By Bhante H. Gunaratana Mahathera
"If everything is
impermanent why should do what we normally do in our every day
life?" was a question a friend of ours who read my article on "That
which is impermanent is unsatisfactory." Which appeared in Bhavana
Newsletter Vol. 10 Number 4 October - December 1994.
This, in fact, is a very important question that every one of us
should ask. Why should we do what we do as everything is
impermanent? It is not the question of "If everything is
impermanent" but "as everything is impermanent, why do we what we
do?" is the question. Impermanence is an eternal and universal law
that nobody can defy.
Everything here means our senses and their objects. When senses are
impermanent, it does not matter, in fact, what else is permanent,
for it is through the senses that we perceive things and it is the
through the senses that we are attached to sensory objects. Also it
is the senses where craving arises and ceases. When we are attached
to our senses and sensory objects we do not think for a moment
both, senses and their objects, are impermanent. If we do think
that they are impermanent then we could use our senses and their
objects mindfully and don’t get stuck with attachment to them. It
is this attachment to these impermanent senses and their objects
that brings unsatisfactoriness to our life. This does not mean that
we should not take care of our senses. We can look after the senses
without becoming attached to them knowing that they are
impermanent.
Knowledge of truth that there is no place to run away from the
reality of impermanence we prepare to face and accept it. We cannot
run away from our body because every cell in our body is
impermanent and they die, as they must, when are ready. If they do
not die when they are supposed to they turn into a grave problem of
autoimmune disorders (AIDS). They remain to be old cells hanging on
to their old habitats multiplying themselves and taking the space
of other living young and healthy cells. This is what happens to
cancerous cells, too. They occupy the space of healthy cells in the
body and doing nothing for the well being of the body. They rather
eat all other healthy cells around them and spread all over the
body gradually. When time comes for change we must let go of our
old cligning and let the change take place. This is a mature
attitude in life. Try to be wiser as you change and grow.
This acceptence of change is very difficult for almost every body
because from the embryonic moment we are propelled by our
insatiable desire which is expressed through our activities and
movements which in turn create more desire and energy to support
and maintain our initial desire. Every cell in our body is a very
powerful power house which convert all food into energy to support
our desire for more food. Desire is built in system within our body
and mind. You cannot live without it until you become free from it.
Desire cannot simply sit idly in the mind and body without doing
something. Desire must create. It must generate other desires,
other beings. It must manufacture one thing or another all the time
for the desire to consude. Since you have energy of desire you have
to engage in doing things to satisfy your senses. Some of these
activities benefit you and your fellow beings and your surrounding.
Because of this satisfaction you perpatuate your desire to become
more ambitious or visionary.
The primary characteristic of desire is cling to one thing or
another, one person or another, one place or another, one sight or
another, one smell or another, one sound or another, one touch or
another, one idea or another, one concept or a nother. The truth of
impermanence never seep into your wildest dream when you cling to
something. All you want is pleasure of clinging, joy of clinging,
sense of security of clinging. Clinging gives you hope, trust,
psychological strength. It brings you artificial solace and
artificial comfort which is made up of the ingradiants of
impermanence. Look at the way how sperm and ovum join together to
make an embryo.
Because of the desire that very sperm of the man goes searching for
a woman’s egg. No bio-chemist knows why sperms travel a most
difficult journey encountering countless problems and dangers on
the way searching for an female egg which is 85,000 times bigger
than a sperm. Only one out of released into woman’s birth canal by
a man in one orgasm does successfully reach the egg waiting in the
pelopian tube of the woman. Woman’s body’s defense mechanism is
fighting to reject all the foreign bodies all the way. In this
hostile environment only the one, charged with desire and propelled
by kamma, out of two to five hundred millions sperms, manages to
reach the egg. As soon as the sperm reaches the egg, the egg hugs
and engulfs it very quickly and builds a wall around it so that no
other sperm cell can enter the same egg to start another battle
inside and to make things complicated. By mere accident, however,
if two sperm enter the egg there will be twins of the same
sex.
In this operation man’s desire, woman’s desire and the desire and
kamma encapsulated in the rebirth consciousness of a being died
somewhere create a situation for the egg to fertilize. If any of
the three (mother’s egg, father’s sperm and rebirth consciousness)
is absent the egg will not be fertilized. If woman, who does not
want to have a baby, uses a contraceptive method or if the being to
be born does not have powerful kamma to be born as human being the
egg will not be fertilized. Behind all these there also is another
factor imperceptible to any ordinary mind and that factor is
ignorance of the truth of impermanence.
However, desire operates in a most concealing manner from
unicellular being to multi-cellular being. The newly fertilized egg
started with father’s 23 chromosomes and mother’s 23 chromosomes
ends up, in nine months, with trillions of cells. They continue to
multiply till they end up in 100 trillion cells adulthood. All this
began from desire, one of the roots of the existence of life.
Desire is programmed into our DNA. It continues to exist until we
deprogram it with a very special method.
Every second 500 billions of hemoglobin are generated in our body
under the supervision of GNA. Every one of these 500, billions
hemoglobins is fully charged with desire to live. Of course, at the
same rate they pass away giving room for new hemoglobins to step
in. Along with their stepping in, the desire to live also continues
to flow in our life. Every cell in our body is a miniature world
creating new desires to live. Every moment our mind also generates
desire for countless things. Because of this unending generation of
desire in the body and mind any moment our senses come in contact
with their sensory fields desire steps in either to grasp something
or to reject something, both of which are the charateristics of
desire. When the mind does not like certain experience it wishes to
repel and replace it with a one that it likes better. Sometimes the
mind does not find a replacement and yet it does not wish to keep
the unpleasant experience. If it finds a replacement it grabs it
very quickly just like ovum grasps the sperm. If not it simply
shrinks into depression or wthdraws from everything.
Do you know that millions of nurons in your brain die every moment?
Do you know that missions of blook cells die every moment? Do you
know .....( fill in with statistics of dying parts in the
body)
Because of this desire we do not wish to think that anything we
enjoy or anything we possess is impermanent. We like to think that
all our enjoyments and our possessions are permanent. When we see
all our senses and sensory experiences in the light of impermanence
our minds can let go of our resentment which operates in us like
cancer. Mind is ankered in bitterness because it cannot see things
in us and others change. Due to this situation the mind likes to
harp on the theme ill will over and over again and continue to
suffer.
The knowledge of impermanence steps into this situation as a
consoling factor and advices us, "Don’t worry, this unpleasant
situation is as impermanent as pleasant situation that you have
just lost. Just wait. Time will cure all wounds. This has happened
to you in the past and it will happen again. You remember all your
past experiences have changed. This is the nature of things. Simply
relax. Everything will be alright."
