I just stumbled out of bed after 14 hours of sleep interrupted by a couple of visits to the toilet. Mike has the same condition and is in the bathroom right now. Yesterday evening we were far more exhausted then reasonable after our work out, we felt something fishy was going on. I normally write this blog between 23:00 and 01:00 at night but I gave up because I couldn’t concentrate. Strange, how circumstances can change within a couple of hours.
What Mike and I are confronted with is the Universal Law of Impermanence:
“The Buddha taught that there is only one unchanging law in the universe – and that is that all things change and are impermanent. For us to understand what is at the core of our hearts, we should reflect deeply on impermanence. Because we grasp desperately to things and are terrified to let go, the impermanent nature of the universe becomes the source of all their suffering.
This is the tragedy and the irony of one’s struggle to hold on: not only is it impossible, but it brings us the very pain we are seeking to avoid. By taking impermanence to heart, people can be freed from their grasping, from their destructive views of permanence and the false notion of security on which they’ve built everything.
Each of life’s losses and deceptions can teach us about impermanence and bring us closer to the truth. According to the Tibetan master Sogyal Rinpoche “entering the transforming field of that much vision is to learn how to be at home in change, and how to make impermanence our friend.””
The three paragraphs on impermanence I found on the internet, I edited them a bit though. I’m intrigued by the words ‘”how to make impermanence your friend”. I am offered an opportunity ‘’to free myself from false notions of security’. That sounds good. It also means there is nothing to count on. I can’t count on my body, health or strenght (not even Mike, who now lies passed out beside me), I can’t count on relationships to last forever nor on my ‘’true love’ to wait for me. The only thing I can do is surrender to this very moment and appreciate what it has to offer me. Right now I’m learning what it feels like to be weak. It’s quite beautiful actually. It feels tender and vulnerable.
That’s all folks, I’m going back to sleep.
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