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The Power of Impermanence - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 12, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

The Power of Impermanence

So I wanted to start with this story that comes from the Buddha's life. The tradition holds that shortly after his awakening, the Buddha said, "Wow, I want to share this." Well, his initial thought was like, "I don't think I want to talk about this, nobody's going to get this." But then he was convinced: "Okay, if I'm going to teach somebody, I want to teach some of my former teachers." But his former teachers were no longer alive. So he said, "Well, I'm going to go teach some of the people that I practiced with earlier."

So he finds them and teaches them what he had awakened to, and one out of the five becomes awakened. His name is Kondañña¹. After hearing this from the Buddha, Kondañña has an experience, and then he says, "Wow!" I'm adding the "wow" part, it's a little glib there. But Kondañña says, "Whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation²." That is, whatever comes to be will at some point no longer be. Whatever has the nature to be born has the nature to die. Of course, often we don't think about it this way, but this was Kondañña after he awakened. He said this was his big insight that allowed him to become awakened. So that's the first person that becomes awakened that the Buddha teaches.

We don't hear very much the details of the other four. These five people practiced together, and they practiced with the Buddha. Then the Buddha went his own way, and these five stayed together. So we hear about the first one. He says, "Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to pass away." We don't know any details about what happens to the others before they become awakened.

Number six is somebody who is the opposite of these ascetics—these people that the Buddha was practicing with. He is a very wealthy person. This person has lots of palaces and lives this opulent lifestyle. For one night, or maybe it's early morning, he just feels like, "This isn't all it's cracked up to be," and he decides to go out for a walk. His name is Yasa³. Yasa happens to see the Buddha, the Buddha sees Yasa, and Yasa goes up to the Buddha. The Buddha invites him to sit down, and Yasa is saying—this is Diana's interpretation—"It's not all it's cracked up to be, to have all this wealth and this opulent lifestyle."

So the Buddha says, "Well, I'll show you some real peace," and gives him some teachings. Yasa has a breakthrough and says, "Whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation. Whatever has the nature to be born has the nature to die." Things arise and pass away. They begin and they cease. So that's number six.

Number seven is Yasa's father, who comes out to find what happened to Yasa. He wakes up in the morning, Yasa isn't there, and his father comes out to seek him. The Buddha gives his father a teaching. We don't know the details exactly—oh yes, we do know a little bit of the details about that one, but he doesn't say, "Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to pass away." Number seven is Yasa's father.

Number eight and number nine are two women. Often we don't hear about this in the story of the Buddha, but the eighth and ninth persons to become awakened, the eighth and ninth students of the Buddha, are two women who also become awakened. And they also say, "Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to pass away."

So there's something about seeing that things have the nature to arise and pass away that is associated with some really deep insight, into some really deep shift or change in the way that somebody thinks, considers the world, or moves in the world. And that's a little bit what I'd like to talk about tonight: this recognition that things come and go.

I can't help but do this with my hand because it's kind of like this: they show up and then they are not showing up anymore. They arise and they pass away.

Some of you might be familiar with the Satipatthana Sutta⁴. This is the premiere text that talks about mindfulness practice, talking about the foundations for mindfulness. It has a number of different practices in there to help establish mindfulness—13 different practices. One of them is often what we teach: you should be aware of the sensations of breathing. But in this foundational text, after each instruction about mindfulness, there is the instruction to abide contemplating the nature of arising, the nature of passing away, and that phenomena have the nature to both arise and pass away. So one of our key texts and practices is pointing to this insight: seeing things arise and pass away.

So what does this mean? One thing that I'll say is that these instructions, or this pointing, don't require that we actually see the precise moment something arises or the precise moment that something passes away. We don't have to see every single beginning, and we don't have to be present for every single ending. But it's just this deep recognition: "Oh yeah, everything's beginning and ending." Wherever I look, there's a sense of beginning or ending.

We might say, "Well, mountains, of course, they're not ending." But every time an animal walks on the mountain and dislodges just a tiny bit of soil, the soil is only going in one direction, right? It's always only going down. The wind does something with the soil; it's only going one direction too. It'll be a really long time, but mountains also are changing. That's why we have a Grand Canyon and all these types of things. So even a lot of the things that we think are stable are actually changing also.

I talked about how seeing this arising and passing away is associated with awakening, but I want to share some other benefits of noticing the changing nature of everything. I keep on using this expression, "arise and pass away," how there's coming and going. This recognition that things will not always be the same can actually bring some depth and meaning to our lives.

We tend to take for granted things that we like: "Oh yeah, okay, it's going to be there tomorrow." But there's this way of recognizing: "Yeah, I don't actually know that things are going to be the same way tomorrow." This is a valid assumption for many things, but we don't exactly know what the future is going to hold. We live in earthquake country. Maybe there'll be an earthquake. We don't know. All kinds of things can happen. It's just awful, right? Maybe you guys have this feeling too, seeing accidents on the freeway: "Oh, right, whoever was in the accident, they weren't planning that." This came as a surprise. And knock on wood, it's not us going home tonight, but there are no guarantees. So recognizing that things can change, and they do change, helps us appreciate the moments that we have.

There's a book written by Stephen Levine—I don't know how to pronounce his last name, I can't remember if it's Levine or LaVine—nevertheless, it's called A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last. There have been courses on this book that are taught at Spirit Rock and elsewhere. I haven't read the book, and I haven't taken the course, but I know people who have, and they've shared with me how this idea impacts them: what would you do if you knew you only had one year to live?

Well, your priorities might shift. In fact, chances are your priorities will shift. Something that I really appreciate is they talk about having more courage: "Okay, I'm going to do those things that I want to do even though I'm afraid to do them." Often we don't do things because we think, "Oh, I'll do it later when it's easier, when I have more courage." But if you realize you just may not even have these opportunities, this recognition that things change supports having a sense of courage, even though there are fears and uncomfortable things.

Also, people have reported that when they realize they have one year to live, they take the time to repair some relationships that might need some repairing. Making amends or doing whatever needs to be done in that realm—taking care of those things so that you can leave without having unfinished business. It's terrible, right? If you have unfinished business with somebody and they die, then you don't really have a chance to finish it in the conventional way. You still have the opportunity with your mind to get to a different place with it, but it's not exactly the same. So this is one benefit of impermanence: recognizing we don't have forever, and maybe we'll start to get our affairs in order, not waiting until we have some terrible diagnosis.

Another advantage or benefit of impermanence is maybe so obvious that it goes without saying: if things couldn't change, then there would be no growth. There would be no maturation, there'd be no learning, there'd be no sense of movement towards greater and greater freedom. That's implicit in this whole idea that we can mature and change. Impermanence means that it's possible to let go of those things that are not so helpful for us and to develop different ways of being in the world: different habits, different patterns, more loving-kindness, more care, more presence, more mindfulness. Being careful with our speech, our actions, all these things.

So that's a second benefit of impermanence. A third one is also something that we often don't think about too much: if things weren't changing, it would be just awful. It'd be stultifyingly boring. I'm reminded of that movie Groundhog Day. I just love this movie; I've watched it many times. The character has this experience on Groundhog Day where he has the exact same day over and over and over again. Early in the movie, after he realizes it's always going to be the same, he tries all these different ways to kill himself: dropping a toaster in the bathtub, driving off a cliff with the groundhog at the steering wheel. It's this recognition that there's no sense of going forward if it's always going to be the same. Impermanence, the changing nature of things, can really add some depth and meaning to our life.

Concepts vs. Experience

But I also want to circle back around to how I started this, with these stories of individuals who are getting awakened. There's some wisdom that comes with seeing impermanence. If we sit with our experience, if we're really present for our experience, we'll see that it's changing. It's always changing. There's either flickering, or it's getting louder then softer, or it's moving location or intensity. It's always changing a little bit.

But what isn't changing are the notions we have in our heads. Abstract ideas, concepts—those have some steadiness. But our actual experience, what's actually happening, is always changing. It's important to make this distinction between an experience and a concept. The label that we assign to the experience and the experience itself are two different things. The map is not the territory. Reading the menu is not the same as eating the food. They are completely different, even though they're both pointing to a cheeseburger with fries, for example.

Part of practicing with impermanence is to notice this. It is to notice that the concepts stay the same, and when we relate to the concepts, it feels like everything's the same. "Oh yeah, here I am, I'm bored again doing this meditation. I'm just bored." If you just think, "Okay, I'm bored," it feels like every other time. Or, "I'm restless, just like I have been every other time." Or, "I'm having a hard time staying awake, just like every other time." If you have a relationship with those words, it feels like every other time.

But if you sink into the experience, you might realize, "Oh yeah, there's a sense that I just want to get up and run away." Or, "I want to get up and write that note on my phone, or I need to send that email I forgot, or add that thing to my shopping list." Or maybe sometimes a sense of boredom comes with, "Oh my gosh, this reminds me of high school English, it was so boring." We all have different associations. So the experience is always different, even though we might be using the same word.

If we are really with our experiences, we can notice they have the quality of changing—being impermanent, beginning, ending, changing in intensity. If we are with our experience, there's a way in which we can also start to get underneath the experience itself. Instead of it being just "sadness," or excitement in the chest, or concern with the shoulders going up and feeling some tightness, we can get underneath and notice the qualities of these experiences.

So there are maybe three elements: there's the concept about the experience, there's the experience itself (which is mostly bodily sensations), and then there are the qualities of those experiences. And these qualities are that they are changing. Starting to see the qualities, rather than just the experiences themselves, is a type of deepening. It moves from concepts, to experience, to qualities. It is this recognition of the qualities that can have a real transformative power.

Cultivating Stability and Allowing

But how can we do this? How can we make this transition from concepts, to experiences, to qualities? Part of that is to have a sense of stability with our practice, a sense of feeling gathered and collected. How that might work is we start where we are. Of course we do; it's not possible to start anywhere else. We just acknowledge, "You know what, I feel really agitated. I feel anything except stable and collected and gathered." That might just be what the experience is.

Or maybe it's just a subtle amount of agitation. There are many ways in which we can be fragmented, or jumping around, or have a little bit of restlessness. There are layers and layers of this, as we'll discover. As the mind gets more and more quiet, we'll discover there are more subtle layers of this agitation. But we shouldn't underestimate how powerful it is just to name it. Naming it is a concept, but it's a way in which we are no longer turning away. We are acknowledging, "Agitation is here, and it feels like this."

So is there a way that we can not be agitated about the agitation? Not to be restless with the restlessness? Not have aversion to the aversion? In some way, just turn towards it and acknowledge, "This is the experience right now. It's restless. I feel restless. There's restlessness right now." I'm using these words, restless and agitation, to cover a whole range of everything that isn't just this sense of collectedness.

Learning how to recognize what's happening in a way that allows what's happening to be happening is very powerful. It's not easy, and it's definitely a practice. But is there a way to just be with "Okay, it's like this right now"? Maybe the mind can only be with "it's like this" for a moment, and then off it goes into something else. And then it comes around: "Oh yeah, okay, I'm agitated." Then off it goes again, and comes back around. But is there a way to not be agitated about being agitated? Instead, you could ask yourself, "How can I be with this agitation in a way that's not in conflict with it?" Without pushing it away, without demanding that it be different, without wishing that it were different, but instead to honor and respect our experience.

There is something about allowing, not being in conflict, and respecting and honoring our experience that allows some disentanglement from what's happening. There might still be restlessness. There might still be agitation, sloth and torpor⁵, longing, aversion, or doubt—whatever it might be. It might still be there, but the problem of it drains out. There is still the same experience, but it's not something that we're trying to make different. Instead, it's like, "Oh yeah, this is what restlessness feels like. It's uncomfortable, it's not my preference, and it's like this."

That is powerful, right? Because then we can bring that into so many areas of our lives. We can show up for our life and show up for other people in so many different ways. Ask this question: "How can I be aware of this agitation in a way that's not in conflict with it?" We don't have to get rid of anything, we don't have to make it different. Instead, we just show up for what's happening.

If we are going down this path of mindfulness and collectedness, we will all discover this sooner or later as we're searching for security and safety. We're searching for a place where we can finally get everything perfect so we can rest and relax. Of course we are; we're looking for this place where we can just abide happy. But this is to be found in an attitude—an attitude of trust, an attitude of allowing. There isn't some perfect place where we're going to land and it's going to be perfect forever.

Instead, there's the recognition that the feeling of not having safety, security, or settledness is so much related to our trying to shove things to be different. We manipulate, engineer, manufacture, and push them to be a little bit different. Maybe I'll say that again: so much of feeling like we want a sense of security, or a place to land, is because we are trying to make things be different. We're trying to somehow not be with what's happening.

Real security and happiness come with this sense of allowing, allowing things to be as they are even if it's not what we want. To be sure, I am not talking about passivity for the rest of our life. I'm not talking about becoming dormant. I'm talking about what happens when the trying to make things different gets put down. Then something else can arise.

Some of this "something else" is this great wisdom that leads to awakening. As part of awakening, when we see that things are arising and passing, and we realize we can't make them exactly how we want, there's a deep letting go that just naturally happens. We don't make this letting go happen. There's just a recognition that it's meaningless to hold on and cling to changing phenomena. Trying to change things is one form of clinging. Even though it doesn't feel like it, it's the way that we're getting tangled up with it. But it's meaningless to try to control and quarrel with a changing phenomenon. There's something deep within us that realizes, "Oh yeah, things are changing. I don't have to hold on. I don't have to try to control it." And then there's just this letting go, and this letting go is transformative.

A characteristic of the first stages of awakening is about this letting go, and it can all start just with this insight that things change. As mindfulness, concentration, or practice deepens and matures, there may be a time when we primarily notice the beginnings of things, because things that are new catch our attention. But then maybe with practice, we'll start to see, "Oh yeah, things are ending too." Maybe we don't see the exact ending, but we start to notice absences as well as presences. "Oh yeah, that pain in the knee, it's not the same as it was. In fact, I had actually forgotten about it."

There's a way in which we might just notice that things are flickering really fast, and so they don't have the sense of solidity that we thought they did. Often we can't see this until the mind is really quiet, often not until we're in a retreat setting, but we start to see that things aren't as solid as they often appear.

So this idea that things have the nature to arise and pass away is not meant to just be a teaching, or something you have to adopt and believe—though we can bring in science to support it. It's a deep recognition that happens: "Oh yeah, everything's changing." There's just this natural letting go that happens. And with that deep kind of letting go comes a really deep freedom as well. There is no longer a sense of desperately trying to control everything. Often that's where we lose freedom, right? When we're trying to control, or we're feeling like we're getting pushed around.

But maybe I'll end there on this idea of impermanence. It is related to many benefits, of course, but importantly it's related to some deep insights that lead to greater freedom. Maybe with that, I'll open it up and see if there are some questions or comments. Someone will bring you a microphone.

Q&A

Speaker 1: Hi, I'm glad I came today because this is exactly where I am. Trying to let go and trying to change things so hard, it's like I don't accept what's happening or what's not happening. I'm so happy that you said it all. I'm going to think about it, I'm going to practice it. I meditate all the time, so maybe with mindfulness I could stop trying to keep changing things. As you said, what I have is enough. It's more than enough, but still, I'm looking for something else to be complete, to be more secure. When I look at it, I say I am secure, I am okay, but still, deep down or in my mind, I want to change it. "This is not good enough." I'm glad I heard you, it really makes sense in the realm of mindfulness. I love that things just arise and pass, that's so true. Thank you so much.

Diana Clark: You're welcome. There's a way that we can practice with this just in our everyday life, just noticing the beginnings of things. Just say, "Okay, I'm going to notice the beginnings of things," or "I'm going to notice the endings of things." Going around our everyday life and just setting that intention. Usually at the beginning we won't remember, but if we keep on setting that intention, eventually we'll remember. "Oh yeah, this is ending." There's a way in which there can be a little more freedom. We can discover that everything is changing, and it becomes a little bit easier. Did you raise your hand back there? Can someone give the microphone to her?

Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It's a wonderful topic, and it seems very simple—impermanence. But I think the hardest thing is when I'm trying to let go of my attachment to what is, especially if things are longstanding. If things have been a certain way for a long time, it's really hard to let go. It's really hard to accept that something has changed. There is that clinging, that fighting to fix it, fighting to go back to how things were, despite knowing that "this too shall pass" and things are impermanent. I know all of those things, but it's just really hard to put it into practice.

Diana Clark: One thing I would say is that all of us understand this thing about impermanence. It's not so much an intellectual understanding as it's a way in which we just deeply know it. And part of the way that we deeply know it is just to see it again, and again, and again. So there's something that can be really powerful just in your everyday experience. I'll just make this up, but like noticing how the sensations within your hands are changing throughout the day. Sometimes you are feeling things that are cool and hard, sometimes you're feeling things that are neutral or not too heavy, sometimes you feel something that's heavier. Just choose something and notice, "Oh yeah, this is changing." Getting into the physical experiences is often what's needed. We can think about these things, and that's often not enough. We need to know it in an additional way. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: I'll try, thank you. Even at the fear conference, somebody talked about body scans and how they had underestimated them. So I appreciate that.

Diana Clark: Yeah, body scans are a good thing too.

Speaker 3: This is probably going to sound kind of mundane, but I'm terribly resistant to change. It's absolutely incredible; I get an A+ in being resistant to change. But today was really strange. I decided I wanted to go to East West Books—you probably know East West Books in Mountain View on Castro. First of all, where am I supposed to park? They closed off the street. I'm in a state of panic because I couldn't remember which the cross street was, but finally I was sent in the right direction. Just out of the blue, this really nice man was walking down to Books Inc., and we started chatting for a few minutes. It was brief but it was very pleasant. We were talking about how Books Inc. used to be upstairs and there was a coffee house, and that was so cool because I love that place.

Then I went into East West, and there were two women who were extremely helpful. I said, "I need something for anxiety. What do you have?" The whole bookstore had changed completely. Those little books with affirmations used to be at the front the last time I went there, which was probably years ago. But she was leading me all around the store, just incredibly helpful. I was amazed. After I left, I went into Paris Baguette, and behold, a French woman! I mean, I didn't even know she was French. We started talking and exchanging, and I didn't expect this to happen, but we really connected.

Then going towards my car, there was an Asian woman out front of one of the places, and we started talking. I guess I started talking about wishing I had a boyfriend. She says, "You'll meet one! You're going to meet one tomorrow." I couldn't believe it because I was open-minded, that's really what it was. I was open to change. I need to be more open to change, but instead of forcing it, just let it happen naturally, right?

Diana Clark: Well, there is this way that says, "I need to..." It's embedded in there, like an "I should" or something. But why not do the same thing: just start noticing change. Like simple, tangible change. That makes it more like, "Oh yeah, of course everything's changing." Once we turn our attention to it, then it'll start showing up everywhere. And once we see it's already inherent in so much of my existence, then it just becomes a little bit more familiar and less of a problem. I like just noticing what's already happening.

Scott: Just before I was here this evening, I arrived early and was lying in my car taking a little nap. I did suffer a loss about a year ago, coming up on the anniversary. When I was laying in the car, I was kind of thinking, "Well, it is the nature of things to die and to pass on." I take some comfort in that. Then I started wondering, is that an adaptive stance? It seems sort of like rationalizing. "I've suffered this thing, and okay... well, it's not so bad." I don't really know where I'm going with this, but it feels like there might be an element of clinging even asking that question. Is this a useful thought to have, just to look at that and say, "Well, we all die. All things die"?

Diana Clark: I would say that grief is something to really honor and respect. Of course there's grief with loss, and it's something for us to recognize that we all have our own timelines, our own ways that we express it. To just say, "Oh, all things die" is a way that maybe isn't honoring the grief, if there's still grief there. Part of our process is to recognize that this is what's happening. Yes, we understand that things die, but that doesn't mean we don't acutely feel that loss. Thank you, Scott, because maybe I didn't say that explicitly. I'm talking about impermanence, but I do want to say of course there's loss. Heartbreaking loss. It's just part of the human condition too; nobody's immune.

Jim: I was going to make a comment. Like you, I really like Groundhog Day. I watch it almost every single Groundhog Day. I have a copy of it at home. One thing that came to me was what shifted for him: it was when he went from seeing his existence as a burden to seeing something that was valuable, that he loved. It was that love and respect and valuing that really made a change to how he held everything.

Diana Clark: Yeah, I agree. When he stopped being so self-concerned and instead was helping others. I love this scene—where there are all these older ladies whose car gets a flat tire, and he's already there helping them change the tire, jacking up the car. There's something so sweet about this, I just love it. So yeah, thank you, Jim, thank you for that.

Reflections

Well, I guess even this class tonight is impermanent. I'm just wishing you all a lovely evening. Thank you, and have safe travels home. I'll see you next week.