The Permanent Impermanence

We cherish familiarity: someone we know, somewhere we’ve been, something we’ve done. It goes deeper: everyday sensations we dull, routine feelings we hide, intimate emotions we suppress. It is difficult to become fully aware of ourselves when we are so preoccupied with all familiar everyday things. We spend all our precious time on other people and seemingly on inordinate trivial matters that there is not much left at the end of the day. Every day we fail to expose our mediocre mind to the possibility of enlightenment. We are guilty of negligence.

There is nothing wrong with wanting familiarity, except that it is repetitive and likely the result of Karma at work. Even though we think we are living differently in this life, we are actually living as we did in our past lives albeit in a different environment. Our thoughts betray us, fueled by our feelings and emotions in a brilliant display, and we struggle with the same mental anguish as we did in our previous lives, in a perceived permanent place we've come to learn as the mortal realm. We are guilty of indulgence.

If life is a coin with two sides, either side it turns up could still be wrong!

The humanistic perspectives of right and wrong are often subverted by agendas of self-preservation and personal gains. But still, we often struggle to make sense of our decisions. We find ourselves wanting to belong, but at the same time, we have to compete with others, in order to gain acceptance by those whom we sought recognition. We imitate success, measured in wealth and power, while we nurture a scarcity mentality that there could only be a few. Henceforth, we have grown used to the daily grind, driven by our hopes and desires, amidst the ingenuity and novelty of life which our forefathers helped build but could never imagine! And yet, in our days of mental anguish, we long for a realised life that only a few have unwittingly stumbled upon. If only, we should, we could.

And so we trudge forward on a glimmer of hope tomorrow might be different. We embrace causality: but yet we fossilise our thoughts and desires, and yet we believe there is permanence in a medium which we know we must one day discard - always too soon, but never late.

We have made a fool of impermanence, but the suffering is ours to bear!

No one can escape impermanence, it is the only permanence in our life.