Enjoy Impermanence

 When all is said and done, all that we can be certain of is "now". But Six Patriarch Huineng has told us that even "now" doesn't exist as a concrete entity that we can somehow "freeze" in time. Maybe we should start using "now" as a verb rather than as a noun--that is, to speak of "nowing" instead of simply treating "now" a a frozen or fixed moment in time. But again, as Huineng remarks, while the future is unattainable and past is also ungraspable, so even the present is not something we can attach to. The present literally is a going concern, much like the ever changing currents of the river.

   Most of the problems of personal and human life can be traced to tendencies to freeze things into fixed moments. If we ever look at celebrity gossip, tabloids or even the conversations we engage in daily life, we often treat people around us as though they were these fixed characters that exist "out there", independently of the way we are constructing them. We "freeze" people in space and time, similar to the way a hunted animal is mounted on a wall. We want to somehow catch some essential truth about the world, so we go ahead and classify everything around us according to these neat categories such as "good", "bad", "wholesome", "unwholesome" etc. And as I was mentioning to my student during our class on disaster narratives, we sometimes even like to reduce other people to tragic accidents, for the sake of feeling better about ourselves. For instance, I may say "that person over there is making a mess of his life", and secretly enjoy the fact that my life is "more together" than his. This is the kind of mentality that gives rise to avarice and competition rather than an easy and relaxed mind.

   Another thing I have noticed about myself is that sometimes I might feel badly about something I have done and then conclude, I am "bad at" doing something. This then creates a cycle where I withdraw from engagement and continue to judge who I am based on one or two incidents. When I catch myself doing this, I realize that I am punishing myself with a a previous thought that has already passed. If I am truly a harsh judge, I also project onto others judgments that they often don't share with me. This again creates a cycle of withdrawal from the world.

   Perhaps the best way to be is to keep a mind that is open to each changing moment, and does not hold on so tightly to images, whether of self or others. This is the way to a more fluid reality. Another way is to enjoy the fact that what is here today will change tomorrow. Reading about the theory of evolution helps in this regard. We can marvel at the fact that species change to cope with new environments all the time, and adaptation allows for new ways of engaging the world. Everything we do, in fact, can be seen as a kind of learning experience that can be seen positively.