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Mindfulness of Breathing (64) The Lesson of Inconstancy

The Onward-Leading Nature of Inconstancy

So we're still lingering in the 13th step of mindfulness of breathing, that of observing inconstancy^[1]. There's something about inconstancy and observing it that leads to the 14th step, which is usually translated into English as dispassion.

There's something about seeing impermanence that is onward-leading. Seeing inconstancy opens something up that allows something to unfold and deepen or move along. A very common term in the Buddhist scriptures is the idea that the Dharma^[2] is onward-leading, leading to greater and greater freedom. One of the things that is very much a part of this onward-leading nature is settling back, resting in awareness, and becoming more and more aware of the transiency of experience—the inconstancy of experience.

Flowing Sand: The Particularity of Impermanence

Sometimes it's called impermanence. But as I've said, that's going to imply for some people only that sooner or later something will no longer exist; it will die or be gone forever. While there's wisdom to that understanding, for sure, and it could be freeing in itself in a certain way, the core insight of the Buddha has more to do with the momentary inconstancy of things.

He didn't say this, but it's like the inconstant waves or ripples on a river that flows by. The little wavelets come in, they go, they exist and don't exist. They're constantly being reborn, constantly passing away. So many of our sensations are coming and going. Sometimes they stay longer than we wish, but sooner or later they pass, and maybe come back again.

To really settle in and start seeing more intimately and closely how much of our experience is a flowing experience of changing sensations—things appearing and disappearing. Sometimes in rapid succession, or sometimes it can just feel like everything is flowing sand. The reason for "flowing sand" rather than water, as some people say, is that sand is a little bit more particulate, so it represents the particular sensations that have some kind of clarity to them. Water flows, but there's no sense of particularity to each molecule of water. With sand, there's a particularity. For some people, it feels like snow, just everything is like snow or raindrops.

But with the flowing sand, everything is just really settling back and getting very still, and then appreciating how everything is arising and passing. This was a very significant insight for the Buddha. In the ways described in some texts, this was his big "aha" moment. In seeing this, he realized this is the path to liberation. With seeing this arising and passing, the inconstancy, there was light, there was wisdom, there was clarity. The path opened for the Buddha.

Relinquishing the Habit of Clinging

In particular, seeing the arising was very important for him, but seeing the passing was very important as well. It seems like the passing and ceasing of things was even more important than seeing their arising. One reason is that when we know that things pass, even if they inconstantly come back, we know that they're not permanent. We know that it's not always that way.

That frees us from the mind that subconsciously relates to things as if they're always going to be there. We can relate to them instead as, "Oh, this is just part of the flavor of the moment. This is what's coming here now, and in due time it will pass." In fact, if I pay really careful attention to the particularity of the moment, it's already passing, and then arising, passing, and arising. Knowing that it's not constant is very helpful with things like suffering.

If we think that suffering is durable, solid, and unchanging—like concrete—then it's very hard to get in there and try to do anything with it. But if we see it more as flowing sand or flowing water, you realize you try to reach into water and hold on to it, grab a fistful of it, and it just disappears through your fingers very quickly. We realize suffering doesn't have that solidity we thought before.

The same applies to the self—all the things we think of as "myself" or identify strongly as "this is who I am." To really see that it also has a certain inconstancy, that the sensations, the experience, the role, the ideas, the feelings, the intuitions come and go. We start seeing that too as part of this flow and current of a river, and we can't quite hold on to it.

So there are these gaps in the arising and passing, these moments of freedom. The passing begins to teach us not to cling, not to grasp. We start seeing it's simply not worth grasping. This is a powerful insight that comes in many ways in life, but in deeper meditation, there's a sense of well-being, freedom, openness, and a lack of clinging that is so palpable. We begin feeling that any movement to contract, any movement to resist, any movement to hold on tight or to linger and be involved with something that's going on, is a loss of some of the peace.

We're actually better off in the freedom; we're better off in this deep, subtle, quiet peacefulness. In that, we can learn it's not worth clinging. We lose something in the contracting, we lose something in the resisting. It isn't that we are told, "As a good Buddhist, you should let go of clinging." There's no admonition like that. It's more like: pay careful attention, become quiet, and when you notice for yourself that you're worse off clinging, then don't cling.

One of the lessons that helps this is when we realize in certain deep states of meditation that clinging doesn't work at all, because whatever it is we're clinging to is also constantly passing away. You don't have to be in that constant passing away place in meditation to begin appreciating how much does pass away, and how in the passing away, it is possible to tune into a kind of peacefulness, a freedom, a spaciousness, an openness.

That makes room for, if we don't cling to the next thing that comes up, just allowing it to pass. In the space that it leaves behind, just be open there, be relaxed there. Take that in. Something else will arise, but rather than being preoccupied by it, caught by it, analyzing it, or doing things with it, allow the next thing to arise in that space. In that openness, in that field of awareness, just let it come and go. In the process of doing that, we learn more and more about letting go. We learn more and more that we're not holding on to anything.

I need to charge my battery. And so, because batteries also pass away, it's probably good for the next couple of minutes to keep it going. [Laughter]

The Illusion of a Permanent Self

This teaching on not-self^[3], which is often perplexing for people, makes more and more sense when we understand that nothing qualifies as an enduring self. There's nothing that we can find inside of ourselves or in direct experience when we're really intimate and close to direct experience that qualifies as, "Oh, that's myself," because it passes as well. The idea being that anything that passes cannot be an enduring self.

From the Buddha's point of view, any doctrine of self, any theory about what the self is, lends itself to a kind of reification—a solidification on what the self is—that's not possible when things are constantly changing. It's kind of like there's no place to hang your hat. There's no place to thumbtack any philosophy, idea, concept, or theory about what the self is. It's like taking a thumbtack and trying to stick it into a river and have it get stuck; it doesn't stick anywhere. So any theory about self just doesn't quite stick, doesn't quite work with this constantly flowing and inconstant nature of experience that begins to open up in deep insight meditation^[4].

The core, deepest, most important insight of insight meditation is this inconstancy of phenomena—the changing nature, the current of phenomena as it flows through and arises and passes here in the present moment. To settle back and observe that on this 13th step is what is being talked about.

Moving Toward Dispassion

As we do that, we begin feeling that the things we cling to, have passionate lust for, or passionate hatred for—the ways in which we're driven by or passionate about our attachments—just don't make any sense. It loses its allure, it loses its enchantment, and we stop falling under its spell^[5]. We begin observing that we're less and less interested in clinging, less and less interested in lust and hatred and this driven, attached kind of passion that can happen, like the passion for money or power.

And so then, the 14th step is observing dispassion^[6].

So then, it will end, and this will pass as well, and will make room for the next thing to happen. And chances are, it's simply inconstant, and we'll meet again here tomorrow at the same time. Thank you.