Guided Meditation: Allowing Absence; Dharmette: Impermanence (2): Loss

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Allowing Loss; Dharmette: Impermanence (2): Loss. 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: Allowing Absence

Hello everyone. I am Maria. Welcome to IMC and this second day of investigation of impermanence^[1]. We introduced the topic yesterday, and the idea that I want to explore with you over these two weeks is that impermanence is not a thing. It's something that's just a characteristic of existence, as we say in Buddhism, a characteristic of experience: that which arises, is present, and passes away.

Part of this exploration has to do with our relationship to impermanence. What is our relationship to it? We may gather that it's there, but what do we do when, as this morning's topic takes up, loss happens? All of us have experienced loss in the world. All of us know what it's like to have something that you no longer have, to be with someone you can no longer be with. And loss is not something that we pretend is not there. Loss is something that we all carry. We've lost a feeling of competence. We've lost our jobs. We've lost our homes. We've lost our parents. We've lost our children. We've lost our lovers. All of us know about loss.

So this morning as we sit, I invite you to allow that sense of loss to be with you. Not the story of the loss; set that aside for the moment. And as we sit for the next few minutes, for the next half hour, sit in your body and be really here in your body, knowing that loss has neither made you greater or lesser than you are. Like impermanence, it happens.

Let's just settle in to a meditative stance. Whether you're sitting or standing or lying, take a deep breath and let it out. Let this be the beginning of just being here with things as they are in this body, in this time, in this room. Take another deep breath and let it out. Then let the breath just happen as it is. And settle into this body, this body that carries you through all the experiences of your life. Be grateful for this body. Whatever its shape or form or condition, this body carries you through all your experiences. Be grateful that your head is here, your cheeks, your mouth, your nose. Allow them to rest in your gratefulness. Ah, let these shoulders that hold everything relax. Your elbows, your hands, the hands that do so much for you. Let them just rest.

Let your torso, this core rest, just breathing. Just this. Your hips, your knees, your feet, they carry you around through all of your life. Grateful feet. Just rest. Toes rest and breathe. Gently breathe.

As you breathe, if this is okay with you, place your attention on that place in the core where you store loss, where you feel loss most acutely. For me, it's kind of in the center at the bottom of my ribs, just near my heart, but just centered. Bring your attention there. And notice the tenderness that rests there. The feeling is tender, maybe a little raw. That place, that place where you hold all of those disappointments, and just hold it. Allow yourself to be there with it, that tender part of yourself. No thinking about worth or blame or conditions. Just be here alongside. Travel with that tender raw place of your heart.

Right here, right now in this room, you are totally safe. Just for these minutes, you are safe. Allow that core to feel that safety. It's okay to feel what you feel. No stories, no reasons, no meanings. Just be here with that tender heart. Breathe into that heart. Breathe softly and let it go. This is a place of safety to feel what you feel. And you can be here. I can be here in this tender part of my heart, the core of my being. Here I can feel what I feel. It's okay.

As you breathe into this space, join that place with the sense of well-being toward yourself. We all just want to be happy. We all want to feel safe. Direct that sense of wishing well-being to this tender place in your core. Like a grandmother with her favorite child, her favorite grandchild. Wish yourself well, safety, to soothe whatever tenderness is there. Allow that raw feeling to change. Allow it to be just as it is. Allow it to feel soothed. Allow this softness, this gentleness to exist along with whatever sadness may be there. Just for now, be soothed. Don't forget to breathe.

If it's too much, step away. Put your awareness on your breath and just breathe it. And when you feel easier, step back into that place in your heart where you feel all the rawness of life and just be with it. You can go back and forth. Feel what you feel. Step back. Enter in. This is you rocking back and forth in this moment, wishing yourself well. And just breathing.

You are safe here. We are all safe right here, right now. Just breathing.

If you hear a little ping, it is moisture dripping down the drain pipe outside my window. Just a drip. Let the sound remind you of gentleness. It's just a sound. As we breathe, things change.

Go back to that center place in your body where you hold all your secrets. Let it be gentle there. Let well-being flow into that place. Be at ease with yourself right here. Breathing into that soft place. And if it resists you, it is just you, say, "Okay, for now, I'm just going to breathe with you anyway." Like sitting with a friend on a warm afternoon on the side of the lake. Just sit with yourself and say, "Okay, whatever sadness, whatever grief." Okay.

With every breath, allow your own good wishes for well-being for yourself to come in with the movement of air. Saturate your body. Go directly to your core. These good wishes. Not wanting things to be different. Just wishing well. May you be happy. May I be happy. May I be safe. May I be peaceful. May I be free. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

With each breath, I sit with things as they are and still. I wish all beings well. I wish well-being for me, for you, for all beings.

Dharmette: Impermanence (2): Loss

I feel like I have to take a deep breath and transition out of that still place to actually speak about impermanence and loss. When we speak of impermanence, very often loss is the first thing that shows up. We think about endings. Impermanence means something that was here is no longer here. Something we had is no longer ours. And we feel its absence.

Sometimes when we think about impermanence, we forget what it is that we're actually thinking about. We lost something and so we immediately think about how it should have been different, how it might have been different, how something could be. We generally don't actually stop and feel the absence. We're conscious of it, but to note it and say something is absent here. There's a hole where something used to be. Sometimes it's a jagged hole. Sometimes it's immense. Sometimes it feels like a piece of ourselves has been ripped away, gone, and we feel the rawness of that ripping away, and we feel like a piece of us is gone. That piece of us that's gone is the attachment that we have to it. It's that feeling when you pull a piece of tape off a paper; sometimes it pulls a piece of the paper with it, depending on what kind of adhesion there is, how much I'm holding on to it, how much am I grasping on to it.

All of this is not about impermanence. All of this is about my relationship to things changing, my relationship to how things are. If this absence means I'm not as smart as I thought I was, I'm not as lovable as I hoped, the person who could see me can no longer see me, I'm not being seen, I'm not worthwhile—all of those thoughts, all of those feelings are a reaction to that ripping away that we feel.

If we can just be with the absence, we don't have to be holding on to it either. We don't have to be reaching for what has already passed. And we can feel ourselves reaching for what has already passed. What was, is no longer present. And somehow acknowledging the absence allows us to disattach, to not be so entangled with what's no longer here.

With any loss, there's a memory of what has been lost along with the absence. But memory is a cruel mistress. They're very attractive. But memories have a way of growing new pieces, imagined things that we think about what we've lost. And of course, we only remember the stuff that we were attached to in and of themselves. All of these reactions we have—loss, grief, resentment, relief—all of these things are emotions that are real, and we can feel those emotions. It's when we try to justify those emotions that we start telling the stories and building up the memories and saying, "Of course, I'm hurt because..." Why not just feel the hurt and say, "Ow, that really hurts." Pain doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. It just means pain. We don't have to make it my emotion, my sadness, my grief. Grief is here, but it's not me. It's grief. Can you separate these pieces?

There are so many losses. A person or being who is with us is no longer with us. Something beautiful has become ugly, marred, a scratch on my new car. Something precious has been misplaced, broken, stolen. I not only feel the absence, I feel resentment. I feel... What do you feel? See these feelings as reactions to what has happened, but is no longer present. Something vibrant has been deadened. We no longer remember names, events, causes. This is a loss. Our computer crashes in the middle of writing a report. Of course, the programs have gotten so fancy that everything is being backed up immediately, and still a sense of doom descends at these losses. Our investments fail. Our house burns down. I can no longer hear as well, so I can't recognize birds that I used to enjoy. We get divorced. There's loss of limbs. All of the sources of sorrow happen, and of course we have reactions to them.

There is this lovely poem by Jane Hirshfield^[2] I want to read to you. It's called "One sand grain among the others in the winter wind":

One sand grain among the others in winter wind. I wake with my hand held over the place of grief in my body. Depend on nothing, the voice advises, but even that is useless. My ears are useless, my familiar and intimate tongue. My protecting hand is useless that wants to hold the single leaf to the tree and say, "Not this one. This one will be saved."

Always we imagine that the thing that is most precious to us will not be affected by the condition of impermanence. We really want it to be saved and we anticipate. I was speaking to a woman last week whose husband had just entered into hospice, and she was anticipating the grief that she was going to be experiencing and wanted to know what was it going to be like for her. And of course, nobody knows what it's going to be like for her. But what is it like for her now? Because there's grief here now. Always we need to return to the now. We can say, "Oh, this is what now feels like. This is what now feels like."

Sadness doesn't disappear when you do that. It only resides alongside of what else is true. Maybe before you couldn't see because the sadness overwhelmed everything. The sense of resentment overwhelmed everything because we take it to be us, part of us. But the sadness need not overwhelm what is sweet in life. No matter how overwhelming that sadness may be, the sadness is enough, and it exists alongside whatever else is here. If we can open our awareness to that without trying to manage that response to loss, but simply see it as here. And when sadness is enough, just that there is the flavor of loving something also. Can we see that also even in loss?

Who I am is not determined by what I lose. It is not me that is lost. There is the absence of something that formerly was here. And my experience includes so much more. When we identify with attachment to what is lost, the clinging actually becomes stronger. Who am I without this person? I remember when my dear friend died last year, my feeling was it was like losing my binky. This was the person who had known me longer than anybody. My family probably knew me longer but didn't know me because they haven't really seen me that much. This person kept track of me for over 50 years. It felt like my history was gone, which is not even logical. But I could feel that sense of loss and say, "But I'm still here. Nothing has actually changed except the way I was attached to this person," holding on to something that meant something about me.

But the opportunity exists to make room for the sadness without being for or against it, without it meaning something. It's just that, and then it becomes something a little precious. It becomes something... ah, I can realize that that sadness arose out of love to begin with. I can make room for that feeling of love, and I could practice for all of the loss that I'm going to have in my life, which will keep happening. More people I'm going to lose as I age. I can practice by noticing that people leave when concerts end. I can notice when my tea gets cold. I can practice renunciation. I can give away something I love and say, "How does that feel? Can I be with that?" The sense of being not able to move in the world is lessened. I can notice the changing light as the sun sets, the changing moods that I have when I experience different people.

By embracing change, by being honest with the feelings that I have and saying, "Ah, grief is here visiting me again," and I am still here experiencing all of life. And I still wish myself well and hold myself with that gentleness. I can be with sadness and be in love and feel the ease of both being present. I wish you the ease of seeing loss just as it is, free of all the meanings that can be attached to that loss. And I wish you all well. Thank you.