What is up with the weather this week? Just one week ago one could not sleep with the heat and had to open windows to let some air in. This week people are talking about turning the heating back on. Wet and windy, even cold, more like late autumn than the summer of last week. It points to a useful teaching. It alerts us to the natural tendency to try and hold on to. and make permanent, things that are going well. However, the only real reality is change. It is our basic instinct to search for happiness. And we can often think that a certain set of circumstances are necessary to achieve it. But then we find that the circumstances change. People change. Commitments change. It reinforces the basic truth that we face every time we sit: things arise and pass away.
Every time we have an experience that brings us face to face with the reality of impermanence, such as when someone moves away, we lose something we care about, or we hear something that changes completely our understanding of a situation, it is good that we take time to reflect on it, and on the way change happens in our life. The more we do that the more we find we are able to let things go. Everything is in transformation. When we can see that with a calm mind, and with an attitude of kindness, we can accept that change is inevitable, and move forward in peace. We can let go of last week and accept this week as it is.
Of course we all know that things change, that nothing endures. No one I know likes to go to the dentist, but everyone goes, more or less relaxed, even for complicated procedures. No one would go at all if appointments were open-ended, with no expectations of when, or even if, we would emerge. We remember things change when we go to the dentist, but we forget when we are confused. Grief confuses us, and loss and sadness frightens us. If we can keep at least a bit of the mind clear about temporality, we can manage complicated , even difficult, times with grace.
Sylvia Boorstein,
It's Easier Than You Think - The Buddhist Way to Happiness
