Three characteristics of existence
May. 1st, 2025 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mickiThree characteristics of existence
This chapter talks about the three truths of our existence: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. Even though they accurately described the rock bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It's easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there's nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful.
“Impermanence is the goodness of reality. Just as The Four Seasons are in continual flux, winter changing to spring to summer to autumn; Just as day becomes night, light becoming dark becoming light again- in the same way, everything is constantly evolving. In permanence is the essence of everything. It is babies becoming children, then teenagers, then adults, then old people, and somewhere along the way dropping dead. Impermanence is meeting and parting. It's falling in love and falling out of love. Impermanence is a bittersweet, like buying a new shirt and years later finding it as part of a patchwork quilt.
“People have respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; In fact we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We tried to resist it by making things that will last- forever we say- things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things....
“But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn't that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one sided, lopsided view of reality. Whoever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It's promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; They are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; Pleasure is not a reward.”
This chapter talks about the three truths of our existence: impermanence, suffering, and egolessness. Even though they accurately described the rock bottom qualities of our existence, these words sound threatening. It's easy to get the idea that there is something wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness, which is like thinking that there is something wrong with our fundamental situation. But there's nothing wrong with impermanence, suffering, and egolessness; they can be celebrated. Our fundamental situation is joyful.
“Impermanence is the goodness of reality. Just as The Four Seasons are in continual flux, winter changing to spring to summer to autumn; Just as day becomes night, light becoming dark becoming light again- in the same way, everything is constantly evolving. In permanence is the essence of everything. It is babies becoming children, then teenagers, then adults, then old people, and somewhere along the way dropping dead. Impermanence is meeting and parting. It's falling in love and falling out of love. Impermanence is a bittersweet, like buying a new shirt and years later finding it as part of a patchwork quilt.
“People have respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; In fact we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We tried to resist it by making things that will last- forever we say- things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things....
“But what about suffering? Why would we celebrate suffering? Doesn't that sound masochistic? Our suffering is based so much on our fear of impermanence. Our pain is so rooted in our one sided, lopsided view of reality. Whoever got the idea that we could have pleasure without pain? It's promoted rather widely in this world, and we buy it. But pain and pleasure go together; They are inseparable. They can be celebrated. They are ordinary. Birth is painful and delightful. Death is painful and delightful. Everything that ends is also the beginning of something else. Pain is not a punishment; Pleasure is not a reward.”
