Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha. An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book - [13]

IMPERMANENCE

All things are impermane

nt . This is one of the most

fundamental teachings of the Buddha and the second to last sentence he uttered before he died: “All phenomena are impermanent! Work out your salvation with diligence!” In his last words, he said everything you

The Three Characteristics

need to know to do insight practices. Things come and go. Nothing lasts for even an instant! Absolute transience is truly the fundamental nature of experiential reality.

What do I mean by “experiential reality?” I mean the universe of sensations that you actually experience. There are many gold standards for reality. However, when doing insight practices, the only useful gold standard for reality is your own sensate experience. From the conventional point of view, things are usually thought to be there even when you can no longer experience them, and are thus assumed with only circumstantial evidence to be somewhat stable entities.

Predictability is used to assume continuity of existence. For our day-today lives, this assumption is adequate and often very useful.

For example, you could close your eyes, put down this book, and then pick it up again where you left it without opening your eyes. From a pragmatic point of view, this book was where you left it even when you were not experiencing it in any way. However, when doing insight practices, it just happens to be much more useful to assume that things are only there when you experience them and not there when you don’t. Thus, the gold standard for reality when doing insight practices is the sensations that make up your reality in that instant. Sensations not there at that time do not exist, and thus only the sensations arising in that instant do exist. In short, the vast majority of what you usually think of as making up your universe doesn’t exist the vast majority of the time, from a pure sensate point of view. This is exactly, precisely and specifically the point. Knowing this directly leads to freedom.

It is wise to reflect on death and all of that, for it is useful and true.

This is a reflection on ordinary reality and thus an aspect of training in morality that is commonly used to develop motivation to train in insight.

Far better to see one sensation arise and pass away. What do I mean by this? I mean that sensations arise out of nothing, do their thing, and vanish utterly. Gone. Utterly gone. Then the next sensation arises, does its thing, and disappears completely. “That's the stuff of modern physics,” one might say. “What does that have to do with practice?”

It has everything to do with practice! We can experience this, because the first set of vibrations we have access to isn't actually that fast.

Vibrations. That's right, vibrations. That's what this first characteristic 17

The Three Characteristics

means: that reality vibrates, pulses, appears as discrete particles, is like TV snow, the frames of a movie, a shower of vanishing flower petals, or however you want to say it. Some people can get all into complex wave or particle models here, but don't. Just look into your actual experience, especially something nice and physical like the motion and sensations of the breath in the abdomen, the sensations of the tips of the fingers, the lips, the bridge of the nose, or whatever. Instant by instant try to know when the actual physical sensations are there and when they aren't. It turns out they aren't there a good bit of the time, and even when they are there, they are changing constantly.

We are typically quite sloppy about what are physical sensations and what are mental sensations (memories, mental images, and mental impressions of other sensations). These two kinds of sensations actually oscillate back and forth, a back and forth interplay, one arising and passing and then the other arising and passing, in a somewhat quick but quite penetrable fashion. Being clear about exactly when the physical sensations are there will begin to clarify their slippery counterpart that helps create the illusion of continuity or solidity: flickering mental impressions.

Coming directly after a physical sensation arises and passes is a separate pulse of reality that is the mental knowing of that physical sensation, here referred to as “consciousness” (as contrasted with

“awareness” in Part III). By physical sensations I mean the five senses of touch, taste, hearing, seeing, and smelling. This is the way the mind operates on phenomena that are no longer there, even thoughts, intentions and mental images.

Since I just used this dangerous phrase “the mind,” I should quickly mention that it cannot be found. I’m certainly not talking about the brain, which we have never experienced, as the standard for insight practices is what we can directly experience. As an old Zen monk once said to us in his extremely thick Japanese accent, “Some people say there is mind. I say there is no mind, but never mind. Heh, heh, heh!”

However, I will use this dangerous phrase “the mind” often, or even worse “our mind,” but think to yourself when you read it, “He’s just using conventional language, but really there are just utterly transient mental sensations. Truly, there is no stable entity called ‘the mind’