Impermanence, Impermanence, Impermanence

I don't automatically think impermanence makes pleasure somehow not important. I easily accept that impermanence is true, but that you can't aim for pleasure, I guess you go the middle way, and don't desperately go for pleasure. A hedonist will know all too well how impermanent pleasure is. 

It's OK to enjoy the pleasures of meditation. I can never really be part of a Buddhism that bans music and other enjoyments because somehow seeking pleasure is bad. I do know that when you move towards the middle from asceticism it's a different experience than moving to the middle from hedonism. Kiss the joys as they pass by, is the oft quoted Blake sentiment.

The Triratna culture isn't to talk a lot about impermanence, and some people can become obsessed by it in weird ways. The phrase grabbing the firebrand by the wrong end is used a lot in the TBC when I was hanging around and listening to it. Who knows what has happened in the past 10 years. Even the TBC is impermanent. I read someone on Reddit who didn't even think the cult was Buddhism, but I'm pretty sure it's Buddhist, and while intense movements will have cultish aspects, when some grab the firebrand by the wrong end, I think it's a valid new movement. NKT is also branded for it's newness, as though being a new movement is a bad thing. Time will tell. With Buddhism being more than 2500 years old, there's bound to be some need to update, and there will be flash in the pan sects. In the end, there is a lot of latitude for the insights of Buddhism, the Dharma, to be integrated into different cultures, and to be developed along different lines. IMS is a fascinating movement, creating a lay movement among the Theravada is kind of interesting. The criticism is that it's not much of a sangha, it's more of a teaching vehicle doesn't mean you can't find or create sangha there.

Speaking of impermanence, Beck's Odelay is 25 and Joni Mitchell's Blue is 50. It's hard not to see the transience of pop culture, but I think both of these albums are great, and Blue and Odelay will hopefully live a long time. That later generations are appreciating Blue and Odelay is wonderful. I'm not comparing the two albums, Blue is I think transcendent, and Odelay is a really catchy album rooted in art. 

Anicca is one of the marks of existence. We are always disappointed when good times end (dukkha), and of course this also applies to the self (anatta), it's not impermanent. Giving up "soul" has been hard for me, it's a great metaphor for being deeper, beyond superficiality. 

Hereclitus is famous for saying you can't step into the same river twice. It is this reaction that gets Plato to create his impermanent forms, that reality takes part in.

My mother was lamenting that a friend had severe arthritis and she had to do all the cooking on a vacation she and my pop took with another couple. I think it's a gift when you let others take care of you, and we're only all temporary abled. I'm sure my mother has lost a lot of friends in her life, I know I've lost friends. 

I think every day about my friend Scott Hamilton. (His scholarship fund) My uncle Charles Thanhauser passed away this time of year, years ago now. My grandparents have been a huge loss to me because I used to spend my summers with them. I got to know them as an adult, but I still feel like I was a knucklehead. The difference in ages is a sort of time travel. 

Grief and loss are everywhere, find a house that isn't touched by loss. That's the mustard seed story. 

I think about relationships with people I never see any more, the relationship is dead. Maybe I'll see the person. When I studied special education, I volunteered in the hunter learning lab. One of the teachers downplayed goodbyes, but the professor leading it said not to do that. Denial of ending relationships doesn't give a person a chance to really mourn the loss with the person. We get uncomfortable. How many times have I chosen not to say goodbye?

And then a relationship ended a long time ago, yet I find the tendrils of clinging. I finished up the last of her hemp hearts. She's going camping with my daughter, and I feel something about them going without me? I have no right to invite myself on the trip. So what if camping was our thing. That is over now. And yet the tendrils of clinging teach me of another opportunity to let go. Letting go turns out to be quite a skill.

My health and beauty fade. My grandfather wouldn't stop talking about death, it was quite annoying. One of my grandmothers thought she would be an angel with wings, and I hope that is true, I hope she believed that enough to get comfort from the idea. My daughter graduated from preschool, and it signals that I'm that much closer to my end. Everything is a signal of our own end. Death isn't talked a lot about in our society, as though pretending it's not there helps us to reconcile with the impermanence of our very own life. The Denial of Death is a root text for me. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. While it's not a Dharma book, it's more about the psychology of Otto Rank, it opens up into the modern culture about impermanence of life, in the fairly current social context. 

You really don't need to read books to be a Buddhist, but I think in America at least, it opens a rich vein of thought that is being well mined. I like to read, and they joke about how you can just incorporate Buddhism into your language and not really even change. I think that's true of all spiritual traditions. The bit of really trying to become more, is too much really. And it also needs to be alongside acceptance, in the dialectic of personal development. 

Doing it instead of talking about it, might be a critique of this blog. I don't care, I use the blog as a kind of public journal about my journey, it's quite easy just to not read it if you don't like it. People who complain about certain books or websites or TV shows--I don't get commenting on it, just ignore it. Not for you. Some day this blog will be taken down. The internet thrives on a lot of illusion hype, like that it's permanent or true or democratic or free. It's not free.

So practice while you can. I'm going to go meditate. May you all be happy, may you all be well.