Guided Meditation: Still & Moving

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Still & Moving; Impermanence (1): Relating to Impermanence. 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 14, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Still & Moving

Good morning. It's Monday. Welcome to the sit. Whatever time of day you may be joining us, let's all settle into this moment. Just this moment.

Take a deep breath. Notice it entering your lungs. Notice wherever you feel it in your body and let it go. Slowly let it go. Take another deep breath. And slowly, gently let it go.

And now let's settle into this moment, into this sit. Allow yourself to let go of whatever has come before this to join this moment. Let your breath settle into just how it feels in this room, in this place right now.

Notice your whole body sitting in this room. Notice your head in this space. Your eyes, your cheeks, your mouth. Relax it. Ease into this space. Let your shoulders fall down. Your elbows settle, your hands at rest. Feel the change of just being, just here.

Let your torso settle. Feel relaxation just settling into your limbs all the way down to your toes. This is your body just breathing. Just here.

Place your attention on your breath. Feel the air moving or feel your belly moving in and out. See if you can feel the movement in and stopping just before out. That tiny space for change, in [moves] to out^[1].

Follow breathing. Just follow the breathing. In this breathing there's movement. It keeps moving whether it's deep or shallow, the breath. It changes from one thing to another, always moving. And yet the body is still, breathing in and breathing out.

The breath changes. The temperature changes. The space between the in and the out changes. And still we're breathing in and out. Still there, but always different.

The mind wanders away. The awareness shifts. We return to our breath. The breathing continues. The breath is different.

Aware of the breath moving in and out, the air moving in and out. Be aware of the body receiving this air. Is there a softening in this space? A rigidity? Can you feel the movement in a still body? Just here as the air passes in and out.

Still here, but not the same as only a few minutes ago. Receiving this air, letting it go. The air passes in and out. And still the breath moves in and out.

Time passes. Breath changes. Body still here. And the breath is still moving. The movement is impersonal. The body breathes without us making it breathe. This air coming in and sustaining life, and the air moving out, taking the unneeded with it. We don't direct it, nor are we passive. The air comes in and out. We're aware of it. We're not aware of it. It still moves in and out.

What we call breathing, our awareness flies away and it can always come back to this. The air moving in and out. Both the same and always different. This air in and out. The process of breathing.

Reflections on Impermanence

Good morning, good morning, good afternoon, whatever time of day it is for you. This is what now feels like. This is what now feels like. How do you feel? This moment is now. This is what it feels like. It's not like yesterday. It's today.

What I'd like to talk to you about this week and maybe next week as well, depending on how I go here, how far I get, is impermanence^[2]. Impermanence is something that we sort of take for granted. We all know impermanence is: things come and they go, things arise, they're present, and they pass away.

Now, what's interesting is that we all have some kind of reaction to impermanence. "Well, forget about it. I can't figure it out. It's not important to me." We take it for granted. We say, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I know things end," but what's really true is that impermanence is something that exists, but it's not something that we control in any way. And so what happens in response to impermanence is what's really interesting. It's our relationship to impermanence.

Our relationship to impermanence decides how we feel about ourselves, how we feel about others, how we want what we want in the world. It's the source of wanting and not wanting—this impermanence. "I want more of this. I want less of this. I want this to come. I want this to go away. I want this to stay the same." That's the most insidious one of all: "I want this to remain the same." We hold on to it.

That includes all kinds of things in our lives. It includes my health. It includes where I live. It includes where I can't live. It includes what I eat, what I want, what I don't want, what my views are. Impermanence means that that view that I am so proud of can change.

Now the next thing that happens, in addition to thinking about what impermanence impacts, is: how am I going to treat that? No matter what we believe about impermanence, we kind of want to manage it. We want to say, "Okay, I am somebody who is not going to be bothered by impermanence," or "I am somebody that's really going to pay attention to the fact that things come and go." And what happens is we still get blindsided by impermanence because we're not following everything, all the conditions of our lives. And these conditions are all subject to impermanence. They arise, they're present, and they pass away.

We often don't think about impermanence in terms of the present. Usually, when somebody says impermanence, we think loss, gone, ending. That's what impermanence is. As soon as you say the word, it's "I'm going to lose something" or "something's going away." And somehow it's all about how it relates to us. The self is so entangled with impermanence that we can't even see it. That's what I'd like to explore.

We seem to want to make impermanence so it's not going to affect me. "I don't want you to be sick. I don't want you to be ill. I don't want you to die. I don't want to die." All of these thoughts have to do with clinging on to something, holding on to something, some idea, some expectation.

And when it doesn't behave, when experience doesn't match what we want, what we think is good, what we think is right, there's a sense of not only loss, but a tendency to assign blame. "It's got to be someone's fault that this has happened. I didn't take care of myself," or "I didn't take care of that," or "I should have predicted this was going to happen." There's this sense of managing change.

Change is a process. It's not a thing. Impermanence is not a thing. It's a quality of things coming into existence and disappearing from existence. Sometimes even anger is just a substitute for dashed expectations. Very often anger is a substitute for "it should have been that way." And when we see that, the anger becomes not the point; it becomes seeing what is it that I wanted that hasn't happened. My idea, my thought.

There are lots of reactions. There are fear and anxiety. I had a terrible time sleeping last night. I was so anxious about getting started and getting up on time and I woke up every 15 minutes, I swear. Well, maybe not every 15 minutes, but I could feel that anxiety about "this is going to be a different morning." That's just how it is. It's neither good nor bad. Although less sleep is usually not a good idea.

Or we can react with nihilism. "Well, nothing matters. Everything changes, so nothing matters." This is usually a sure sign of developing suffering^[3]. If nothing matters, then there comes an attitude of despondency and despair. When it's really just that change has happened. It's happening all the time and what we really see is what we're holding on to.

When we talk about impermanence, we're often uncomfortable. That itself is a clue. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes it conjures up loss, uncertainty, grief, unreliability. What can I rely on if everything's changing all the time?

But even as we sat this morning and the breath was changing, we were still here. That's a marvel to me. I'm awestruck^[4] by the fact that everything is changing and yet we are still here. This arises, is present, and passes away. But the feel of things shifting beneath our feet—that feels uncomfortable.

And then we try to manage impermanence and we say, "Okay, I'm going to develop equanimity^[5] and I'm going to develop resilience and I'm going to be ready," as if it was something coming up. But it's now. It's now. This is what now feels like.

The interesting thing is it depends really on our state of mind. How are we approaching impermanence? What does it have to do with? Am I optimistic? Am I pessimistic? Am I looking for protecting myself from change? Am I looking forward to change? What is the attitude? And it's not the same all the time. It's not as if we're chronically—well, some people are chronically optimistic. I almost envy them. That sense of always being buoyant. And yet we know we're not always buoyant. We're not always down. We can get stuck in these places.

Even when the change belongs to someone else, it somehow reflects back on us. Let's take the change that happens to somebody else, not me. Somebody else loses their job, loses their mother, loses their sense of ease. That affects me. I want to fix it. I want to change it. I am even uncomfortable with their changes. Think about how often when impermanence arises, it brings up thoughts of me, mine, I. Just be aware of that. Know that these things are affecting you and that change is always here.

It's useful to think about how do you think about change in general? Do you like change? Do you not like change? I remember when I was a manager of people, I was trying to convince people that ambiguity was a good thing. This was not a popular thought. People wanted to know where are we going and how are we getting there and when do we know we've made it. Just setting the course and saying, "Here's where we're headed" just was not good enough. What is your comfort with ambiguity, with not knowing? Because that is a quality of impermanence—not knowing.

Accepting impermanence not as a thing but as a process, that change is just a quality. Seeing change helps us relate to change in a way that doesn't engender grabbing on or pushing away. Really embracing change. Just this thing. How can I show up without insisting that I be a certain way? How can I allow you to show up without insisting you behave a certain way? How can I keep this ease of relationship to impermanence? That's what I would like to explore with you. What does it mean in my life, impermanence, and how do I relate to it? How do I realize impermanence without clinging to thoughts of "who am I?"

I lost a very dear friend last year and it was amazing to me how often what came to me was, "Who am I if this person is no longer here to know me?" It's a very interesting thought. Things come, they are present, and they go away.

So, I found a poem I hadn't read in a long time that I'd like to read to you. It's by Denise Levertov^[6], Once Only.

All which, because it was flame and song and granted us joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit, turns out to have been what it was: that once, only. Every initiation did not begin a series, a buildup. The marvelous did happen in our lives. Our stories are not drab with its absence. But don't expect now to return for more. Whatever more there will be will be unique as those were unique. Try to acknowledge the next song in its body-halo of flames as utterly present, as now or never.

All which, because it was flame and song and granted us joy, we thought we'd do, be, revisit, turns out to have been what it was: that once, only. Every initiation did not begin a series, a buildup. The marvelous did happen in our lives. Our stories are not drab with its absence. But don't expect now to return for more. Whatever more there will be will be unique as those were unique. Try to acknowledge the next song in its body-halo of flames as utterly present, as now or never.

This is what now feels like, and this is what we have. So as you go about your day today, bring into mind this is what now feels like. Let impermanence lead you to the present.

Thank you. May you all be well.

The dripping faucet is rain.