IMPERMANENCE
All things are impermanent. This is one of the
most fundamental teachings of the Buddha and the second to last
sentence he uttered before he died: All phenomena are impermanent!
Work out your salvation with diligence! In his last words, he said
everything you need to know to do insight practices. Things come
and go. Nothing lasts for even an instant! Absolute transience is
truly the fundamental nature of experiential reality.
What do I mean by experiential reality? I mean the universe of
sensations that you actually experience. There are many gold
standards for reality. However,
when doing insight practices, the only useful gold
standard for reality is your own sensate experience. From
the conventional point of view, things are usually thought to be
there even when you can no longer experience them, and are thus
assumed with only circumstantial evidence to be somewhat stable
entities. Predictability is used to assume continuity of existence.
For our day-to-day lives, this assumption is adequate and often
very useful.
For example, you could close your eyes, put down this book, and
then pick it up again where you left it without opening your eyes.
From a pragmatic point of view, this book was where you left it
even when you were not experiencing it in any way. However, when
doing insight practices, it just happens to be much more useful to
assume that things are only there when you experience them and not
there when you dont. Thus, the
gold standard for reality when doing insight practices is the
sensations that make up your reality in that instant.
Sensations not there at that time do not exist, and thus only the
sensations arising in that instant do exist. In short, the vast
majority of what you usually think of as making up your universe
doesnt exist the vast majority of the time, from a pure sensate
point of view. This is exactly, precisely and specifically the
point. Knowing this directly leads to freedom.
It is wise to reflect on death and all of that, for it is useful
and true. This is a
reflection on ordinary reality and thus an aspect of training in
morality that is
commonly used to develop motivation to train in insight. Far better
to see one
sensation arise and pass away. What do I mean by this? I mean that
sensations arise out of nothing, do their thing, and vanish
utterly. Gone. Utterly gone. Then the next sensation arises, does
its thing, and disappears completely. That's the stuff of modern
physics, one might say. What does that have to do with
practice?
It has everything to do with practice! We can experience this,
because the first set of vibrations we have access to isn't
actually that fast. Vibrations. That's right, vibrations. That's
what this first characteristic means: that reality vibrates,
pulses, appears as discrete particles, is like TV snow, the frames
of a movie, a shower of vanishing flower petals, or however you
want to say it. Some people can get all into complex wave or
particle models here, but don't. Just look into your actual
experience, especially something nice and physical like the motion
and sensations of the breath in the abdomen, the sensations of the
tips of the fingers, the lips, the bridge of the nose, or whatever.
Instant by instant try to know when the actual physical sensations
are there and when they aren't. It turns out they aren't there a
good bit of the time, and even when they are there, they are
changing constantly.
We are typically quite sloppy about what are physical sensations
and what are mental sensations (memories, mental images, and mental
impressions of other sensations). These two kinds of sensations
actually oscillate back and forth, a back and forth interplay, one
arising and passing and then the other arising and passing, in a
somewhat quick but quite penetrable fashion. Being clear about
exactly when the physical sensations are there will begin to
clarify their slippery counterpart that helps create the illusion
of continuity or solidity: flickering mental impressions.
Coming directly after a physical sensation arises and passes is a
separate pulse of reality that is the mental knowing of that
physical sensation, here referred to as consciousness (as
contrasted with awareness in Part III). By physical sensations I
mean the five senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and
smelling. This is the way the mind operates on phenomena that are
no longer there, even thoughts, intentions and mental images.
Since I just used this dangerous phrase the mind, I should
quickly mention that it cannot be found. Im certainly not talking
about the brain, which we have never experienced, as the standard
for insight practices is what we can directly experience. As an old
Zen monk once said to us in his extremely thick Japanese accent,
Some people say there is mind. I say there is no mind, but never
mind. Heh, heh, heh!
However, I will use this dangerous phrase the mind often, or even
worse our mind, but think to yourself when you read it, Hes
just using conventional language, but really there are just utterly
transient mental sensations. Truly, there is no stable entity
called the mind which can be found! By doing insight practices, I
will fully understand this! If you are able to do this, well get
along just fine.
This mental impression of a previous sensation (often called
consciousness in Buddhist parlance) is like an echo, a resonance.
The mind takes a crude impression of the object, and that is what
we can think about, remember and process. Then there may be a
thought or an image that arises and passes, and then, if the mind
is stable, another physical pulse.
Each one of these arises and vanishes completely before the other
begins, so it is extremely possible to sort out which is which with
a stable mind dedicated to consistent precision and to not being
lost in stories. This means that
the instant you have experienced something, you know that it isn't
there any more, and whatever is there is a new sensation that will
be gone in an instant. There are typically many other
impermanent sensations and impressions interspersed with these,
but, for the sake of practice, this is close enough to what is
happening to be a good working model.
Engage with the preceding paragraphs. They are the stuff upon which
great
insight practice is based. Given that you know sensations are
vibrating, pulsing in and out of reality, and that, for the sake of
practice, every sensation is followed directly by a mental
impression, you now know exactly what you are looking for. You have
a clear standard. If you are not experiencing it, then stabilize
the mind further, and be clearer about exactly when and where there
are physical sensations. Spend time with this, as long as it takes.
The whole goal is to experience impermanence directly, i.e. things
flickering, and what those things are doesn't actually matter one
bit!
How freeing! Interpretation is particularly useless in insight
meditation, so you don't have to spend time doing it when you are
on the cushion. Throughout this book I recommend reflecting on
spiritual teachings and how to bring them to bear on our life, but
not on the cushion. Thoughts, even supposedly good ones, are just
too slippery and seductive most of the time, even for advanced
meditators, though if you can avoid getting lost in their content
they are as valid a stream of objects as any other. Try to limit
yourself to a few minutes of reflection per hour of meditation.
This should be more than enough. There are simply no substitutes
for this sort of momentum in practice.
How fast are things vibrating? How many sensations arise and vanish
each second? This is exactly what you are trying to experience, but
some very general guidelines can provide faith that it can be done
and perhaps point the way as well. Begin by assuming that we are
talking about one to ten times per second in the beginning. This is
not actually that fast. Try tapping five to ten times per second on
a table or something. It might take two hands, but it's manageable,
isn't it? You could obviously experience that, couldn't you? That's
the spirit!
