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What do we know about waves?
They begin, peak, decline, and begin again.
What behaves like a wave?
Everything
There is one truth we can be absolutely sure of and that is the inevitability of death. What reassuring certainty we can find in this fact if we fully accept it.
When we pay close attention to all the events of our life, we see a pattern. There’s a conception – an originating intention, followed shortly by a birth – marking the beginning of an emergence into existence. Birth is followed by an accelerating phase of vital expansion. The vital expansion begins to slow as it approaches its apex – an inflection point where contraction and decline slowly begins. The decline slowly steepens into death and disappearance… which may be a terminus, or another inflection point depending on how you perceive the nature of existence.
It’s important to note here, how one understands the nature of existence is also helpful to view through this lens that we’ll call impermanence. Meaning that the understanding we have at a given point in time arises based on our knowledge at that time, persists for some time, changes, and eventually becomes a new understanding that may be unrecognizable compared to what came before. Therefore, avoid getting caught up on particular speculations about the nature of being and be perpetually open to alternative explanations. These need not all be adopted as some may be antithetical or harmful, but it’s important to have the capacity to consider them.
Returning now to this realization of the finiteness of our existence. I invite you to open your imagination and emotional world to a guided meditative journey.
Take a moment to settle into your heart and with a couple of slow, even breaths, bring about a felt sense of the breadth of your being. A being that fills the present, extends, perhaps, into the people you know, falls behind you into the past, beyond presence out into the future, and maybe into other dimensions where non-material beings participating in your story stand by. Bring to mind someone whom you hold dear, someone who feels like a part of your being. With care, notice what they offer you and the wider reality with their being. Recognize each offering with gratitude, and then imagine its absence. Turn towards whatever feelings arise and allow them to move through. See the world without their being in it and feel the contrast. Let grief and gratitude commingle as you accept the truth that you will likely experience reality with, and someday without, this being.
Now let your body completely relax. Scan each part of your body and see if you can give it completely over to gravity. As you sink solidly into the pull of gravity, imagine for a moment that you are unable to move your lower limbs. Let yourself imagine for a moment what it might be like to have the desire to make food for yourself without the use of your lower limbs. What if you need to shower? Use the restroom? Take time to imagine each of these challenges without the use of your lower limbs. Let the imagined arduous effort, the feelings of helplessness, whatever may arise, come up and be known. Now come back to a sense of appreciation for the use of your lower limbs, letting the reality that while it may not be your limbs, it may be your liver, your kidney, your cognition, that will be the first to fail during the descent. There’s no way to know what the descent holds for us, just that it will inevitably happen to each of us.
How does this exploration land with you? What arises for you? Likely sadness, maybe fear, possibly relief. The reality of death can do unexpected things to our heart-minds. How do we hold its inevitability and simultaneously, the mystery of when and how it will eventually happen? How do we hold that when we think about those we love? When we think about ourselves?
In Pali, the middle Indo-Aryan language that was used during the time of the Buddha, there’s a word pronounced saṃvega which describes a sense of spiritual urgency. An awe and appreciation for the preciousness of the gifts we have in this present moment undergirded by a clarified fear when we look at all the suffering subsuming so many beings in this world, concurrent with an overwhelming surge of compassion that arrives with the awareness that we must move calmly, with clarity, but also with urgency to act while the supportive and profoundly rare conditions that life presents us exist such that we may leverage it in service of liberating ourselves and all other beings.
Receiving the weight of saṃvega with lucidity and receptivity allows us to draw on an endless well of inspiration with which to inform skillful action in the world. We are moved to act with pure intention and non-attachment to action, while staying aware and mindful of the fruits of our action so as to refine our approach as we go. Know that everything we accumulate in this endeavor, whether it be wealth, possessions, relationships, projects or accomplishments will ultimately vanish – as the great Indian adept Shāntideva says:
“And fix this firmly in your understanding: all that may be wished for will by nature fade to nothing.”
(Shantideva; Goldstein)
