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seems to be exactly what the Buddha meant when he spoke of the basic
shakiness of our sense of subjectivity in the famous doctrine of anatta,
or nonself. Though we all need healthy egos to operate normally in the
world, the essential grounding of ego is the false notion of permanence,
a notion that we unthinkingly subscribe to, even though, deep in our
hearts, we know it’s untrue. I am me, I have been me, I will be me. I
can change, and I want to change, but I am always here, always me, and
have never known any other experience. But this ignores the reality that
“all conditioned things have the nature of vanishing,” and are
vanishing constantly, as a condition of their existing in time, whose
nature is vanishing. No
wonder we feel, as my friend felt, a constant nagging sense of
dissatisfaction and disjunction that we might well interpret as coming
from a chronic personal failing (that is, once we’d gotten over the even
more faulty belief that others were responsible for it). On the other
hand, “all are is
Buddha Nature.” This means that the self is not, as we imagine, an
improvable permanent isolated entity we and we alone are responsible
for; instead it is impermanence itself, which is never alone, never
isolated, constantly flowing, and immense: Buddha Nature itself. Dogen
writes “Impermanence itself is Buddha Nature.” And adds, “Permanence is
the mind that discriminates the wholesomeness and unwholesomeness of
all things.” Permanence!? Impermanence seems to be (as Dogen himself
writes elsewhere) an “unshakable teaching” in buddhadharma. How does
“permanence” manage to worm its way into Dogen’s discourse? I
come back to my dream of being stuck in the doorway between life and
death with my mother-in-law: which side is which, and who is going
where? Impermanence and permanence may simply be balancing
concepts—words, feelings, and thoughts that support one another in
helping us grope toward an understanding (and a misunderstanding) of our
lives. For Dogen, “permanence” is practice: having the wisdom and the
commitment to see the difference between what we commit ourselves to
pursuing in this human lifetime, and what we commit ourselves to letting
go of. The good news in “impermanence is Buddha Nature” is that we can
finally let ourselves off the hook: we can let go of the great and
endless chore of improving ourselves, of being stellar accomplished
people, inwardly or in our external lives. This is no small thing,
because we are all subject to this kind of brutal inner pressure to be
and do more today than we have been and done yesterday—and more than
someone else has been and done today and tomorrow. On
the other hand, the bad news in “impermanence is Buddha Nature” is that
it’s so big there isn’t much we can do with it. It can’t be enough
simply to repeat the phrase to ourselves. And if we are not striving to
accomplish the Great Awakening, the Ultimate Improvement, what would we
do, and why would we do it? Dogen asserts a way and a motivation. If
impermanence is the worm at the heart of the apple of self, making
suffering a built-in factor of human life, then permanence is the petal
emerging from the sepal of the flower of impermanence. It makes
happiness possible. Impermanence is permanent,
the ongoing process of living and dying and time. Permanence is
nirvana, bliss, cessation, relief—the never-ending, everchanging, and
growing field of practice. In
the Buddha’s final scene as told in the sutra, the contrast between the
monastics who tore their hair, raised their arms, and threw themselves
down in their grief, and those who received the Buddha’s passing with
equanimity couldn’t be greater. The sutra seems to imply disapproval of
the former and approval of the latter. Or perhaps the approval and
disapproval are in our reading. For if impermanence is permanence is
Buddha Nature, then loss is loss is also happiness, and both sets of
monastics are to be approved. Impermanence is not only to be overcome
and conquered. It is also to be lived and appreciated, because it
reflects the all are side
of our human nature. The weeping and wailing monastics were expressing
not only their attachment; they were also expressing their immersion in
this human life, and their love for someone they revered. I
have experienced this more than once at times of great loss. While I
may not tear my hair and throw myself down in my grieving, I have
experienced extreme sadness and loss, feeling the whole world weeping
and dark with the fresh absence of someone I love. At the same time I
have felt some appreciation and equanimity, because loss, searing as it
can be, is also beautiful, sad and beautiful. My tears, my sadness, are
beautiful because they are the consequence of love, and my grieving
makes me love the world and life all the more. Every loss I have ever
experienced, every personal and emotional teaching of impermanence that
life has been kind enough to offer me, has deepened my ability to love. The
happiness that spiritual practice promises is not endless bliss,
endless joy, and soaring transcendence. Who would want that in a world
in which there is so much injustice, so much tragedy, so much
unhappiness, illness, and death? To feel the scourge of impermanence and
loss and to appreciate it at the same time profoundly as the beautiful
essence of what it means to be at all—this is the deep truth I hear
reverberating in the Buddha’s last words. Everything vanishes. Practice
goes on.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a Buddhist teacher, writer, and poet. He is the founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation, whose mission is to open and broaden Zen practice through “engaged renunciation.”
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