

You might let your eyes be soft and even behind the lid sense the play of light,

Noticing how light and dark move,

Change,

Nothing is static.

You might feel your body from the inside out.

What happens if you bring your awareness to fill the face,

Shoulders,

The hands,

The heart area,

The belly?

Letting everything happen,

Not controlling,

Can you sense how sensations,

Energy always moves?

Listening to and feeling this changing flow.

Is anything holding still?

Is there anything moving?

You might notice that you can let go just a little bit more into that stream,

That flow.

So Gil Rinpoche writes,

If everything changes,

Then what is really true?

Is there something behind the appearances,

Something boundless and infinitely spacious in which the dance of change and impermanence takes place?

Is there something,

In fact,

We can depend on that does survive what we call death?

Bringing presence to radical impermanence means again and again letting go into,

Relaxing,

Letting go of control,

Letting go into this aliveness,

This river of changing sounds and sensations.

Sensing how everything moves,

Sensing this changing flow,

And also sensing the space it's happening in.

Perhaps that alert inner stillness,

The space of knowing.

Let me take a full breath.

This is a way of closing to say that right at the heart of spiritual practice,

If you want to go really deep you can,

Is this attention to radical impermanence.

That as we open to reality,

We open to love and we open to wisdom.

And then we live our life from a place of awakeness,

Sometimes described a heart that is ready for everything because we faced fears,

We're not defending against what's around the corner.

So I'd like to close tonight with the spirit of that,

A heart that's ready for everything,

A poem that I've always loved by Mary Oliver.

If you'd like to close your eyes and just listen,

Please feel free.

Appropriately this is titled,

When Death Comes.

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn,

When death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me and snaps his purse shut,

When death comes like the measle pox,

When death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity wondering,

What is it going to be like,

That cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood and I look upon time as no more than an idea and I think I consider eternity as another possibility.

And I think of each life as a flower,

As common,

As a field daisy and as singular,

And each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

Tending as all music does,

Towards silence.

And each body a line of courage and something precious to the earth.

When it's over I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom taking the world into my arms.

When it's over I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

So we close with a sense of loving-kindness that wish for our own being and for all beings may we accept that all things,

These bodies,

Those we love,

Pass away.

May our hearts be as wide as the world including this moment and this one,

This blossoming season,

The ones we next encounter,

Those who are suffering,

The earth our mother and all beings everywhere.

Namaste and thank you.

For more talks and meditations and to learn about my schedule or join my email list please visit TaraBrock.

Com.

Reviews

Tara Brach’s insights and pearls of wisdom are always inspiring. She is one of my favorite teachers. Very grateful for her guidance the past 11 years!🙏🏻

Profoundly helpful during a time of big life changes and health challenge. This too shall pass. I also enjoy the stories and humour
Namaste 🙏🏼

No words 😶 just a heart grateful for your wisdom. thank you 🙏

Loved this talk. Thank you.

I love the interwoven humor. Poignant. Thank you.

I will listen to this often, it is a heartfelt reminder to me that ‘change is the only constant’. Namaste 🙏🏼

Thank you for this wise, beautiful message and experience. Namaste.

Thank you for the shift. Much gratitude. Namaste. I choose peace & love.

Whoa. Such a lucid explaining of these concepts. And such good company for me, gentle companionship in the middle of the night as I grapple with the reality of them. Grateful.🙏🏻

Very helpful when my mind is racing with anxieties.

Tara has the voice of a angel. So peaceful and loving 🙏

Awesome… I love having my heart and thinking enlarged by your teaching Tara. Thank you 🙏🏻

One of the best talk I heard that brought immense clarity. I always said the first and last day of summer vacation used to be the best - there is some magic in that and as Tara mentioned - I can bring the magic of the first and last to each experience.

Tara has a wonderful way of describing the seemingly-ineffable and making it more accessible and relevant to beginners in this sphere.

Such beautiful story telling and deep human insights! Reflective and inspiring! Thank you

thank you again.

This was an incredible gift. Thank you 🙏🏽

Wow. Beautiful. I felt my heart soften at the end. Thank you for all you do.

Very moving. Thank you. Thank you. Namaste. 🙏🏼🕊🙏🏼

So beautiful. Thank you Tara. I’ve listened multiple times, and will again. Each time a new understanding, a new level of acceptance and letting go. Namaste.