The paradox of awareness, impermanence and letting go

Based on the earlier meditation, we examine the importance of reflection on and mindfulness of, impermanence, both gross impermanence and moment-to-moment impermanence; why it's difficult to be deeply aware of impermanence; practices to explore impermanence; and deeper understandings opened up by practices with impermanence.

1. Wise Friends 2. Celebrating Basic Integrity 3. Hearing the Dharma 4. Wise Effort 5. Harmony with Impermanence

This talk by Shaila Catherine is the first in the speaker series "Doorways to Insight." Shaila Catherine describes the importance that is placed on recognizing and contemplating impermanence. This is one of the three main characteristics that we observe in insight meditation practices. We see and know that things change. Everything is changing—thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions, sensations, tastes, and emotions. But when we don't see the impermanence of things, we tend to grasp and cling to them. We tend to want to make them to last, and thereby we identify and become attached. As a result of attachment, we suffer, because they are changing anyway. Can we see beyond things that change, and realize what might be called changeless or deathless, to awaken with insight, to realize nibbana?

This talk offers some ways of reflecting on impermanence and also touches on the importance of perceiving it directly.

The infinite multi-eon range view and moment to moment view of impermanence

We explore how the ordinary experience of dukkha becomes dukkha ñāṇa, understanding of the universal characteristic (samañña lakkhaṇa) of dukkha. We look at the how the perception of impermanence (anicca-saññā) creates anxiety when the heart intuits the groundless of experience, and how the unfolding of this anxiety is mapped by the dukkha ñāṇas of classical Theravāda Buddhism. Finally, we see how the experience of dukkha gives way to that of not-self (anattā), when the heart stabilises through the maturity of mindfulness (sati) and equanimity (upekkhā).

We look at the first three sentences of the chorus of Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, where the Buddha explains the arising of insight (vipassanā). We examine “tracking body as body internally and externally,” where the assumed boundary between self and other begins to dissolve. Then we look at how the practitioner opens into the perception of impermanence – “tracking the nature of arising and ceasing as body.” Finally, we examine the entry into emptiness, where the practitioner is mindful that “body is,” for understanding (ñāṇa) and continuous mindfulness (paṭisati).