The Buddha’s point is that the method to get happy and to stop suffering is to get wisdom: to have your mind in sync with how things exist. It sounds kind of grand: how things exist. What does that mean?
We can start with impermanence. It’s staring us in our face: it’s evident to anybody with half a brain that things change. Then you check: “Well, is that how I feel?” We know it intellectually, but look at the disconnect between knowing it intellectually and how we feel. We grasp at things as unchanging, and that’s how we live our lives, and all Buddha’s saying is that’s why we suffer, babies. So that’s what we’ve got to look into.
Forget about not realizing karma, forget about not understanding your mind, forget about not realizing emptiness, forget about not having bodhichitta – they’re more advanced views that we are trying to internalize. Just this one alone can bring a profound effect in your life: that you’re changing moment by moment, that things change moment by moment, that they’re uncertain.
When we start to study the Buddhist view and we start to look at attachment, we’re going to see that this clinging to something being permanent – We will be together forever! – is very linked to attachment. We have to understand this, and it will help us understand more.
Attachment, as we talk endlessly, is this emotional hunger in us that only wants the nice things – the junkie in us that only wants the nice things. Then you have, alongside that, this grasping at things as unchanging.
When you’re in love, and life is perfect, and everything’s beautiful – the money’s there, the job is there, you’ve got friends, you’ve got the kids, you’ve got your life, you know, you wake up every morning, and still things are there, and you keep living, and it’s wonderful, attachment is getting what it wants – you can’t stand the thought that it won’t be like that, that tomorrow it might be different. All this is instinctive – and then we live in terror.
One thing we do then when we can’t stand the thought of things changing is we put this fantasy on top: because it’s delicious today, because everything was perfect today, because the family was there, the husband was there, the kids were there, the life was there, the job was there, everything’s lovely, then because it’s delicious today, we project: therefore it won’t change. That’s the illogic of ego because we can’t stand the thought of change.
Now, another kind of person – because we’ve all got attachment and want only the lovely things – another kind of person is thinking that nothing will last, so they go to the other extreme: “Well, nothing will last,” and all they do is see all the dramas: “Oh my God, what if this happens? And what if that? And what if I lose it? And what if I lose my money? What if my husband leaves me? What if this? What if that?” Every second you go crazy. That’s another aspect of the same problem.
People can become so paralyzed, even though everything is nice today, because it’s unbearable to think it won’t be like that tomorrow.
I remember a woman at one teaching who said, “I think all the time that my husband will die. What can I do?”
Well, you know, the first thing many people will say is, “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course he’s not going to die!” Well, excuse me, no: of course he’s going to die! So why not think – and this is sometimes too unbearable – “he will die.” This is fact: you can’t argue with it. It is fact: he will die.
Whether he’s seventy or twenty-seven, he will die. This is the heavy-duty level of impermanence: we can’t even be certain that a person is going to live until their middle age or old age, forget about being together till we’re eighty.
The idea that a person won’t be there, that a person will die on me – not just leave me but die – this is so horrific for us. So I said to her, “Well, you know, one approach is to be very direct and very blunt and very brave and say to yourself, ‘Well, you know what, sweetie pie? He will die, but I don’t know when.’ So then what do you do? You make the most of the relationship.”
This is the general point about impermanence: when you know that things change, you make the most of them.
I said, “Think that he is impermanent, because things do change – not just from one day to another, but second by second, things are changing – it’s just the nature of the universe. When you see it in this way, then you value it more, you value him more. Therefore, you make the most of him every second, and you’ll be kind and patient and loving and delight that you have him. And then when you wake up in the morning and you feel his body and it’s still warm, it’s a bonus, and then you make the most of the day.”
This is the real way to live our lives, and there won’t be fear then.
This is the thing: either you believe you’re going to be together until you’re eighty and you stay in this little kind of permanent bubble, or you live in constant panic attack: “Any second, things could change. I could lose my house, I could be thrown out, he could die. This could happen, that could happen.” That’s the panic that some people do have, and that’s a nightmare – it’s a nightmare.
The reality is things do change, so we make the most of what we’ve got when we’ve got it.
To neither live in the denial that it’s going to be permanent forever, nor live in this total panic every second – and they’re the two extremes we have, isn’t it? – is to learn to be more realistic and more courageous.