Life is a lesson in non-attachment. It [change] is the reality of this life inside which we live. It is the only permanent, the one thing we can count on from the time we are born until the time of our deaths. Even at the time of death and the moments that follow, those who remain will exist inside of the permanence of change. I read about change most profoundly from the late Ajahn Chah, a Buddhist teacher in his book Everything arises, everything falls away. He points in the direction of not becoming fixed on conditional things. He looks deeply at attachment as our greatest cause of suffering—we are blinded by the tangibles so much that we believe them to be real. We hold on to that which has the nature of leaving. We suffer out of ignorance and ego. We end our suffering with mindfulness and the practice of the present. When we know the truth of this and accept it as a practice, we begin to let go of the holding on. We learn to release and become conscious of not grasping.
As a hospice therapist, I see this ‘letting go’ as being the path walked by my patients. I bear witness to the journey of those who are aware of having only the moment. Each day of their ongoing final moment is a day where they stand in the center of all that is. Now. They witness what it means to live inside of change and what it means to no longer count on anything else. Change is their deepest pain until it becomes the source of peace. It is all in letting go. That which once haunted them slowly befriends them, comforted by their ability to just be. Like a heartbeat, they watch their lives arise and fall. They watch them fall into the arising. I watch them go from walking and laughing with friends, to a wheelchair and a diminished desire to be social. The wheelchair fades into a hospital bed with a periodic visitor. Eventually speech turns silent and life begins to resemble more closely what it means to die. Birth and death are indeed one. All things arise. All things fall away.
Hospice patients learn the unavoidable lesson of non-attachment. This is not always a willingly learned lesson. For many it’s forced on them. ‘Ready or not, here it comes!’ Death. And not even denial can change its truth. No holding on keeps life present. It slips through their fingers like sand. They learn to desire less, accept what is, and try hard not to go back to what once was. A patient once said to me “dying isn’t the problem, it’s waiting to die that’s hard.” They do wait. Patience is no virtue here. This is simply an empty space of waiting, of counting down, of wondering how, and of hoping not to be alone or in pain. Change. The terminally ill are suspended between a life once had and death. That empty space in the middle is the journey of waiting to die. This is the journey of change. The wait has no consistency. It is, as someone dear whose mother recently passed, used to say “stable on a roller coaster.” A paradox. What stability is there in movement? What consistency is there in change?
The Buddha’s teachings all touch suffering. This is the foundation of the Dharma, summed up in the Four Noble Truths: In life there is suffering, the cause of suffering, our suffering can end, and the path that leads to the ending of our suffering. Is death suffering? Is knowing that you are dying suffering? No. When looked at from a place of truth, we do not have to suffer at the awareness of death and dying. It is our attachments that lead to suffering. When we truly understand that all things arise and all things fall away we are able to stop ourselves at the doorway of suffering choosing instead acceptance. It is the ego which seeks to hold on. It seeks to hold to life in the moment we hear that our life is ending. The ego holds on when letting go becomes too painful. We hold so tightly afraid of pain that we do not realize our suffering. This is the cycle. This is what Buddhists refer to as samsara, cyclic existence of suffering. We forget that in order to know freedom we must come to accept change.
When we practice change we are engaged in what it means to be with what is. Being with what is means that we are in the present moment; we are not reaching back to the past or to some unknown place in the future. We are simply in the now. It is here in the now that the ego is capable of being dissolved. It is similar to meditation where we continue returning to the breath, not following the mind as it jumps about like a monkey full of activity and distraction, confused. Instead, we concentrate on the breath. The ego is tamed when we practice breathing. It has no opportunity to race about running amok. No. As we sit in the present we tame it to be quiet. It dissolves with practice. It runs rampant in the moments when we forget the present allowing anxiety, attachment, and suffering to consume us. Inside the ego we forget truth: Change always is. Impermanence. Those who are dying know impermanence very well. They hold on to nothing outside of the moment. It alone is timeless. Even when it is not spoken, the dying know the truth: All things arise. All things fall away.
