Impermanence
A Dying Certainty
Impermanence: The intimate certainty that one day I will die
Analytically: of course I will die (one day). Experientially: only animals and strangers die.
There are only two certainties in life they say, death and taxes, and I’m not so sure about taxes.
Although Buddhism, within a few centuries after Gotama Buddha’s passing had (and how incredibly human is that?) already split into nearly twenty different factions, all disagreeing about something while all claiming that their recollection or interpretation or both of the Buddha’s words was the correct, and only correct interpretation, they all — as well as all subsequent sects and factions — still agreed upon one thing: all things are impermanent.
Of course they are, stands to reason, says the analytical mind.
Sure, says the ego, I’ll go with that, with one key exception — me. The precious ego is forever (either that or completely dead along with the body come corpse day).
The Buddha begged to differ: even the ego is impermanent, a sham, an illusion, a precious misconceiving of the self-loving self who is pretty sure that if anything remains after body-death, surely it’s ego-me, surely.
Not so. The Buddha taught three basic principles, Anicca, Dukkha, and Anatta — Impermanence, Suffering, and Non-Self.
Anicca (Pali) means Impermanence; it means that all things are in a constant state of flux. Buddhism states that all physical and mental events come into being and dissolve. Human life embodies this flux in the aging process and the cycle of repeated birth and death (Samsara); nothing lasts, and everything decays. This applies to all beings and their environs, including beings who are reborn in Deva (god) and Naraka (hell) realms. This is in contrast to nirvana, the reality that is Nicca (knows no change, decay or death).
Dukkha (Pali) means unsatisfactoriness, suffering, pain. The Buddha taught that Dukkha includes the physical and mental sufferings that follow each rebirth, aging, illness, dying; dissatisfaction from getting what a being wishes to avoid or not getting the desired, and no satisfaction from a life in which everything is conditioned and conditioning, or because all things are not experienced as impermanent and without any essence.
And Anatta (Pali) refers to the doctrine of “non-self”, that there is no unchanging, permanent individual Self or soul in living beings and no abiding essence in anything or phenomena. While anicca and dukkha apply to all conditioned phenomena, anatta has a wider scope because it applies to all phenomena whether conditioned or not. Thus, nirvana too is a state of anatta. The anatta doctrine of Buddhism denies that there is anything called a self (i.e., ego) in any person or anything else and that a belief in self is a source of Dukkha. Some Buddhist traditions and scholars, however, interpret the anatta doctrine to be strictly about the physical phenomena rather than a universal truth.
When it comes to Impermanence, however, opinions and views harmonize. Things all come to an end.
Except for teenagers, who are all immortal.
At my age (the wrong size of seventy) it is no longer a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, and of how prepared am I to take that leap, out of body and out of ego.
Lately, I have been holding Shankara’s hand in plumbing for and sensing the True Self (Atman) that always was and always will be. Maharshi, too, is providing wonderful guidance in making me realize that the True Self is not only permanent, but it also transcends both permanence and impermanence, and that is a very comforting thought, indeed.
And so I continue to meditate, morning and evening.
© Wolfstuff
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