Flowing with Change

“Everything changes, nothing remains without change.” Buddha

Things constantly change both perceptibly and imperceptibly. Science tells us that all things in the universe are in flux, including us at every level of our beings. Even when we don’t choose change, it happens anyway. It’s unstoppable. It’s probably the one thing we can count on.

Yet we deny it and we resist it. And it is our very denial and resistance of change that causes us pain and suffering, not change itself.

The Great Truths

Buddhism talks about the three great Truths of Existence: impermanence, egolessness and suffering. Meaning that continuous change is a marker of life. When we resist change and try to hold on to illusory sameness of things, we cause ourselves pain and suffering. And even what we conceive as our identity – an identity anchored in what we think and feel in any given moment– is really not reflective of who we are. This superficial, cobbled-together identity that we’ve constructed shifts and changes too.

So what this means for me is, that to deal with life with any level of equanimity and peace, I need to accept these Truths and markers and flow with them instead of trying to deny them, push against them or resist them.

Flowing with change does not mean that I am not an effective agent in my only life or that I am in all ways helpless. Flowing with change does not mean that I am not connected to others or that there is not meaning in my existence. Flowing with change doesn’t mean that I don’t have a deeper identity that is yet to be revealed.

Gracefully Going with the Flow

But what it does mean is that flowing with change is a more graceful and less stressful way to negotiate life as a sort of spaciousness opens up in my day-to-day world, where anything and everything becomes possible.

Of course, flowing with change is not easy to do. But I’m choosing it anyway because it beats the alternative. So slowly, ever so slowly, it’s becoming both my attitude, and my practice.

Stay tuned for developments.