Seeing Impermanence Through the Eyes of Impermanence

(I said, “You often find fault with others. For example, you see someone acting selfishly, making demands, and not giving anything in return. Why do you keep staring at what is bad about that person?” He said, “Of course. Being selfless is better than being selfish.” His framework is still there: being selfish is wrong.)

He is right, you are right, your view is right—there is no problem with it. The most important thing is: what is your purpose? While you are here, you are here to attain enlightenment; that is your ultimate goal. So then, you have some things—because of attaining enlightenment, something like that.

That is what I was talking with them about just now. Likewise, if this person harms you or whatever, you can choose to deal with him alone and confront him head-on. You are not weaker than he is; you may be able to change him. That might be good for you at that moment, and good for him too, because he had not encountered someone formidable. You speak to him, and he changes—isn’t that so? Then you have helped him, too.

You may also choose patience. When someone bullies you, there are two choices: one is to practice patience; the other is to confront him head-on and subdue him. Most important, what is your goal at that moment?

For example, at this moment you say, “In 2012, including this year, I am here to cultivate the Way.” So at this moment, with realizing Buddhahood as my ultimate goal and attaining enlightenment in first place, I am not fighting over right and wrong, or arguing about who is right and who is wrong, you understand? Then you should choose patience, you understand? In other words, at that moment, where is your goal? Then choose whichever action benefits your attaining enlightenment.

No action is simply right; either way is right. Fighting with him is right, and practicing patience is right. These are just two methods. Whichever method benefits your cultivation of the Way right now, choose that one.

In other words, suppose the company currently has many problems. Suppose, I mean, that our company has this kind of problem: everyone’s state of mind, habitual tendencies, and desires are different, and that is where these problems lie. Everyone is actually cultivating the Way. The goal—the goal you have set is to attain enlightenment; everyone who comes here can attain enlightenment—so each person’s goal is to cultivate and work on their own habitual tendencies and desires.

So, perhaps especially with awakening, in every choice you make and everything you do, you may turn a blind eye, observe and stand by, or speak up. In fact, any of these can be right. The most important thing is which method suits your attaining enlightenment at that moment.

What method suits your attaining enlightenment? Which method can give you peace of mind? Peace of mind, yes. For example, if I do not say something now, I will lie awake all night; I will not be able to sleep. Then say it, you understand? Sit here and say publicly, “You did wrong in this matter. I just cannot make sense of it.” Then, okay, you have a way to resolve the matter; it may become clear. In the end, you gain peace of mind, and peace of mind helps your cultivation of the Way.

If you feel that speaking up can only intensify the conflict, and that he will not acknowledge it anyway, then do not speak; practice patience. Then I do better. For example, suppose you see someone throw a piece of paper on the floor every day. He never pays attention to small matters; after eating, he just throws it down with a thump. You pick it up, you understand?

He throws it away every day and you pick it up every day. That is the Bodhisattva practice: without saying a word, you use your actions to tell him: “This is your patience; I pick it up for you every day.” It is all right. One day he will see it: “Look, Shao Ning picked it up again.” One day he will feel embarrassed. And you do not mind either—if it needs picking up, pick it up. Serve him as if you were serving God. What are you afraid of? He will change one day. In other words, this is an act of patience. Whichever action you feel will help solve the problem and help you attain enlightenment, choose that method.

The method I choose now is to be aware yet unmoving; that is fine too. But when you are aware yet unmoving, your mind is very cluttered. Your body is still, but your mind is moving. Your mind is complicated; it says, “Aware yet unmoving, aware yet unmoving; this is right, this is wrong, this is wrong.” It turns like a computer, doesn’t it? Then you need to keep cultivating—you have not cultivated it to completion. That is being aware yet unmoving.

Being aware yet unmoving does not mean that your body does not move; it means that your mind does not move. In other words, the mind must first stop making distinctions, but you must keep cultivating: giving, upholding the precepts, practicing patience, and diligence. You have to learn and do all of these, you understand?

I have always acknowledged your views. I have said that what you think is right and that your understanding is right. From your former company and that company’s rules, to what an employee should be like and what a practitioner should be like—those understandings are all fine in my view. What a practitioner should do, how thoughts should arise and move, what one should do—I think all of that is right.

The most important thing is that everyone has habitual tendencies and desires, and everyone is cultivating and realizing. On this path, everyone makes mistakes; everyone has desires and habitual tendencies they cannot restrain, and everyone has their own faults. In other words, everyone is watching one another. How much can you endure? That is also a problem. We are living together, living together in this practice center, and the purpose is transformation.

At the same time, people say, “After three days apart, you must look at someone anew.” In other words, three days from now, this person may awaken and suddenly become someone you no longer recognize. So, the benefit of impermanence is that everyone changes. You cannot be certain about someone based on who they are today. If they awaken tonight, they will be different tomorrow, won’t they? So everyone is changing every day. It is fine to look at impermanence through the eyes of impermanence.

Suppose this person is sitting here—just as an example, I am not talking about you. Suppose you saw him do very bad things yesterday, many bad things. When we look at him today, do not look at him through yesterday’s eyes.

Today he is new, so do not carry your past experience with you. Do not look at him through your past experience, and do not look at him through your future expectations. Your expectations of him—what you want him to become—belong to the past, built on your experience of him and then added to your expectations for the future. So you can never know a person. You must look at him with the eyes of the present moment, because every day he is new.

This is how a practitioner looks at people. We never know the truth of a person; we cannot see the true reality of this world clearly. In other words, why do we say that we recognize people? We always live inside “what you think I am,” or “what I think I am,” or “what he thinks I am.” I live within the ways many people see me.

Everyone has a view of you. Why? Why does everyone have one? Because everyone has their own past experiences, their expectations of you, and their judgments about the future. Whenever someone has a past and a future, what they see is never the real me in the present; there is always an illusion. I also live in the past and future, and my evaluation of myself is also an illusion. No one sees a person as they really are; no one can see clearly, because when there is a past and a future, you cannot see clearly.

When it comes to seeing true reality, why can’t we see the true reality of this world? Your mind, including the world of body and mind, is completely filled with past experience and future expectations. Future outcomes and expectations completely fill your mind. You are never looking at things in the present moment. You cannot see, in this table, the true reality that Form and emptiness are not two. It is not that you do not have it or lack the ability—you are all Buddhas, so how could you lack the ability? You think realizing Buddhahood is very far away, but it is right here and now; it is just that your mind is filled with the past and the future.

There is no problem with keeping these things. Shouldn’t we remember the past and look forward to the future? That is fine. But when you recognize this durian, why are you not looking at what is here and now? Why bring past experience over, bring future expectations over, and then interpret this thing?

You explain and recognize it conceptually, rather than looking at it, you understand? You use your consciousness to recognize this thing instead of your eyes. It is that simple. Look at it; live in the present moment and look at it. Look at what it is like. That is true reality.

You use your consciousness and the knowledge in your mind to analyze and recognize it. You live inside all your analyses and recognitions. You recognize it and analyze it, so you do not see true reality. If you do not see true reality, then what you see are false marks.

And your false marks remain in your mind, unchanged for three days. You have also violated the law of impermanence: everyone else is changing, but you have not changed—that is attachment, understand? In other words, you remain in a fixed understanding for two or three days, especially when it comes to people. People are constantly changing, especially in a practice center; everyone is changing.

In other words, get used to looking at things with your eyes. Do not think so much about the past, the future, or your expectations. In other words, this is a quality of cultivation, a quality you must cultivate and train in yourself.

Think about it. Whenever you do anything or communicate with someone—for example, when you communicate with him, or with me, or with anyone else—you base it on your understanding of me. This understanding comes from the past. When you communicate with me, you base it on the experiences behind what you think I am like, and those experiences are all from the past. Do you notice me today? What am I like here and now?

If you set aside your past understanding of me, set aside your future expectations of me, and set aside what I might become, do you know the me who is here and now? Do you know what I am thinking? Do you know what I am doing? You have never sat in the present moment and looked at a thing or a person. You are analyzing, using your mind.

Set those things aside. They do not need to be set aside; you do not need to create a process in your brain and say, “I must put them down first.” Those things are already illusory. You only need to stop—stop.

Stop. Sit there quietly, quietly, and do not identify with it. Whether it moves or is chaotic, that is a state, a state of life: constantly moving, moving chaotically, chaos; stillness, movement, chaotic movement, chaotic analysis. Let it turn. As long as you do not identify with it, simply watch it, keep your eyes on it. Moving, moving chaotically, moving and moving—it will stop; it gets tired eventually. Then do not think, “I am drowsy; I am going to sleep,” and so on. Whenever any state comes, be aware of it—just be aware of it. Do not analyze anything else, and gradually you will stop.

Your mind operates too quickly, and you have become accustomed to this operation. The way your mind works has its own perspective and habit of thinking. How can I put it? It is fragmented, very fragmented, and very fast—that kind of operation, that kind of thinking habit. You cannot stop; you simply cannot stop.

If you cannot stop, practice patience. What is patience? It makes your mind broad and open. It opens the breadth of your mind, so that nothing can affect your state of mind, you understand? The most important thing affecting your state of mind is the self—the harm done to the self. Someone harms you, curses you, slanders you, or collides with you. If you can endure that kind of hurt, the other things are not so important. Other matters, losing or giving up some things, are not so important. In fact, the most important harm is harm to the self.

First endure; first practice patience. While practicing patience, also practice being aware yet unmoving. Then a person’s bearing and capacity become very broad, very expansive. When your capacity is great, your perspective of thinking changes. When some things no longer affect you, your mind no longer turns over these small matters. There are not many major matters, so you become still.

The matters you turn over are relatively small, you understand? This comes from—actually, I think perhaps—you children of the eighties and nineties, why is that? Because the goals you focus on are small. You no longer focus on humanity, no longer focus on the universe, no longer focus on… If every day you focused on matters of the whole universe, of the entire Milky Way, you would not care about the movements of the solar system. If you focused on the solar system, you would not care about Earth. If you focused on Earth, perhaps you would not care about…

In other words, the broader your perspective of thinking, view of life, and values, the less you will agonize over who ate this piece of durian in front of you. Whoever ate it, let them eat it—who cares? Even if it was mine, it does not matter. You will not turn over tiny immediate gains and losses in your mind. He is not used to this—to turning such things over. He is not used to considering these trivial matters; he simply is not used to it and has no such habit of mind.

In other words, you have no goal in life; the goal of life is unclear, and you are becoming increasingly practical. What does “practical” mean? It means considering only what is in front of you: eating, drinking, playing, having fun, and sleeping. Becoming increasingly practical means that what is in front of you consists only of these trivial matters. Where are the major matters? Major matters seem to have nothing to do with anyone. The goal and meaning of life never occupy an important place in your hearts.

All your considerations are positive, and I think many of your ideas are quite correct, but they do not help you attain enlightenment. Your ideas are right. If one day you were to establish a small company or some department, these ideas of yours would be very good. The department would be orderly, everyone would be in their proper place, and everyone would do their own work. I think that would be good.

But these things are an obstacle to your attaining enlightenment. Break them first, then come back and plan them again—that is how it is. First break these things, then when you come back to plan, everything will also be very pure. It is actually very simple.

Then think about it. Sometimes, if your mind is confused, think: what were you paying attention to all day today? Or perhaps you were not paying attention to anything at all. Either it is, “I do not care about anything, I do not pay attention to anything, there is nothing in my mind”; or it is, “I care about everything—I even know how many ants are crawling on the ground.” Either you go into that much detail, or you say, “I do not care, I am not thinking about anything, I will just sit there,” and that is it.

The meaning and goal of life are unclear, and the purpose of cultivating the Way is not firm either. Although you like it and are willing, you say, “When I have time, I will cultivate.” In other words, “When I have time, I will cultivate,” but you still will not give up anything for cultivation. Deep in your subconscious, if you had to give something up for cultivation, you would still be unwilling; you would not make any effort or sacrifice for cultivation. That is how it is.

It is not those problems you are thinking about; those have nothing to do with you. Whatever you think is fine. The question is, where is your goal? What are you going to do?

Now, when we have no goal, we gradually, gradually, gradually walk along a path, and the goal becomes clearer and clearer because we have no feeling or experience of it. We human beings, we establish goals because we benefit from them, or because the goal strongly attracts us.

But as far as this goal is concerned right now, because we have no felt experience of it, we are simply living amid causes and conditions from past lives. Since we cannot see or touch such a goal, and have nothing visible or tangible, nor any strong attraction, our motivation is insufficient. When none of those things is present, we will indeed sometimes feel confused, because it conflicts with reality in many ways. This confusion is inevitable.

But this is a process. I think there is no problem for now; keep cultivating. Since this is how things are in the present, keep going, keep walking. Gradually, gradually, when thinking about every question, looking at every person, and communicating with every person, set aside past experience and the things from before. Then settle down and be aware, aware, aware of what is in front of you.

In fact, all obstacles come from your living in the past and the future. Your mind contains too much from the past and future: fear of the future, past feelings, sensations, and experiences, past understandings. Your mind is filled with these things; there is nothing of the present moment.

But this requires a period of cultivation and realization. If you put it this way, you will think: if I forget the past and future in the present moment, my mind will become muddled, my eyes will stare blankly, and I will only know how to eat, or only know how to drink, without knowing what I ate—something like that. Then you need clarity and purification; gradually, gradually, cultivate, and cultivate meditative concentration too—some kind of purification. At that point you can sit here knowing everything.

You could say that, to be honest, we are all in outer space. The past is outer space, and so is the future. Our consciousness is constantly wandering outside; we do not return to this place. As long as you live in the past and live in the future, you are not here. If you are not here, you are not on Earth, not here.

If one day you truly return fully to the present, you will certainly see true reality, see the truth—how could you not? You will see the truth of your body and mind. The outer and inner world of body and mind is right here; return completely.

Note: This text was prepared from a teaching video by Yang Ning. If it differs from the video, the video takes precedence. Watch the video.