Everything changes. Fair enough. Intellectually we can acknowledge that. We see old picture of ourselves and we see how much older we look. Relationships change, addresses change, jobs change, and maybe we like those changes, and some we don’t. Clinging to the past only leads to suffering, much like when it’s raining and we want to make the weather great again. Change is the nature of all phenomena, and is the result of our action (or inaction)—that is, karma.
Sometimes the change we wish for may turn out not to be to our liking, such as when the rainy day turns into a hurricane or the string of sunny days leads to a drought. But EVERYTHING is always changing, whether we notice or not, with every breath, with every cloud in the sky, like a great cosmic lava lamp. Every change that comes results in the universe changing, even if we don’t notice.
Just as we intuitively know that we can’t stop that wax from melting and changing form (and that we’d get burnt if we tried), we deny that about other things, still thinking we can still mold things to our liking. So, we can think our way into suffering by wanting to grasp the wax, we can passively accept that change is indeed inevitable, so we just let it, regardless of whether the outcome is beneficial, or we can accept change and try to do what we can so that the result may be to the benefit of all beings.
“So is all conditioned existence to be seen.”
Thus spoke Buddha.
Haengdal Citta gave the Dharma talk about his go-to teaching, the Diamond Sutra.
