Ayya Santussika: The Never Ending, Constant, Kaleidoscope of Change

So today, I think I want to talk about impermanence. One thing that's impermanent is the fact that we weren't expecting to be at the Meditation Center today. We were expecting to be at the Hermitage. We were taking this time to be on retreat as a community, but it hasn't been possible to really have retreat. And I won't go into the details of that, but the reason we're here at the Meditation Center is because around 6 a.m. or so, the internet went out at the Hermitage, so I wouldn't have been able to do the program. Went through all the rigmarole of talking to the internet provider and doing the troubleshooting, and nothing worked. So we had enough time to get here to meet with you all. Which is really so delightful. So impermanence. So those who are local, we said, oh, we're not going to have an in-person meeting today. Sorry. Here we are anyway. But I've been reflecting on impermanence for other reasons as well. A couple of our community members right now have been in the midst of losing people in their close family life. And it's such a potent heavenly messenger to have to say goodbye, to let go of those we love. So when we practice with this polyphrase, sabbe sankara nicha, all sabbe all sankara, all conditioned things, all concocted or formed things are impermanent. It really can be seen on so many levels. You just think about how everything changes. Simple things. You clean the kitchen. And of course, if you use it again, it's going to get dirty. But even if you don't use it, even if you leave for vacation or something and then you come back, there's still dust and spiders and whatnot. Nothing stays the same. It doesn't stay as you leave it. You make some food. You can make some delicious food. And if you eat it, obviously it changes a lot. But even if you don't eat it, it's going to change. It's going to decay, spoil. Our life is so full of trying to deal with change. And our coping mechanisms are so well developed in many ways to try to deal with change, to rise above it, to soften the difficulties of it, to try to ignore some of it. And with practice, what we want to do is really look at it, like recognizing that even with our best efforts, we can't completely mitigate the results, the consequences of this being a changing environment world. Another little example of things changing was last year, the railings on the deck of my kouti got moldy. They're only about three years old. I don't even know the wood was treated with preservative kind of thing. It's still developed this mold, so I had to work on that and clean it up and strip the finish off. And then we also have the new railings on the kouti we're building. And then you're supposed to wait a while after the new wood is put in. So it's like they're expecting the change of the wood. It has to dry out before you can put the coating on it that will be absorbed. Okay. So I had to wait four to six months. Well, four to six months later, I don't have time to take care of it. Now the wood is getting kind of dark and changing again. And I might not be able to bring it back to its original beauty and luster. We'll see. But it's like this is the kind of thing we're dealing with all the time. And we deal with it on these much more important levels of the body changing, our financial situation changing, the climate changing, the political situation changing. And we can develop in the practice by noticing this on all levels. You know, so we chant that phrase, sabay sankara nicha, and sabay dhamma anata, all conditioned, all things are not self. And then, you know, like to really take that seriously is to really think about, you know, what does it mean? What what would it what is what is really the effect of all of this impermanence and unreliability? It's not about going into despair, but it's really that we can start to recognize that there is that which doesn't change. So that which doesn't change nibbana, pure consciousness, those that that unconditioned, unformed, uncreated, unborn, that is real, that is true. That can be witnessed, experienced is not quite the right word, realized is really is really the way to think about it. And sometimes it sees really profound changes in our life. You know, this recent for our community member loss of a dear sister, you know, the sister that was always so helpful, so kind. The one that took the one that really took the best care of the parents, the one that kept the family together, the one that's too young to be passing away, passes away. And then you really reflecting on this, first of all, reflecting on the feelings that arise and that there is going to be sadness, there's going to be grief. There's going to be missing them. And that that too changes. It's natural. And even with, you know, like profound levels of insight, there's still the feeling. It's going to come or is likely to come and go. And reflection upon this reality helps us to notice, bring in, experience, feel, open up to, might say, that which doesn't change. Having a deeper sense of the connection that we have with each other. To really think about what is nabana? What is pure, if we call it that pure consciousness or ultimate consciousness or something like that ultimate reality that is not changing? It means that there is no distinction between you and me and no self in it at all. When a dear sister that passes away, the consciousness that was in viewing that body and mind is the same in everyone. To really begin to take that in. To take in the importance of the way we interact with each other, being so precious, so important to leave our time together in a good way always. And to see the aging, old age, sickness, death as those heavenly messengers, I was reflecting a bit upon, you know, my childhood. And when I first was exposed to death, I think one of the first times might have been, I have a second cousin who was four years old. And he was, he died, he was run over by a tractor. Kind of a horrible, horrible circumstance. And later, a few years later, a cousin of mine who died from a gunshot wound. He was just 11 years old, going to go out hunting with his older sister's boyfriend. They're just taking the guns out of the trunk of the car and it goes off and kills him. You can think, well, that's so foolish. And the living year old shouldn't be out with another young person and doing this kind of thing. But we can always think like that. But there's no end to the dangers and potential threats to existence in this world. And the blaming, you know, of course we try as a society, we've done quite a lot of work to try to protect everyone with all of our safety measures and warning labels and, you know, requirements. And there's still no way to avoid changes that we would rather not have happen. So being being exposed, you might say, to accidents, to illnesses, to old age and death. Isn't, I want to say, not something to be avoided, but something to embrace, take in. It's like our feelings that are painful. They're not to be avoided, but to be observed, to be present with compassion and kindness and patience. That we can be present with another person's sadness and our own sadness, their grief and our own grief. To be able and willing to allow and open to whatever the experience is and what can emerge is a tenderness, a kind of caring that really can transcend this whole idea of me and mine, the sense of self. Because we really all are in this together, you might say, facing the same realities that are presented in different flavors in different ways. And, you know, just listening to people checking in, the joy, the happiness that comes from helping each other, from doing things that are beneficial for ourselves and for others, for our family, for our friends, for the world. Recognizing that it's in every, this practice is in everything. It's in every activity we pick up and every circumstance we find ourselves in. We can use it as something that we can learn from. And not just the learning intellectually, obviously, but the learning at the gut level, you know, to care and let go. And that letting go of our attachments and clinging, letting go of our perceived needs. I mean, we all have actual needs to keep the body going. And, you know, it's just that's the nature of the form, the physical form. But a lot of our needs are just kind of perceived, you know, we learn, we can learn that it's okay for things not to be the way we want them to be or expect them to be. We can adjust. It's part of the good, the good news about Anisha. We can adapt. But the biggest adaptation, if that's what I want to call it, I'm not sure that works, but we'll see, is to realize truth, realize, develop wisdom. When the Buddha talked about loss, he talked about the loss of youth, the loss of health, the loss of wealth, the loss of family members, and how understandable it is that we feel sad or that we grieve, that we feel maybe disoriented or something, you know, but if we practice, if we prepare, if we reflect on this, Anisha of the Sankharas, then we can be present within, observe it, and we can start to develop wisdom. And he said, you know, it's so much worse to lose wisdom than it is to lose wealth through. Family or health. And you might wonder, like, can you really lose wisdom? You know, if we have an insight and a deep insight into something, can we actually lose it? And I think we can. I have an example for you. I've told you this story probably before. Most of you have heard about this story of when I was doing a lot of reflection around Dukap. You know, the phrase, Sabi Sankara Anicha is often followed by the phrase, Sabi Dhamma Dukha, no, Sabi Sankara Dukha, and then Sabi Dhamma Anatha. But that Sabi, all Dhamma, all Sankara's are Dukha might be, is another thing to consider, like, do you believe it? Is it true? Do you recognize that? Or do you see it? Not taking it just because we're told, but learning through observation. I was doing a lot of practicing looking at Dukha and these things in the suttas like, you know, birth is Dukha, aging, old age is Dukha, death is Dukha, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are Dukha. Not getting what you want is Dukha. Having to be exposed to and deal with what you don't want is Dukha. All of those things, that whole list. And as I was reflecting on that, I would reflect on how the things that we, you know, willfully volunteer to engage in are Dukha oftentimes. And the example, I'm not going to go into the details, but the example that I was working with at that moment was this tropical fish tank that my friend had, and seeing the Dukha in that, and then the insight, that family is Dukha. And that insight, as I've said before, really changed the way I related, felt and understood my relationships to my family members. And it's not just, of course, like I said, an intellectual understanding, but it's a complete reorganizing the inside of us, you know, how we know and see reality. And over the following months, things changed a lot in my life. And I was able to start looking for a place to ordain. And I took my mother along on this trip around the world to look at the places where I could ordain as a nun. And the whole five and a half months of travel, she kept saying, well, if you go into the monastery, what about me? What about me? And I didn't want to really, I could say, well, you'll be fine. You know, all my brothers there and on and on it could, you know, you can make kind of like an argument that it wasn't going to be that hard for her. But she was continuing like that. And finally I thought, you know, I really am resistant to looking deeply at this. So I think I should. And so when I really put myself in her shoes, I was thinking, okay, I have to make this work in some way for both of us, instead of leaving the United States and ordaining somewhere else. I'll try to stay here and still be available for her. And there wasn't a place available that many years ago for me to ordain. But and then this friend of mine traveled quite a ways to come to see me at that time. And he happened to be the same age as my mother. And he said to me, don't give up your dream because your mom is having a hard time with this. But I thought, okay, yeah, I'm not going to give it up, but I'm going to try my best to make it work for her too. And what was interesting is that as I was doing that, I completely forgot my insight into family suffering. It's like it got suppressed and that and it was through a friend who I had talked about this insight with before. Then talking to me about it again, saying that insight you had so important, you know, this, and I had to really work to bring it up out of my memory. So it's like sometimes the conditions of life are so impactful. Our instinct is we have to make sure everything is okay. We have to we have to pay and I'll be responsive to the people that we that we feel are so integral to our life that we can actually lose track of our own wisdom. I hope this is making sense. I hope that this is relatable. Because I feel like when you when you have insight and you know that it's true, it's really good to reflect upon it again and again. Really encourage it. And it's going to go against the grain of the world. Because the world will keep telling us that we need to try harder to make things work. We need to try to make everything okay, or whatever our conditioning is, whatever our circumstances are. The world will want us to come into alignment with the way the world presents itself. It's a little like the stories and the sutras of Mara coming to someone like the Buddha and trying to pull him back into the way of seeing the world. That is consistent with ignorance. And of course the Buddha was solid on the night of his enlightenment, even though Mara, you know, according to the stories brought forward every kind of way to tempt him back into ignorance. He wasn't having any of it. Thank goodness. But for us, we need to, I think, be on alert to not fall back. And thanks to my friend reminding me and having the space to really recall what had been submerged, I could come back to it. It did work out. I was able to find that, you know, thread that needle and still take care of my mom until her last breath and become a nun. And it's not like becoming a monastic is the answer, of course. It's whatever it is that supports your practice to recognize that Anisha and Dukha in this world are never going to be free of it unless we awaken. And that the awakening, the peacefulness, the happiness that comes with seeing these heavenly messengers as heavenly messengers and recognizing that this is the very material, the very kind of situations where awakening is most available. There's a chant that we do is traditional in Thailand and I think Sri Lanka also this chant that we do when someone passes away. It's Anicha Vata Sankara. So the Anicha and then Sankara are still in there. Not the Sabha, not the all, but it's for all of the. And Vata means truly, surely, certainly. So certainly all conditioned things are impermanent. They truly are impermanent. Anicha Vata Sankara. Rupada Vahidamino. It's their nature to arise and cease and having risen and passing away. They pass away and they're passing away. They're ceasing brings peace and happiness. And it's so, you know, it challenging to the mind to see how the passing away, the ceasing brings peace and happiness. It's really the stilling of all formations, the letting go of all attachments. That brings the profound peace and happiness. And in that peace and happiness also comes this love and compassion, the equanimity. But once we taste it, we can build upon it, apply it in all kinds of situations. The never ending constant kaleidoscope of change. And when that occurs, and even if it's a kind of a fleeting experience of it, we can really make much of it. And the Buddha talks about this in various places in the suttas, really make much of it. You know, feeling that peacefulness, feeling that calm, that happiness of stillness, of letting go. And that we share this with everyone else. This is the experience that, I don't know, calling it an experience doesn't really work, but this is the reality. That is the foundation of being, foundation of existence. Because existence is just something that comes and goes. But the ground of being is stable, unchanging. This is something we can only know through our individual experience that's direct and penetrating. True relief from something. That little chant, that little four line chant has really always been my favorite of all the chants. The part of why you don't me know. Who part git wanle ru janti, The sanghu pass the most or go I need chaua to sanghara. The part why you don't me know. The part it wanle ru janti, The sanghu pass the most or go. So in my reflection there, and I'd like to hear any questions or comments you might have. I could start. Thank you, Kush. Oh, who was that? Anna. Okay, Anna. Okay. I wanted to ask a question about seeing in experience rather than intellectually. Is this something I really struggle with, even though I try my hardest to see from experience? Because I have so many experiences where suffering is directly visible. It's right in front of me, but my mind is so distracted that I can't see it. So when was there a point in your life where that barrier kind of broke a little bit? Yeah. Well, one of the things that I did before I knew anything about Buddhism really, I was doing some therapy, was in therapy with a person who would just, all that we did was she would guide me to be present with what I was experiencing. The felt sense is what Eugene Jenlin called it. And the felt sense is this sensation in the body, this feeling that comes with emotion that comes with thoughts that accompany emotion. And to feel that in the body, whether it's in your throat or your gut or whatever, it's to be present with that. And to notice when the focus goes back to the thinking mind and the story and then keep coming back to the felt sense in the body. And so that work was really helpful because our conditioned responses, like I said, we want to use these coping mechanisms that we've developed to either kind of suppress or sometimes we indulge in, you know, like various ways of escaping from actually being present, directly present with what we're experiencing. And so all of these escape routes, because we don't want to feel painful feeling. And sometimes we can't even tolerate pleasant feeling for very long. We want to get away from it. And so that was very helpful. And using something like anapanasati, mindfulness of in and out breathing, not just to follow the instructions, not just to be present with the breath, but to be present with our felt sense with the experience in our body of what we're feeling, what our emotional state is, what our mental state is, and also reflection upon dhamma. So it's really establishing this ability to be a witness to whatever we're experiencing. So the whole idea of, well, eventually something will happen some way, the dhamma will come in and show us the truth. That's true. But we can't make that occur. We can't say, well, now I'm going to really see reality. And then it's like it's it that whole activity is like me, an individual person trying to kind of like see reality. It doesn't work. What has to happen instead is that we step back, relax and observe, be present with whatever is there to be experienced. And from that development of that habit to observe and allow the body and mind to become calm, not like trying to get calmness, but just opening to it, allowing it. That's the that's putting in the right conditions for insight to arise. My my sense of it is the dhamma is right here all the time. Like when the Buddha said the gate to the death list is open. It's here all the time. The truth is here all the time. Ultimate consciousness is here all the time. Those are just words fo