![]() Get present to the places in your life you are attached.Be mindful of this impermanence in yourself and all living beings. Do not wait until your last breath to face this truth. We are not fully free until we embrace death as a natural part of our journey. Has my understanding of death and impermanence become so keen and so urgent that I am devoting every second to the pursuit of enlightenment?.Do I remember at every moment that I am dying, and everyone and everything else is, and so treat all beings at all times with compassion?.Rinpoche suggests we ask ourselves two questions to evaluate if we truly understand impermanence: The past does not exist and there is no future only this gift of the present. The only thing you have is this moment in front of you RIGHT NOW. The Autumn winds will come and the clouds will billow, and then dissipate. This peace comes when you flow with life and stop clinging to your idea in how life should be. What has been accumulated will be exhausted,Īnd what has been high will be brought low.įreedom comes from letting go. What has been gathered will be dispersed, Rinpoche tells us in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: This is the ultimate clinging to permanence. We take this fear to our deathbed and we die constrained and without peace. I can feel the shudder inside of you as you read this. As much as we hope for the miraculous cure or life extending drug, our lives will end. We hide from it until it is too late. And, just like the Autumn clouds who form in the west then morph and change throughout their life until finally succumbing to the elements, our lives end. ![]() The greatest avoidance of change the western mind focuses on is the avoidance of death. We put energy in trying to avoid or ignore change yet the inevitable flow of life happens and we suffer. A thought in the way things should be, or the way things are supposed to be. ![]() ![]() Our suffering comes from clinging to this perceived permanence in our lives. The Buddha – As quoted by Sogyal Rinpoche in The Tibetan Book of Living and DyingĪs the Buddha said, our lives are like Autumn clouds, passing by in an instant and constantly changing, impermanent until our deaths. Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain. To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.Ī lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky, This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds. ![]()
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