This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Kisa Gotami & impermanence with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Kisa Gotami and Impermanence - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 23, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Kisa Gotami and Impermanence

Good morning. I'm going to do a little sound check. How does the volume sound? Does it sound okay? Yes, as Martha said, I teach on Monday nights, and it's hard to believe it's been many, many years—well, maybe four years now I've been doing Monday nights. That's a lot of Mondays, and here I am on a Sunday, sitting in for Gil while he's teaching a retreat down at IRC. I also want to welcome you to Autumn, right? Today is the first day of the Equinox. The sun passed directly over the Equator this morning, so it's roughly the same length of day and night starting today.

This morning I'd like to share a story from the Buddhist tradition. I first heard this story many, many years ago and it troubled me a little bit. I recently saw that somebody had fleshed out some of the details of this story a little bit more in modern terms, and then I could start to feel and sense some of the teachings and what's valuable about this story, instead of just being dismissive of it or thinking, "Oh, that's from thousands of years ago, who cares?" Instead, I realized, "Oh no, no, no, there's something here." Something for me, and I hope maybe something for all of you, too.

For those of you who care about these things or know about these things, this story is from the commentarial tradition¹, which is maybe about a thousand years after the time of the Buddha. Some of you may know that Gil and I have been teaching the suttas². We've spent a lot of time doing the suttas, and that's attributed to closer to the time of the Buddha. This story is after that time.

This is the story of Kisa Gotami³. She was a woman who came from a poor household, and she was very thin and frail. Because she was thin and frail, people called her Kisa, which we can translate as "skinny." So "Skinny Gotami" is what they were calling her. But as it happened, she married into a family that had more wealth than the family she came from. However, the in-laws didn't like her; they disrespected her and treated her poorly.

That is, until she gave birth to a son. As it happened, this son was the first child, the first grandchild, and he was a boy. You know, this happens even in modern times, that in-laws don't get along with their children-in-law, but then when there's a birth of a child, the dynamics often change. There can be a way in which things are a little bit different. And so, with the birth of her son, her in-laws started to treat her better, more respectfully. She was a really good mother. She took good care of her son, and this was noticed by the in-laws and by other people in the village as well. So maybe they still called her Kisa Gotami, but just because it was her name, maybe it wasn't so much with derision; it was just more because that was what they knew her by.

Her life had changed, and she felt like things were going well. She had this child that she loved and who was thriving. And then, soon after her son had learned to walk, she and her son were out for a little walk in the village, and the son tripped and fell and didn't get up. Kisa grabbed the son and pulled him up, but he was just limp. Thinking, "Oh my goodness, he's unconscious. That must have been a terrible fall. What can I do?" she kind of hits him on his face and tries to wake him up, but he's still not waking up. She's completely destroyed. "God, please wake up, wake up." And the son doesn't wake up.

She picks up the son and takes him home, thinking that the relatives will be able to help her, her family will be able to help her and her child, her son, who just needs to be revived. Then soon, everything will be okay, and she could go back to the life that she had, if only her son would just wake up.

In her anguish and in her grief, and trying to figure things out, she wasn't able to see that actually her son had died. She couldn't quite take that in, couldn't quite process it. So she's running back home. When she gets there, the in-laws see, "Oh my goodness, this is really bad." And she's like, "There must be some medicine. What can you do? Help him, help him. He just needs to wake up." And they were trying to explain to her, "He's not going to wake up." And she's like, "No, no, you don't understand. Clearly, you don't see." They tried to reason with her, but she couldn't be reasoned with. She was convinced that simply if they could just see things her way, they would understand that he needs some special medicine or something to help bring him back. Some thought, "Okay, well maybe we just console her and say it's going to be all right. Can you just relax?" And she was like, "What do you mean, relax? No, that's urgent. I have to take care of things now."

I'll pause here with a little bit of a commentary. In the version of the story that I heard initially, it just talked about how Kisa Gotami was crazy; she went crazy. And I thought, well, you know, I don't know about that. It just kind of wrote her off as crazy. But then when you start to think about it, a child, right? I mean, there aren't many things that are much worse than this, a child dying. And then you add on top of that, something that had really turned around her life, had made such a big difference in her life, and then to see it just gone in a blink of a moment.

There's a way in which we ourselves do this. Things that are important to us, that are very meaningful to us, and then they change, they go away. There's a way in which... how would we feel? It's devastating. It's devastating. And there can be some times in which society likes to tell us, or maybe we even tell ourselves, "Oh, you shouldn't be upset about that. Just go on with life," or, "Oh, it's not really that bad." There's a way we sometimes gaslight ourselves, like, "Oh, it's not that bad." I know somebody that was telling me that one of her... her dog had died, and it was devastating for her because she and this dog had been through so many life changes together, and so many things together. And people were telling her, "Get over it. It was just a pet." And she was so really, really hurt by this.

We're talking of a child here; this is devastating. A fur family member is devastating. But there's also things about our youth, our capabilities, our jobs. There are some of these things that when they go away, we tend to not really understand and instead want to just ignore and frantically look for something to restore it, to return it. So it's not so much that Kisa Gotami was crazy; she just wasn't quite ready. I mean, this is... I keep on using this word devastating. I can't think of a better word right now. What's so important, to see it slip away. We don't want to see it slip away. We want to deny it.

So getting back to the story. Kisa Gotami, her family wasn't helping, so she thought, "Okay, there must be other people in the village here who understand." So, carrying her son who's not alive—this is just heartbreaking, right?—she went to the neighbors. "Please, can you help him?" And they were trying to talk some sense into her, quote unquote, and like, "No, no, no, there's no help for your son. I'm sorry." And she's like, "Oh, I don't know." And she's going to the next door and the next door, and nobody was able to convince her until finally she gets to this house of some of the elders.

The elder, she understood what was happening here. She could see what was happening. And Kisa Gotami was asking for medicine for her son. The elder recognized there isn't medicine for her son, but maybe there's medicine for her. And so the elder said to Kisa Gotami, "There's a doctor, some call him the Buddha. He's nearby. Why don't you go see him? He probably has medicine."

So Kisa Gotami is delighted. Finally, here's somebody who's paying attention to her, who's not being dismissive and trying to pretend like something terrible isn't happening, and instead is giving her some direction, something to do. So Kisa Gotami hurriedly goes to the Buddha. She goes to the Buddha and says, "I beg you, please give me the medicine which I need to wake my child from his sleep."

And straight away, the Buddha understood what was happening. And he replies, "Good woman, I do have some medicine for you. But in order for this medicine to work, you need to obtain a small quantity of mustard seed from a house in the city." And Kisa Gotami is like, "Okay, no problem. Mustard seed from some of the neighbors, I can do this."

"But wait. You must obtain a small quantity of mustard seed from a house in the city where no one has died. From a house in the city where no one has ever lost a loved one."

Kisa thinks, "Okay." So she goes to the next house nearby and says, "Do you have some mustard seed?" And she's still carrying her son. I can only imagine what the neighbors were imagining when she knocks on the door and they see this. And they're like, "Yeah, here, let me go get it." And they get the mustard seed and they give it to her, and she's like, "Oh, great, thank you. Oh, and by the way, has anybody died in this household?"

"Yes, my grandmother just died last month."

Oh. She gives the mustard seed back, goes to the next house. "Do you have any mustard seed?"

"Yes."

"Oh, thank you." They go to get it, they bring it. "And has anyone died?"

"Yes, my cousin died last week."

Oh. So then, you know how the story is going to go, right? She's going to go to house after house. They have mustard seed, and they also have death. She's able to find mustard seed, a common cooking ingredient, but isn't able to find a household that hasn't been touched by tragedy, that hasn't been touched by the loss of a loved one.

There's this way that humans will do almost anything to not feel helpless. They will do almost anything in order to not feel like things are out of control, to not feel like, "Oh my gosh, this is awful. It has to be different, and I have to make it be different." So the elder and the Buddha, they respected Kisa Gotami. They met her where she was, in a state just highly agitated, not seeing clearly, and recognized that it's actually through experience when our minds get changed. Very often it's through when we recognize something for ourselves instead of just being told it. Especially these days, right, with social media, you can find anything you want on the internet. You can find any point of view you want if you look hard enough. So it's hard to have confidence in what people are telling us. Not only just because you can find any point of view you'd like, but it's different, right? It's different when we have an experience and we know things in a different way.

When my father died a number of years ago, I mean, of course I understood that people died, but it wasn't until they died that I understood it like, deeply inside. Like, "Oh, yeah, this is what it means when people die." It's a different experience than somebody telling you, right? There's a difference between what we intellectually understand and what we know from experience. And the Buddha, he knows this. He's pointing to direct experience so much in the teachings. This is partly why we meditate, so that we can quiet the mind and just be with our experience instead of being completely lost in our thoughts, which spin any way and every which way.

So Kisa Gotami, coming back to the story, she's starting to have an experience. She's starting to recognize, "Oh, it's not like there's a malfunction in the universe that I'm having this terrible, terrible experience, but instead, other people have this too." Instead, this is part of the human condition, that there's terrible loss, there are difficulties. Nobody is exempt. Nobody. Not me, not you, not anybody. And we know this, right? The Buddha talks about this as the First Noble Truth⁴: there is suffering. But there's sometimes a way in which we're kind of secretly thinking—at least I know I have for a lot of time—"Yeah, okay, that's for other people."

There's a way in which we think, "Oh, there's something wrong with me," or "I failed," or very commonly, "Whose fault is it? I have to blame somebody." And first, we often... well, not always. For some people, they like to blame outside, and for some people, they like to blame inside, ourselves, or blame others. But this idea of blaming... it's quite something for me when I encounter the news and the different formats that it's available. It seems to me it's always about blame. "Breaking news, this happened, and we're trying to find who to blame. This happened, and here's who to blame. And this happened, and these people are blaming that." I'm not saying we shouldn't hold people responsible, I'm not saying that. I am saying just notice how this wish to blame is often just a way to distract ourselves or divert ourselves from this feeling of helplessness, from this feeling like, "Oh yeah, these things are happening out there, these terrible things that we can't control," and it doesn't feel good.

But there's a way in which maybe having the experience, like turning towards experience as best we can, to be able to hold it with as much spaciousness as we're able to. When I first heard this expression from somebody else, I thought it was peculiar, but now I've started to see it: this idea of gaslighting ourselves. The way that we kind of want to discount ourselves or talk ourselves out of some difficulty, or "This isn't a problem, get over it," or something like that. Or the way that we want to be dismissive and avoid things. But is there a way that we can recognize that, yeah, there's really hard things that happen in our lives? Difficult things. And not only in our lives, in everybody's lives. The peculiarities, the distinctions are different, but every single one of us has difficulties. And it makes absolutely zero sense, no sense at all, to compare. It's just all of us have difficulties.

And there's something about meeting that and acknowledging that and saying, "Yes, this is the truth of the moment," as best we can. And so what is one way that we can do that? It is to tune into the bodily experience. This is a sense of despair, and it feels like heaviness in the shoulders, and maybe there's a lump in the throat or tightness in the belly or something like this. Or maybe there's just like, "Oh, there's this feeling of helplessness and overwhelm." And then maybe you just feel your feet on the ground, just feeling connected and grounded this way. There's a way in which being with the body can be such a support because it interrupts the momentum of all the catastrophizing or the spinning out that we can do.

Some of us don't like to be in the body or feel a little bit disconnected to the body, so this is why I offer just being grounded, just feeling your feet on the ground. Don't underestimate how this simple thing can make such a difference. When I was working in corporate America, I learned that this was something that I could do. Like, when I was in a meeting that was going south, just somehow feeling my feet on the ground made such a huge difference for me not to get pulled into the fray and want to, I don't know, defend myself or assert myself in some kind of way that would have been unhelpful.

So getting back to this story about Kisa Gotami. After a while, she realized she wasn't going to find a house that was untouched by death or by tragedy. And she couldn't help noticing how many houses, in fact, had lost a child. And then maybe at the end of the day, she decided that she was going to go back to the Buddha and talk to him.

She was still feeling the pain of her loss. It's not like she was no longer devastated or was no longer feeling sad. But she goes to the Buddha and she utters a verse. This is common in the suttas, that when individuals have a conversation with the Buddha, they might say something pithy that gets captured in verse. So here's a verse that Kisa Gotami says to the Buddha:

It's not just a truth for one village or town, nor is it a truth for a single family, but for every world settled by gods and humans, impermanence indeed is what is true.

Endings, changes—this is true for all of us, is true for everybody, everything. It's a part of us that knows this. Today is the first day of fall, right? It's the new season. Summer is ending, fall is, I guess, technically here. There's something about noticing impermanence in particular is liberating.

The Buddha, after he first became awakened, some of you might know this story, he went and taught his five former companions. They had practiced extreme asceticism together. The Buddha abandoned the asceticism and went and sat under the Bodhi tree and eventually became awakened. These five people had continued on with their asceticism. After he becomes awakened, he wants to teach them what he discovered, so he finds them and he teaches them. And the first person to become awakened after the Buddha became awakened, his name is Kondañña. And after Kondañña becomes awakened, he utters: "Whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation." Whatever comes to be, ceases. It's this impermanence that Kondañña is saying also is like a key insight for him that helped him to kind of let go of the difficulties and anything that he was holding on to that led to liberation.

And then this is a part of the story that's also captured in the Vinaya⁵. This is in the Pali Canon. After these five ascetics, the Buddha goes to teach the exact opposite of ascetics, a very wealthy merchant. His name is Yasa. And the Buddha encounters Yasa through a short little story, then gives him the teachings. Yasa becomes awakened. Yasa, he says, "Whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation," after his awakening experience.

So there's something about recognizing that things arise and pass away. They're not always permanent in the way that we think they are. Everything is always changing. Sometimes there's giant changes like the loss of a child, and sometimes there are subtle changes. But there's a way to acknowledge this allows us to maybe align ourselves with the reality of the moment instead of just holding on to, "Yeah, but it used to be like this." That turns out not to be so helpful, to be grasping onto a past or something like this, but instead to be able to recognize, "Oh, yeah, okay, things are different now." And it's okay to feel really sad. Of course there's grief. Of course there's grief when there's loss. Can we allow the grief to be there? Can we allow it to be experienced? And can we allow it to move through us when the time is right, without identifying with it and saying, "Okay, I'm the person that's been sad for X amount of time, I'm always going to be sad, and nobody understands." Instead, can we allow the experience to be there? And as best we can, feel it in the body. Again, this interrupts the momentum of the mind that's making all these stories about how things should be, and if only that hadn't happened, and I'm going to blame this person or blame myself. Instead, can we just be with what's actually happening? The tears, the heat in the face. All of us have cried with loss. All of us have had loss. It's part of the human experience.

When we think of impermanence, we tend to focus on the challenging aspects of it, just as I have. But there's also a way in which things ending or changing allows us to put things in perspective. It's sometimes when something is lost that that can be kind of like a reset button, and we start to rethink our priorities. Like, "Wow, I didn't realize how much I was taking that for granted. I didn't realize how important that was for me. And now that it's no longer here, it's awful." And then we start to maybe look at our life in a way that we hadn't before, and maybe there is some resetting of priorities and a wish to make some amends, for example, or to live life more fully, for example, or to be less disconnected, just lost in doom scrolling or in our social media echo chambers or something like this.

And then this is something that's obvious once we think about it: it's only because of impermanence, it's only because things change, that allows growth to happen, that allows cultivation to happen, that allows some change in our spiritual lives, changes in our lives that are supportive and help us to find more freedom, help us to find more peace and ease. That's only possible because of this change. The same change that allows growth is the same change that is allowing other things that we didn't want to go away to go away. And there's a way in which we humans, myself included, we want to think that we know, like, "Okay, well in order for me to have happiness and freedom, I need this and I don't need that." Like we have this clear idea. Maybe it's not explicit or maybe it's subtle, but like, "Okay, I need this and I don't need that. I just need to meditate more clearly and I don't need a difficult body or I don't need this neighbor's dog that incessantly barks," or you know, whatever it might be. "I need to read all the suttas." I'll give you a shortcut: I've read probably all the suttas, [Laughter] and they're deeply meaningful for me. They have impacted me deeply, but that's not a requirement. I'll just save you guys some time.

But there's this way that we have this idea that we think we know what's needed and what's not needed. But it turns out that we don't really know. We have firm ideas of what we like and what we don't like, that's true. But do we really know what's going to help us bring the most freedom? We don't. We think we do, and certainly our preferences are there for a reason. But if we only followed our preferences, then that's a way in which we're clinging and that's a way in which we're identifying, and that's not a way in which we can find more freedom.

So there's this way in which wisdom comes from seeing this impermanence deeper and deeper and deeper ways. I gave this story about the obvious loss and an ending, but there's a way in which can we see how just the changing nature of everything turns out? And is that a way that can help us to not hold on so tightly, not to be wishing like, "This has to stay and this has to go"? Instead... I first saw Gil do this quite so many years ago, I don't remember when, but I'm sure you've seen him do this too. This idea, right, if we hold on to things like, "Oh, I need this," and we're holding on to this... for example, I'm holding this striker so tightly. But can we hold them like this, with an open hand? Just sometimes for me, when I first saw this visual, I felt like, "Oh yeah, it's not like, okay, I have to get rid of it right now." There's a way in which we can just hold it with an open hand, "it" being whatever is arising, whatever your experience is, including the really difficult ones. Can we hold it, care for it, respect it, honor it, instead of trying to get rid of whatever is happening? That is the way forward. That is the way towards greater freedom, greater peace, greater well-being, is to honor and respect our experience, including the changing nature of experience. And through this, we can find greater and greater freedom.

Maybe I'll circle back around to this story with Kisa Gotami. So after she meets with the Buddha, she has this realization. She asks to ordain. For her, now that she has seen something deeply, she wants to devote her life to practice. You don't have to ordain to devote your life to practice or to have practice be an essential part of your life or even a marginal part of your life. So she asks to join the monastics, and the Buddha allows her to do so and ordains her, I should say. And then as the story goes, she becomes an arahant⁶ and becomes a completely awakened person. And some of her verses, her awakening verses when she becomes completely awakened, are preserved in the Therīgāthā⁷. And regrettably, I don't have her verses in front of me here; something that I didn't make it onto this sheet here this morning. But there's something for me that I just appreciate so much, that just somebody who was having difficulties and maybe felt like the world was ending, but found a way, found a different way, and found complete freedom, complete peace.

So with that, I wish you all a wonderful day today, the first day of autumn. May you notice also the changing nature of your experience and to honor and respect and care for your experience. And as best you can, also feel in the body the bodily experience, because the mind sometimes is telling us stories, telling us stories. Thank you.