For this Dharma talk, I want to open with a few lines from the Diamond Sutra from chapter 32. The Buddha has just finished his daily walk to Sarasvati to gather offerings for food. I can see them eating quietly, and when they are finished, Subhuti, one of his monks, asks the Buddha.
“How, Lord, should one who has set out on the Bodhisattva path take his stand? How should he proceed? How should he control the mind?
The Diamond Sutra’s 32 short chapters are the Buddha’s answer to that question.
For our purposes here, I I want to start at the 32nd chapter because in it the Buddha answers Subuti’s question on how to proceed on the Bodhisattva path, by awakening to the impermanence of our conditioned existence.
From the Diamond Sutra
“So, I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:”
“Like a tiny drop of dew or a bubble floating in a stream.
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”
Thus spoke Buddha.
I love that the Buddha distills all 32 chapters into one poem. And why a poem? Why this poem?
Here are a few different translations of this same poem.
As a lamp, a cataract, a star in space
an illusion, a dewdrop, a bubble
a dream, a cloud, a flash of lightning
view all created things like this.
(Red Pine)
All composed things are like a dream,
a phantom, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.
That is how to meditate on them,
that is how to observe them.
(Thich Nhat Hanh)
I have loved these lines for a long time. In another sutra, the Buddha teaches that,
“Just as a dewdrop on the tip of a blade of grass quickly vanishes
with the rising of the sun and does not stay long,
in the same way, brahmans, the life of human beings is like a dewdrop.”
There is something bittersweet in these images – a profound truth about the transience of all things.
One of the core teachings in Buddhism—one of its three marks of existence—is impermanence, known as Anicca (or Anitya in Sanskrit). It’s the deep, often unsettling truth that everything changes, and nothing lasts forever. Nothing.
Most of us know this. We understand, intellectually, that nothing endures. But knowing is not the endpoint—it’s only the beginning of a much longer journey: the path of embodying impermanence.
Grasping the idea of change isn’t difficult on the surface. We see it daily. Friendships shift, marriages unravel, and jobs come and go. Love affairs flare up and burn out. Parents leave us—sometimes emotionally, sometimes physically. People let us down. We let them down. The quiet forest trail we once loved is clearcut. The river that once ran sweet turns sour. Our beloved cat or dog dies. Our parents die. And—if we are lucky—we die before our children.
Loss is threaded with sorrow. Grief is the emotional pulse of impermanence made real. In Buddhism’s Five Remembrances, we are taught that by nature, we fall ill; by nature, we age; by nature, we die. Whether life is long or short doesn’t really matter—in the end, its length is never what defines it. We will get them in a bit. Here again, from the Diamond sutra, our lives are like,
a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream.
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
The Buddha taught with poetry because the teaching of impermanence is not simply an intellectual insight but one of the heart. Maybe the sadness or the grief inherent in impermanence keeps us from becoming intimate with it. That is why most of us engage with this teaching only superficially. I know I have for so long.
The Buddha often taught in poetry because the truth of impermanence is not merely an intellectual insight—it is a truth of the heart. Perhaps the sorrow, the grief inherent in impermanence, keeps us from becoming truly intimate with it. And so, most of us engage with this teaching only at the surface. I know I have—for a very long time.
Let us return to Chapter 32 of the Diamond Sutra. Remember the opening line of the poem:
“This is how we contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world.”
And the closing line:
“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”
At the heart of the teaching of impermanence lies this phrase: conditioned existence. But what does it mean?
Conditioned existence refers to the reality that all things—all phenomena—arise in dependence upon other things. Nothing stands alone. As the Buddha taught:
“If this exists, that exists. If this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist.”
This is the essence of impermanence: everything arises because conditions allow it to occur, and when those conditions dissolve, so too does what they gave birth to. What is born from causes will vanish when the causes fade. Or, as the Buddha says,
“All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing.”
Let that sink in.
Everything—by its very nature—vanishes.
In Japanese, the ache—the tender sorrow—of impermanence is expressed in the phrase mono no aware. It resists translation, as all true poetry does. Those who speak more than one language know this intimately. Still, we try. It has been rendered as “the ahh-ness of things,” or “the is-ness of things,” or more fully, “the bittersweet poignancy of things.”
Years ago, I read the introduction to a collection by one of my favorite poets, Eugenio de Andrade. In it, he speaks of his deep love for the world—for its beauty and fragility—and of the praise and grief born from its transience. That has stayed with me.
Lately, I’ve come to understand, as Martín Prechtel writes in The Smell of Rain on Dust, that grief and praise are inseparable. They are two hands of the same gesture. So, too, are impermanence and gratitude.
Mono no aware—the gentle sadness and quiet beauty in knowing that all things pass—is at the heart of meaningful, everyday Buddhism. It isn’t a grand philosophical concept reserved for monasteries or scholars. It’s lived, felt, and practiced—not in abstract thought but in the soft moments of our daily lives.
Understanding and embodying impermanence doesn’t happen through study alone—it unfolds in how we greet the world daily. It is in the smile of a child that disappears just as it came, in the steam rising from morning tea, in the way sunlight shifts across the floor and then is gone. We come to see, slowly and often with aching hearts, that everything we love—everything we are—will change will end.
But mono no aware teaches us not to turn away from this truth but to turn toward it with tenderness. We begin to recognize impermanence not as a source of despair but as a source of depth. We allow ourselves to feel both grief and praise in the same breath—to mourn a moment’s passing even as we bow in gratitude for its having ever existed. This is the ground of practice: to feel the full weight of impermanence in the small, ordinary moments and to meet it not with fear but with presence.
So, everyday Buddhism is not about detachment in the cold sense—it is about intimacy. It is about being so present with the fragile beauty of this world that our hearts break open, again and again, to love it more fully. It is about living with impermanence, not despite it.
As you can see, this is so much more than simply knowing—logically—that things come and go. Impermanence isn’t an idea to be grasped; it’s something to be felt in the body, in the bones. It’s visceral.
My own “knowing” that I will die one day hasn’t changed the way I live. Not really. I smoked for thirty years. I’m not especially more grateful, more patient, more compassionate. This intellectual acknowledgment—that everything ends—hasn’t transformed me.
In truth, “knowing” impermanence hasn’t changed me at all. I am, we are like what Bukowski writes in these lines from this poem.
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities; we are eaten up by nothing.”
In a way, the Buddha is inviting us to love more deeply—not by holding on but by letting go. When he tells Subhuti how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world, he is gently urging us to loosen our grasp, to embody impermanence, to love not despite transience but because of it.
“Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream.
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.”
In the end, so many disappointments and travails are for nothing. The Buddha understood this. In Dharma Breeze, Nobuo Haneda writes, this,
Although the basic nature of the self was impermanence, he [Shakyamuni] was attached to the self; he considered it permanent and desired to maintain it against the truth.
The negative aspect of the Dharma (the truth of impermanence) initially appeared to Shakyamuni as an opposing force (old age, sickness, and death)
But when Shakyamuni understood absolute impermanence, he recognized his mistake. Now, he identified with the truth of impermanence and loosened his grip on the self.
He goes on to say that the friction between being attached to the idea of a permanent, unchanging self and the reality he discovered—at the heart of his awakening experience, the impermanence of all things—finally abated. This attachment had been the source of all this suffering.
In his awakening experience, the Buddha discovered that at the heart of reality was anitiya, this constant arising and fading, appearing and vanishing, this state of constantly becoming, as Gyomay Kubose so beautifully puts it. The Buddha did not become Buddha until he embodied and lived a life of impermanence and continuous becoming.
Realizing this, the Buddha has invited us to begin to recognize and allow ourselves to experience (grieve and praise) the impermanence of everything that exists and, by doing so, start to cultivate a deeper and more intimate connection with it because of its fleeting nature and a more profound gratitude for experiencing it at all.
Our journey entails becoming intimate with the sorrow and joy that can be found in the realization of impermanence. Poetry is important in expressing this profound teaching. We can say all day long that we know we are going to die “someday” or that we embrace the teaching of impermanence, but do we?
The Buddha does not offer us a mere cognitive nod to the truth of impermanence. His teaching goes deeper—into the body, into the heart of our lived experience.
I can say that I understand impermanence—that everything is in constant flux. I can repeat the words, even believe them. And yet, when a love affair ends or a marriage falls apart, I’m undone. When a friend betrays me, I feel shock and sorrow, as if permanence had ever been promised. When my health falters, I resist, as though decay were an exception rather than the rule.
I know we all die. Of course, I do. But still, in some quiet corner of my mind, dying is something that happens to other people.
That is why one of the traditional practices is to recite the five remembrances every morning.
- 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 having 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.
- My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
Fun times!
I remember reading Dogen’s teachings years ago and coming across these lines: “Impermanence is in itself Buddha-nature.”
That passage challenged me. I didn’t like it—I put the book down.
Intellectually, I do not quarrel with impermanence. I understand it conceptually. But emotionally… it’s another story. Impermanence can feel brutal to someone who has lived through abandonment. It touches old wounds, buried memories, the places where love left and never returned.
Part of my resistance to impermanence isn’t philosophical—it’s personal. It’s hidden grief—unresolved, unspoken, maybe even unacknowledged.
And I’m beginning to see that embracing impermanence—truly living it—isn’t just about accepting change. It’s about learning to live with its natural companion: grief. To walk hand in hand with the ache of loss, without turning away. To allow sorrow, not as an interruption, but as part of the sacred rhythm of life.
I love this poem from Kōdō Sawaki Roshi.
Even insentient beings
Such as grasses and trees
wither today.
Seeing them in front of their eyes,
How can people be without grieving?
Feeling and embracing the grief of impermanence is part of the Buddhist path. It is part of being a realized human being. Okumura Roshi teaches that Dogen’s path to the Dharma began in the grief of seeing the incense smoke at his mother’s funeral. Issa, the Jodo Shin Priest and Haiku master of the 18th century, wrote this haiku after the death of his daughter.
This world of dew
Any yet
And yet.
BASHŌ’S, the Haiku master, writes about returning to his hometown many years after he had left. “Nothing remained the same in my native village,” he writes. “Even the faces of my brothers had changed with wrinkles and white hair, and we simply rejoiced to see each other alive.”
Bashō’s eldest brother removes a small amulet bag, opens it, and says, “See your mother’s frosty hairs.” After weeping for a few moments, Bashō composes a poem:
Should I hold them in my hand
they will disappear
in the warmth of my tears,
Icy strings of frost.
Nothing in the Buddhist path guarantees you will “feel better,” but one thing is guaranteed: you will feel more joy and sadness. Being present with yourself, maybe for the first time in your life – you will start feeling all those things you have hidden away in stories. I like to say,
If you aren’t cryin’, you aint tryin’
In Rev Gyomay Sensei, the Center Within, he shares a story about a man who has lost his beloved wife and, thinks of her all the time and is overwhelmed with sadness. He tells Sensei that he understands the teaching of non-attachment and impermanence. Why am I crying? I am a bad Buddhist because I cannot let go, and I am so sad. Is crying bad, Sensei? This is a great question.
Sometimes, Buddhists do a thing called spiritual bypassing, in which we use the teachings NOT to Feel something because, as Buddhists, we are supposed to let go. We try to be good Buddhists. In reality, we can’t truly let go until we experience the grief of our loss.
Sensei tells him this.
“Your wife was very dear to you, she meant so much to you. Non-attachment does not mean detachment. When you cry, cry …tears are often beautiful. Your trouble is not with your wife but your attachment to non-attachment.”
Shinran Shonin, the father of Jodo Shinshu, taught that we should not criticize those lamenting in sadness. When you are sad, you do not have to hold back your tears.
It is OK to grieve,
Grieve the reality of impermanence.
As Issa has written
Tears of Sadness
They naturally turn into
Compassion.
As we contemplate conditioned existence, I believe the first step toward becoming truly intimate with impermanence is allowing grief to enter our experience. Not pushing it away. Not numbing it. But letting it arrive—fully, honestly.
As Francis Weller writes:
“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”
This is the path. Let ourselves feel the truth that all things vanish by their very nature.
It is not enough to know this with the mind. It must be felt with the body, lived through the heart. When we allow ourselves to grieve what is passing, what has already passed, impermanence begins to seep into our bones. Slowly, it becomes not just a concept but a companion—one that reshapes how we see, how we love, and how we live.
The Buddha knew that by embracing impermanence, we could finally be free. Free of all the suffering that comes from so much knowing and grasping at the illusion of permanence.
I want to share these words on Mono No Aware from the writers at the Berkeley Center for Religion and Culture.
“It boils down to this: appreciate the moment, because the beauty experienced in it will never be the same. It will pass. It will end. And that is OK because as life changes, new beauty, perhaps of a different kind, will arrive. Every season the cherry blossoms die. But every year, they come back to, once again, coat the streets in their ethereal and incomparable demise.”
Once we embody impermanence, we can truly be present in our lives as they unfold in a way we never have before.
On the other side of the grief that impermanence brings is a deep and astonishing gratitude—one that rises not despite change but because of it. When we genuinely feel the weight of impermanence, we begin to recognize the immeasurable gift of simply being alive. And perhaps, for the first time, we can see all the quiet grace that has been with us all along.
So that, at the end of it all, we might be able to say, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut:
“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud.”
So, we breathe, feel, and show up—fully, without reservation, even in the face of inevitable change. In this presence, we discover a quiet, profound gratitude. In the impermanence of each passing moment, it is here that we realize the true miracle of being able to sit up, look around, and say,
“Lucky me, lucky mud.”
Everyday Nembutsu 