"If
everything is impermanent why should do what we normally
do in our every day life?" was a question a friend of
ours who read my article on "That which is impermanent
is unsatisfactory" which appeared in Bhavana Newsletter
Vol. 10 Number 4 October - December 1994.
This, in
fact, is a very important question that every one of us
should ask. Why should we do what we do as everything is
impermanent? It is not the question of "If everything is
impermanent" but "as everything is impermanent, why do
we what we do?" is the question. Impermanence is an
eternal and universal law that nobody can defy.
Everything
here means our senses and their objects. When senses are
impermanent, it does not matter, in fact, what else is
permanent, for it is through the senses that we perceive
things and it is the through the senses that we are
attached to sensory objects. Also it is the senses where
craving arises and ceases. When we are attached to our
senses and sensory objects we do not think for a moment
both, senses and their objects, are impermanent. If we
do think that they are impermanent then we could use our
senses and their objects mindfully and don’t
get stuck with attachment to them. It is this attachment
to these impermanent senses and their objects that
brings unsatisfactoriness to our life. This does not
mean that we should not take care of our senses. We can
look after the senses without becoming attached to them
knowing that they are impermanent.
Knowledge of
truth that there is no place to run away from the
reality of impermanence we prepare to face and accept
it. We cannot run away from our body because every cell
in our body is impermanent and they die, as they must,
when are ready. If they do not die when they are
supposed to they turn into a grave problem of autoimmune
disorders (AIDS). They remain to be old cells hanging on
to their old habitats multiplying themselves and taking
the space of other living young and healthy cells. This
is what happens to cancerous cells, too. They occupy the
space of healthy cells in the body and doing nothing for
the well being of the body. They rather eat all other
healthy cells around them and spread all over the body
gradually. When time comes for change we must let go of
our old cligning and let the change take place. This is
a mature attitude in life. Try to be wiser as you change
and grow.
This
acceptence of change is very difficult for almost every
body because from the embryonic moment we are propelled
by our insatiable desire which is expressed through our
activities and movements which in turn create more
desire and energy to support and maintain our initial
desire. Every cell in our body is a very powerful power
house which convert all food into energy to support our
desire for more food. Desire is built in system within
our body and mind. You cannot live without it until you
become free from it. Desire cannot simply sit idly in
the mind and body without doing something. Desire must
create. It must generate other desires, other beings. It
must manufacture one thing or another all the time for
the desire to consude. Since you have energy of desire
you have to engage in doing things to satisfy your
senses. Some of these activities benefit you and your
fellow beings and your surrounding. Because of this
satisfaction you perpatuate your desire to become more
ambitious or visionary.
The primary
characteristic of desire is cling to one thing or
another, one person or another, one place or another,
one sight or another, one smell or another, one sound or
another, one touch or another, one idea or another, one
concept or a nother. The truth of impermanence never
seep into your wildest dream when you cling to
something. All you want is pleasure of clinging, joy of
clinging, sense of security of clinging. Clinging gives
you hope, trust, psychological strength. It brings you
artificial solace and artificial comfort which is made
up of the ingradiants of impermanence. Look at the way
how sperm and ovum join together to make an embryo.
Because of
the desire that very sperm of the man goes searching for
a woman’s
egg. No bio-chemist knows why sperms travel a most
difficult journey encountering countless problems and
dangers on the way searching for an female egg which is
85,000 times bigger than a sperm. Only one out of
released into woman’s
birth canal by a man in one orgasm does successfully
reach the egg waiting in the pelopian tube of the woman.
Woman’s
body’s
defense mechanism is fighting to reject all the foreign
bodies all the way. In this hostile environment only the
one, charged with desire and propelled by kamma, out of
two to five hundred millions sperms, manages to reach
the egg. As soon as the sperm reaches the egg, the egg
hugs and engulfs it very quickly and builds a wall
around it so that no other sperm cell can enter the same
egg to start another battle inside and to make things
complicated. By mere accident, however, if two sperm
enter the egg there will be twins of the same sex.
In this
operation man’s
desire, woman’s
desire and the desire and kamma encapsulated in the
rebirth consciousness of a being died somewhere create a
situation for the egg to fertilize. If any of the three
(mother’s
egg, father’s
sperm and rebirth consciousness) is absent the egg will
not be fertilized. If woman, who does not want to have a
baby, uses a contraceptive method or if the being to be
born does not have powerful kamma to be born as human
being the egg will not be fertilized. Behind all these
there also is another factor imperceptible to any
ordinary mind and that factor is ignorance of the truth
of impermanence.
However,
desire operates in a most concealing manner from
unicellular being to multi-cellular being. The newly
fertilized egg started with father’s
23 chromosomes and mother’s
23 chromosomes ends up, in nine months, with trillions
of cells. They continue to multiply till they end up in
100 trillion cells adulthood. All this began from
desire, one of the roots of the existence of life.
Desire is programmed into our DNA. It continues to exist
until we deprogram it with a very special method.
Every second
500 billions of hemoglobin are generated in our body
under the supervision of GNA. Every one of these 500,
billions hemoglobins is fully charged with desire to
live. Of course, at the same rate they pass away giving
room for new hemoglobins to step in. Along with their
stepping in, the desire to live also continues to flow
in our life. Every cell in our body is a miniature world
creating new desires to live. Every moment our mind also
generates desire for countless things. Because of this
unending generation of desire in the body and mind any
moment our senses come in contact with their sensory
fields desire steps in either to grasp something or to
reject something, both of which are the charateristics
of desire. When the mind does not like certain
experience it wishes to repel and replace it with a one
that it likes better. Sometimes the mind does not find a
replacement and yet it does not wish to keep the
unpleasant experience. If it finds a replacement it
grabs it very quickly just like ovum grasps the sperm.
If not it simply shrinks into depression or wthdraws
from everything.
Do you know
that millions of nurons in your brain die every moment?
Do you know that missions of blook cells die every
moment? Do you know .....( fill in with statistics of
dying parts in the body)
Because of
this desire we do not wish to think that anything we
enjoy or anything we possess is impermanent. We like to
think that all our enjoyments and our possessions are
permanent. When we see all our senses and sensory
experiences in the light of impermanence our minds can
let go of our resentment which operates in us like
cancer. Mind is ankered in bitterness because it cannot
see things in us and others change. Due to this
situation the mind likes to harp on the theme ill will
over and over again and continue to suffer.
The knowledge
of impermanence steps into this situation as a consoling
factor and advices us, "Don’t
worry, this unpleasant situation is as impermanent as
pleasant situation that you have just lost. Just wait.
Time will cure all wounds. This has happened to you in
the past and it will happen again. You remember all your
past experiences have changed. This is the nature of
things. Simply relax. Everything will be alright."
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