Chapter 4 Chapter 2 Impermanence

Death can find us anywhere on earth--even if we seem to be turning our heads in a suspicious and strange place--if there is any way to avoid death's blows, I will not look back--but If you think you can survive death, you are wrong. People came and went, came and went in a hurry, danced and danced, but didn't say a word of death.All well and good, but when the end comes - their own death, the death of their wife, their children, their friends - it catches them by surprise, leaves them awake, unprepared, and the emotions take over like a storm They, let them cry to death, angry and heartbroken!

If we want to start to break free from the greatest domination of death over us, we must adopt a completely different method. Let us unravel the mystery of death, let us be familiar with it, let us get used to it; Where awaits us, so let us await death everywhere.The practice of death is the practice of liberation.He who learns how to die learns how not to be a slave.Montaigne Why are the practices of death and liberation so difficult?Why are we so afraid of death that we dare not even look at it?In the depths of our consciousness, we know that mortals are mortal.We know, as Milarepa said, "This so-called 'corpse' that we fear so much lives with us here and now." The more we delay facing death, the more The more ignorant it is, the more shadows of fear and insecurity haunt the mind.The more we try to escape that fear, the scarier it becomes.

Death is a great fog, but two things are certain: one, we will die someday, and two, we don't know when or how we will die.So the only thing we know for certain is that we don't know when we're going to die, and we use that as an excuse to delay seeing it face to face.We are like children playing hide-and-seek, blindfolded and thinking that no one can see us. Why do we live in fear of death?For our instinctive desire is to live, and to live on, and death relentlessly brings to an end all that is familiar to us.We think that when death comes, it will throw us into the abyss of ignorance, or turn us into a completely different person.We imagine ourselves in a daze after death, in an extremely strange environment.It's like waking up alone, in the torment of anxiety, in a strange country, knowing nothing about the land and language, no money, no external channels, no passport, no friends...

Perhaps the biggest reason we fear death is because we don't know who we really are.We believe we have a separate, special, and individual identity; but if we face it up, we discover that this identity is sustained by a never-ending chain of elements: our names, our "biographies," Our partners, our families, our houses, our jobs, our friends, our credit cards...we build our security on these fragile and ephemeral supports.So when all that is taken away, do we even know who we really are? Without these familiar supports, we would be dealing with nothing but our naked selves: someone we don't know, an unnerving stranger with whom we've lived with all our lives but never really met. to him.We fill every moment with idle or petty noise and action to ensure that we are not alone with this stranger.

Doesn't this point to a fundamental tragedy of our way of life?We live under a virtual identity, in a neurotic fairy tale world, not unlike the fake turtle in the movie.Under the hypnotism of passion, we are so fascinated by the thrill of building a house that we build the house of life on the sand.The world seems too real for us to believe, until death shatters our illusions and drives us out of our hiding places.So what would become of us if we were ignorant of the deeper realities? When we die, we can't take anything with us, especially the physical body we love so much, rely on so blindly, and try so hard to live.And our hearts are not necessarily more reliable than our bodies.Just observe yourself for a few minutes, and you will find that the mind is like a flea, jumping around.You will find thoughts popping up for no reason.Every second we are swept up in chaos, falling prey to fickle hearts.If this is the only mind we are familiar with, it is a ridiculous gamble to rely on it at the moment of death.

big scam Human life is also born with worry.Those who live long will die, and they will never die for a long time.Why bother!It is also a shape, and it is also far away! "Zhuangzi's Ultimate Joy" When a person is born, his troubles are born with him.Some people become more and more stupid the longer they live, because they become more and more anxious in order to avoid the inevitable death.What a pain!Some people are whimsical and dreamy all their lives, longing for immortality, which makes them unable to live in the present. After my master passed away, I was fortunate enough to have regular access to one of the greatest Zen masters, mystics and yogis of our time, Dudjom Rinpoche.One day, he drove through France with his wife, admiring the beautiful countryside scenery along the way.As they passed the large cemetery, which was brightly painted and blooming with flowers, Dudjom Rinpoche's wife said, "Rinpoche! Look, everything in the West is so neat and clean, even the place where they put their dead bodies. In the East, Even the houses that people live in are not as clean as here!"

"Ah, yes!" he said, "that's exactly right. What a civilized country it is! They built such wonderful houses for dead bodies, but did you notice that they built such wonderful houses for living people too?" The corpse lives!" Whenever I think about this story, it makes me think how empty and trivial life would be if it were based on eternal false beliefs!If we live like this, we will become like the walking dead that Dudjom Rinpoche said. In fact, most of us are so drunk, we live according to the existing pattern: when we are young, we are all receiving education; then, we find a job, get married and have children; we buy a house, strive for the top in our career, Dream of a country house or a second car.We go out with friends for the holidays, and then, we prepare to retire.The biggest worry some people face is where to go on vacation next time, or who to invite for Christmas.Our lives are monotonous, trivial, repetitive, wasted on trivial matters because we don't seem to know how else to live.

The pace of our lives is so intense that we have no time to think about death.In order to have more possessions, we desperately pursue enjoyment, and finally become their slaves, just to hide our fear of impermanence.Our time and energy are wasted just to maintain false things.Our only purpose in life becomes to keep everything safe and secure.Whenever there is a change, we look for the quickest antidote, some superficial or temporary solution.Our lives are wasted like this, only when serious illness or disaster wakes us up. We don't even spend much time and thought about this life.Think about some people who work for years and years, and when they retire, they realize that they are old and dying, and they are at a loss what to do.Although we always say that we should be practical in life, what Westerners call practical is actually ignorance, selfishness and short-sightedness.Our superficial vision, so narrowly focused on this life, turns out to be the great deception from which the ruthless and destructive materialism of modern society arises.No one talks about death, no one talks about the afterlife, because it is thought that talking about death or about the afterlife hinders the "progress" of the world.

If, most of all, we want to live authentically and live on, why do we blindly believe that death is the end?Why not try exploring the possibility of an afterlife?If we're as pragmatic as we say we are, why don't we start asking ourselves seriously: where is our "real" future?After all, very few people live past a hundred years.After that point, there is an indescribable eternity,  …. dynamic inertia I really like an old Tibetan story called "The Father of Saiyue Boy".There was a very poor man who, after working so hard, managed to save a sack of grain and was very proud.After returning home, hang the bag from the roof beam with a rope to keep out mice and thieves.After hanging the grain, he slept under the sack to guard that night, and his heart began to race: "If I can retail the grain, I can make a fortune. If I make money, I can buy more grain, and then If you sell it again, you will make a fortune soon and be recognized by everyone. Many girls will come to chase me, I will ask for a beautiful wife, and soon I will have a child...he must be a boy...we should replace it What's his name?" He looked around the house and his eyes fell on the little window through which he could see the moon rise.

"What a beautiful moon!" he thought. "What an auspicious sign! That's a good name indeed. I'm going to call him 'Sai Yue'..." While he was thinking wildly, a mouse found its way, climbed up the sack of grain, snapped the rope, and When he said the word "saiyue", the bag fell from the ceiling, killing him on the spot.Of course, "Sai Yue" was never born. How many of us are like the poor man in the story, driven around by what I call "inertia to move"?There are naturally different kinds of inertia: Eastern inertia and Western inertia.The inertia of the East is at its fullest in India, and consists of lounging in the sun all day, doing nothing, avoiding any work or useful activity, drinking endless tea, listening to Indian movie songs, the radio blaring, and Friends talking nonsense.The inertia of the West is quite different. They are too busy all their lives to face real problems.

If we observe our own lives, it becomes very clear that we are busy with insignificant "responsibilities" throughout our lives.One master likened them to "dream chores."We tell ourselves we need to spend some time on the big things in life, but we never find the time. Even when we wake up in the morning, there is so much to do: open the windows, make the bed, take a shower, brush our teeth, feed the dog, Feed the cat, clean up the garbage left over from last night, find out that the sugar or coffee is gone, go shopping, make breakfast... a lot of things are endless.Then there were the clothes to sort, choose, iron, and fold again, and the hair and make-up!At a loss, with phone calls and small plans all day long, with so many responsibilities, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it "irresponsible"! Our lives seem to live on our behalf, and the strange momentum of life itself drives us dizzy; in the end, we feel that we have no choice over life, no control over it.Of course sometimes we feel bad about the situation, waking up from a nightmare in a cold sweat and wondering, "How am I getting by?" But our fear only lasts until breakfast time, and then we head out with our briefcase, and everything goes on again. back to the start. I think of the Indian sage Ramakrishna who once said to his disciples: "If you spend one-tenth of your distracted time such as chasing women or making money on spiritual practice, within a few years you will be guaranteed Enlightenment!" There was a Tibetan master named Mipham in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, known as Da Vinci of the Himalayas.He is said to have invented a clock, a cannon and an airplane.He destroys these things as soon as they are ready, saying they only serve to distract him further. In Tibetan, the body is called Lu, which means "something left behind", like luggage.Every time we talk about the way, we remind ourselves that we are just tourists, temporarily living in this life and this body, so Tibetans do not spend all their time improving the external environment and distracting the mind.If they have enough to eat, enough to wear, and a house to live in, they are satisfied.If we continue as we are doing now, burying our heads in the pursuit of material desires, we will lose our purpose in life, and we will lose our minds.When travelers check into a hotel, if they are sane, do they redecorate their room?I love this teaching by Patrul Rinpoche: Remember the example of the old cow, It is content to sleep in the barn. You have to eat, sleep, poop... These are unavoidable things... Besides, the rest is out of your business. Sometimes I think the greatest achievement of modern civilization is that it sold reincarnation on a massive scale and completely confused the mind.To me, everything in modern society seems to distract people from the truth, from making the truth a purpose in life, or even believing that the truth exists.The civilization that produces these phenomena, although it claims to respect life, actually makes life impoverished and meaningless; although it keeps shouting to make people "happy", it is actually a source of obstruction to true joy . This modern reincarnation breeds anxiety and depression, and further locks us in the "consumer's machine", making us so greedy that we keep moving forward.Modern samsara is highly organized, fluid, and sophisticated; it uses propaganda to attack us from every angle and create an almost impenetrable environment of addiction around us.The more we try to escape, the more we seem to fall into the traps that have been carefully designed for us.As the eighteenth-century Tibetan master Jikme Lingpa said: "Bewildered by sensations of all kinds, beings are endlessly lost in the cycle of samsara." Lost in false hopes, dreams, and ambitions, which seem to bring us happiness, actually bring us only pain, making us crawl in the endless desert, almost dying of hunger and thirst.What this modern reincarnation can give us is a glass of salt water, making us hungrier and thirstier. face death Knowing this, can we not listen to Gyals Rinpoche?He said: Planning for the future is like fishing in a dry deep; No matter how hard you try, you can't get what you want. Let go of all schemes and ambitions 1 If you want to think about something-- Please think of your floating death... For Tibetans, New Year is the main festival of the year, just like Westerners celebrate Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and birthdays in one day.Patrul Rinpoche was a great master whose life was full of mystical stories that brought the Dharma to life.Patrul Rinpoche does not celebrate the New Year and wish each other "Happy New Year" like others, he usually cries.When people asked him why he was crying, he said that another year had passed, and many people were still approaching death unprepared. Consider something that has happened to almost each of us: we are wandering the streets, pondering enlightening questions, planning important events, or simply wearing a Walkman.A car drove by suddenly and almost smashed us to pieces. Turn on the TV or read the newspaper, and you will find news of death everywhere. Ask those who died in a plane crash or a car accident, did they ever think that they would die?They, like us, take life for granted.Don't we often hear about the sudden death of acquaintances or friends?We don't even have to be sick to die; our bodies can suddenly break down and fail, like a car breaking down.We may be fine one day and fall ill and die the next.His Holiness Milarepa once sang: When you are strong and healthy, Never thought that sickness would come; But it's like lightning, Suddenly it comes to you. When you are entangled with worldly things, Never thought death would come; But it is like a thunderbolt, Make you dizzy. Sometimes we need to wake up and ask ourselves honestly, "What if I die tonight?" We don't know if we'll wake up tomorrow, or be there.If you breathe out once and you can't breathe in again, you die, simple as that.As the Tibetan proverb says, "Tomorrow or the next life, whichever comes first, we will never know." Some famous Tibetan meditation masters emptied their cups and placed them face down beside their beds when they went to bed at night.They were never sure if they would wake up the next day and still need a cup.They even extinguished the fire at night so that the embers would not burn the next day.Every moment they thought that they might die at once. There is a pond near Jime Lingpa's retreat, which is difficult to walk across.Some disciples suggested that a bridge be built for him, but he replied, "Why bother? Who knows if I'll be able to sleep here alive tomorrow night?" Some masters warn us to recognize the fragility of life with even harsher visions, telling each of us to visualize ourselves as a condemned prisoner being imprisoned for the last time, a fish struggling in a net, or a fish in a slaughterhouse. Animals waiting to be slaughtered. Other masters encourage their students to vividly visualize their own death as a systematic method of meditation: to visualize the feelings of death, pain, misery, helplessness, the sorrow of relatives and friends, and realize their own life. what has or has not been done. The body lay flat on the last bed, Moaning the last words, Thinking about the last memory of the past: When will this scene happen to Hui? We should calmly visualize again and again that death is real and can come without warning.Don't be like the pigeon in the Tibetan fable, who spends the whole night making noise, busy making her nest, and doesn't even close her eyes when dawn comes.As the twelfth-century master Drakpa Gyaltsen said: "Man is preparing, preparing, preparing all his life: only not preparing for the next life." take life seriously Only those who understand how fragile life is can know the value of life.I once attended a conference in England, and the participants were interviewed by the BBC.At the same time, they interviewed a dying woman who had never imagined that death could be so real, so she was terrified.Now that she knows, she just wants to say one thing to the living: "Take life and death seriously." Taking life seriously does not mean that we have to live in the Himalayas and meditate all our lives like the ancient Tibetans.In modern society, we have to work to earn a living, but we can't be caught up in a 9-to-5 life without understanding the deeper meaning of life.Our mission is to seek balance, find the middle way, learn not to indulge in the enjoyment of modern life, the key lies in simplicity, not to overstretch ourselves with external activities, but to make our life simpler and simpler. This is the true meaning of Buddhist precepts.The Tibetan word for precepts is tsul trim; tsul means "suitable" or "proper", and trim means "rule" or "way."The commandment, therefore, is to do what is proper or right; in other words, to simplify our lives in this age of over-complexity. Peace of mind comes from here.A peaceful mind allows you to pursue spiritual things, and the knowledge that springs from spiritual truth can help you face death. Sadly, very few do.Now we may be asking ourselves: "What have I done in this life?" This sentence is asking how much we really know about life and death. I have been inspired by near-death experiences in the writings of my friend Kenneth Ring and others.Many people who have survived serious accidents, or who have had near-death experiences, have recounted "life review" experiences, reliving their lives with vividness and clarity.Sometimes, they also experience first-hand the impact and emotions they have had on others.Someone told Kenneth Ringling: I know that everyone has something to accomplish and learn when he comes to this world, such as sharing more love, being more loving to each other, and discovering that the most precious thing in life is the relationship and love between people, not material things.At the same time knowing that everything you do in your life is being recorded, even if it passed by inadvertently at the time, it will show up later. Sometimes, while looking back on life, there is a majestic "life of light" that appears.During the meeting with the "Life of Light", various testimonies underline the only important goal of life: "to learn to love others and to acquire knowledge". Someone told Raymond Moody, "When the light appeared, the first thing he said to me was 'What have you done to prove that you haven't wasted your life?' or something like that... the whole process, He kept emphasizing the importance of love...he also seemed to care about knowledge..." Another told Kenneth Rilling, "He asked me (but didn't speak, just a moment of telepathic communication) what I was doing to benefit or Something to improve humanity?" What we do in life makes us who we are when we die.And everything, absolutely everything, has something to do with it. autumn clouds In the monasteries of Nepal, the great Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the oldest surviving disciple of my guru, one of the best living guru, teacher of Guru Lama and many other gurus , everyone respects him as the endless treasure of wisdom and compassion.Huge in stature, benevolent and dignified, he was scholar, poet, and mystic all in one person.He had practiced in seclusion for twenty-two years. When a lecture was about to end, everyone looked up at him. He stopped and stared into the distance: "I am now seventy-eight years old, and I have seen so many vicissitudes in my life, so many young people have died, so many people my age have passed away, so many old people have passed away; so many high-ranking people have died , so many humble people got up; so many national changes, so many tragedies, so many wars and plagues, so many horrors spread all over the world. However, these changes are nothing but a dream. When you When you meditate deeply, you will find that nothing is permanent, everything is impermanent, and even the tiniest hair is changing. This is not a theory, but something that can be known and even seen with one’s own eyes.” I often ask myself, "Why does everything change? There is only one answer: that is life, and everything is impermanent. The Buddha said: Our existence is as fleeting as autumn clouds, Watching the life and death of all beings is like watching dance steps, The time of life is like lightning in the sky, Like a torrent rushing down a ridge, slipping away in a hurry. In the face of death, we have infinite pain and confusion, the main reason is that we ignore the truth of impermanence.How much we long for things to remain the same, so we have to believe that things can remain the same.But this is just pretending to be true, and as we often find, beliefs have little or nothing to do with reality.This false information, beliefs, and assumptions build the fragile foundation of life.No matter how much truth keeps approaching, in order to maintain our disguise, we still prefer to continue to be hopelessly grandiose. We always think that change equals loss and suffering.If change occurs, we anesthetize ourselves as much as possible.We stubbornly and unquestioningly assume that constancy provides security and impermanence does not.But in fact, impermanence is like some people we meet in our lives, who are difficult to get along with at first, but after getting to know them for a long time, we find that they are more friendly than we imagined, and they are not scary. Think of it this way: awareness of impermanence is, ironically, the only thing we can be sure of; possibly, our only eternal possession.It is like the sky or the earth, no matter how much everything around us may be changed or destroyed, they will never be changed.Let's say we go through a bone-shattering emotional crisis...our whole beings come close to falling apart...our husband or wife suddenly leaves without saying goodbye.Still, the earth is still there, and the sky is still there.Of course, even the Earth occasionally shakes, warning us not to take anything for granted...   Even Buddha will die.His death was a teaching to shock the naive, lazy and complacent, to wake us up to the impermanence of all things and the inescapable fact of life.Before he died, the Buddha said: in every step, The elephant's footprint is most noble; In all mindfulness meditation, Remembrance of death is the most noble. Whenever we are disoriented or lethargic, contemplating death and impermanence can often jolt us back to the truth: the living must die, Those who gather must disperse, Those who accumulate will be exhausted, Whoever stands must fall, The tall must fall. Scientists tell us that the entire universe is nothing but change, activity, and process—a total and fluid change: Every subatomic interaction involves the destruction of original particles and the creation of new ones.The subatomic world is constantly arising and dying, mass becomes energy, energy becomes mass.Ephemeral shapes pop up and disappear again, creating a never-ending, ever-innovating entity. What is life but this inconsistency?The leaves in the park, the light in the house when reading this book, the four seasons, the weather, the time of day, the people passing by on the street, which one is not changing?And ourselves: doesn't everything we did in the past seem like a dream today?The friends we grew up with, the places we played as children, the views and opinions we once held true to, are all left behind.At this moment, reading this book seems vivid and real to you, but even this page quickly becomes a memory. The cells in our bodies are dying, the neurons in our brains are failing, and even the expressions on our faces are changing with our emotions all the time.What we call basic character is really nothing more than a "flow of mind."Today we are refreshed because everything is going well; tomorrow we are downcast.Where did that good feeling go?When circumstances change, our minds change: we are impermanent, influences are impermanent, and nothing solid and permanent can be found anywhere. Is there anything more unpredictable than our thoughts and emotions?Do you know what your next thought or feeling is?In fact, our mind is as illusory, impermanent, and fleeting as a dream.Look at our thoughts: it comes, it stops, it goes away.The past has passed, the future has not yet arisen, and even the present thought, as we experience it, immediately becomes the past. The only thing we really have is the Now, the here and now. Sometimes, after I gave these teachings, someone would come up to me and say, "These are commonplace things! I already knew that, so tell me something new!" I would say to him, "You really Do you understand and appreciate the true meaning of impermanence? Have you integrated impermanence with every thought, breath, and movement, thus changing your life? Please ask yourself these two questions: Do I remember every moment that I am walking? Towards death, everyone and everything is also dying, so can I treat all beings with compassion at all times? Is my awareness of death and impermanence so urgent that I am chasing enlightenment every second? ? If you answer yes to all of them, you have truly understood the truth of impermanence.”