Impermanence and The Illusion Between Us

Why do they say all is impermanent?

There is a misconception within this.

To say, all is impermanent, is already to make a conclusion. To say this understanding is true is then to make the understanding permanent. So already there is something strange about the statement itself.

Let me explain.

What the Buddha encountered was that life has a beginning and an end. There is sickness. There is suffering. There is death.

These are conclusions.

There is a beginning.

There is an ending.

This became that.

This caused this.

This person was born.

This person became sick.

This person suffered.

This person died.

And each one of these, once it has happened, is permanent within time.

What happened happened.

The flower may die, but it remains true that the flower lived.

A person may die, but it remains true that the person was here.

A moment may pass, but it remains true that the moment occurred.

So there is something very strange about impermanence.

What changes becomes permanent as something that changed.

What ends becomes permanent as something that ended.

What began becomes permanent as something that began.

The conclusion itself becomes fixed within time.

So perhaps the problem is not permanence or impermanence.

Perhaps the problem is conclusion.

A beginning is a conclusion.

An ending is a conclusion.

An answer is a conclusion.

A becoming is a conclusion.

A destination is a conclusion.

Even to say, I found it, brings the looking to conclusion.

I was here.

Now I am there.

This happened.

Then that happened.

This became that.

This caused this.

And once the mind establishes these things it once again enters the permanence of time.

So how does the mind transcend it?

How does the mind escape the permanence created by beginnings, endings, causes, answers, and conclusions?

Not by finding another answer.

For then you have another conclusion.

Not by finding the beginning.

For then you have made another beginning permanent.

Not by discovering what everything becomes.

For then becoming itself has been brought to conclusion.

Not even by discovering what everything means.

For then meaning becomes another thing possessed by the mind.

So the mind begins doing away with conclusions.

Then answers.

Then beginnings.

Then endings.

Then becoming.

Then undoing.

This is difficult.

To live without conclusions is difficult.

To look without having to find something is difficult.

To know without needing the knowledge to remain before you is difficult.

To live without demanding to know what you are becoming may be more difficult still.

But you still live your life.

Mind you, you still live a life.

You wake.

You eat.

You walk.

You speak.

People come.

People go.

There is sickness.

There is health.

There is suffering.

There is joy.

There are beginnings and endings all around you.

The world continues.

Time continues.

Your life continues within all of this.

The freedom is not that these things disappear.

The freedom is that the mind no longer has to possess them.

The mind no longer has to bring everything to conclusion.

It does not have to answer everything.

It does not have to locate everything.

It does not have to know where everything began.

It does not have to know what everything becomes.

It does not have to take what is lost and make it found.

It does not have to take what is unknown and make it known.

It does not have to say:

There.

That is it.

That is where it is.

That is what it means.

That is what happened.

That is what will happen.

That is what I am.

That is what I am becoming.

Once this begins to fall away, something peculiar becomes visible.

The observer.

But the observer does not become visible as another object.

You cannot turn around and look at it.

For whatever you look at has already become something observed.

You cannot completely describe it.

Whatever you describe has already become a conclusion.

You cannot locate it.

Location requires here and there.

You cannot say when it began.

Then it has a beginning.

You cannot say when it ends.

Then it has an ending.

You cannot say what it becomes.

Then once again you have brought becoming into it.

So how is the observer recognized?

By seeing everything else move.

Thought appears and dissolves.

Emotion appears and dissolves.

Memory appears and dissolves.

Knowledge appears and dissolves.

Even knowledge.

I may know something completely in one moment.

Then I focus on something else that I know.

The first knowledge disappears from the immediate mind.

It has not necessarily been destroyed.

But it is no longer there before me.

Another knowledge has arrived.

Then attention moves again and that too disappears.

So knowledge has arrival and departure.

What I know comes forward.

What I know falls away.

What I know becomes present.

What I know becomes absent.

Then perhaps it returns.

Attention itself does the same.

Attention comes and goes.

It does not last.

I focus on this.

Then that.

A sound.

A thought.

A memory.

A person.

My body.

The room.

Something I know.

Something I do not know.

Even the effort to hold attention becomes another movement.

Attention does not remain.

Knowledge does not remain before the mind.

Thought does not remain.

Emotion does not remain.

Memory does not remain.

The body does not remain as it was.

The world does not remain as it was.

Everything is moving before the observer.

And yet that which knows the movement does not appear to move with the thing that moved.

This is what I mean when I say:

The self is movement.
The mind is immovable.

The immovable mind is not frozen.

It is not a stone.

It is not dead.

It is not unconsciousness.

It is not simply emptiness.

It is not something sitting somewhere inside your head refusing to move.

It is that which does not have to travel with what it observes in order to know that movement has occurred.

A thought comes.

The thought changes.

The thought disappears.

Something knows this.

Then another thought comes:

I am observing my thoughts.

But notice.

That too is a thought.

It came.

It remained for a moment.

Then it disappeared.

Then perhaps another thought comes:

I am the observer.

But this too appears before the mind.

So let that one go also.

Do not make the observer another conclusion.

Do not turn it into another possession.

Do not say:

There it is.

For the moment you say, there it is, it has become another thing seen.

So what remains?

Do not answer too quickly.

The answer itself would merely appear and dissolve.

And perhaps this is how one begins to understand why it is said:

All is impermanent.

It is not because the mind has discovered one final permanent doctrine called impermanence.

It is because when the mind has done away with conclusions and answers, it begins to see the arrival and departure of everything that once seemed fixed.

Knowledge comes and goes.

Attention comes and goes.

Thought comes and goes.

Emotion comes and goes.

Memory comes and goes.

Answers come and go.

Certainty comes and goes.

The found can become lost.

The lost can become found.

The unknown becomes known.

The known disappears from attention.

Then it returns.

Beginnings appear.

Endings appear.

Becomings appear.

Undoings appear.

But the mind no longer possesses them.

This is the point.

The reason one would say all is impermanent is because once the mind has done away with conclusions and answers, once it sees the arrival and departure of knowledge, the coming and going of attention, the appearing and dissolving of thought, then all of these things become transparent.

Not gone.

Transparent.

The mind understands beginnings without possessing a beginning.

It understands endings without possessing an ending.

It understands becoming without needing to become.

It understands undoing without needing to be undone.

It understands answers without needing to conclude itself through an answer.

It understands knowledge without needing knowledge to remain.

It understands attention without needing attention to stay.

And because of this, beginnings and endings no longer bind the mind.

They still exist within life.

But they are transparent.

You see through them.

You understand what they are.

You understand how they arise.

You understand how they disappear.

But the mind itself no longer has to make itself from them.

This is very different from saying nothing exists.

It is very different from saying life is meaningless.

It is very different from saying that because everything changes nothing matters.

Life still happens.

Your life still happens.

You still love.

You still suffer.

You still eat.

You still sleep.

You still laugh.

You still lose things.

You still find things.

You still know things.

You still forget things.

But the mind does not have to conclude itself from every movement of life.

And this is perhaps how the mind begins to transcend time without leaving life.

You remain here.

But the mind no longer has to become here.

You move there.

But the mind does not have to conclude itself there.

Something begins.

The mind understands the beginning.

Something ends.

The mind understands the ending.

But it does not have to make either one the boundary of itself.

Perhaps you will see then that in order to experience this, eventually you have to do away with experience.

That sounds impossible.

But consider what experience means.

I experienced something.

Something happened to me.

It began.

It continued.

It ended.

Now I remember it.

Already the mind has taken what happened and placed it into time.

Already it has made a beginning.

An ending.

A memory.

A conclusion.

A possession.

My experience.

So even the experience of transcendence would become another thing within time if the mind were to hold onto it.

I experienced enlightenment.

I experienced emptiness.

I experienced the observer.

I experienced the eternal.

There it is again.

A beginning.

An ending.

An answer.

A conclusion.

And so perhaps what is called the Buddha is not merely someone who discovered a final answer.

Perhaps Buddha points toward a state of mind in which the demand for the final answer has ceased.

A mind no longer trapped by its own conclusions.

A mind no longer compelled to establish a beginning and ending for everything.

A mind no longer compelled to possess what appears before it.

And then there is the Middle Road.

Light and darkness.

Both can become projections.

Both can become extremes.

Imagine Buddha in deep meditation.

His eyes are closed.

Darkness.

The world disappears from sight.

Forms disappear.

Names disappear.

The movement of the world becomes quiet.

But then he opens his eyes.

Light.

The world returns.

People return.

Trees return.

Suffering returns.

Life returns.

And he does not throw away the darkness because there is light.

Nor does he reject the light because he found silence in darkness.

He keeps his balance between them.

This is how I understand something deeper in the Middle Road.

Not simply moderation.

Balance.

The wisdom of not falling completely into either side.

Eyes closed:

darkness.

Eyes open:

the world.

Too far into the world and the mind becomes consumed by every appearance, every answer, every conclusion, every desire, every fear.

Too far into the darkness and even emptiness becomes another thing possessed.

Another attachment.

Another conclusion.

So remain between them.

Bring the wisdom of the darkness into the light.

Bring silence into movement.

Bring the immovable into a life that moves.

Do not reject the world.

Do not become possessed by it.

Do not reject knowledge.

Do not become possessed by knowledge.

Do not reject attention.

Do not imagine attention must remain.

Do not reject beginnings and endings.

Understand them so completely that they become transparent.

Then perhaps impermanence itself is seen differently.

The world moves.

The body moves.

Thought moves.

Knowledge moves.

Attention moves.

Life moves.

The self moves.

But the recognition of movement raises the question:

What knows that movement has occurred?

Do not answer.

Watch the desire to answer.

It arrives.

It remains.

It dissolves.

And there again you have seen movement.

So do not move toward the observer.

Do not search for it as though it were somewhere else.

The observer cannot be made immovable.

It is recognized as immovable when the mind ceases trying to move toward it.

And perhaps liberation cannot finally be something found.

Whatever is found becomes another thing.

Whatever is reached becomes another destination.

Whatever is answered becomes another conclusion.

Whatever becomes known will eventually disappear from attention as attention moves somewhere else.

So the Middle Road becomes the extraordinary act of living completely within movement while no longer mistaking movement for the whole of mind.

The life moves.

The self moves.

The world moves.

Knowledge moves.

Attention moves.

But the mind does not have to go anywhere at all.

——————————————————————

What Is the Illusion?

What is the illusion?

An illusion is the part of the magician’s trick that you do not see.

It is not necessarily the flowers that appear in the magician’s hand. The flowers are there. Everyone can point to them.

The illusion is how they appeared there.

It is the invisible movement, the sleight of hand unnoticed by the audience, that causes the reaction.

The flowers appear.

The audience gasps.

Then comes the praise.

Then the applause.

But what everyone is reacting to is not merely the flower.

They are reacting to the appearing of the flower.

And there is the illusion.

Notice that you cannot point at it.

You can point to the flower.

You can point to the magician.

You can point to his hand.

But you cannot point to the appearing.

By the time you point, it has already happened.

This is important.

You cannot point to an illusion.

You can point to what appeared through it.

But the illusion itself is the movement between what was and what suddenly seems to be.

Let us look at a dream.

I mean when you are actually asleep.

You are lying in bed and witnessing a dream, perhaps even participating in it, yet you remain the dreamer of the dream.

You walk through it.

You speak within it.

You react to it.

You understand enough of what is happening to participate, even if this understanding occurs at what we might call a subconscious level.

And something peculiar happens when attention enters the dream.

The more carefully you observe it, the more obvious the machinery of the dream can become.

The dream continues one moment into the next as narrative.

This happened.

Then this happened.

Then this person appeared.

Then you went there.

Then something pursued you.

Then you escaped.

One event seems to require another.

But I assure you, there can come a moment in a dream when the dreamer thinks:

I am not participating in this absurdity.

And with enough attention the dream itself can begin to struggle.

The narrative weakens.

The characters lose their authority.

The situation becomes less convincing.

Sometimes the dream breaks completely.

Why?

What was the illusion?

What was the magician’s trick between the observed dream and you, the observer?

Something was happening between you and the dream that could not itself be found inside the dream.

You were participating.

The dream was responding.

You took something from what appeared before you, and what appeared before you took something from your response.

Consider another example.

A man steals something from another man and escapes.

He has taken something.

He now possesses what belonged to someone else.

From the thief’s point of view there seems to be no illusion whatsoever.

Look.

Here is the object.

I have it.

He does not.

The thief goes merrily on his way.

But now the man from whom he stole confronts him.

Suddenly the person he left behind has returned into the situation.

The thief can no longer behave as though that man has disappeared.

The man says:

You cannot take this from me.

There is confrontation.

Suppose the thief returns what he stole.

Now look carefully.

Something was taken.

Then something was returned.

At the end the original owner possesses what he possessed before.

So where is the theft now?

It happened.

Yes.

But the condition created by the theft has disappeared.

The taking has been undone.

What seemed to establish a new reality—

I have more.

You have less.

—has vanished.

And this gives us another clue.

The illusion is not necessarily the people.

It is not necessarily the object.

It is something occurring between them.

A sleight of hand in relationship.

One takes.

The other is taken from.

Then each begins defining themselves through what has supposedly been transferred.

Put these examples together.

The magician.

The dream.

The thief.

What do they share?

The illusion is the invisible movement by which something appears to be taken from one side and acquired by another.

If I take something from you and you take something from me, there is immediately the appearance that something has happened to both of us.

I am more because I received this.

You are less because you lost it.

Or perhaps:

You gave something to me.

I gave something to you.

Therefore we are both greater.

Then someone says:

No, this is simply exchange.

But the question remains.

How does an object make the being greater?

How does possessing something increase the person who possesses it?

How does losing something decrease the entirety of the person who lost it?

There is something very subtle here.

Something is exchanged, certainly.

But then the mind creates conclusions from the exchange.

I have more.

I am more.

I lost something.

I am less.

You gave something to me.

Therefore you changed me.

I gave something to you.

Therefore I changed you.

There is the sleight of hand.

Not necessarily in the exchange itself, but in what the exchange appears to make us become.

Return to the dream.

I take an understanding from the dream.

I say:

Now I understand what this dream means.

Immediately the dream seems to take that understanding and continue with it.

The story becomes richer.

The interpretation produces another interpretation.

Something that happened earlier suddenly explains something happening now.

The dream grows.

And I also feel that I have grown because I understood it.

Now there are two apparent enlargements.

The dream has become greater because of my understanding.

I have become greater because I understood the dream.

But what was actually exchanged?

This is why dreams can seem almost narcissistic.

They continually appear to say:

Because of you, I am behaving this way.

Because of this, you must understand that.

Because you understood that, now this must happen.

And the more one takes from the dream, the more material the dream seems to have from which to continue.

Here is another.

Hunger is an illusion. Take my word for it.

I stand before a cup.

The cup contains nourishment.

I take the nourishment from the cup.

But in order for me to take from the cup, I must move the cup.

Now the cup has taken movement from me.

You might say:

The cup does not want movement. It is an object. It would remain perfectly still if left alone.

Exactly.

Participation in illusion is very much like this.

Suddenly everything is moving because something is being taken.

I reach.

The cup moves.

The nourishment moves.

My body moves.

Then I say:

I have taken nourishment.

But what has happened to the cup?

What has happened to me?

What is nourishment apart from this entire movement?

Again, the illusion is not necessarily the object.

The illusion is the invisible relation being created through the taking.

Return again to the magician.

The magician is not really what the audience applauds.

The flowers are not what they applaud.

They applaud the appearance of the flowers.

That is what provokes the gasp.

That is what provokes the applause.

The appearing is the illusion.

And once again notice:

You cannot point to it.

You can say:

There are the flowers.

But you cannot say:

There is the appearing.

The appearing has no object of its own.

It is something that happened between what was seen before and what is seen now.

Try another example.

There are two people in a restaurant.

One is the customer.

The other is the waiter.

The waiter presents a menu.

The menu is already an illusion of food.

It is not food.

But it points toward food.

The more the two participate with this menu between them, the more one becomes the waiter and the other becomes the customer.

“What would you like?”

“I’ll have this.”

“How would you like that prepared?”

“I’ll take this with that.”

Their language changes.

Their posture changes.

Their expectations change.

Their roles become stronger through their relationship to what is between them.

Yet before the interaction they are simply two individuals.

The menu appears between them and suddenly:

Waiter.

Customer.

Order.

Expectation.

Service.

Payment.

Hunger.

Satisfaction.

One illusion leads into another.

The menu, once understood, creates expectation for the food.

The food arrives and creates expectation for satisfaction.

The waiter leaves for another customer.

The first customer waits.

Then the next interaction begins.

Again, I am not saying the individuals are illusions.

The food is not necessarily an illusion.

The menu exists.

The restaurant exists.

The illusion is the invisible movement between these things by which each participant seems to become something more specific through what is being exchanged.

Look now at a mountain.

I look at the mountain and say:

What a beautiful mountain.

What happened?

I took something from the mountain.

Beauty.

And the mountain appears to take that understanding from me so that it now appears beautiful.

You might immediately object:

“That is ridiculous. The mountain did not take anything from you.”

Exactly.

Nothing was taken.

That is the illusion.

Seeing the mountain is not necessarily the illusion.

Seeing beauty is not necessarily the illusion.

The illusion is that invisible taking by which I imagine that something traveled between us.

The mountain did not reach into me and retrieve beauty.

I did not reach into the mountain and remove it.

Nothing moved between us.

Yet suddenly there is:

The beautiful mountain.

Now go further.

I say:

That is a mountain.

Did the mountain take the word mountain from me?

Of course not.

Did I take “mountain-ness” from the object?

No.

Then why do I call it a mountain?

Because an understanding has appeared between what is there and the mind that names it.

Again:

There is nothing wrong with naming it.

The question is whether we recognize the invisible movement by which the name becomes confused with the thing itself.

And now we arrive somewhere more difficult.

Are you somebody today?

Are you taking from reality:

I am this.

I am that.

I am this kind of person.

I have this history.

I have this identity.

I have this status.

I have this wound.

I have this success.

And does reality seem to take those declarations from you so that your life begins arranging itself around them?

This is who I am.

Then reality reflects it.

Then because reality reflects it, I say again:

See?

This is who I am.

And now the illusion becomes stronger.

I take an identity from reality.

Reality appears to take that identity from me.

Then the two reflect each other until what was once merely an understanding appears absolutely real.

How then does one surpass attachment?

Perhaps attachment is precisely this taking.

I take something from reality and say:

This belongs to me.

Then I take another thing:

This happened to me.

Another:

This is who I am.

Another:

This is what I know.

Another:

This is what I have discovered.

And each time reality appears to accept what I have taken and return it to me as something established.

Look at experience the same way.

Discovery.

Knowledge.

Understanding.

How much of suffering is hidden here?

I take something from discovery.

The discovery takes something from me.

Now it is:

My discovery.

I take an understanding.

Now it is:

My understanding.

And because I have discovered it, I feel enlarged.

And because the discovery has been recognized, it too seems enlarged.

Then we begin looking for the discovery of discoveries.

The final answer.

The greatest experience.

The ultimate realization.

But when does this end?

When is enough enough?

When can I stand before the illusion of taking and say:

Enough.

I will not participate in this taking.

I will not take from you merely so that you may take from me.

What is actually necessary?

What do I truly need?

And beneath so much taking there may be something surprisingly simple.

Fear.

Fear that without taking I will have nothing.

Fear that without possessing I will be nothing.

Fear that without understanding I will disappear.

Fear that without experience my life will not have happened.

So I take.

Then, having taken, reality appears to take the taking itself and make it real.

I become more of myself.

Reality becomes more of the reality I have described.

The two seem to grow through one another.

Yet why not simply say:

Reality is.

I am.

Nothing needs to be stolen from either.

Nothing needs to be added to either in order for either to be.

Perhaps this is something close to Buddha-consciousness.

Not the accumulation of greater and greater understanding, but the ending of the need to take understanding from everything one encounters.

Then even experience changes.

I no longer need to say:

This is what I want to do with my life—take from reality, take from experience, collect experiences until I have enough of myself.

Perhaps life can simply be lived.

Here is another example.

You receive an injury.

You are still an individual.

The injury has occurred.

But now something else can happen.

The injury begins taking from you.

You begin taking from the injury.

You say:

This hurts.

This has changed me.

This has diminished me.

This has wounded me.

Now the injury is no longer merely an injury.

It has become a wound within identity.

And the more that wound takes, the more the person may take from it.

Pain.

Fear.

Anger.

Memory.

Identity.

Perhaps even:

I am a victim.

And the illusion grows larger.

Then larger still.

This does not mean pain is unreal.

It does not mean injury should be ignored.

The body itself responds immediately to injury. Blood coagulates. Cells begin repair. Immune processes respond. The living organism begins trying to restore itself.

There is wisdom in this.

The injury happens.

The organism responds.

But the whole organism does not need to become the injury.

You remain a whole person who has received an injury.

The injury is not you.

The discipline is in refusing to allow what happened to consume the entirety of what you understand yourself to be.

Perhaps the wound, in this philosophical sense, is the illusion created between the injury and the identity.

What has the injury taken from me?

What am I now taking from the injury?

Can the injury simply remain an injury?

Can I remain myself?

This heightens the meaning of discipline.

Not denial.

Not pretending pain does not exist.

Discipline.

The refusal to allow one event to take possession of the entirety of mind.

And finally—

It was heard:

“Chase, no one will ever understand what you are talking about.”

And my reply:

“I will not take that understanding from you.”

Notice what happens.

The statement has been offered.

I do not have to take it.

I do not have to make it mine.

I do not have to turn:

You will never be understood

into:

I will never be understood.

I can leave the understanding exactly where it came from.

Then perhaps another statement follows:

No.

Or perhaps ridicule:

This is all bullshit.

This is ridiculous.

Again:

I do not have to take that understanding from you.

This ends something important in the illusion of control.

If I am not taking your understanding from you, your understanding does not have to become mine.

You may offer an interpretation of me.

I do not have to accept it.

You may offer fear.

I do not have to accept it.

You may offer humiliation.

I do not have to accept it.

You may offer a conclusion about who I am.

I do not have to take it.

And neither must I take your understanding away from you.

You are permitted to understand something differently.

I do not need to steal your understanding in order to preserve my own.

That may be the ending of the exchange.

No taking.

No forcing.

No surrendering the mind merely because another understanding has appeared before it.

I simply say:

I understand that this is what you are offering me.

And then:

No.

Not hostility.

Not domination.

Not another exchange of control.

Simply the refusal to take.

The magician’s illusion requires reaction.

The dream requires participation.

The thief requires possession.

The identity requires taking.

The argument requires that one understanding defeat another.

But perhaps there comes a moment when one can simply stand before the sleight of hand and see it.

Nothing has to be taken.

Nothing has to be added.

Nothing has to be made greater.

Nothing has to be made lesser.

Reality is.

You are.

And the illusion is what appears to pass between.