Guided Meditation: What is True Now?; Dharmette: Impermanence (3); Inconstancy

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: What is True Now?; Impermanence (3): Inconstancy. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 16, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whenever you're listening to this. Welcome to IMC. I'm Maria, and we have been talking about impermanence. Today we're going to be talking about change.

The one thing that I don't have any control over is the rain dripping down the downspout outside my condo building. So, if you hear a dripping sound, which I don't currently hear, just incorporate it into your practice and try not to focus on it. Bring your awareness back to where we are. Notice the change in how it feels when you stop listening. Stop putting your awareness on hearing and put your awareness here. There's plenty to follow right here.

Guided Meditation: What is True Now?

With that in mind, please take a meditation posture, whatever you choose, some relaxed but alert position: sitting, standing, lying, walking. Make the change that now I am engaged in meditation. Whatever else was true, now I'm here.

Take a deep breath just to anchor yourself in this moment, and let it out. And as you let it out with that outgoing air, let go of whatever came before this moment and just be here with the breath. In this body, this ever-changing body. Welcome all the pieces of this body into this moment. Settle in.

Allow your shoulders to sink down. Feel the feeling of them moving. Feel your elbows resting next to your body. Your hands resting. Your torso softening, alert and rested. And if what you feel is restlessness, allow the restlessness to be here. Okay? Be restless. Take a deep breath and let it out. And just here, and just let the body breathe. It's like this now. In a moment it may be different, but it's like this now. Just be with the breath.

The soft going in and going out of the air. The rising and falling of the diaphragm, the in and out of the belly, the body at rest. And still the air moves, changing with every breath. And still we are just here, just breathing.

Is your awareness still on the breath? Whatever you chose for your object of meditation, has your awareness shifted? Is it still here? Have the thoughts wandered? If so, just come back. Just bring your awareness to this moment, here. Feel what you feel.

If you notice your awareness wandering, bring it back to the breath. Notice whether you welcome it back or resist. Be aware that you are here in the room breathing.

As you are here in the moment, how has your breath changed? Is it still? Is it deep? Is it gentle? Has it become softer? Is it shallow for a moment? Check. Are your shoulders still down? Have they risen up in this body?

I am in this room. This body is at rest, or not. The breath is deep or shallow. Be aware of the movement, the shift, the stillness. Try to note without judgment, without opinion. Ah, here. Just here. Just this breath.

In the last couple of minutes of our sit, take note of your breath. Take note of your body. Feel how it is just in this moment. And as you're here, reflect on this sit. How has it changed? How has it changed you? How has the breath changed? Where has your awareness been? No judgment, no right or wrong. How is it? Where is it? Where is your attention? How do you react to where your attention is? Do you feel the need to alter it? Do you feel satisfied? What is this sense? Pleasure, no pleasure, pleasant, unpleasant. Just note how it is.

Be aware of what it's like to be in this moment, to inhabit this moment. Do you feel leaning into the next moment? "Ah, soon this will be over." Do you feel a reluctance to let go of this stillness? Just note the raw experience of it. This moment.

Dharmette: Impermanence (3); Inconstancy

Welcome to this moment. I realized I went past the time, which is okay. What we're going to talk about today is inconstancy. Inconstancy. Just change. Raw change. All things arise out of conditions and all pass away when conditions change. Today we consider how we respond to change, incorporate it, are surprised by it.

What is change? Change is: this was true and now this is true. This is true and now this is true. Change without judgment around it. Just change. This was what was true.

I like to think of sand dunes. If you've been around the coast, you see huge humps of sand or narrow strips of sand. And sometimes the sand is compacted because it's on the edge of the water and the water sort of seals those pieces of silica together. But basically, when you're walking on sand dunes or considering sand dunes, they're made up of little pieces of something—coral, silica—and a piece will roll slightly down, or it'll roll all the way down a curve, or it'll just move around a little. But the sand dunes themselves appear to be pretty solid. You know, "There's a sand dune. I see it. It's not moving." But in fact, they move all the time. All the small pieces are moving, and eventually those sand dunes move up and down and back and forth.

There's a beach close to here on the San Mateo coast called Gazos Creek Beach. My family had been out there around July, and we had a picnic under this big rock, and we took pictures. I went out again in December, and it was five feet lower where we had been sitting. The sand had moved so much. And this wasn't even a dune. It was just the ocean coming in and moving it away. It moves constantly. It's always changing.

It's one of the things I love about the beach. One of my favorite walks is out at Limantour Beach at Point Reyes National Seashore. It's about a three-and-a-half-mile walk out to the end of the spit. And one of the things I like about it is because it's totally uncontrolled—nobody's trying to fix it—it changes wildly over the course of the year. Something is always different. It allows me to really see change and how inconstant it is. Even though that spit is not only three-and-a-half miles out all the time, it's there, but it's never the same. The conditions are never the same.

How we feel about the movement of sand depends on whether we have a house on the beach, or we're just visiting, or we're birdwatching, or we're looking at wildflowers. Here they tried to stabilize the beach in places by planting ice plant. So half the population is trying to get rid of the invading species, ice plant, and the other side is saying, "Oh, look, it's beautiful right now. It's blooming out on the coast. It is gorgeous." And I find myself pulled between, "Oh, but it's shading out natural plants," and "Oh, it's gorgeous."

And we're like this in response to all of the conditions of our lives. We see change, but we don't really register it. And we don't register how we're reacting to it. And how we're reacting to it has everything to do with the view that we have: how we expect it to be, how we want it to be, how we are used to it being, what is familiar to us. Are we comfortable with the unfamiliar?

Sometimes we're delighted by it. The other day I was walking around the pond near here and I saw a western bluebird sitting on a post. It's a gorgeous little bird, and I was delighted by it. Partly because you almost never see them. Not there. Not in the middle of the city.

I once wrote a poem about change. And the last line was, "I'm always in favor of change when it's my idea." And that's the rub. It's how are we seeing things that cause us to react to change. How do we want it to be? I want my meditation to be a certain way. And so I set up the conditions the best I can. And of course, no meditation is ever the same. And so I form opinions. "It's because I don't know how to meditate. I forgot how to meditate. I can't concentrate. My cushion just needs to be fluffed. I really need to be sitting on a different device." We have all of these things because we want to fix how things are, and we're unwilling to see that things are never the same. We really don't want to see that. We really want it to be this way. Noticing how we cling to this way is an important part of practice.

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to go to another beach that had small pebbles. It was a beach of small pebbles, maybe three or four millimeters in diameter, which is not a typical beach. And I sat down on the beach and enjoyed the ocean for a while. And then when I tried to get up, I couldn't find purchase. Everything was just sliding away from me. And I was noticing the irritation of, "Why can't I just get up? Why can't it just be the same way?" And watching every time I put my hand down, it would slide away. And I was unable to just do what I normally do on a sandy beach. And I thought, "How interesting. I have this, and now I don't have this. This is pleasant. This is unpleasant. I should have done something about this. I should have anticipated this."

How we see ourselves, how we want to be seen, is a view. And views are in fact impermanent. How I see myself, how I'd like to see myself. And despite this impermanence, we cling to this view tenaciously. "It's my view. This is how it should be. This change is not acceptable, or this change is necessary."

What do we do when change that we think is necessary doesn't happen? All of a sudden things seem like they never change, and we latch on to the idea that things are not changing. "This should be changed. This absolutely can't continue this way. It's got to be fixed." Now, I'm totally in favor of advocacy, but not fanaticism.

So sometimes when I think I would like to create this environment, and let's say I want to create a sacred environment, and I set up all of my tools to make it a sacred environment, and I soften my voice and I try to arrange conditions in a certain way. But there are some people that don't like those conditions. They don't feel safe in those conditions at all. And it doesn't feel at all safe. It feels contrived, and there's irritation built up. Am I thwarted because I haven't succeeded in my view of what sacred looks like? Or have I lost sight of the intention to create sacred space, which is an allowing, safe space?

We do this around holidays. The holidays are supposed to look a certain way, and then we frantically work to make it look that way. We frantically work to make our meditation look a certain way. And when it's short of that, what is your response?

It's useful to pay attention to change and notice what your mind habits are. Now, I have a tendency to be a fixer. My husband is a big fixer. It's, "I have to make this peaceful. I have to make this peaceful." How does this drive you? Can you let something just be? Can you let change occur and not be driven by it one way or the other? Can you work toward change and allow that some change occurred, even if it's not to the point that you wish?

All of this has to do with wanting things to be different than they are. This is a primary recipe for suffering. This desire for things to be a certain way colors how we see ourselves, how we see the world. And we think, "If I only had the right control or the right..." We don't pay attention to the fact that change is happening all the time and the conditions are always changing.

We have to be able to say, "It's like this now," without saying, "This is just like before," or "This is different than before," or "It's always going to be this way," or "It should always be this way." Can we come into the experience and see it without our opinion, but just see the experience and say, "Ah, it's like this now," and register change without having an opinion about the change?

Now, of course, I have opinions about change. I notice when it's hot, when I'm cold, when there's anger present or the absence of anger, but it's really the noticing of how it is now, and not registering the expectation of having it different. This is what we practice with.

So, I have a poem by one of my favorites at the moment, Jane Hirshfield^[1]. She's often a favorite, and this is called "I Wanted to Be Surprised."

To such a request, the world is obliging. In just the past week, a rotund porcupine who seemed equally startled by me. The man who swallowed a tiny microphone to record the sounds of his body, not considering beforehand how he might remove it. A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread. How easily the large spiders were caught with a clear plastic cup surprised even them. I don't know why I was surprised every time love started or ended, or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war, or that no one kept being there when the doorknob had clearly... What should not have been so surprising: my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others. What did not surprise enough? My daily expectation that anything would continue, and then that so much did continue, when so much did not. Small rivulets still flowing downhill when it wasn't raining. (I might add: rain spout pinging.) A sister's birthday. Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence that even today please means please. Good morning is still understood as good morning, and that when I wake up the window's distant mountain remains the mountain. The borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing its alleys and markets, office of dentist, drugstore, liquor store, Chevron. Its library that charges—a happy surprise—no fine for overdue books. Baldwin, Szymborska, Morrison, Cavafy^[2]...

"I wanted to be surprised. I don't know why I was surprised when every time love started or ended, or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war, or that no one kept being there... What should not have been so surprising: my error after error. What did not surprise enough? My daily expectation that anything would continue, and then that so much did continue, when so much did not."

May you seek out surprise. Welcome it. See how your mind responds to it with openness or anxiety. Then see what's true. See that all surprises are not the same. See how your attitude of mind affects the reception to change.

A final quote from the woman astronaut that just returned on Artemis. Christina Koch^[3] told The New York Times, "I just had an overwhelming sense of being moved by looking at the moon." "The moon really is its own unique body in the universe," she continued. "It's not just a poster in the sky that goes by. It's a real place."

May you know the real place of your own moons. Thank you.