Benefits of Contemplating Impermanence

   Since the recent 3 Day meditation retreat with Venerable Guo Yuan, I have been reflecting; what are the benefits of reflecting on impermanence? Is it really as simple as "just let go" whenever there is a problem in life? Venerable Guo Yuan reminded the retreat participants that this view of the mind is not actually in accord with Buddhist practice, since cause and conditions also need to be factored; what a person does does have repercussions, so one should always be aware of consequences of doing and not doing certain things. In fact, this retreat reminded me of the importance of treading (both literally and metaphorically) carefully on the ground, rather than just recklessly plodding along everything, believing that, "it's all mind, so what's the difference?". To use the literal example: after the rainfall, I would go out and do the walking meditation outdoors, only to find that concealed beneath the grass is a whole lot of wet mulch that made slurping noises when my shoes stepped on it. Now had I just gone happily along without heeding the warning from nature, what would have happened? Perhaps I would have returned to the Chan Hall covered in mud and dirty water.
   So, contemplating impermanence doesn't necessarily mean just thinking of oneself as a cork floating in the ocean. Rather, it refers to a more nuanced sensibility of seeing events as delicately poised along many cascading conditions. It might even require having an artistic or a literary critic's attitude toward the characters and situations in a novel: not morally condemning behavior (for this would be crude and imposing) but at the same time discerning the clues to the underlying meaning and subtleties of situations. Things are never black and white: sometimes one person's understanding might fail to see the full picture of another's understanding. When one realizes that their view will always be a little bit partial, they will have the humility to know that their picture of the universe is never complete or completed: elements add, subtract, change and so on, in accordance with the constantly changing patterns of things.
   But, on the other hand---this having been said, it's true that no matter how badly a person feels about the way things are, things are bound to change. Even the most unfortunate of circumstances has a window for growth if one chooses to be present with the feeling and appreciate its poignant entirety--not trying to fix it so hastily with a bandaid.