Navigating Change: The Five Remembrances in Everyday Life

Change is the only constant, Marc Lesser reminds us — even if we hate it. He shares how Buddhism’s Five Remembrances can help us navigate life’s transitions and find acceptance in the face of uncertainty.

Marc Lesser
30 October 2024
Photo by Nothing Ahead.

I love my routines.  

Each morning while it is dark, I fluff my meditation cushion, bow, and sit down. I count my breaths, become distracted, and return to the breath. When I’m finished meditating, I get up, bow to my cushion, bow away from my cushion, and step into the space of my room and the space of my day.  

Even though I meditate nearly every day, I write “meditate” on my calendar. I sometimes describe one portion of my life as putting things on my calendar. It’s extremely satisfying knowing what will happen. Then I look forward to, or not look forward to, each particular event and activity. 

Yet I’ve noticed that at some point all, or most, of these events happen. When I first write them on my calendar, they represent the future, and while they are happening, I call them “now.” For a brief moment, the events become the present. Then afterward, all the work meetings, personal meetings, travel, celebrations, dinners, birthdays, weddings, memorials, whatever — they move from the future to the here and now and, like a bubble bursting, into the past.  

“Resistance doesn’t change some basic facts: We are born. The sun goes up. The sun goes down. We grow up, we get older, and we die.” 

How strange. How interesting. When things are happening, it’s now. Now. Now. Now. Then things slip away, and that particular now ends, and it’s another day, another now. How strange. 

What isn’t on my calendar? Everything that happens around and in between these events. Every surprise and all of life’s endless transitions — growing up and growing older, getting married, having children, starting companies, leaving companies, losses, and deaths. 

And feelings. So many feelings: joy, grief, loneliness, boredom, love. 

This is perhaps why I am so attached to filling out my calendar in the first place. Why I seem to depend so much on my daily routines. They provide the illusion of predictability. 

I also like to go to bed early and get up early. And my full morning routine includes meditation, study, exercise, and reading the New York Times over a cup of coffee. I struggle when I’m traveling and my routines are completely turned upside down.   

I like my relationships to be stable. I prefer that my family and friends love and appreciate me and not become annoyed or, for their own reasons, leave. I’ve been married for over forty years, and I have many long-term friendships, people I’ve known since my childhood. 

I’m still a bit sad and cranky that my children grew up and left the house and moved away, at times far away. I miss them lots.  

My parents died many years ago and I miss them profoundly. My mother used to call me nearly every Saturday morning, and now I find myself calling my children on Saturday mornings. Why change a good thing, right? I’ve lost many close friends in recent years and have felt immense grief.  

I want my work to be stable and predictable, particularly when things are going well. Of course, that never lasts, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to create stability, from wanting it. As I describe in this book, I was once fired from a company I founded. I resigned from another company I began. And as a coach and consultant, my current job, I swim in a sea of tremendous uncertainty. My clients struggle with uncertainty, and I struggle to maintain a consistent roster of clients. I sometimes think it would be better to get a “real job,” one with set hours and predictable tasks, and then I realize that there is no such thing as a real job.  I like my health to be stable. I depend on my body, and except for two hip replacements and a bout of prostate cancer—now nicely in the past—my health has been remarkably good for most of my life. Yet I continue to age. Getting old really sucks, though I do prefer that to not aging.  

I know, I know, aging, sickness, and death come with the territory. But why! Really! Buddhists and others often say it’s the shortness, the evanescence, of life that provides meaning, that makes it so sweet, but perhaps that is just a Buddhist rationalization. We don’t have to like it, and I don’t.  

But resistance doesn’t change some basic facts: We are born. The sun goes up. The sun goes down. We grow up, we get older, and we die. 

The Five Remembrances 

Sometimes I hate change on so many levels. Yet as another old saw goes, the only constant is change. We can’t avoid it. 

I recently met with one of my executive coaching clients, Robert, who was describing how well everything in his life was going. He has a tenured teaching position at a major US university doing work that has great value and that he enjoys immensely. His wife is the CEO of a significant and influential nonprofit. And his children, after going through some difficult growing pains, are all doing really well at school and at home.  

As Robert happily reported how positive everything was, I celebrated with him. We should always acknowledge the good times and appreciate life whenever we’re happy, healthy, and satisfied. Then again, ideally, we should appreciate each moment of our lives, even when things are not going so well, or even falling apart.   

I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, which was that Robert’s rosy situation wouldn’t last. Children grow up and leave home. Bosses and colleagues quit or get fired. Companies go out of business. Markets change, societies change, priorities change.   

If we are lucky, we will get old, surviving every sickness and injury, even as everything and everyone we know and love changes, becomes lost, or ends.   

I overcame my resistance and asked Robert if he was familiar with what are called the Five Remembrances of Buddhism. He wasn’t, so I described them, along with the statement we are meant to say to embody them:  

The inevitability of aging: “I am of the nature to grow old; there is no way to escape growing old.” 

The certainty of illness: “I am of the nature to have ill-health; there is no way to escape having ill-health.” 

The reality of death: “I am of the nature to die; there is no way to escape death.” 

The impermanence of possessions and relationships: “All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change; there is no way to escape being separated from them.” 

The law of the consequences of actions: “My actions are my only true belongings; I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.” 

Like all people, I feel resistance to each of these statements. I avoid them. For instance, when I turned sixty, I changed my pretend age from thirty-seven to forty-seven. My pretend age serves me well as a Buddhist against change.  

Nevertheless, despite my personal resistance, I feel obligated to incorporate and bring forward the Five Remembrances in my coaching and teaching. I ask people and groups to say them out loud. Sometimes I even say them to myself, when I’m alone. When I’m meditating. 

And what I’ve noticed is that the more I accept and integrate that we are really only here for a short time, the more I appreciate everything: my breath, the clouds, the trees. My family and friends. My life. Even the ants. 

Marc Lesser

Marc Lesser is an executive coach, speaker, and Zen teacher with more than 25 years of experience as a leader and supporting leaders to reach their full potential, as business executives and as full, thriving, human beings. Marc helped develop a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence training for leaders within Google. He then co-founded and was CEO of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute from 2012– 2017. Marc has been CEO of three companies and has an MBA degree from New York University.

Marc is the author of five books including Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader: Lessons From Google and a Zen Monastery Kitchen, and Less: Accomplishing More By Doing Less. Prior to his business and coaching career, Marc was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, including director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the western world. He has a passion for utilizing business as a force for positive change and sees work as a place to cultivate character and bring meaning and satisfaction to everyday life. Find out more at marclesser.net