I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. What I'd like to talk about this morning is one of the three marks that is described in the Buddha's teachings as the mark of impermanence. That quality or characteristic that is expressed in many, many different ways in all the schools of Buddhism. But the expression that I've been working with recently that I find usefully troublesome is the statement that everything changes, nothing remains the same. So I would like to have my beginning remarks be particularly to the children who are here this morning.

[01:05]

One of the useful things in my experience about understanding the accuracy or truth of this description that everything changes is that we don't suffer so much when things change. We're not so surprised. And one of the ways to begin checking for yourself to see if it is in fact accurate that everything changes is to start looking around. So maybe after you leave the lecture hall this morning, you might go out to the garden, for example, especially if Wendy was going to go with you, and you'd see lots of examples of this, everything changes, nothing remains the same. especially if you get her to talk to you about compost. Because, of course, compost is the perfect example of everything changes, nothing remains the same.

[02:12]

We put all our garbage into the compost pile, or at least the garbage that's made of vegetables and not, usually not paper, certainly not plastic. But things that come from the plant world in particular, the garbage, the carrot peelings and potato skins and burnt rice and all that stuff, goes into the compost pile. And if we mix it with the right ingredients, some straw and leaves, maybe some horse manure, other things. At the end of some months, what we get is sometimes called gardener's gold. Delicious, beautiful, sweet-smelling, nutritious material that helps all the flowers and plants grow. So what starts out as a smelly, rotten mess becomes this wonderful, sweet-smelling stuff

[03:18]

But you can also just look at your own bodies and notice this fact of change. Your hair grows, but if you don't cut it off, the ends will split and eventually will break off. Your fingernails grow, and if you don't cut them or your mother or father doesn't cut them, they'll break off. The skin on your body gets old and flakes off, but then you make new skin. And in fact, if you study your body, you will discover that every seven years you have completely renewed the whole business. Your hair, your skin, your blood, muscles, everything has changed. If you look at night at the moon, you can see that the moon changes. Every night the moon looks different, especially on the nights when you can see it.

[04:23]

You certainly have observed in the last few months that the weather is constantly changing. And I imagine that today we're going to see the weather changing again. There's lots of blue sky now, but maybe later in the day there'll be more clouds and maybe even some rain. It's very useful to not accept this description as true without checking it for yourself. But it's a good idea to spend some time doing that checking. looking around both inside and outside to see if in your experience it's true that everything changes, nothing remains the same. I have a friend who, when we were doing a retreat using this expression as a kind of focus point for our retreat, couldn't remember the line. She so didn't like the message that she couldn't remember it.

[05:29]

So her solution was to say to herself, nothing changes, everything remains the same. And she used that as a way of looking around the world. She didn't like that either. She finally decided that that was more miserable than everything changes, nothing remains the same because, of course, there were many wonderful things that depend upon this characteristic or mark of change. So, if you don't like the idea, that's okay. Just keep looking to see, is it accurate or is it not accurate? and see if the grown-ups in your life can help you see examples of change to help you get started in looking around. Most of the time we get caught because we don't want what we like to change and we do want what we don't like to go away to change.

[06:34]

That's where our suffering comes from. But we get so caught by resisting the fact of change that sometimes we don't enjoy what's happening right in the moment. And we in fact miss what's delightful or beautiful or inspiring or fun because we're busy worrying about what's going to happen next. One of the very interesting aspects of our experience to watch with respect to change is our emotions. If you're happy, does that happiness last or does it change? If you're unhappy, if you're sad, does it go on and on and on? It changes. Thank goodness. If we understand that, then we can really enjoy those happy times and be reassured when we're having an unhappy time because we know it won't last.

[07:39]

So I want to encourage you, when you go outside, to look around and see if you can find anything that doesn't change, even cement changes. It just takes longer than compost to change. Okay? I decided to take this focus of impermanence as a focus for my own practice and teaching this year.

[08:56]

It's something that I picked up in this way many years ago, very early on in my practice as a meditator, and I'm not quite sure how it is that I realized what a good idea it was, but in retrospect, I know that a lot of my understanding about the nature of my own suffering began to open up as a consequence of looking into this teaching about the mark of impermanence. And what I was just suggesting to the children is, I think, a very useful way to work with finding out for ourselves, is this an accurate description? I know several people who are working with very difficult emotional states and states of mind, who, when they pay attention and don't feed those emotional states, are consistently surprised and relieved to realize that even emotions rise and fall.

[10:04]

And that if we don't fan them, the difficult and challenging states of mind or emotional states will fade. that there's a certain comfort in recognizing that and a way that we then cannot take our emotions in certain situations quite so seriously which can be in itself very useful. I was diagnosed with cancer last October and had surgery in the middle of November and That kind of diagnosis does get one's attention. I was extremely fortunate. The cancer was detected early. It was confined. It's slow growing. And surgery was what took care of the whole business quite well. For me, the whole issue of impermanence came up really more because of the reaction of those in my family, my loved ones, and the people I practice with.

[11:15]

And so the focus with respect to impermanence that came up for me this past fall was this teaching about meetings will end in separation. The impermanence of our coming together, of our connections. That in the very nature of coming together, inherently there is separating. Sometimes people feel that the Buddhist tradition is rather gloomy because of this focus on impermanence. Do we have to always be pushing our noses into this miserable topic? In Japan, apparently, when a Buddhist priest walks by, people shudder because it's the Buddhist priests who take care of the dying part. It's the Shinto priests that take care of the celebrations and weddings and all that.

[12:18]

My own experience is that it is, in fact, exactly the opposite. When I keep in mind the fact of impermanence, I have much more possibility for staying present in the moment, not having a lot of regret, not waiting to tell those I cherish and love that I cherish and love them, not waiting until the weekend or vacation to do the things I love. So a life-threatening diagnosis can be an enormous gift, enormous gift. Because it is, of course, true that we will all die and we do not know when or how. And if we really understand that and don't lull ourselves into thinking that we're an exception to that description, we don't wait around for the right time for what we really want to do, what is our heart's inmost request, as Suzuki Roshi used to say.

[13:33]

One of the things I want to forewarn you about is that if you pick up meditations on impermanence, you will at some point hit some territory where fear arises. I think that's almost inevitable. So one of the challenges is for us to know how to be present with fear and not turn away from it. Because when we're present with fear we begin to experience the fact that fear also has the mark of impermanence. It's very useful to have a kind of home base to come back to. the home base of physical posture and awareness of what happens to our state of mind and our breathing when we're aligned as we are when we practice meditation. The home base of awareness of physical body and breath, for example, can be very helpful.

[14:40]

There's a a meditation which comes out of a very early sutra, the Anapanasati Sutra, where what is described is the possibility of mindfulness of anything on the breath in and on the breath out. And so that's one of the ways to be with fear, for example. to just be aware of fear, be aware of the sensations that seem to be accompanying the emotion. As I breathe in, I note fear within me. As I breathe out, I note fear within me. And what I discover when I do that is at some point I realize, oh, the fear has changed to some different state or has faded or eased. And I begin to have increasingly, experientially more and more confidence about my ability to stay present with myself no matter what arises.

[15:47]

I think for some of us, fear arises mostly around our own dying, our own mortality. But for some of us, I think particularly those of us who are parents a particular kind of apprehension and fear and vulnerability arises around the mortality of our children, those we love dearly. And it is at those times that it's very helpful to have some wider sense of this mark of impermanence, that it's not particular or peculiar to us or our life circumstances. This is the description of the characteristics of all beings and all things, that the only constant is change itself and that it's not personal. Nevertheless, there are times in our lives, particularly around dying, when having some wider frame, some place of refuge or reference point can be enormously helpful.

[17:03]

Here on my left is this beautiful figure of Jizo Bodhisattva, the Compassion Bodhisattva. in the form that we find throughout Japan. And in Japan, he is the emanation of compassion which is particularly nurturing and protective. And he is that embodiment or expression of compassion which is called upon for beings as they travel into life and out of life. So, during pregnancy, Jizo would be called upon for the protection and well-being of both mother and child. Jizo is also called upon for protection and nurturance for the subtle mind of someone as they are passing from life, dying, into afterlife. He's also become the focal point for a particular version of a Buddhist funeral or memorial ceremony around the occasion of the dying, in particular, of an unborn child through miscarriage or abortion or right after birth, SIDS deaths, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or any child who dies before their first year in particular.

[18:38]

I've been doing this particular ceremony with Jizo Bodhisattva as the focal point for a number of years. And some years ago I actually went to Japan and went on a pilgrimage visiting different temples and shrines that were dedicated to Jizo to see the different forms and expressions of turning towards this emanation of compassion as it's practiced in Japan. And part of the format of the ceremony is that people will make some offerings or bring offerings. Very often they'll make a hat or a bib to put on the figure of Jizo as a kind of offering as part of what happens with the ceremony or just informally to put a bib in remembrance of some being who's died at the local shrine or temple. But also people leave McDonald's hamburgers or pinwheels or toys or shoes or all kinds of things.

[19:50]

But that sense of offering to whatever presence there is in the world of compassion, in particular this compassion that is protecting and nurturing. Turning ourselves over out of grief or sadness or sorrow or regret or sometimes a tumble, a jumble of reactions and responses can itself be very helpful. Certainly for those of us who are left, who are not the dying ones. And it is argued that this practice is also wholesome for those who've died. So this afternoon, for anyone who wants to join me in doing the ceremony with Jizo Bodhisattva, we'll do a simple form of the ceremony up in the yurt at two. Sometimes people who come to do the ceremony have been carrying some heaviness or some grief.

[21:01]

particularly with regard to an abortion, for years and years, and have not found any container for letting that come to some rest. In our society, we don't have much of a container for the consequences of this kind of dying. One of the things I most appreciate about the ceremony is that I have over and over again seen people who come from every place on the political spectrum with respect to abortion meet with the occasion of our shared grief and suffering that's very personal. One of the things that interests me about the widespread practice of this referencing Jizo Bodhisattva, referencing compassion, nurturing and protective compassion in Japan is that this practice really started again in the way that we see it now during the American occupation after the end of the Second World War.

[22:23]

when abortion became the standard means of birth control in Japan, and with that very widespread suffering. And the request for doing some kind of ceremony that was more particular for this circumstance in our human lives didn't come from the sort of officials, the Buddhist officials, the priests, but came from ordinary men and women who wanted some help, some container for their response to their experience with not just abortion, but in particular abortion. There's something quite staggering about going up into the mountains on Shikoku Island in Japan, many, many, many miles from roads or civilization, and coming upon little shrine houses with Jizo figures in them, one after another, after another, after another, with fresh bibs and other offerings.

[23:29]

One day I sat at a big temple that's right next door to the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo. And I spent the day just sitting quietly and watching people come and go. Grandmothers and grandfathers, young couples, people coming alone and with one or two other people offering incense, doing prayers, making some offering. there were several thousand images of Jizo in that particular temple. And what I realized is that there is this request that comes up in us in certain circumstances, and I think particularly around death and dying, where we want some sense of a bigger container We want some sense of compassion that we may not quite know in our ordinary mind, but that we feel relieved to have a sense of.

[24:41]

In the Buddhist tradition, these images, the sacred art of Buddhism, is about expressing these qualities of compassion and wisdom that exist within each of us. And when we see an image of compassion, for example, that was made by an artist who really himself or herself understood compassion in their own lives, in their own hearts, somehow the figure they make carries that understanding and that sense, that palpability of compassion. And I certainly think that this figure that we have here is one of those figures. I'm always struck when people who don't know anything about Buddhism or Buddhist sacred art see compassion figures in particular and understand, oh, I know what that figure is about. I know what that is expressing. So I also want to suggest to you that at the same time that we move toward or call forth compassion in many realms, seen and unseen, we're also calling forth our own capacity for compassion within ourselves, for ourselves, and for other beings.

[26:04]

This isn't a calling upon that which exists separate from each of us, but more finding a way to awaken within ourselves nurturing and protective compassion around the experiences and reactions and responses to our experiences, for that's what we need. We Westerners are rather skeptical about the realms we can't see until we get into trouble. How many of us pray when we have a near accident, having not prayed for decades? Calling out for that which is bigger than I am. During the surgery that I had in November, some of my students and my family were sitting just outside the surgery room, meditating and doing prayers on my behalf.

[27:13]

And in fact, I feel very blessed because a lot of people were praying for me. The surgeon was a rather... How could I describe him? very much a scientist and a surgeon. And after the surgery I had strongly requested that I not be sedated. I wanted to be there for whatever it was they were going to do. So I was doing a meditation practice, actually a form of the practice that I suggested a little while ago for working with fear. And afterwards, both the surgeon and the anesthesiologist said, what were you doing? Were you praying or meditating or what were you doing? And a few days later, when I saw the surgeon again, he said, do you know about Larry Dossey's work and the studies that have been done on the positive effect with respect to healing for people who are prayed for over against people who don't have anyone praying for them?

[28:24]

I said, yes, I did know those studies. He then went on to talk to me at great length about how moved he was to read these studies and how much it had opened him up to the efficacy of prayer. I thought, wow, that's wonderful. One of the things he commented on was how wonderful it was to be operating on someone who was held lovingly by others. He said, you're very lucky. I often will do surgery on someone and afterwards I will want to know, you know, who's going to take you home. And they will say, oh, I'll take a cab. I haven't been on friendly terms with my children for 10 years or something like that. So here was this kind of crusty, hardcore surgeon type so open to talking about the expression of compassion on behalf of others in a very open-hearted way, and I thought, how wonderful.

[29:32]

So at the same time that we culturally and socially may be conditioned to be a little bit cynical about this calling forth compassion for ourselves and for others, there's also, I think, a part for many of us where we long for that sense of the possibility of calling forth compassion and protection and caring and tenderness. for ourselves and for those we love, and in fact for all beings. In a teaching that His Holiness the Dalai Lama did in Los Angeles a few years ago, he said something I found rather startling. He said, you know, I think that we cannot afford the luxury of wisdom. the world is in such terrible shape, what we need to focus on intensely is compassion. Of course, can we have real compassion without wisdom?

[30:40]

How do we call forth? How do we develop? How do we open our own hearts? The only way we can do that is to begin with ourselves. And I know firsthand that of the focus on impermanence is a way for me to begin to do that. Particularly if I stay with noticing the fact of impermanence until I hit the territory where I feel like, oh, I don't want what is so to be so. It's a very good idea to start small. Those of us who are past 45 understand about the impermanence of eyesight or hearing. You know, your 45th birthday and bingo, you need reading glasses. It's impermanence.

[31:46]

or your spouse suddenly doesn't hear you and you keep thinking that there's something wrong in your relationship and it's just the impermanence of hearing. I have this very dramatic hip, dramatic cane because I am trying to take care of some bursitis I have in my left hip. and I keep noticing how much I expected to be able to do all the things I've done for most of my life and now all of a sudden I have this cranky left hip. So there's certain kinds of things that I can't do or can't do quite so easily. Oh! I am of the nature to grow old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I am of the nature to die. All that is dear to me is of the nature to change.

[32:52]

It's just a fact. And what I've discovered is that if I stay in touch with the detailed experience of that mark of impermanence, it's not what leads to gloom and doom. What happens is the arising of a kind of joy and sense of liberation because I'm much more able to be present in the moment. So, in fact, I think that we Buddhists are, if we're lucky, not so gloomy. We just keep bringing up these miserable subjects and considering them. But we also laugh a lot. Joking and fooling around and silliness is definitely a part of the territory. Some years ago, when I was keeping an old friend and teacher company as he was dying, he took a very long time to die, and just before he died, he was in a kind of semi-coma, and he would surface every once in a while and sing songs.

[34:15]

One of his last songs was, Bye Bye Blackbird, which we all joined in on with him. It's wonderful. I've been thinking a lot about the people who died in the tornado in Florida, the tornadoes in Florida. And I've been imagining myself being one of those people and asking myself, What would be my state of mind if I suddenly found myself swept up like that? One of my inspirations is Gandhi, who, when he was shot and killed, had the name of God on his lips. But the reason he had the name of God on his lips was because he had the name of God on his lips for a long time.

[35:23]

Ram, [...] Ram. And it's that way with meditating on impermanence, on the breath in and the breath out. And we have no idea whether we will die with a calm and happy mind. The only way we increase the possibility is to cultivate deeply a calm and happy mind right now. With whatever thought arises, with whatever emotion arises, with whatever diagnosis the doctor gives us, with whatever happens with our friends or out on the freeway, in any moment, what do I need to do to cultivate a deeply calm and happy mind? I can ask all of the emanations of compassion to help me discover how to cultivate a calm and happy mind. I can bring that quality of calmness even to fear and anxiety and grief and sadness.

[36:34]

And I also know that I feel a great deal of encouragement by having good company with others who are willing to take the same path. Having good friends in this way can make a big difference. So I'd like to make a couple of suggestions to you if you're interested in pursuing the topic. You could take this ancient expression, everything changes, nothing remains the same, and just paste it up around your life. You know, in the bathroom mirror and the refrigerator door and your calendar and dashboard of your car, etc. And also, periodically in the day, just as you breathe in and breathe out, everything changes, nothing remains the same.

[37:40]

And initially, don't just accept it as true. See if you can find some exceptions. because your confidence in the veracity of that statement will depend entirely on your own energy and effort to inquire about the soundness of the description. Begin by noticing the impermanent nature of your own body, your emotional states, your states of mind but also with the physical world around you. All the things I was suggesting to the children are very helpful, so that you don't move too quickly in on the hotter territory, if you will. For those of you who've had the experience of sitting with someone while they're dying, you know a lot about what it's like. For a lot of us, fear arises because our own mortality brings up what we don't know much about.

[38:50]

that's changing in our society. There are increasingly more and more of us who know firsthand about what the dying process is like. A lot of our fear arises because it's territory which is unknown, which is unfamiliar. Slowly, in time, then you can move more closely to a brief but regular focus on some meditation like, we all will die and we do not know when or how. That's a focus which I've done for a number of years with my husband whenever one or the other of us leaves the house. And what I found is that by reminding myself about, we all will die, each of us will die, we do not know when or how, is that I am less likely to put off telling him all the things I may want to tell him if I'm not going to see him again.

[40:02]

That I take care of unfinished business in a way that I didn't do in my first marriage. that I don't wait to enjoy the deep and dear connection that I feel with him. With my children, to not wait to tell them how I feel about them, to not continuously be so busy that I don't have time to spend with them in some settled and wholehearted way. to take care of a friend or an acquaintance because I may not see them again. The consequence of living in that way is joyful. stepping into that pool, if you will, takes encountering whatever is so for you around impermanence.

[41:12]

And there's no way around encountering your own reactions. So the initial expression of compassion will begin in your relationship with yourself, in the way you listen to what arises around impermanence. Now, of course, the mark of impermanence is not the only mark that's talked about in the Buddhist tradition, but it's the first one. It's the place to begin. And so much else in the Dharma falls into place, makes sense, when you've really thoroughly plumbed this particular teaching. Thank you very much. May our intentions equally penetrate every... Yes. Well, you know, in what sense can life not be killed?

[42:53]

Because in the ordinary phenomenal world we live in, life can be killed. Life can come to an end. There is such a thing as harming. But I also think that you have to be very careful about getting caught by too strict and narrow a view because our very lives depend upon killing. There is no way we can be alive without the killing of something. It may not be cows, it may be carrots, but there is killing. So, part of what you get to do is to express your gratitude to the life that is ended in order to feed me. I mean, you know, The munchers munch and are munched.

[43:57]

There's a chain of munching that's one way of describing the cycle of existence. If you just look at the natural world, there are predators as part of ecosystems. It's too simplistic to say, oh well, but the eucalyptus trees are alive so we shouldn't cut them down. You have to take into consideration all kinds of things that include a remarkable fire danger with eucalyptus trees, for example. What does it mean to just let everything kind of fight it out? For example, just at the level of how to take care of this watershed, there are some invasive exotics like forget-me-nots, which become a blanket It's such a vigorous plant and it makes such an enormous amount of seed that pretty soon you have a blanket of forget-me-nots that smothers and kills every other kind of small plant.

[45:06]

The same thing with something that's called Cape Ivy, which is choking all the alder trees down at the end of the valley. I mean, Killing and dying is part of the cycle of existence. How big is your frame? How big is your picture? I do think that from the standpoint of training the mind, in practicing to the best that we can, not intentionally harming, which is really, I think, the underlying understanding in that first precept, has a profound effect on your state of mind. I mean, I know that just being a gardener and the days when I'd go around trouncing on snails had a real effect on my state of mind. And the big factor in a lot of situations has to do with the amount of energy I'm willing to spend working with some difficulty like the snails munching, you know, whatever in the garden.

[46:21]

There are certain kinds of things I can do preventively to not attract snails short of, you know, mayhem in the snail world. Am I willing to make that extra effort? What's the effect on my state of mind and the state of mind of others in terms of how I understand that designation about a disciple of the Buddha does not intentionally harm?

[46:52]

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