All About Change
Change is the focal point for Buddhist insight—a fact so well known that it has spawned a familiar sound bite: “Isn”t change what Buddhism is all about
” What”s less well known is that this focus has a frame, that change is neither where insight begins nor where it ends. Insight begins with a question that evaluates change in light of the desire for true happiness. It ends with a happiness that lies beyond change. When this frame is forgotten, people create their own contexts for the teaching and often assume that the Buddha was operating within those same contexts. Two of the contexts commonly attributed to the Buddha at present are these:
Insight into change teaches us to embrace our experiences without clinging to them—to get the most out of them in the present moment by fully appreciating their intensity, in full knowledge that we will soon have to let them go to embrace whatever comes next.
Insight into change teaches us hope. Because change is built into the nature of things, nothing is inherently fixed, not even our own identity. No matter how bad the situation, anything is possible. We can do whatever we want to do, create whatever world we want to live in, and become whatever we want to be.
The first of these interpretations offers wisdom on how to consume the pleasures of immediate, personal experience when you”d rather they not change; the second, on how to produce change when you want it. Although sometimes presented as complementary insights, these interpretations contain a practical conflict: If experiences are so fleeting and changeable, are they worth the effort needed to produce them
How can we find genuine hope in the prospect of positive change if we can”t fully rest in the results when they arrive
Aren”t we just setting ourselves up for disappointment
Or is this just one of the unavoidable paradoxes of life
Ancient folk wisdom from many cultures would suggest so, advising us that we should approach change with cautious joy and stoic equanimity: training ourselves to not to get attached to the results of our actions, and accepting without question the need to keep on producing fleeting pleasures as best we can, for the only alternative would be inaction and despair. This viewpoint, too, is often attributed to the Buddha.
But the Buddha was not the sort of person to accept things without question. His wisdom lay in realizing that the effort that goes into the production of happiness is worthwhile only if the processes of change can be skillfully managed to arrive at a happiness resistant to change. Otherwise, we”re life‐long prisoners in a forced‐labor camp, compelled to keep on producing pleasurable experiences to assuage our hunger, and yet finding them so empty of any real essence that they can never leave us full.
These realizations are implicit in the question that, according to the Buddha, lies at the beginning of insight:
“What, when I do it, will lead to my long‐term well‐being and happiness
” This is a heartfelt question, motivated by the desire behind all action: to attain levels of pleasure worthy of the effort that goes into them. It springs from the realization that life requires effort, and that if we aren”t careful whole lifetimes can be lived in vain. This question, together with the realizations and desires behind it, provides the context for the Buddha”s perspective on change. If we examine it closely, we find the seeds for all his insights into the production and consumption of change.
The first phrase in the question—“What, when I do it, will lead to ….”— focuses on the issues of production, on the potential effects of human action. Prior to his Awakening, the Buddha had left home and gone into the wilderness to explore precisely this issue: to see how far human …
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