Noticing Impermanence
Leaf in Winter
The Practice of Seeing Impermanence
As I begin 2022, one thing that has been on my list for a while is to find a way to catalogue my thoughts on spirituality and life. I have been interested in spirituality and enlightenment ever since I was a child. It was a chance encounter with a librarian last week that inspired me to make the connection between the practice of remembering impermanence on a moment to moment basis, and embodying spiritual awakening simultaneously.
One of the primary causes of psychological suffering, is our resistance to the flow of life. Reality by its very nature is random and chaotic, and a lot of our suffering is caused by our resistance to the flow of life. If we look within ourselves, we can see that the primary cause of resistance to the flow of life is the inflexibility of the mind, and the desire to want a particular outcome. In most cases reality never agrees with what the mind wants. This is a daily occurrence, and we don’t need any special practice or meditation technique to see this impermanence on a consistent basis. All we have to do is notice how our minds prevent us from seeing what reality IS. Our daily life is our practice. We have a million opportunities to practice seeing impermanence.
As an example, yesterday when it was raining heavily and my dog wanted to go out to pee at 2 AM, my first inclination was to curse the dog and the rain. But unfortunately reality doesn’t care what you think or feel. Reality is just IS. It is our mind that gets in the way and stops the flow of experience. If I had welcomed the experience as a novel way of getting wet at 2AM, and enjoying the feeling of stepping in wet soggy grass, the whole experience would have been very different. My cursing did not stop the rain from falling, or the dog wanting to going out.
Happy New Year to all of you. May we remember that impermanence is our daily reality and flow with it. My goal with this blog is to catalogue my experiences with impermanence on a regular basis through photography and direct experience. I am excited about this endeavor and hope to share it with you.