Riccardo

Around the middle of September, certainly here in England, we begin to notice things changing.

The mornings are a little darker. The temperature drops. We leave the house and realise that we need an extra layer, perhaps an umbrella. The evenings become shorter and summer begins to disappear.

Depending on what kind of person we are, we may have a reaction to this.

Perhaps we love autumn. Or perhaps we’ve been enjoying the warmth, the long evenings and the sunlight, and suddenly there is a little resistance.

Already? Is summer really over? Do I really need a jacket now?

Something as ordinary as the changing season gives us a wonderful opportunity to practise, because we don’t need a book or a Dharma talk to teach us about impermanence in September. We can simply look out of the window.

The temperature changes. The light changes. The leaves begin to turn.

Everything is moving.

And what is interesting is that the season itself doesn’t seem to have a problem with any of this. The trees aren’t complaining that summer was too short. The sky isn’t trying to hold on to August.

Change is simply happening.

And then there is us.

When Preference Becomes Resistance

There is a koan involving the Zen master Joshu that I find particularly relevant to this:

“The real Way is not difficult. It only abhors choice and attachment.”

Joshu continues by saying that with a single word there may arise choice and attachment, or there may arise clarity. But then he adds something surprising:

“This old monk does not have that clarity.”

A monk questions him. If Joshu doesn’t have that clarity, what does he understand?

Joshu replies:

“I do not know that, either.”

The monk continues questioning him, until eventually Joshu says:

“Asking the question is good enough. Now make your bows and retire.”

Our everyday experience is full of choice and attachment.

I like this.

I don’t like that.

I want this.

I don’t want that.

I want this experience to continue.

I want that one to disappear.

I don’t think having preferences is somehow a failure of practice. If it’s cold, I might prefer to be warm. If it’s raining, I might prefer sunshine.

That’s completely natural.

The interesting moment is when preference becomes resistance: when I would prefer sunshine becomes It shouldn’t be raining.

Now I’m arguing with something that is already happening.

And the rain doesn’t particularly care.

It continues raining.

What Is Happening — and What Am I Adding?

One thing I find useful in practice is noticing the difference between what is happening and what I think should be happening.

It rains.

That’s what is happening.

Then comes: I don’t want it to rain.

I wake up tired.

Then: I shouldn’t be tired today.

Someone says something I don’t like.

Then: They shouldn’t have said that.

There is the situation itself, and then there is the world we create around it: our preferences, judgements, expectations and ideas about how things should be.

Perhaps there is a very simple practice available here.

Can I pause?

Can I notice what is actually happening?

And can I notice what I am adding to it?

Not because I need to eliminate my preferences, but simply to see the difference.

We Are Not Separate From Change

When we talk about the changing season, it is easy to see impermanence outside ourselves. Yesterday it was sunny; today it is raining. The leaves were green; now they are beginning to change colour.

But exactly the same thing is happening here, in this body and mind.

Moods change. Thoughts appear and disappear. Memories, desires, excitement and boredom come and go. Even during meditation, when from the outside it may look as though absolutely nothing is happening, there is constant movement.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

Sensations, sounds and thoughts appearing and disappearing.

The body is changing too. It has been changing since the moment it appeared.

Yet we often speak as though I am here and change is happening to me.

Life changes. People change. My body changes. Circumstances change. And I have to learn to deal with all this change.

There is me, and then there is impermanence.

But where exactly is that separation?

We might say that our task is to align ourselves with change or merge with impermanence. But even that suggests two separate things: me here, change over there.

Perhaps we don’t need to merge with change.

Perhaps we need to notice that we were never separate from it.

This body responds to temperature and light. It breathes the air, eats and drinks, grows and ages. Our mental experience changes from moment to moment.

So where is the boundary?

Where does September finish and I begin?

Acceptance Is Not Passivity

Allowing things to be as they are does not mean becoming passive or accepting everything blindly.

If it starts raining and I don’t want to get wet, I open an umbrella.

That’s not resistance to reality. That’s responding to reality.

If something in my life needs changing, I can work to change it.

Action is not outside impermanence.

Our response is part of the change.

Perhaps freedom isn’t about standing back from life and allowing everything to happen. Perhaps it is about participating completely in what is happening without demanding that reality first become something else.

I can respond to what is here, or I can spend enormous amounts of energy arguing with the fact that it is here.

Nowhere to Land

This brings me back to Joshu.

What I particularly like about the koan is that he doesn’t give us anywhere comfortable to land.

We hear that the Way “abhors choice and attachment” and immediately we might think we understand:

Okay. Choice and attachment are the problem. Clarity is where I need to be.

But Joshu says:

“This old monk does not have that clarity.”

So perhaps clarity isn’t somewhere to stand either.

The monk asks what Joshu does understand.

“I do not know that, either.”

I don’t think Joshu is simply saying that he is confused. Perhaps he is refusing to give us another position to occupy.

We can very easily think:

I understand impermanence.

I accept things as they are.

I am not attached.

And suddenly we’ve built ourselves another little house. Perhaps a very beautiful Zen house, but a house nonetheless.

Joshu keeps taking the ground away.

It Is Constantly This

So when things change, perhaps we can begin very simply.

This is the weather.

This is my body today.

This is my mood.

These are the circumstances.

This is the person standing in front of me.

This is the world today.

What can I do with this?

Not with the world I wish were here. Not with the body I had twenty years ago. Not with the person I wish you were. Not with the weather I wanted.

With this.

Life is constantly giving us material.

It is constantly this.

Rain and sunshine. Energy and tiredness. Success and failure. Things beginning and things ending.

And we can respond to all of it — not by controlling the constant change, but by participating in it.

As the season changes, perhaps we can notice the darker mornings, the first genuinely cold day, the changing leaves, or even our irritation with the rain.

And perhaps we can also notice that the person noticing all of this is changing too.

No fixed season.

No fixed experience.

No fixed body.

No fixed mind.

No fixed me standing apart from everything else.

Just this movement.

Perhaps what we call freedom isn’t about finding somewhere solid where change can no longer reach us.

Freedom is not getting life to stop changing.

Freedom may be discovering that we don’t need it to.

And if we don’t quite know what that means — or we don’t quite know how to do that — perhaps Joshu has already given us permission not to know.

Perhaps he isn’t telling us to stop looking for an answer. Perhaps he’s inviting us to stay with the question without rushing to create one.

“Asking the question is good enough.”