By Bhante H. Gunaratana Mahathera
"If everything is impermanent why should do
what we normally do in our every day life?" was a question a friend of
ours who read my article on "That which is impermanent is unsatisfactory."
Which appeared in Bhavana Newsletter Vol. 10 Number 4 October - December 1994.
This, in fact, is a very important question that every one of us should ask.
Why should we do what we do as everything is impermanent? It is not the question
of "If everything is impermanent" but "as everything is impermanent,
why do we what we do?" is the question. Impermanence is an eternal and
universal law that nobody can defy.
Everything here means our senses and their objects. When senses are impermanent,
it does not matter, in fact, what else is permanent, for it is through the senses
that we perceive things and it is the through the senses that we are attached
to sensory objects. Also it is the senses where craving arises and ceases. When
we are attached to our senses and sensory objects we do not think for a moment
both, senses and their objects, are impermanent. If we do think that they are
impermanent then we could use our senses and their objects mindfully and don’t
get stuck with attachment to them. It is this attachment to these impermanent
senses and their objects that brings unsatisfactoriness to our life. This does
not mean that we should not take care of our senses. We can look after the senses
without becoming attached to them knowing that they are impermanent.
Knowledge of truth that there is no place to run away from the reality of impermanence
we prepare to face and accept it. We cannot run away from our body because every
cell in our body is impermanent and they die, as they must, when are ready.
If they do not die when they are supposed to they turn into a grave problem
of autoimmune disorders (AIDS). They remain to be old cells hanging on to their
old habitats multiplying themselves and taking the space of other living young
and healthy cells. This is what happens to cancerous cells, too. They occupy
the space of healthy cells in the body and doing nothing for the well being
of the body. They rather eat all other healthy cells around them and spread
all over the body gradually. When time comes for change we must let go of our
old cligning and let the change take place. This is a mature attitude in life.
Try to be wiser as you change and grow.
This acceptence of change is very difficult for almost every body because from
the embryonic moment we are propelled by our insatiable desire which is expressed
through our activities and movements which in turn create more desire and energy
to support and maintain our initial desire. Every cell in our body is a very
powerful power house which convert all food into energy to support our desire
for more food. Desire is built in system within our body and mind. You cannot
live without it until you become free from it. Desire cannot simply sit idly
in the mind and body without doing something. Desire must create. It must generate
other desires, other beings. It must manufacture one thing or another all the
time for the desire to consude. Since you have energy of desire you have to
engage in doing things to satisfy your senses. Some of these activities benefit
you and your fellow beings and your surrounding. Because of this satisfaction
you perpatuate your desire to become more ambitious or visionary.
The primary characteristic of desire is cling to one thing or another, one person
or another, one place or another, one sight or another, one smell or another,
one sound or another, one touch or another, one idea or another, one concept
or a nother. The truth of impermanence never seep into your wildest dream when
you cling to something. All you want is pleasure of clinging, joy of clinging,
sense of security of clinging. Clinging gives you hope, trust, psychological
strength. It brings you artificial solace and artificial comfort which is made
up of the ingradiants of impermanence. Look at the way how sperm and ovum join
together to make an embryo.
Because of the desire that very sperm of the man goes searching for a woman’s
egg. No bio-chemist knows why sperms travel a most difficult journey encountering
countless problems and dangers on the way searching for an female egg which
is 85,000 times bigger than a sperm. Only one out of released into woman’s
birth canal by a man in one orgasm does successfully reach the egg waiting in
the pelopian tube of the woman. Woman’s body’s defense mechanism is
fighting to reject all the foreign bodies all the way. In this hostile environment
only the one, charged with desire and propelled by kamma, out of two to five
hundred millions sperms, manages to reach the egg. As soon as the sperm reaches
the egg, the egg hugs and engulfs it very quickly and builds a wall around it
so that no other sperm cell can enter the same egg to start another battle inside
and to make things complicated. By mere accident, however, if two sperm enter
the egg there will be twins of the same sex.
In this operation man’s desire, woman’s desire and the desire and
kamma encapsulated in the rebirth consciousness of a being died somewhere create
a situation for the egg to fertilize. If any of the three (mother’s egg,
father’s sperm and rebirth consciousness) is absent the egg will not be
fertilized. If woman, who does not want to have a baby, uses a contraceptive
method or if the being to be born does not have powerful kamma to be born as
human being the egg will not be fertilized. Behind all these there also is another
factor imperceptible to any ordinary mind and that factor is ignorance of the
truth of impermanence.
However, desire operates in a most concealing manner from unicellular being
to multi-cellular being. The newly fertilized egg started with father’s
23 chromosomes and mother’s 23 chromosomes ends up, in nine months, with
trillions of cells. They continue to multiply till they end up in 100 trillion
cells adulthood. All this began from desire, one of the roots of the existence
of life. Desire is programmed into our DNA. It continues to exist until we deprogram
it with a very special method.
Every second 500 billions of hemoglobin are generated in our body under the
supervision of GNA. Every one of these 500, billions hemoglobins is fully charged
with desire to live. Of course, at the same rate they pass away giving room
for new hemoglobins to step in. Along with their stepping in, the desire to
live also continues to flow in our life. Every cell in our body is a miniature
world creating new desires to live. Every moment our mind also generates desire
for countless things. Because of this unending generation of desire in the body
and mind any moment our senses come in contact with their sensory fields desire
steps in either to grasp something or to reject something, both of which are
the charateristics of desire. When the mind does not like certain experience
it wishes to repel and replace it with a one that it likes better. Sometimes
the mind does not find a replacement and yet it does not wish to keep the unpleasant
experience. If it finds a replacement it grabs it very quickly just like ovum
grasps the sperm. If not it simply shrinks into depression or wthdraws from
everything.
Do you know that millions of nurons in your brain die every moment? Do you know
that missions of blook cells die every moment? Do you know .....( fill in with
statistics of dying parts in the body)
Because of this desire we do not wish to think that anything we enjoy or anything
we possess is impermanent. We like to think that all our enjoyments and our
possessions are permanent. When we see all our senses and sensory experiences
in the light of impermanence our minds can let go of our resentment which operates
in us like cancer. Mind is ankered in bitterness because it cannot see things
in us and others change. Due to this situation the mind likes to harp on the
theme ill will over and over again and continue to suffer.
The knowledge of impermanence steps into this situation as a consoling factor
and advices us, "Don’t worry, this unpleasant situation is as impermanent
as pleasant situation that you have just lost. Just wait. Time will cure all
wounds. This has happened to you in the past and it will happen again. You remember
all your past experiences have changed. This is the nature of things. Simply
relax. Everything will be alright."