The Boundless Creativity of Change. Appreciating the whole cycle of impermanence

Program 2019

We usually appreciate only half of the cycle of impermanence. We can accept birth but not death; accept gain but not loss.

True liberation comes from appreciating the whole cycle and not grasping onto those things that we find agreeable. By remembering the changeability and impermanence of causes and conditions, both positive and negative, we can use them to our advantage. Wealth, health, peace, and fame are just as temporary as their opposites.

If you cannot accept that all compounded or fabricated things are impermanent. If you believe that there is some essential substance or concept that are permanent, you are swimming against the stream of reality.

Consider the example of generosity. When we see everything as transitory and without value, we don’t necessarily have to give it all away, but we have no clinging to it. When we see that our possessions are all impermanent compounded phenomena, that we cannot cling to them forever, generosity is already practically accomplished.