Buddhism

Recognizing Impermanence 

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Childhood photos, the fleeting impression of a dream, flowers wilting on the kitchen table – reminders of impermanence are everywhere. Nevermind the grave reminders of the cemetery I walk through a few times each week. Changes, transitions and endings are the rules, not the exceptions. Though Western culture is hellbent on selling us eternal youth and everlasting love, our lived experiences reveal a different reality.

And yet, in the rhythm of my everyday life, as a relatively young and healthy person, I’m all too quick to lose sight of how changes, transitions and endings are personally relevant to my life. Somehow, it can be hard for me to connect the dots. I have a feeling I’m not alone in that. I wonder sometimes if asking ourselves to build a life, to commit to the things and people we love in this world requires us to forget, in some sense, the tenuous nature of existence?

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Hint: the cage is not locked.  

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As we let go of a search for freedom. Or liberation or immortality or whatever word is as far away as the perfect wedding or train ride and begin to understand what we actually hold as incredibly more perfect because the million happenings have been smithing it from the beginning. 

It is why we practice mindfulness. Not to get anywhere, but to be.

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Holding on to Let Go

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In Attachment Theory, the original sense of safety is provided by our primary caregiver. They either meet our needs consistently in a way that helps us trust that our needs will be met, or they don’t, which leads to a fundamental mistrust that others, and the world in general, will be able to meet our needs.

When we take this perspective, that a sense of safety helps us relax and trust, then we can begin to see that these principles aren’t actually in contrast to much of what’s taught in Buddhism.

Buddhism has these principles embedded all through it. If you were to become a traditional Buddhist, you’d do something that’s called Taking Refuge. You take refuge in The Three Jewels, which are The Buddha (the teacher or enlightened ideal), The Dharma (the teachings or truth of the path), and the Sangha (the community).

While the Buddha preached non-attachment, The Three Jewels definitely look like forms of attachment to me. My theory is that while The Buddha taught an ideal, it was also realized that there’s a very real process to ultimately achieving that ideal.

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Encountering the Divine

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Meditation is ultimately about dropping as much of the framework or understanding as we can, and beholding directly the mystery of existence. The more we shed our ideas about what the world is, the more intimately we can encounter it.

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A Fractal Analytic of Loneliness

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Why do I feel so desperately lonely?
Because “I am” is now invisible: it is ungraspable, uncertain, unstable, perpetually withheld from my reach. “I am” is always becoming and persists at the end of time. “I am” is inexhaustible movement, relationship, fluxing transition between states. But “I am” is breathing me when “I think” I am breathing it. It is an affirmation of my existence. It is Change. Always changing (thank God, always changing). 

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