This Morning – Embrace Change

Embrace Change: ten leading Buddhist teachers and writers offer personal stories, teachings, and meditations to touch our hearts, open our minds, and help us embrace the change in our lives.

I woke up this morning, and my sleeping died. I stood up, and my lying down died. I brushed my teeth, and the toothbrushing came to an end. My coffee was in the mug, and then it wasn’t. I thought about what I had on my schedule, and then I thought about something else, and the first thought was gone. I sat down to meditate, and a feeling of virtue arose. Then that feeling died and changed to a feeling of restlessness. I shifted position and then I was still. There was a gap and I disappeared, but then I noticed my breath.

A thought arose—where was I? And then another—what time is it? I thought—what changes and what stays the same? I thought—be present now. But now kept slipping into the past. Then I noticed that the instant it was past, the more solid and gone it felt. Then I felt some kind of force pushing me in the direction of old age and death. A thought occurred—what lies ahead? A flurry of fantasies and possibilities arose as fleeting thoughts.

Those thoughts spontaneously dissolved and there was a gap. Something noticed the gap and destroyed it. Then I tried to get it back. A memory arose of my teacher saying, Don’t alter your experience or try to make anything happen. Then I tried to not try to make anything happen. A strong feeling arose of—what a joke. It occurred to me that I was fighting something. I felt frustrated and my shoulders got tight. Then I saw an opening and I went for it. It was as if the arising and falling and the noticing what was arising and falling and the struggling with what was arising and falling collapsed under its own complexity. Then there was a feeling of stillness and simplicity. But that changed too.