---

I want to begin our discussion on Dharma today with a story shared by Mark Epstein, one of the pioneers in integrating psychotherapy and Buddhism. He recounts an encounter with his teacher, Ajahn Chah, many years ago. During this meeting, someone asked the master how genuine happiness is possible in a world where everything changes, where nothing stays the same, and where loss and sorrow appear throughout our lives. The question was essentially about how to find security and peace in an unpredictable and impermanent world.

Ajahn Chah smiled, held up the glass he had been drinking from, and said:

“You see this goblet. To me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it. I drink from it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes reflecting the sunlight in beautiful patterns. If I tap it, it gives off a lovely ring. But when I set it on a shelf and the wind knocks it over, or my elbow brushes it off the table and it shatters on the floor, I say, Of course. When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious. Every moment is just as it is, and nothing needs to be otherwise.”

I appreciate the line, “when I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” This is something I love about Buddhist thought. Even a simple drinking glass can teach us the insight of impermanence. If this is true for a glass, how much more can we apply it to the relationships in our lives. Our families, our friends, our communities, even the driver going 30 in a 45.

In Buddhist teaching, the first mark of existence is anitya or impermanence. Today, I want to explore this central truth of the Buddha’s awakening.

Among the many names for the Buddha is the Great Physician. Like a physician, he diagnoses our fundamental problem and then offers the medicine that can ease our pain and confusion. His teachings are a path out of suffering and ignorance.

Before he was the Buddha, he was Siddhartha Gautama. He was a man confronted by the raw and unavoidable realities of human life. He left home seeking answers to suffering, aging, death, and the cycle of rebirth. After six strenuous years of practicing asceticism and other disciplines that did not bring liberation, he found awakening through what became known as the Middle Way. Central to this realization was pratityasamutpada, dependent co-arising. This is the insight that all phenomena arise in dependence on causes and conditions.

“If this exists, that exists. If this ceases, that also ceases.”

This is the heart of impermanence. All things arise because conditions allow their arising. When those conditions change or fall away, what has arisen also changes or disappears.

The Buddha expressed it simply.

“All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing.”

Many scholars believe this was his very first teaching, even before the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. It is important to understand why.

The Buddha discovered that at the heart of reality is this constant arising and fading. Gyomay Kubose calls it continual becoming. We see impermanence everywhere. The changing seasons, shifting moods, the ebb and flow of love and resentment, aging, illness, and death. The world is always teaching us this truth.

We acknowledge impermanence intellectually. What we lack is intimacy with it. We resist it. We hold it at arm’s length. We insist on solidity, even as life continually dissolves and reshapes itself. We deny impermanence until something breaks our certainty. A death. A heartbreak. A loss that enters us so completely that we cannot push it away.

We believe we can escape this law of nature. We think we can manage our circumstances if we only try hard enough. We plan, we calculate, we cling to the idea that things should remain stable. But the world moves.

The Buddha realized that there is no solid ground, only the appearance of solidity. Continuity is not permanence. Solidity is an illusion. Mu Soeng writes:

“Of what is the body made. It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the heart of the world there is no solidity. There is only the dance.”

Modern physics mirrors this insight. David Barash writes:

“An iron bar is mostly empty space, and even the subatomic particles within it are in constant motion or exist only as clouds of probability rather than as fixed points of permanence.”

Even our own bodies are in continuous change.

“There is a new you every day, every hour, minute, second, and instant.”
David Barash

Despite this, we hold fast to the idea that things should be predictable. We even argue with something as ordinary as traffic slowing down on our way to work. We get frustrated because we believe traffic should behave according to our expectations. This is simply our refusal to accept impermanence.

How dysfunctional our relationship can be with impermanence, especially when it touches the meaningful parts of our lives. Yoshida Kenko wrote in Essays in Idleness:

“If man were never to fade away like the dew of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, how things would lose their power to move us.”

Impermanence gives life its poignancy and its depth.

The Diamond Sutra expresses this poetic understanding.

“So you should view this fleeting world.
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.”

Dogen was once asked what the world is. He replied with three simple lines:

“The world. Moonlit drops
Shaken
From the crane’s bill.”

He also taught:

“One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.”

Ilyas Kassam echoes this truth.

“To know yourself you must know the transience of your self.”

In Japan, this intimacy with impermanence is expressed through the phrase mono no aware. It is often translated as a sensitivity to things. It is an awareness of impermanence that brings both a gentle sadness for what passes and a deep appreciation for the beauty of that passing. It is an emotional clarity that arises when we understand that everything is fleeting.

Without intimacy with impermanence, we live as if time is guaranteed. Our days slip through our hands. Gratitude dissolves. Entitlement grows quietly.

In Zen monasteries, a wooden board called a han is struck to call practitioners to attention. Carved into it are the words:

“Great is the matter of birth and death.
Life flows quickly by.
Time waits for no one.
Wake up. Wake up.
Do not waste a moment.“

Dogen asks:

“Why does the passage of time steal your endeavor. What kind of enemy is the passage of time. How regrettable to waste your time because of distraction. If you do not know yourself, you will not be able to be your own ally in the great undertaking.”

Understanding impermanence helps us let go. When we become intimate with change, compassion arises. Gratitude expands. Life becomes vivid. Beautiful. Urgent.

How do we cultivate this intimacy. We become students of change. We meet it directly.

Alan Watts wrote:

“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

Life is movement, flow, and continual becoming. Even who we think we are is not a fixed thing but an unfolding process.

Gyomay Kubose teaches impermanence as continual becoming. He writes:

“Life is changing. All things are changing. All conditions are changing. So let things go. Let abuse, anger, and criticism come and let them go. Whatever we do, we should do sincerely and honestly and with full strength. When it is done, it is done.”

He also writes:

“Many people get attached to the past or the future and neglect the important present. Live the best now with full responsibility.”

What does it mean to live with full responsibility.

One way is through the daily recitation of the Five Remembrances. They are part of my own practice.

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
I am the owner of my actions. I am the heir of my actions. Whatever actions I do, good or bad, of these I shall become the heir.

With this understanding, we can participate fully in the present moment. Our task is to be intimate with the process of becoming. Gyomay Sensei writes:

“When the sun shines, enjoy it. When it rains, enjoy it. Let all things in life come and go.”

True happiness resides in the state of becoming because becoming is where truth unfolds. The beauty of life is found in this constant transformation. Joy arises from embracing impermanence and the gratitude that blossoms from that awareness.

I want to close with these words from Paul Flesschman:

“Impermanence is what we run from. Impermanence is what we fear. It is said that one develops insight into impermanence slowly, over lifetimes. The actual experience, not our ideas or fears about it, is simple and clear, like the wind.

The experience of impermanence leaves one floating in the impersonal truth, the ocean of life. The flood of life does not need to drown us. It can lift us up if we learn how to swim. The experience of impermanence is the place to plunge in and become a fish, a wave, a fleck of foam on the surging expanse of life itself.”

---