Tara Brach - Impermanence: the Gifts of Facing Reality

Episode Date: March 16, 2011

2011-03-16 - Impermanence: the Gifts of Facing Reality - Only by opening our hearts to change and loss can we live and love fully. Yet much of our life is organized around finding ground-- avoiding the insecurity of change, loss and death. This talk explores how our ways of grasping and resisting remove us from the spontaneity and aliveness, the love and wisdom, that is our human potential. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

I begin tonight with a story that take place in a faraway country, now lost in the midst of time. Old king and queen and the king's ailing, and the queen's concerned about the care of the kingdom after he's gone. And the reason is they have a son, a prince, a young prince, who's very proficient in the matters of war and clever in terms of, of the affairs of state. He's kind of an aggressive guy and egocentric. He's been positioning himself well with different

sectors of the population, but he's not really concerned about people's troubles, kind of impatient and headstrong. So the queen's concern and she goes to a sorcerer and tells the problem and he listens and he

asks the question, what does the prince like more than anything else? And her response is horses. He's passionate about horses. The sorcerer says that'll do. So he tells the queen to bring the prince to the palace gardens the following day. She does so. And there's a beautiful white horse.

And the prince runs up to it, wants it, asks how much. And the sorcerer says first, well, can you ride it? and he says, can I ride it? He jumps on, begins to gallop faster and faster. He's thrilled. He goes out to the surrounding farmlands. Keeps on galloping into the hills and then the high mountains and overpasses. And he never tires.

He just keeps on going and going until the prince finds himself in regions that he's never been to. And beautiful woods and slowly he starts, you know, slows down some. He finally comes to a stop in front of a. small cottage in the middle of a deep forest. And of course, a beautiful young woman answers the door. Doesn't that always happen? She's never heard of his kingdom, but she invites him to stay the night. So he stays over and introduced to the father, a woodcutter. And then the next morning he sets out to find his way home. And everyone he asks has no idea where that kingdom is. And basically, you know, he's kind of realized that he's only going to get more or loss, so he goes back to the cottage.

And this happens each day. He goes out trying to find someone who can help him figure out his way home, but no one knows. So eventually, he begins to help the old man with the work, cutting wood, and he kind of grows wise in the ways of the woods, the forest. He's attracted to the daughter, so they get married. New life, a trade. He gives birth to a son and a daughter and takes over the family business, and, you know,

lives a simple life. He's taking care of the needs of his family, becomes very happy and peaceful, and the memories of his former life fade. He often walks in the forest, a special walk, one he loves a lot into this deep glen, a very clear, sparkling pure glen in the midst is a pure deep pond. And one day he hears a cry, and his two children come running out of the forest. They're being chased by a tiger. and before he can do anything, the children run into the pond and disappear. Tiger jumps in and disappears. And then his wife comes running up, and she's very frantic,

and she jumps into the pond and disappears, and after that, the father, and after which point the horse gallops up to the pond and jumps in and disappears, leaps into it, and disappears. And then the water is still and totally clear, and there's no sign, of the family or the horse or anything. In other words, in the period of two minutes, everything in his life had vanished. And with the shock of the loss,

he falls to the ground, his body's shaking with sobs, he's crying and crying, and then he feels a hand softly touching his shoulder and looks up and sees the eyes of his mother, the queen, and the concerned faces of others in the court, and he's in the palace gardens and the horses standing quietly right there

and the queen's very relieved she says as soon as he mounted the horse he had fallen to the ground and he'd be just lying there unconscious for two to three minutes and the prince says two to three minutes that's impossible it was years I had a life I had a family

I had a trade I had people I loved a wife two children I had things that mattered to me I'd live my whole life and they said no it wasn't too It was two to three minutes. He goes, it's not possible. And dazed and bewildered.

He stood and walked away. And the old sorcerer bowed to the queen, took his horse, and left. And the prince was profoundly altered by the loss and by the mystery would happen. But his attitude entirely changed. His heart opened to every moment in his life. And after his father died, he ruled wisely. He was well attentive and caring about. the welfare of his kingdom.

So what is it in our lives that allows us to open our heart, to truly open our heart to the moment, to what matters, to the people around us? What makes life precious like that? And like the prince and the story, and the reason

I always like this story, is that I've seen over and over again how we wake up fully when we we encounter one of the edges of life where somebody that we love passes away. We wake up when we've gotten some diagnosis that's terminal that lets us know we don't have forever. Or when somebody close to us has.

When we're not able to turn away from the reality that this life really is fleeting, it comes and goes. that causes this shift where in some way we get aligned with what matters. One of my friends was telling me recently about having this very deep fear of flying. And she had to make a trip to San Francisco in 1989. And she built up towards taking the trip this panic about being on the plane. But she got on the plane and it was surprisingly smooth. and easy and actually it was an enjoyable flight.

So then a day later she was in Candlestick Park. You know how this story might go. It was the World Series game and that's when the earthquake happened. And to her, that was the moment. Things shifted. It was like any confidence that there was ground under her was taken away. And we find that out in our lives that things are just going along and all of a sudden the unimaginable happens

and it's completely real and we'll never see that person again or we'll never have the same view of how the rest of our life's going to go. It happens. So here we are now with what's going on in Japan. It's a global tragedy and it's very personal.

One friend is pretty sure he's lost his aunt and his cousin who are in Sendai. just a wordless sorrow and fear for the earth and it reminds us again what's true in every one of our life just reminds us that there's this groundlessness that we might think that everything is held together in some way

but there's nothing we can count on there's nothing we can really control so there's these forces and it's mother nature forces of human nature that are inherently unstable, that there's this creation and this dissolution that's just happening. And this is what the Buddhists call anitya impermanence. And when we come to face impermanence, and I mean by face it, like a radical understanding, in our body understanding that it's real, that's when we can begin to live our lives in a really sane way,

in a really caring way, in a really wise way. So I'd like to reflect with you tonight on impermanence, on this, it's sometimes called the first characteristic of existence. And to start by saying, it seems really obvious.

Like, you know, when you hear the word impermanence, most of us go, yeah, yeah, well, you know, I know about that. You know, we know that the weather changes and that our children are growing up and that we are getting gray or that we're replacing a car or replacing a hip

or, you know, it's just this stuff keeps on rolling on. And so it's like it's really obvious and sometimes it's most obvious if we really look at ourselves through our lifetime. And, you know, I can look back at some of the attitudes or views

or ideas I had about things and be amazed, you know. Or we just look at our body's changing or just the way our whole perspective is. I'll share, with you a few that I thought were. This is from one child. One woman describes I'm driving

with my three children one warm summer evening when a woman in a convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked. As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my five-year-old shout from the backseat. Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seatbelt.

So how we put value on things. Another one, a little boy, a similar line of thought, a little boy gets lost at the YMCA and finds himself at the woman's locker room. When he spotted the room burst into shrieks with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover, the little boy

watched an amazement and then asked, what's the matter? Haven't you ever seen a little boy before? And then a few more, and these are from interviews. This is a question if you could change one thing about your mom, what would

it be? Asked to children. One response. She has this weird thing, about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that. Another one, I'd make my mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me. I'll just read you a few more. I think they're kind of fun.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him? First one, his last name. Second one. She had to know his background, like, is he a crook? Does he get drunk on beer? Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say no to drugs and yes to chores? Just read you one.

Why did your mom marry your dad? Well, my dad makes the best spaghetti in the world, and my mom eats a lot. Second kid answers, she got too old to do anything else with him. This is the third one. Why did your mom marry your dad? My grandma says my mom didn't have her thinking cap on. I wanted to bring children in because in a way, we see change the fastest and the clearest, and it's most obvious there.

This is Dean Inge. She says, when our first parents were driven out of paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve, my dear, we live in an age of transition. And don't we always feel like it's that way? Like on some level, it feels very much like we're in the midst of really fast-changing times. But still, we don't actually get impermanent. In the Bhagavdita, place where Arjuna is talking with Lord Krishna, he says,

what's the most amazing thing you've seen created on this earth? And the response? The most amazing thing is that human beings can see people all around them, aging and dying, and think it won't happen to them. There's two ways that we block it out on some level. one of the ways it being death and change, real change, we make it not real, we pull away into a kind of virtual reality. And the second way is we make it bad.

We in some way push it away with our thinking something's wrong. Most people I know on some level take aging as an insult. Do you know what I mean by that? That on some of it feels offensive and embarrassing and sickness feels embarrassing. death to. It's like it's really not supposed to happen. Oscar Wilde on his death bed was drifting in and out of consciousness. Once when he opened his eyes, he was heard to murmur, this wallpaper's killing me. One of us has to go. Okay, so here's our predicament. Our predicament is that the very nature of

incarnating, of being on the planet in a body living here, is that we want to hold on. to our existence. You know, we wanted a certain way. We want to look a certain way and feel a certain way. And we want others to treat us a certain way. And we want appliances that don't break and bodies that don't break and so on. And yet it all changes. We know everything breaks down.

And so trying to control it, trying to make things a certain way. And I think one person put it really well is like grabbing on to a moving rope. we get rope burn. This is Dukha, our suffering. It's that it's unstable. We grab on, we try to make it a certain way, and we get rope burn, we suffer. Now, you might wonder,

well, aren't we supposed to, in some way, try to survive and thrive and make this world a better place? And so I'd like to first say that there's a difference between what I sometimes think of is this ego's mission to control and get ground all the time and, you know, kind of grabbing on. And this very natural kind of, it's kind of our karma in a way, you might describe it. But it's got a very deep intention of caring and interest where we're engaged with our life.

And of course we want to do the best we can for this body and other bodies and this earth's body. And so we do what we can. We try to take care of each other and serve the earth. And that's not rope burn. You can feel it by the intention. The intention is one of care, of interest, of engagement. We get rope burn when we're, and I'll switch metaphors a little, when we're in a current and we're saying this current is wrong, it's bad,

I need there to be a different current, and we're fighting it. you can sense it in your own life when you look close up you can sense it when rather than the kind of wise intention to to really serve these lives we're grasping and resisting you can sense it when you're clinging to how it used to be

in some way just not willing to accept okay it's different now whether it's because your children have left home or because you've retired or whether it's because your company's been taken over or your body's changed. There's some hearkening back and just not letting it be how it is.

You can sense it when there's a kind of a grasping onto power or authority like not willing to share the reign, so to speak, or you can sense it when there's a having to have things different. It's this fear of mistakes.

Again, this is all this ego mission to secure ground. It's like on some level we're armoring ourselves. And the flag of it is, the way we know that we're in some way fighting impermanence, fighting the current. The flag is our body gets tense. We're fighting the flow of what's going on. Our bodies get tense and rigidify in order to push away what naturally needs to keep moving and changing. The other flag is that our minds leave the present moment, which is alive in flux, wild, changing, and go off into a virtual reality. It's kind of our control tower. We leave our body, which is where nature's playing out and go to a kind of virtual place where we can kind of try to keep controlling things

and it creates a very static world. So when there's incessant thinking, we're trying to control the currents. We're trying to reestablish a sense of I'm here, I matter, I'm in charge. There's a little cartoon Descartes goes into a bar and he's drinking a beer and he finishes it and the bartender says one another Descartes says I think not and he disappears the big flag

of fighting impermanence fighting this natural changing flow of experience is a kind of judging and the word that you'll catch it with is should you should be different I should be different

this should be different I really invite you to check it out when the word should is there. And a way, should is saying that how reality is is not okay. The way you can test this out, find out, you know, my fighting the current of, you know, this unchanging flow of reality is if you're in the middle of some sort of busyness at work, whatever, stop. Try to get yourself to randomly stop. Just pause for a moment. Just stop. And then check your throat, your heart, and your belly.

And just sense what it's like. Just check in. And just notice if there's anxiety there. What we tend to do when we're running away from the present moment, and when we're trying to control things, we stay real busy. And underneath that is anxiety. There's some fear that if we just stop, we will disappear, like Descartes, the world will go out of control,

the currents that are carrying us to demise will take over. In other words, we need to keep that ego in there to control it and hold onto ground or everything will go crazy. So check it out. Just stop in the middle of activity and sense what's really going on right now in my body and in my heart. When we begin to investigate and really sense, okay, the controlling self is pretty active a lot of the time.

How does that help? What we find is the things that we value, the transformations don't come from the controlling self. They don't come from the part of us that's trying to prove ourselves, are trying to avoid bad things happening. They come from a much more tender and caring place. And what we find is that our false refuges,

the controlling self, give us the illusion of control. they give us a temporary sense of you know we're on top and in charge but they actually undermine the very thing we're wanting the happiness and freedom we're wanting Alan Watts I think capsizes perfectly he says it's like we're winding our watch on the way to the gallows keeping track on charge thinking about things working out stuff John O'Donohue describes his suffering in a kind of interesting

way when we manage our experience when we stay inside the familiar cocoon of plans and worries and trying to use our judgments and our busyness to stay on top to avoid the currents he says that the wild

mysterious existence our wild and mysterious existence gets reduced to cookie cutter days patterns that seem static. So we're cut off from our spontaneity, from our aliveness, from mystery. And I think this is a compelling expression of what happens, that if we're really caught in controlling,

if we're not willing to enter the currents and open to the currents of our life, we're so busy trying to manage them and make sure the self comes up, on top and others cooperate the way we want it to be you know we're so busy with that there's something that happens that our days become very patterned and we do lose contact with aliveness so that's somewhat of the kind of we're taking flight we're freezing but there's also another level of suffering on a mention when we avoid impermanence and we try to control things and you can see it on a global level

that we're violating natural rhythms. So any time that we violate the natural rhythms of what's happening by grasping, trying to get more that's mine, more consuming, we deplete the Earth's resources. We endanger planetary life. This avoidance of just what is, this kind of hold on and get more for me.

We can't support this level. of comfort that we live in. You know, we're trying to buffer ourselves from our mortality by getting more and more comfortable, more and more secure, and we can't support it on planet Earth. So we endanger life on the planet by our grasping, and we also, by avoiding mortality, there's something, and I've read this many from many different authors in this death denial, is that in order to avoid death, you become the sacrifice. In earlier societies, there were live sacrifices.

If I can sacrifice your body, then my body is not going to have to go. Well, now we do it through mass-scale global violence of war. If we can put down another, we become bigger, more powerful, avoiding our own death. And so how do we do it? We subjugate others, and it's happened through history. Males become more sure of their, they hold their grandparents, more sure of their position by subjugating females through the history of the planet in different places. And then it happens racial minorities. The majority puts down the minority, those outside mainstream sexual orientation, those with different religious beliefs.

Again, these are ways you try to gain ground. And they go in a very deep way to trying to avoid mortality, avoid what's out of control and wild. we can mostly see it in an individual way that when we're taking false refuge when we're trying to grasp on to things and avoid things in those moments we can't feel loving in those moments we can't feel connected

with each other you know it if you've been caught in an addiction when you're chasing after whatever the substance is in those moments there's no real sense of belonging there's no presence you know it when you're in a conflict

and you're really angry no matter how righteous it is there's no peace there's no belonging so the Buddha and most every spiritual teacher I've studied in some way or other talks about a radical alternative to the ways we try to gain ground our habitual ego's way of gaining ground doesn't work and this radical alternative

is to recognize and open to the changing flow of what's right here, to really come home into reality. And that reality is both the most immediate reality of moment to moment, this aliveness that's right here, that we run from over and over again, but come back. And then in what's called comprehensive mindfulness, opening to the reality that these lives come and go. that every one of us is going to die

and is going to lose everything that we hold tightly to, to open to that, to recognize that. So this last part of talking tonight and we'll do some reflecting together is how do we do that? And really, what are the gifts of coming home into what's called the stream, which is really this radical presence that's right here?

Suzuki Roshi says renunciation that means letting go of ground letting go of what we're holding on to does not consist of giving up the things of this world but in accepting that they go away okay so this is

like a kind of a tip that even though our habit is to hold onto ground to our power and to our position and to the impression we make on others and the body that we don't want to get old you don't have to let go of anything in the sense of give it up

there's just this accepting just noticing and accepting it changes can we open to that so this is the training and meditation you should be getting a kind of a familiar scent right now that that our training and meditation is moment to moment okay so now notice this moment what's happening like just this moment

Okay, now can you allow that to happen? Can you see how that's unfolding into what's next? Can you sense how there's this in-breath and this out-breath and these sounds and how there was the helicopter sounds and then they went away? And then there was a feeling in the heart. And then there might be a sense of the weight of the body on the cushion, another breath,

maybe a thought, maybe some anxiety. So we just start noticing, oh, it's going and changing. And really the invitation is, can you notice and just let that be? Just let that be. Sometimes the words, this too, are the most powerful training. Like every time it's going to keep changing that you remember to say this too, that creates an openness for this to move through. And then the space opens for the next thing.

Ajan Shah again, he says, if you let go a little, you'll find a little piece. If you let go a lot, you'll find a lot of peace. If you let go absolutely, you'll find absolute peace and tranquility. So take a moment, just close your eyes. So we begin with a very direct reflection on recognizing an opening to this changing dance. And you might gather yourself by feeling the breath in the center and the foreground,

breathing in breathing out and yet let the senses be awake so you can be aware of the sounds just listening with your whole awareness not controlling anything noticing the arising the passing

that sounds of this changing symphony and with the same receptivity that you listen to sound see if you can listen to and receive the sensations in the body since these sensations is a changing dance, points of light in the night sky. Is anything holding still? If you let go a little bit into this changing flow, you'll find a little peace. If you let go a lot, you'll find a lot of peace.

If you let go absolutely, you'll find absolute peace and tranquility. So our training begins in this very, you know, ground. level way, this first foundation of mindfulness where we're bringing attention to sensations and sounds and noticing how when we really stay that just moving and changing and dancing it's all in motion.

Now what happens though is something occurs that we don't like or that we want different. Are there some notion of wanting something more? And we leave that wildness, that changing flow, and we go into control mode. So I'd like to speak to that. How do we, when we're in control mode, come back into the changing flow? How do we find that peace and that aliveness? And as an example, I'll share with you one man I worked with several years ago who was trying to hold on very hard to a marriage and they had worked through a lot of things,

but then he found out his wife was actually still having an affair. She hadn't really cut it off. And he was devastated. So that's when he knew they were going to have to split. They had children and it was really, really painful. And he kept trying to make, you know, trying to move towards, you know, take the steps he needed to take. But his mind kept going into the virtual reality of how bad she was, of course.

That was his first line of, you know, trying to, she just fixated on her badness, how she should be different, and how this should not be happening. He kept, something in him kept saying, this should not be happening. And of course we can listen and most of us can say, well, yeah, I mean, to break up a family that's,

you know, we don't want that to happen. But the should had him get stuck. He could not take the steps he needed to take. He kept thinking it should be different. And so he told me, he said, Tara, I know this is causing me more suffering, but that's just what my mind is doing. So we explored how could he let impermanence be his teacher. And what I encouraged him to do was not to fight his thoughts, just to notice, just to intend to notice them. But to ask himself, underneath should be different what's going on.

Underneath should be different. And I say this to all of you because. For so many of us, we are in some way opposing how reality is. This person should be different. I should be different. Life should be different. And I really invite you to check out the should and what happens with that. Because that is like putting up this kind of a dam and trying.

When the tsunami is coming, we're just arguing with reality. and for this man, and he liked that term arguing with reality, he started checking it out, and every time he would pause and hear him saying, she should be different, this shouldn't be happening, he'd check in, and what he'd find under that were layers, and one layer was incredible anger, so that's the first way that we argue with reality,

is we're angry at it for being the way it is. but when he then let the energy of the anger be there, underneath that was deep grief. And if he could keep on pausing and under should be different, which is trying to in some way put up a wall against reality, sense what the living experience was in him, he would find this very, the enormity of the grief, and when he could open to the grief,

when he could really mourn the relationship, he actually became empowered. And this is the point here, that we have no power if we're arguing with reality. Coming into the moment and into the living experience actually empowers us.

It's not passive. It's not like saying, oh, it's just the way it's supposed to be, I give up. It's not being a dormat. It's actually opening to the wildness it's here into the layers. And what happens is we start becoming aligned with reality

and we tap into a very universal power and clarity. So for him, the grieving put him in touch with his caring for his kids and about how he wanted to be as a co-parent and about the fact that he wanted real intimacy in his life. It actually empowered him into action, but it came from a very alive place in him, not from a resigned place. there's a metaphor I heard at one point

this kind of in the lines of going with the currents which is that if you have a straw in the Gulf Stream if the straw is at odds with the Gulf Stream it just twirls around and gets thrown around but if it's aligned with the Gulf Stream the power of the whole current moves through it and I think of it that way with coming into impermanence

that if we are fighting how it is fighting what's going on with our bodies fighting with how we're losing our memory fighting with how someone's not cooperating with us or fighting with how they're not what they're doing to themselves we're kind of misaligned and we lose our power

when we open to how it is we get in touch with the tremendous aliveness and this is the first gift I want to mention to them I'm going to mention several gifts of what happens when we start in a very radical way recognizing impermanence and aligning ourselves. The first gift is chi prana. Chi is the word that is for energy but it's energy it's the empty universal energy

that pours through and animates all of us. We open to that. So the first gift of coming into the moment into this changing flow of experience as we get back in touch with this universal power of chi. The second gift I want to mention when we start opening to change is a kind of cherishing that comes up. And I mentioned earlier there's two ways that we can relate to impermanence. One is directly arrive right here in the living, changing sensations and aliveness in this moment. The second way we can relate to impermanence is what's called comprehensive mindfulness,

which is see the sweep of our life, see that it actually is changing and coming and going, that this body is coming and going, that the lives around us are coming and going. This latter awareness of impermanence is described beautifully again, Ajan Shah, who, for those that haven't heard of him. He passed away some years ago. He was a Thai monastic, wonderful teacher, and he really had a lot of influence over many of the Western Vopasana teachers. Ajan Shah had a cup, a very beautiful cup that he used to drink out of every day.

And he used it and he treated it with great care. And people would ask him, aren't you attached to this cup? You know, because he's teaching all the time about not being attached. And here's what he said. He said, no, every day I imagine this cup shattered. Millions of pieces shattered. And then I simply value in this moment it's here. Do you understand that the true cherishing comes from a very profound insight into reality?

That if you can be with any part of your life and get that it is just fleeting, it's just here for right now. you will arrive with it with a profoundly tender, awake heart. I remember hearing about one woman who had cancer. She had a young child, and she was told she had a year to live. And, of course, you can imagine the anguish that would come with that, being a young mother with a young child. And her mantra became, I have no time to rush. impermanence, the truth, because impermanence is true, puts our values right in order.

What if you could remember, what if you could really know as you move through different experiences that not to make assumptions that this person will be around, that you'll be around? Ticknaut Han taught about this in a way. that had a very profound impact on me. Probably about 20 years ago I went to a retreat he led and a very good friend of mine went and we hadn't seen that much of each other. We were excited to drive down and go to the retreat together and so on. So we attended and at the very end he had us do an exercise and where you'd stand in front

of another person and you'd first bow, namaste, which means I see the divorce. vine anew. You just pause and be like with that person in that presence. And then there were three reflections and the reflections were I'm going to die and you're going to die and we have just these moments together. So I did this meditation with my friend and it had been lovely driving down and it had been lovely having her there but it was in those moments. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is because it was such a wake-up to me of how much I wasn't there. It was in those moments that I realized, wow, you know, I really am going to die and she's going to die, and here we are. And my heart just broke open. It was like the dearness of this being. So I

use that reflection a lot. If we just consider for ourselves how our lives would be deeper, and richer and more sane, if we remembered. It can be really quite an amazing thing. So we'll do a reflection together. We're going to do this and then one more reflection. It says before just arriving with this sense of the changing world within and around you. Feel your breath moving. Feel the sensations in your body.

When you soften the hands, you can feel the illusion. liveliness and the movement of sensation more. And this is true when you soften and relax through your body. Tension is a way of pulling away from this impermanent wild aliveness. Relaxing lets us enter the river. I'd like to invite you to call to mind one person that you care about in your life, somebody you see regularly enough. You can imagine that person here, just bring him or

her into the room and you might sense the namaste just looking into that person's eyes and bowing in some way sensing as you do that you're bowing to the sacred the light the aliveness that lives through that being imagine holding that person hugging and being hugged and this reflection as you breathe in and out knowing that this body mind you call self is temporary I'm going to die and the second in breath and out breath and you're going to die

knowing that this being is a fleeting expression of the sacred this body mind and the third breath and we have just these moments and as you reflect on that to feel the bond

the love the care that's here and taking a full breath and opening your eyes talking tonight about the gifts of opening to impermanence, to that radical impermanence moment to moment, to that the bigger sweeps of sensing the beings that come and go. I'd like to say the last gift, which is really recognizing the timeless, the changeless, the

changeless, the deathless. This is described as the absolute truth. That when we really open without resistance to this river of changeless, the deathless, this is described as the absolute truth, that when we really open without resistance to this river of changing sensations and sounds, this whole changing movement of life, what we discover in that openness is what is changeless. It says one Tibetan teacher said, he's Zoguel Rimbusha. He says, if everything changes, what is true? When we open and sense everything changing, we can sense this alert inner stillness, this awareness, this changeless awareness that's aware of change. And sometimes we can intuit it when we sense our own life.

If you imagine your own self going through time and you kind of remember back to being a child and perhaps what was exciting or what was difficult and you kind of see the camera rolling through time you're sensing yourself in high school or what happened if you went to college or your first job and just know the changes in your body and your perspective as I mentioned earlier and if you're middle age or older now the different shifts that have happened in your life with your family with your relationships with your own body and then if you just sense well what has been the same through all that and again you might close your eyes as you you do that and just sense what's always been here, what has always been here. And you might intuit

it, you can't see it, you can't feel it, but you might intuit this timeless awareness. Some call it the witness, but it's not something, it's not a thing. It's the space of awareness, that which knows. And when we're able to intuit that, that there's this awareness, that there's this awareness, awareness, this stillness that's aware of the changing sensations, this silence that's aware of the sound. When we become aware of this formless quality, we're opening to a wholeness that allows us to live our lives fully loving and fully awake. So there's a reflection here. And again, you might just sense inside that you're aware right now. I invite you to notice again all the changing experience,

the sounds that are close in, the more distant sounds, this vibrating, tingling world of sensation, just noticing that nothing is holding still, completely letting be, no resistance. And in that letting be, sensing that beingness, that vast space of presence, that everything's happening in. When we touch this vastness of our being,

the natural expression through our lives is love, is service, is creativity, is spontaneity. The poet hafeas in the poem, deepening the wonder, says, death is a favor to us, but our scales have lost their balance. The impermanence of the body should give us great clarity, deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

of this mysterious existence we share and are surely just traveling through. If I were in the tavern tonight, Havas would call for drinks. And as the master poured, I would be reminded that all I know of life and myself is that we are just a... mid-air flight of golden wine between his pitcher and his cup. Death is a favor to us,

but our scales have lost their balance. The impermanence of the body should give us great clarity, deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes of this mysterious existence we share and are surely just traveling through. you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com, our IMCW site, which is imcw.org. Thank you very much.