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RU-7-28-03

Impermanence – Denial of the Passing Moment

Today my subject is: Impermanence – Denial of the Passing Moment. Impermanence is something very important. It was not only Buddha’s personal experience. In our own daily lives it is very important. We don’t really notice impermanence. We like to deny it. As a consequence of that we get a big shock when something changes. Suddenly we realize that we are too old or that it is time to go. On top of that, our American culture in particular is avoiding to think about it. We create all kinds of entertainment so that we don’t have to think about it. We don’t really want to know what’s happening. We don’t want to acknowledge that change is taking place on the physical, emotional and mental level. Particularly, the physical and emotional changes we try to deny a lot. When you always deny change, then when it inevitably comes, we are in for a big surprise. Wouldn’t it be better to remind ourselves of the reality of impermanence, to have some awareness of it? It is absolutely up to everyone.

If thinking about impermanence doesn’t help, then indeed there is no point dwelling on it and giving ourselves additional worries and pains. We would be better off forgetting about all of that and when it is time to go, we just go. But from the spiritual point of view, from my background I have to say that it is definitely beneficial to think about impermanence now. I tell you why. I am coming from the background of reincarnation. To me, life doesn’t just end at the time of death. This particular life ends, but we don’t end. Nobody ends. I am not here to sell reincarnation to you, but at the same time, nobody can tell me not to believe in it. Actually, belief is not the right word. I have very solid reasons. Let’s assume for a moment there is reincarnation. Then who reincarnates? Me or somebody else, a stranger? If it is somebody else, it won’t make a difference to me. Millions of people are born every day. What do they have got to do with me? But if I myself am going to reincarnate, then I have to watch out. Will I be better off or worse? Will my future life be more comfortable or will it be miserable?

From that angle it becomes important to be able to prepare for my future as best as possible and impermanence is the trigger to remind myself that I have to do something. If you don’t think that there could be a future life, you may indeed be better off not thinking about impermanence. Our society is already built in such a way that we don’t want to see ageing and dying at all. We put on a lot of make-up, trying to hide the signs of old age. We are trying to fill in the cracks in our skin and make ourselves look better. In TV interviews they put powder on you, making you not look so old. Our society does that. But if you think about the future, every sign of impermanence will remind you that your time is getting shorter all the time and the future life is coming ever closer. Are you prepared for it? Under those aspects, denial is a disadvantage. It causes me to waste my time. This country is ideally suited for wasting time. It is not hard at all. You don’t have to do much. Just turn on your television and you get inundated with entertainment 24 hours of the day.

The traditional example is this: you sit at the sea shore and watch the waves. They never end. If you want to wait for the last wave to hit the shore you can wait until you die – or until the cows come home. Now we don’t need that example. We have TV. The programs are available for 24 hours, 7 days a week, although they are repeating themselves a lot. Our society is built in that way so that people don’t have to feel lonely or something. There is a big question whether spiritually that is good for us. Probably not. Forget about doing spiritual activities. Even in ordinary terms you could do a lot of work instead of watching television. When you sit down in your arm chair and turn on the TV you have no idea how much time goes by. It is so easy to waste time.

When Buddha was asked why it was such a big deal to think about impermanence he replied,

Which animal do you think will leave the biggest foot print in the mud? It is the elephant. He has the biggest and best foot print. Likewise, impermanence is the strongest and best mental imprint we can have.

The simple reason is that it cuts down the denial. Denial is always bad. You may deny something all you want but it is still happening to you. You may not want to think about getting old but you are anyway. Then one day you will have a big surprise.

Some years ago I went to Beijing with my brother and we took a taxi through the city. My brother speaks Chinese and the taxi driver was saying something to him. I asked him what he had said, and my brother translated, ‘He said that it is good to show certain areas to this old man.’ He was referring to me. That was a shock for me. It was 10 years ago and I was 53 years old then. The reality is it is the truth, whether you like it or not. You may do surgery and lift your face or try anything, but the fact that you are getting older doesn’t change. It doesn’t help.

On the other hand I think it is much wiser to start packing the things I am going to need in my future life now. I am the only one who can carry them. What can you carry into your future life? One thing I know is that you cannot carry your future life insurance policy. It doesn’t work there. Most probably the lawyers will get it. We virtually carry nothing. At the time when we go we have to leave everything. I am not just giving you bad news. It is true reality. We all know it. But we don’t want to think about it. There is this Tibetan saying:

At death the king will leave his estate behind and the beggar will leave his begging bowl behind.

You may be a great king or a beggar in the street. At death everything is left behind. We leave not only our possessions but also our spouses, children, families. No matter how much they love you, they may be surrounding your body that is lying on the death bed, they may be holding your hands and begging you not to go, but not a single one of them can go with you. You have to go alone and the only think you carry with you are the imprints of your deeds in this life, good and bad. Nothing else. Everything else is forgotten. You won’t remember anything. Even before death our memory goes. In the end we cannot even remember our own name, forget about the names of friends and family. Why? It is simple and straight forward.

At the time of death all the gross parts of our mind are dissolving. Dissolving is actually too nice a word. In reality they are just erased, cancelled, by another mental faculty, called forgetfulness. It is true. When we go to visit a friend who is dying, our friends and even the doctors always ask, ‘Did he recognize you? Did he remember your name?’ With that we are checking how much their gross mind is still working. Even when the gross mind no longer works, the subtle mind is continuously active. Gross minds come and go. Even today many of our earlier gross minds have gone. We don’t recognize people any more that we have known earlier in life. They might have changed or we don’t think about them any more. You may see a familiar face but then you struggle to remember where you know them from. Sometimes you remember, but sometimes you don’t. Then it is awkward. We have to go to them and say, ‘Sorry, I know you from somewhere, but I forgot your name?’ This is how gross minds give up. In Buddhist terminology it is called ‘Dissolving’. Actually, they are just forgotten.

In the end it is only a very, very subtle mind that goes with us, accompanied by a very subtle energy. It is almost not even a mind, but just a continuation of mind. When I use the word ‘continuum’ I hope you understand that I mean that to be even subtler than mind itself. Mind itself is intangible, without color and shape, but this continuum is even subtler than that. When this continuation of mind goes from one life to another, the only thing it carries are the imprints of the deeds in this life. In that way, good things we have done for ourselves and others are never wasted. Likewise, when we have done something bad, then even if the police or the law has not caught us, the imprints of that deed continues. We will sooner or later face the consequences of every action, if not in this life then in the next.

For that reason it is extremely important to remember impermanence. To show that, when Buddha died, the last words he said to his followers were about impermanence. He took off his clothes and told the disciples,

Look at the body of a Buddha. It is very rare to see. This is your last opportunity. It is time for Buddha to pass away.

That is how Buddha went. He chose impermanence as his last words purposely, because to remember impermanence makes a hell of a difference to our life. Otherwise we will waste tremendous amounts of time with all the wonderful entertainments our networks provide for us. For me it is CNN. It gives you mixed emotions to hear that the difficult situation in Iraq is still continuing. On the one hand I don’t even want to hear it any more, but on the other hand I want to find out whether more people have been killed there again. That is how the networks play with our emotions. Some people have no interest in politics, but for them there are nice movies and plays. In any case they play with our emotions and get us caught in them. As a consequence we waste our precious time.

Our time here is precious because this is the time when we can make a difference to ourselves. Instead of just watching CNN for an hour, if we meditated on compassion or on wisdom, how much impact would that have? You could probably pack up two whole suitcases to take with you to your future life. Instead of that, if you end up watching Larry King, he will say ‘Good Night’ after an hour and that’s the end of it. The time which we don’t have enough of will be gone. It is especially tragic at this time because our capacity, our understanding, our value as a good human being is unique. But that capacity is also impermanent. We all know that it is impermanent. We like to deny, but the reality is that we are constantly getting older. We may be continuing to think that we are 25 years old, and then when somebody is telling us that we are and old man or woman, we will be shocked. It happens to all of us. To get old is normal, there is nothing wrong with that. But what matters is: are you prepared when it is time to go? When suddenly your time is up, it won’t do to ask, ’ Hey, I am not prepared. Can you wait five minutes?’ There is no extension then. It is important to remember this while our situation is still in our own hands. We can make a difference to ourselves now. No one else can. That is the value that only our life has. Dogs cannot do that. Cats, parrots and so on can’t. Even the aliens cannot. Only humans can. We have this wonderful mind, we can understand and we can communicate the understanding to others and first to ourselves. That is the most important. No one is greater than us in the ability to communicate the truth to ourselves. We may not use the term ‘communication’. We may prefer to say that we can educate ourselves, but the reality is that we are communicating knowledge to ourselves. Spiritual development in that sense is communication. We have that capacity. Other life forms don’t. If we waste that it is a tremendous waste.

There is an example in the old Buddhist teachings. There was a poor man who found a sack full of gold dust. He carried the bag on his back and told everybody that he had found gold. He was very proud. He didn’t know, however, that the bag had a hole and from that hole the gold dust was dripping out continuously. By the time he realized this it was too late. The bag was empty. So even though he found a whole bag of gold it became useless to him. Likewise, we have a wonderful life with all the opportunities of communication of knowledge to ourselves and others. It is the life where we can make a difference, unlike the thousands of others lives we have taken. Especially, at a time like today the opportunities are more than ever. Traditionally, our time is supposed to be the kali yuga, the degenerate age. However, right here and now we have the best opportunities ever. We can have everything, materially and spiritually. It is all here. It is just a matter of looking it up in the yellow pages, eastern, western, Tibetan, Japanese, South-East Asian, Hindus. It is a great opportunity waiting for us. If we don’t take it that is our own fault.

This life has the opportunity not only of picking up whatever information we want but also to make the changes that we need to make to free ourselves. To me dharma, or spiritual development means nothing more than change. People don’t like change. They may deny it, but they like to keep the status quo. Dharma is change, from our usual negative addictions to positive addictions. I am using this term purposely. For example, if we are addicted to getting angry we can change that and get addicted to compassion. If we are addicted to jealousy, try to change that to love. If you are addicted to stinginess, change it to generosity. These changes make our life better. The best of all changes is to change ignorance into wisdom. That is what every spiritual path is looking for.

Don’t think that wisdom is something outside somewhere that you can get. Wisdom is already within ourselves. As a matter of fact it is only a matter of acknowledging that and picking it up. It is important to know how you pick it up. You can’t just leave the information in the books. I have a lot of Tibetan books in Michigan. My basement is completely filled up with Tibetan books. There must be a thousand volumes. But if I don’t know how to use them, they are no more than museum pieces. The Tibetan books look nice, wrapped in brocades with beautiful labels in front. If you just look at them it is the same as going to a museum. And then, even if you can read, but if you don’t get it, it is no use. The wisdom is not in the books. That is why I said you can forget about trying to get wisdom from somewhere outside of yourself. It is within us. Take impermanence. I see impermanence everywhere. The hourglass in Day of our Lives shows me impermanence. Any movie that I see shows me impermanence by it fast changing nature. There is change from positive to negative, from negative to positive. To see that is wisdom. Look at the melodrama of people’s lives. You see changes everywhere. That is where wisdom comes in. To change ignorance into wisdom is nothing new to us. It is like looking at art with a trained eye. People who can do that see more than untrained people. That is what wisdom is about. Wisdom is not something that somebody is keeping separately and may or may not give to you, you are wrong. It is yours and you have to take it, particularly the spiritual wisdom. No one is keeping it from us, not God, not Buddha, not anyone else. It is there for us, just somehow we couldn’t get it, because we have not made the necessary changes.

Wisdom is also not something that you can hit yourself with on your head and all of a sudden you have it. It doesn’t work that way. It is a gradual process. It is not instant enlightenment. We all that this is a myth, but we still hope and pray and hang on to the idea that suddenly something will happen to us and we are enlightened. If you think you have got enlightened instantly, it is a sign that you have gone crazy. People do that. They exaggerate some experience they had and think they are enlightened now. They come out and say, ‘I am this, I am that.’ This only shows that they have gone crazy. Actually there is something called Crazy Wisdom in Buddhism but that doesn’t go like that. Even that comes about through a gradual process.

Spiritual development is change, change within the individual. What is changing? My attitude, my way of thinking, my way of functioning. Changing from negative into positive is my spiritual development. You don’t go somewhere and get development.

To conclude, because of all these reasons to pay attention to impermanence is extremely important. In any case, it is the reality. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it is there. We can’t stop it. If we could, we all would. The question is whether we deny it or whether we acknowledge it and make use of it. The gross level of impermanence is death. And that is always around us. You listen to the news and there is death always in your face. Up to today over 50 Americans have died in Iraq since our president declared the war to be over. On top of that we hear about murders and deadly accidents all the time. But we never think that it could happen to us. You have to think that the soldier who was ambushed in Bagdhad today could have been your son. If you think that way it comes closer and you get a different message. To think that it has been an American is already closer to us than if it was an Iraqi. Now think it could be your own son. It makes a big difference. Likewise, when people have died in a plane crash or car crash, think that it could have been you. You will be glad that it wasn’t you. When I think about that I ask myself, ‘If that had been me, where would I be now and how would I support myself?’ I have been trained to think like that since childhood. You have to go that far and then you will get certain feelings, either anxiety or joy. That is how you can judge your spiritual situation.

I had a friend in the Netherlands. She was a medical doctor and she developed a terrible cancer. She only found out when it was in the late stages. They couldn’t operate. They opened her up looked inside and closed her back up. There was nothing they could do. She got a prognosis of maximum two months. But she did the Tara healing practice and lived five more years with a reasonable quality of life. She could travel and go everywhere and look after herself. At one point she went through a serious crisis where she fainted and nearly died. She told me afterwards, ‘While I was close to death I couldn’t think about anything else except my refuge.’ She thought that was not good enough, but actually it is great.

So think about impermanence. It will be very beneficial to you.

Thank you.

Audience: Can bad karma cancel out good karma that we already have?

Rimpoche: Yes. Particularly hatred does cancel tremendous amounts of good karma. It is like a forest fire that burns everything. Virtue is the fuel that hatred uses to burn. Buddha and all the great masters have said that. It must be true because all the other things they said about hatred you can verify with yourself. They are definitely true. Hatred makes our life miserable. We lose even the rare good feelings we get once in a blue moon in a matter of seconds. Logically speaking, if the smaller, visible consequences of hatred that Buddha talked about are true, the subtler, larger consequences must be true as well. According to Buddha there is a way to prevent our positive karma being burnt up by hatred and that is by dedicating it. We dedicate our positive deeds to the happiness of all beings. We target them, in order to materialize that wish. Once we have done that, it can’t get burnt by anger. Karma is definite. Once it is completed, you cannot change it. The example is this: If you grow a fruit tree, what do you get from that tree? Just fruit, nothing else, no matter how many jalapeno pepper plants you grow next to it. The taste of the fruit is not influenced by the peppers growing next to it. Likewise, once dedicated, positive karma can’t be lost, even if hatred occurs. That is the insurance you can give yourself.

Therefore, Buddha taught that the beginning and the end of any activity are very important. The beginning is the motivation, and the end is the dedication. The beginning practices like praying and meditating, will guide your actions in the right direction and the dedication at the end will safeguard them.

Audience: After studying several religions I am thinking that all of them have a central them, and that is love. Now, in Buddhism you talk about the imprints of karma that we are carrying with us. The Christian tradition on the other hand tells us that we can repent and our sins become whiter than snow. No imprints are left.

Rimpoche: While I know almost nothing about Christianity, it seems to be to me just a question of terminology. In Christianity you talk about forgiveness, in Buddhism we call it purification. In Christianity everything is centered around what God does or doesn’t do. In Buddhism is it all about what you as an individual do or don’t do. The responsibility is with you. Therefore, if you are focused on God, you are seeking his forgiveness, if you are focused on yourself, you purify yourself. At the end of the day it is the same thing. We are trying to make the individual pure. The point is to make the sins whiter than snow, like you said. It is just terminology. All traditions are working towards the same point, and that is to help the individual and by extension to help everybody. You may call it love or help. I have no disagreement with that.

What I disagree on is that some traditions deny that there is anything bad. Ram Das for example doesn’t accept that there is bad. That is too extreme. Others say that everything we do is bad and we are going to get punished. The truth, as always is in the middle. There is definitely both, good and bad within us. And most traditions are working on increasing the good and getting rid of the bad.

Thank you very much.