Impermanence and Permanence
For a while I lived in a small incorporated community in Texas called Nassau Bay. It was near the Houston Space Center; astronauts used to live there and maybe still do. There was a lovely, rather large, artificial lake at the center of the community.
One day I was sitting on a bench next to the lake, enjoying the peace there, and suddenly I became aware of movement around me. There was constant movement that I could see in the grass around me, in leaves on the trees encircling the lake, in the light wind, in nutria (web-footed rodents) in the lake, and so on.
I had begun to study Buddhism in depth shortly before this, and eventually I realized that what I was observing in all the movement was what Buddhists called “impermanence.” It is a principle in Buddhism that movement and change, or impermanence, is a constant aspect of life.[1]
I am a member of a dharma study group that is reading a book called The Hidden Lamp. There is a koan in this book called “Miaoxin’s Banner.” Miaoxin is a wise nun who directs a guesthouse at her temple. There happen to be several monks staying at the guesthouse who are traveling to seek enlightenment. Miaoxin overhears them discussing the koan, attributed to the Sixth Patriarch, “What moves is not the wind nor the banner, but your mind.” She remarks to her attendants that in studying this koan, the monks are not “even getting close to the Dharma.” Later Miaoxin has occasion to speak to the monks, and she advises them, “What moves is not the wind, nor the banner, nor your mind.” Hearing this, the monks awakened.[2]
There are, naturally, various opinions about what the koan the monks were studying means. The advice that Miaoxin counters with, however, distinctly brings to my mind the idea of permanence. If movement, as in the monks’ koan, implies impermanence, then no movement, as in Mazoxin’s advice, implies permanence. It is by a glimpse into permanence that the monks wake up.
In spite of the Buddhist view of impermanence as inherent in life, is there in Buddhism also a belief in something permanent, stable, without change? Such a view can be found in Keizan’s Transmission of Light. Keizan is called the “Great Patricarch” of Soto Zen. He was born 15 years after Dogen passed (1253), who is the “Highest Patriarch” of Soto Zen.
Keizan says that there is a power existing outside time. It is “not in the realm of becoming and decay.”[3] He says that this power is “ single spiritual light that is eternal and stable.”[4] He refers to it as “a self which never changes through all time.”[5] According to Keizan, this self is in everyone, and he advises seekers to “maintain your true self.”[6]
The discovery and maintenance of one’s eternal true self is accomplished through zazen. In any event, I assume zazen is what Keizan is referring to when he says that to reach the true self,“. . .For the time being close your eyes – when the breath ends and the body ends and there is no house to protect you, all function is unnecessary, and you are like the blue sky with no clouds, the ocean without waves – then you’ll be somewhat in accord with it.”[7]
The aim of Zen might be said to be the discovery and nurturing of a stable and unchanging power in oneself, buoyant and supportive. This is what the monks woke up to, and so, through zazen, can we.
Footnotes
- This is similar to a teaching of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who said that you cannot step twice into the same stream.
- The Hidden Lamp, Wisdom Publications in Massachusetts, 2013, p. 286.
- Zen Master Keizan, Transmission of Light, tr. Thomas Cleary, Shambhala, Boston, 2002, p. 176.
- Ibid., p. 201.
- Ibid., p. 70.
- Ibid., p. 84.
- Ibid., p. 190.