A Threaded Talk on Impermanence
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How do you experience impermanence?
In this first threaded talk, Zuisei introduces the realization of impermanence—from a teaching called The Eight Realizations of Great Beings—and asks the group to “thread together” their reflections on the teaching.
The word sutra means to sew or thread together, so in this collective teaching we explore together how we each can and do work with the awareness of impermanence, weaving a narrative that expresses an understanding much larger than each individual person’s.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
A Threaded Talk on Impermanence
Hello. Hello, everyone. It's really good to see you. I didn't know when I sent my email if people would be scared or intrigued, so I'm delighted to see that it seems to be the latter. Let me tell you what we're going to do. As I said in my email, the word Sutra means Sutra in Sanskrit, or Sutta in Pali, and it means to thread together, to sew together.
I was thinking about this last week. There's a kid that I've known from Zen Kids since he was three. He's now eleven, Colin. For the last two years, actually April is two years, I have been meeting with him and his mom, just teaching them Buddhism. Last week, we worked on some Haiku. As I was looking into the history of Haiku, I read that it was actually a shorter poem called Hoku, which was part of the Renga—the collective poems that Japanese poets, or sometimes regular people, would create together in poetry salons. One person would start and offer a line, and then somebody would pick it up, and together they would create a poem. A light bulb went off in my mind, and I thought, "Huh, I wonder what it would be like to do a talk like this."
There was something else. I've been joining the Westchester Insight Meditation Sangha that Gina Sharp leads, and she often says, "Let's write the Dharma talk together." Though she means it more in the sense that she begins with a topic, then people ask questions, and it goes on like that. So this is—well, we're not actually going to write it down, but we're going to create it together. The way it will work is, I will start with just a short passage, a short teaching, and then whomever wants to pick it up will do that.
There are a couple of guidelines. One, be brief. Everyone who would like a chance can take a few minutes—two to three minutes, perhaps—to speak. Speak from your experience. Even if you reference a teaching or a book, that's fine, but please attribute it so we know who you are quoting or referring to. More importantly, tell us why it's important to you. I really don't want to hear that the fifth rank of Master Dongshan is unity attained. Well, that's great, but what does that have to do with you, your life right now, or your practice?
You have all heard me give talks, so you know that my usual way of doing it is I have the teaching, but then I bring in stories, anecdotes, and examples of my own life. It's fine for you to come in with a question, but the person who goes after you needs to, if not answer it, at least thread into it, move it forward, expand it, or deepen it. There is no way to do this wrong. Even if you say something you think is wrong—so what? Wrong according to who, when we're exploring together? That’s the whole point.
Cumulatively, we have hundreds of years of wisdom and experience, our lived lives, each one of us. The things that have worked, the things that haven't worked. You also don't have to come into this knowing anything. It can be a doubt, or it can be an example of something that didn't work, which then can be a point of reflection. My hope is that together we can create this fabric, this fabric of wisdom. After my turn, I don't intend to jump in unless we seem really stuck. Otherwise, I want to let it unfold as it will. Then I'll come in at the end and give a little closing, or not. We'll see.
So, any questions before we begin?
So, I just started editing a manuscript for Parallax Press on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings. There seem to be different versions of this teaching because I’ve seen it, just the contents are even different. This particular version is used by the Thich Nhat Hanh order of inter-being. It’s a translation from Chinese, from Pali to Chinese, by a Vietnamese monk by the name of Anshikau. This is early, early Buddhism—first or second century of the Common Era. Buddhism is just beginning, and this sutra already exists. It’s very simple and kind of a list. I’m not going to go through the whole thing now, so I’ll just read the first realization.
Impermanence as Opportunity
The first realization is the awareness that the world is impermanent. There’s a little commentary: Political regimes are subject to fall. Things composed of the four elements are empty, containing within them the seeds of suffering. Human beings are composed of five aggregates and are without a separate self. They are always in the process of change, constantly being born and constantly dying. They are empty of self and without a separate existence. The mind is the source of all confusion, and the body, the forest of all unwholesome actions. Meditating on this, you can be released from the round of birth and death.
I’ll add a bit more. The book I’m working on is by one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s senior students, Brother Papp Hai (I’m not exactly sure how to pronounce his name). He said something about impermanence that I thought was quite nice: “What can I do in this moment so that this breath, this step, this interaction can be the most meaningful breath, the most meaningful step, the most meaningful interaction that I’ve ever had?” He really encapsulates impermanence with this statement.
Now I open it up to you, Michelle.
“Thank you. The thing that jumped out the most at me was the very end of this, the idea of impermanence, and that each moment—how do we make each moment the most meaningful, the most change? For me, I’ve just started a new job, a new career, a totally new field, and every moment is a brand-new fresh start, a new beginning. Literally, my life is a new beginning. That statement brings it even more to the fore: every single second, we have a new opportunity. Even if a relationship is going bad, or an interaction is going badly, in the next second, the next minute, or the next email, we have an opportunity to craft a new start, a new positive start. My brain always goes to, ‘Oh, impermanence, it’s bad, that’s scary, that’s unstable.’ Yet this last statement is a complete paradigm flip for me: impermanence is actually a glorious opportunity to do good a billion times a day, every single day.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Michelle, for that, because I feel like you helped crystallize something that was floating. That last part was what jumped out to me as well. When he talks about making each breath the most meaningful, I feel like I waste a lot of time. There can be an internal pressure that doesn’t necessarily help me shift. One of the things I’ve often turned to is the Five Remembrances. While I’m doing something that feels like wasting time—playing a mindless game—I start chanting that in the back of my mind to begin to make a shift. Even if I don’t make the shift, it brings me into a place of, ‘Am I at least enjoying what I’m doing?’ If I have a mind that likes puzzles and games and feel like I’m losing the thread I was trying to bring in, that idea that every moment you can make a shift reminds me that I am actually in one continuous thread. I was struggling this afternoon with staying in the container, so I made a shift. I signed up for this because Zoom holds me accountable. You’re seeing me, and I’m being seen. I’m more in the moment in a way that livestream doesn’t always work for me. That idea that impermanence allows a shift at any time—if you just become curious and almost playful—is powerful.”
“And Sarin, if I could, just for people who might not know, can you say the Five Remembrances?”
“I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape death. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape ill health. I am of the nature of old age, sickness, and death. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death.”
“Did I mess those up somehow?”
“You said that one, but everyone I know, everything I own, is of the nature to change. I cannot escape being separated from them. My only true belongings are my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”
“Thank you. The Five Remembrances are a teaching that I use often as well. What’s interesting to me is that the first four remembrances speak directly about impermanence, related to ourselves, those we love, and really everything. The last one speaks directly about our actions. Amidst impermanence, amidst the truism that everything is going to fade away, our actions carry on and have an effect. I came from a place in my life, when I first came to practice, where I lived in very nihilistic ways. In a very odd way, I don’t think some of my views were far off from some Buddhist views, except that I hadn’t had guidance or soul searching. A lot of my ideas turned me toward the philosophy that nothing matters. I love the way this teaching, and really all teachings on impermanence, turn us toward the truth that everything matters. These teachings can be applied even to small things in our lives that we need to get beyond. For example, I was speaking with Amy recently. She was struggling with something she said to someone. It wasn’t significant, but it was bugging her. I thought about how many times I’ve done that—said something I didn’t like, and then gone around in my head for a while thinking it’s the end of the world. But thinking about it with Amy, I couldn’t think of one example. That said a lot to me about how important those small things are. It’s no small thing; it helps us get past insignificant issues and face significant ones. Real-life changes—new jobs, aging parents—these are the significant things in our life.”
“Rock, I wonder, could you repeat the beginning of that?”
Facing Death and Change
“Sure. Yeah, because some of it is repetitive and a little abstract. Political regimes are subject to fall, and the awareness itself is that the world isn’t permanent. Political regimes are subject to fall. Things composed of the four elements—air, fire, water, earth—are empty, containing within them the seeds of suffering. Human beings are composed of five aggregates, the five skandhas, and are without a separate self. They are always in the process of change, constantly being born and constantly dying. They are empty of self and without a separate existence. The mind is the source of all confusion, and the body, the forest of all unwholesome actions. Meditating on this, you can be released from the round of birth and death.”
“There’s my problem. I don’t know, like—I mean, I like being alive. I like this thing. I don’t understand why I would want to ever be released from that. First of all, I don’t even get what that means—to be released from that round of birth and death. I love being alive. If I have to die and then get reborn again, that doesn’t seem like such a bad deal. I guess maybe I’m not understanding it correctly because, in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe I’m going to die and be reborn. I have a real hang-up at that spot because I don’t really… I mean, if I were going to be released and maybe go to heaven, where I could just be alive all the time without suffering, that sounds good. But I really dig existence, as convoluted and confused and delusional as it is. I love it. I never want it to stop, ever.”
“And I don’t know if that’s my hang-up. I like all the other stuff. For instance, I was at Trader Joe’s, talking to a Black man there, telling him I grew up in a white part of the country—Montana—and talking to him about Buddhism. I don’t know how I had this whole conversation with him in the time it took for him to ring my groceries, but I told him the Four Noble Truths: that life is suffering, no matter how rich or famous we are, or the color of our skin. I really dig that part of the teaching. But this whole thing about being released from existence—who would want that?”
“Marguerite?”
“Thank you. I definitely agree with you, Brooke. I want to live as long as I can. I like the side of the grass. I like moving in space. I understand that the body is the source of actions, and those actions can be wholesome or unwholesome. I’ve been in situations where they’ve been unwholesome, and I even enjoyed the unwholesomeness of it. I understand that more and more. What I am curious about, though, is death. I’ve decided to be curious about death, and it makes me more comfortable with it. I had a realization as I sit and let go of my thoughts and feelings: I am getting ready to let go of my life. That’s good. I want to practice getting ready to let go of my life. If meditation helps me let go, that’s helping me let go of this body—which I like. Letting go helps me realize impermanence as well, because when I let go, it’s gone. Most of all, I know impermanence after it happens. I was with my mother at her death—I got her last breath. I was with my father as his energy passed through his body. I was with impermanence. It was changing radically. Everything changes so fast. I’ve decided, at this age—75—that I don’t want any more regrets. I want to be present to as much happiness as I can, for me and for others. I just want to be happy with them, because I know moments are going by really fast. It’s like a merry-go-round. Sometimes I want to sing, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off.’ But thank you, and thank you, Michelle, for turning the idea of change into something exciting, happy, curious, and uplifting, rather than dull or scary.”
“Well, talking about death and becoming comfortable with it… as I was listening, you know, we’re listing all the horrible things that are unavoidable—death, sickness, losing the things we love—and it’s a stark reality. But it’s also freeing because it is reality, and that’s the place we have to start from and live in. There’s a phrase from a Galway-Kanell poem—my god, I’m forgetting the name of the poem. It’s about a man looking at his daughter when she’s crying. He comforts her, and it becomes a breathtaking meditation on mortality and how he wishes he could save her but can’t. At the end, the line that took my breath away is: ‘The wages of dying is love.’ That’s part of what we get for dying. Impermanence gives us everything, gives each moment, gives us the chance to realize that we are not a separate self. That changes moment to moment. It’s a commonplace thing to say, but it’s miraculous.”
“I was thinking about it again yesterday when Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict came. The moment before the verdict, I was tense, knowing everyone else was tense. The second I heard the word ‘guilty,’ I started crying. I was about to lift weights, and there I was, crying. I went from a man about to lift weights to a crying man. My God, we saw videos a year ago of him kneeling on another man’s neck, filled with what I can only assume was hatred. Now he’s going to jail, a completely different situation. It changes, and our actions carry us forward. I don’t know what I’m saying, other than… other than all just… The last thing I’ll say this morning is, right before I sat, I was thinking about him, thinking, ‘If everything is one thing, if it’s one indivisible life, it has to include him.’ That was really hard. I tried to sit with that for a little bit, and I will leave it at that.”
“Adam, before you go, can you repeat that Galway-Kanell line, please?”
“The wages of dying is love. I will find the poem and share a link to it in the chat. I’m an evangelist for this poem.”
“Thank you, Chris. I love that line. It sounds familiar—maybe I’ve heard it before. I keep thinking about love and Angel Ciaro Williams, who said that love is space. I’ve heard her say it a couple of times, and just the fact that it’s three words that cover everything for me feels special and magical. It really connects to what Adam was saying about letting everything in the world belong. These days, I’m really looking to do that. The only reliable way seems to be to give space—not always physical space, not just backing away or clearing things off, or pausing in speech, though sometimes it is those things. Space is a natural quality of things, always there. When we try to fix, adjust, or pin down right and wrong, we occlude that space and clutter it. I’m working to let space be itself and discovering that is the way to love. The forms that space takes when we let it be, when we get out of our way and get out of the way of other things trying to be themselves, somehow make it more tolerable, although not less painful, to have things like murder in the world. There’s a deep mystery in that version of space. What was Derek Chauvin’s life like? I’ve been thinking a lot about his life as a child, the times he was reprimanded as a police officer, the ways he was let down. And then he did a terrible thing and got justice, perhaps exactly what he deserves. The sadness of how that chain of being let down unfolded… the only way I can tolerate it now is to acknowledge that’s what happened when a lot of people didn’t give the right kind of space, didn’t offer love in the right way. I wonder a lot about how I can give space and find the flavor of space that is love. That’s all.”
“It’s interesting; I haven’t thought much about Derek Chauvin’s prior instances before George Floyd. Considering those times as moments given insufficient importance, I wonder what it would have looked like to treat each of those earlier moments as the most significant. I mean, not just in his life, but in all lives of cruelty or mistreatment. I’ve been thinking about this in my own life recently because I’m from Brooklyn but moved to the Bay Area. People I’ve encountered here really want to tell you what they feel, engage with you, and express how you made them feel. In Brooklyn, people didn’t go there much. The effect this has had on me is that I’ve been given a framework for conversation, and I’ve realized what it might look like to take seriously each interaction, each moment as the most significant, even if it means actually dealing with it.”
“One moment I’ve thought about for six months: I took a woman in labor at the out-of-hospital birth center where I work. She was Colombian, spoke both English and Spanish, and had a doula who was Chicana. I transferred her to the hospital of her choice at one or two in the morning. The staff asked me what language she spoke. Exhausted, I just said, ‘She speaks English perfectly well,’ and they took her to a room. A month later, I heard from the doula how offended she was by my tone—it seemed to express classism and racism that I had not intended. In my mind, offering that information was a way to protect her. It was half a second, but it has stayed with me. I wonder what it would look like to truly take seriously the idea of offering each moment as the most significant, even if we then have to deal with the consequences.”
“Shoho, sorry, I couldn’t figure out how to lift my digital hand. I remember the first time I heard the concept—either at a dharma talk at a temple or monastery—about how we are constantly being born and constantly dying. I had never thought of that before, never lived my life with that in mind. It really rocked my world, because I felt it was completely true. I found it tremendously relieving. I realized that for most of my life, I had spent most of my moments thinking about the future or the past, planning the future, scheming about what I should have done in the past, trying to undo it. The thought that everything is coming and changing, that we are changing every molecule, inside and outside of us, all of us together, all of it changing constantly, was a deep relief. Talking about it brings relief, helps me be less afraid of dying. I feel it as something true, something I cannot change nor would want to. It relieves the pressure of trying to manipulate constantly, to make things more of what I want and less of what I don’t. That effort is ridiculous and a waste of time; it’s not real, not true, not effective. Just sitting back and being aware of what’s going on right now is a deep relief. I am so grateful for having that concept introduced into my life; it has helped me get through difficult times and also helped me fully appreciate wonderful moments as they happen. Right now is fully rich, and that’s it.”
Impermanence is actually a glorious opportunity to do good a billion times a day, every single day.
“I think that is a wonderful place to wrap up. I want to highlight a few things I experienced with all of you. Brooke and Marguerite, I’m with you. A few years ago, we did a study with Shugun Roshi, the monastics, and seniors, discussing exactly this teaching: that nirvana is the complete cessation of the round of birth and death, the end of samsara and suffering. That’s why traditional Buddhism says we would want to put an end to the wheel. I told Sugen, I don’t know about this—becoming fully enlightened, where do you go? Where are you in space and time? I really like my life. He said, ‘Why don’t you just get to just before full enlightenment, and then you won’t have to worry about it?’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll work on that.’ I actually agree with him. There are moments when I think, oh my God, do I have to do this again? But generally, I love life, and I would be sad to leave it. I’m with you. You don’t need me to say that—you don’t need me. I feel very touched and moved by all of you. What I said is true: all these years of accumulated wisdom are here, and given space and opportunity, they just flower.”
“One of the things about threading a sutra, a teaching like this, is that you really have to listen. It’s not just one-directional, where I speak and you listen, maybe cooking dinner. You have to really hear what was said before. You have to be present and follow the thread. There were no non sequiturs, nothing coming out of left field. You were really listening to one another. I’ve come to feel that one of the most powerful expressions of love is offering presence, listening attentively. I’ve had to train myself to do that. On Zoom, I have to be fully there because it’s easy to zone out with a screen. When I’m able to do that, I feel the energy and love for all of you. I’m very grateful for having done this.
A Threaded Talk on Impermanence, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast, video, and transcript available.