This too shall pass
Seeing Eternity through Impermanence.
It is said that a Zen student reached out to his teacher asking for help. He has been feeling that his meditation practice is horrible, he always gets distracted or sleepy and his legs hurt. The teacher replied: “It will pass”. A few days later, the Zen student came back very happy, saying that his practice is now amazing, he is now feeling peace and awareness. And the teacher replied again: “It will pass”.
How many times have we screamed and kicked at night feeling that our sadness has reached its limits and we cannot tolerate this world anymore? And it has passed. How many times have we woke up extremely happy that nothing is lacking anymore? And it has also passed. The cycle needs to be completed. And if we don’t live through this cycle, how can we realize that the emotions we label as “happiness” and “sadness” are actually interconnected and cannot exist without the presence of the seeming opposite. We need to taste all the bitterness of sadness and accept it in order to see the light of happiness. And we need to fully surrender to both emotions so that we understand that they are both impermanent - they actually start leaving us as soon as they arrive.
“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain” - Khalil Gibran
How many times have the trees lost their leaves and remained naked in the cold? Every year. And how many times have they bloomed again and flowered? Also, every year. The cycle needs to be completed. Death is a must for re-birth to happen. And if the new leaves and flowers were not impermanent, no new ones will have the opportunity to see the light.
The houses we build and we live in are impermanent. The money we work hard to acquire comes and goes. People around us also come and go. Pleasant and unpleasant emotions are impermanent. Thoughts just come and go. We change every second, we are always evolving, never the same. Our whole body is on its way to death, the most tangible evidence of our impermanence. It shall all pass, and what a relief to be aware of this! What a relief to know that the sorrow we are feeling today won’t be there tomorrow, the pain, the loneliness, the anger, the frustration, … And, although it may seem sad to realize that pleasant emotions shall also pass, the awareness of the impermanence of the sadness we just attached to this realization is relieving.
By realizing that everything shall pass, our attachment to each situation, each emotion, every thought, every person, … immediately dissolves. Nothing is permanent in its current form, it is all evolving, we are all evolving. At each momentum, cells in our body are dying and making room for new ones to grow. At each momentum, light is evolving into darkness and darkness is evolving into light. Death is walking towards life, and life is walking towards death. Nothing is permanent, so what is the Eternal?
This impermanence is eternal by itself, it will always and always happen, we cannot stop transformation from occurring. Transformation is eternal. This consciousness that allows for all the transformation to happen, that takes us from one step to another, from one form to another, from a newborn to an elderly, is eternal. The consciousness that allows us to transcend beyond pleasant and unpleasant emotions and to feel the stillness within ourselves is eternal. Souls who are aware and conscious to invite stillness at each pleasant and unpleasant moment (even if they can enter this state for only little moments) know that, beyond all impermanence, there is a universal and eternal connectedness, a life flowing through all living and dying matter, and a loving energy finding its way everywhere, through our happiness and our sadness, our easiness and our pain, our “good” moments and our “bad” ones.
Take it easy, it will all lovingly pass. Thank you for reading!