In praise of impermanence

As my American friends ask me how I remain happy all the time, even though I sleep just 2-3 hours in a 24-hour cycle, and am always multi-tasking, I simply respond; "Well, thanks to my simple, humble experiential  knowledge in the Buddha's teaching of impermanence." 

An American spiritual friend of mine in Clearwater, Florida, asked me last week to blog this simple insight that he finds profound. He said he'd suggest this, as he finds it intriguing to see Buddhists in general, who see impermanence, must be sorrowful, as most outsiders generally think, but are in fact happier in the world. 

Yes, I'm happy, I really am always, no matter what. I personally prefer the term, 'perpetual change' to the traditional term, 'impermanence.' If I react to the negative remarks, insults, destructive criticisms, baseless allegations, and much more negative things, which the world levels against me, I won't have a moment to be happy in life. This is how I'm happy.

Following the Buddha's advice, instead of struggling to see the beginning and end of samsara, or cycle of re-becoming, suffering, or birth & death, I reduce the length of samsara within the boundaries of daily life. Life is an incessant flow of moments, and within the duration of daily life, it is a samsara of incalculability, hence life for a day itself being a beginningless and endless samsara. Now that I know that I gotta deal with this kind of more-sense-making samsara, I'd strive to see an Upananda (=myself) in different moments I experience within my 'I-am-ness' (self). Within each moment, I see a different I that is gone by the time I experience another I the next moment, and so on so forth. In the backdrop of my 'conventionally fixed' self-identity, I really don't have a fixed self-identity in the eyes of perpetual change. I don't rush to disclose it, as most don't get it. Am I scared, as I don't have a fixed self-identity? Absolutely not. Why? Because there is no such thing called fixed, permanent self-identity. I feel light, as I very often have a big burden of self-identity off my head. I only run through an incalculable chain of picture-frames of self-identity. In meditation I'd see that between the picture-frames there's an absence, which I don't see all the time, as the moment is much faster than a nanosecond. Upananda has a long way to go to outrun the moment's speed, and I'm not worried about my speed either. This is daily life dassana (perspective). I'm not worried that I haven't experienced any degree of enlightenment. 

Buddha's Dharma is just a theory to me, as long as I don't experience it in daily life.

Thank you Buddha for your lesson on samsara to me.  Thank you my Clearwater friend for asking me to blog this. 

By the way, I firmly safeguard my US and Canadian ID documents, as the loss or theft of them would bring me a disaster, since when asked I just can't present myself as proof of my ID.

I expire every moment. So does my ID, hua ha hah hah. Self-identity is a perspective (dassana).

Enlightenment/Nirvana has no hub. It's not a destination either. 

"Let no moment escape you." - Buddha

By Upananda Thero Dedunupitiye

(Picture: by courtesy of http://www.kerismith.com/blog)