Reflections on Impermanence

Whatever prepares you for death enhances life.

Stephen Levine

Sit someplace where you can be quiet and alone. Try to find a place that brings you closer in touch with a sense of the natural ebb and flow of all life. In Tibet, this kind of meditation is often done outdoors in a cemetery, or beneath clouds moving across the sky, but these particular forms aren’t absolutely necessary. You can watch the waves move in and out on a beach; you can sit near a waterfall or in a park. In autumn you can watch leaves flutter to the ground. Other places sometimes suggested to increase awareness of impermanence would be the city dump, car junkyard, or hospital entrance.

Wherever you are, get comfortable. Release the muscular tension throughout your body. Breathe in through your nostrils; breathe out through your nostrils. Do this several times until you are feeling relaxed and settled.

Rest in the moment. Stay with this awareness of breathing. Be aware, attentive, and mindful. Feel what you feel and sense what you sense in the immediacy of the present experience. Breathe in through your nostrils. And then breathe out. And go through this cycle again and again.

Let your breaths come and go, rise and fall, like waves in the sea and clouds in the infinite sky. Again and again... like gently rhythmic waves.

Notice whatever comes to mind. Simply be with what you are presently experiencing, beyond judgment and beyond interference or alteration. Don’t suppress what you feel or what you think. But also don’t allow your mind to get carried away into trains of discursive thinking. For the moment, don’t try to work or figure anything out. Just be mindfully aware of whatever appears for you in the field of consciousness. Stay with breath-awareness; observe the breath flowing in and out of your nostrils. Pay attention.

When you are calm, still, and centered, reflect on the changing nature of the seasons in the places where you have lived and visited. Remember how they have flowed one into another, one season giving way to the next. Reflect on the heavy snowstorms, chilly winter days, and icy streets; reflect on the melting snow as spring arrives with its crocuses, daffodils, and tulips; reflect on rising temperatures and how spring becomes summer; reflect on long hot summer days; reflect on the coming of autumn with the changing leaves and shortening days and the return of arctic air.

Continued on page 2: Reflect on the various great world civilizations and their rise and fall over centuries. »