This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Being the River of Change; Insight (11) Introduction to Change and Impermanence. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
I’m happy to be back here after being gone for a week. I was at the Zen monastery down in the mountains of Big Sur, near Monterey, Tassajara. And Tassajara has a river going through it, the Tassajara River. One of the fairly well-known sayings is the idea, “You cannot step in the same river twice.” But the full quote goes something like, “You cannot step in the same river twice because it’s never the same river and never the same person,” that the person’s also changing all the time.
A central metaphor in Buddhism is a river, flowing in a river. And so for this meditation, I’d like to offer you an image for sitting in meditation that emphasizes the constant change, the river of change that we’re in, the river of time, the river of change that’s all around us.
The image is that of a big, solid boulder sitting in the middle of a river. The water of the river just flows right by it. It just flows and flows and flows, but the boulder is solid, sitting there. And someone goes to meditate on that boulder and feels solid like the boulder, and everything is allowed to just flow by. Every thought, every feeling, whatever is happening is allowed to flow, to be in the river. We don’t pull any water out of the river. We don’t pull a bucket of water and hold on to the bucket. We just let everything flow in meditation, move and flow through.
The variation of this is that the boulder is you, and you’re sitting there like the boulder, but the boulder also is not made of rock, but it’s made of ice. Maybe a big ice block fell off a glacier into a river, and that slowly over time, not only does the river wear out the ice, it melts the ice. It melts the ice, and eventually, all the ice, all the water of the ice melts and joins the river. And now, instead of being the boulder, you are the river.
In this way, we sit in meditation in the stream of change. Everything’s changing, constant change, except for in some way or other, we freeze our experience through our thoughts, our attachments, our preoccupations. The meditation is to allow for all things to flow and move in our experience. It’s the nature of perception, experience, even the nature of thoughts themselves to constantly be shifting and changing and flowing. And that doesn’t have to be a whirlpool. It doesn’t have to be an eddy or rapids. It doesn’t have to be a stagnant river. Everything can flow, can flow together in the same direction harmoniously, and we flow in it. We ourselves are constantly changing. We also are the river of change.
So to sit in meditation like a boulder, feeling solid in your seat, in the place where you’re meditating. And to gently close your eyes and to settle into being here in a solid, grounded way, taking some fuller breaths, deeper breaths, and relaxing on the exhale. Releasing to the pull of gravity on the exhale without losing a solid posture.
Letting your breathing return to normal, and for two or three breaths more, softening the body on the exhale. Softening the thinking mind, as if what is solid and tight or contracted in the thinking mind can melt, can soften.
For some people, the emotional center may be in the heart or the belly. Wherever it might be, soften, softening, relaxing. Sometimes the river is a river of tears. Sometimes it’s a river that’s a gentle, gentle flow through our body.
And then to feel the sensations of breathing. The inhale comes and goes. The exhale begins and ends. The changing sensations of the inhale are sensations in the body: expansion and pressure, movement, a feeling of fullness.
Imagine that the sensations of breathing, the experience of your body breathing, that you’re gazing upon it from your boulder, but watching it flow by as if sitting looking at a river—the current, the gentle waves, the ripples, as the water flows on and on. Or watching the waves lap up on the sand beach and recede with the kind of gaze that you would use, relaxed, watching a natural process of change in your own body, watching the river, the waves of breathing.
Except for sitting on a solid boulder, let everything else be in the river of change. Every perception, every thought, every feeling is flowing, moving. Some things, like a river, the river is always there, but the flowing of the river is also always there. The river is the flow, the change.
And then allowing the boulder to dissolve in the water. Maybe the boulder is made of ice, so nothing is held out of the water, nothing’s held away from the flow. All of who you are is part of the changing nature of the present moment, always changing, shifting, flowing. Every perception changes. Thoughts change. Sensations and sounds.
Maybe the sensations of breathing are the central current of the river. Stay in the current, in the middle of the river of change. All things are changing.
Just as in the present moment the sensations of breathing are changing, so in the present moment all experiences, all sensations, thoughts, feelings, in and of themselves are shifting, changing, flowing. Don’t hold yourself out of the river. Let all things melt into the flow of change.
And as things change, to be soft, soft without resisting change, without pushing the change. Finding a way to be in harmony with the change that’s about to happen, which is bringing this meditation to an end. The river is just taking a different bend. It’s always flowing.
To take a few long, slow, deep breaths to feel more connected to your body, maybe feeling a little bit more like you’re on the boulder again, solid and grounded here.
And appreciate that one way or the other, all of us are involved in a constant process of change. Sometimes what’s new appears. Sometimes what has been disappears. Sometimes what’s here grows old or matures and ripens. And in this tender, changing world, to be each other’s companions in the river of change. So we care for each other, we help each other float and move and be known.
May it be that we are each other’s companions with care, with kindness, with love in this flowing and changing world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be at peace. In this changing world, may all beings be free. As a river flows freely without any obstacles, may all beings be happy.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to this series on insight that is following the longer series on samadhi1. After a break for this last week, I want to pick up again and now do a series of talks on the first primary insight of insight meditation, which is insight into the experience of change, of inconstancy, of impermanence. Things are constantly shifting and changing and arising and passing, appearing and dissolving and disappearing. This is a really central aspect of human life, and becoming wise about the changing nature of life is something that a lot of wisdom traditions, maybe all wisdom traditions, emphasize.
Heraclitus is the one who said, “You can’t step in the same river twice,” but even more wisely, the rest of the quote goes, “You cannot step in the same river twice because it’s never the same river and never the same person stepping into it.” So even you are changing, just as the river is constantly changing and shifting.
We often have ideas that don’t change with the changing nature of reality. We have ideas that things are going to be this way forever, and some things that disappear will never come back. But the art and the power of mindfulness practice is to appreciate that in our direct experience, what we’re experiencing is constantly coming and going. Nothing stays the same in experience, in what we sense and feel. The nature of all the different aspects of the human being that come together in the moment, we’re always a change. And to a great degree, the world is too.
There’s a Sufi story that I like of a man who had a ring made. He went to a Sufi master and said, “Can you inscribe something on this ring that whenever I look at it, I will be wise or will support me in my life?” And so the master said, “Yes, please leave it here.” And when the man returned in a week to pick up his inscribed ring, on it was written, “This too will pass.”
So Buddhism is not unique in emphasizing the changing nature of the world. In fact, I’ve met people who I thought were wiser than many of the Buddhists I’ve known—people who have been in the middle of life’s challenges, in the middle of all the changing nature of life and death and change and war and peace and poverty and wealth. People have been through it all, so many different things, and through it all, they haven’t become bitter. They haven’t become despondent. They haven’t become afraid. Somehow or other, they’ve come to the point in their life where they understand in some deep and wise way that everything is changing all the time, and to expect change, not to be surprised by it. Certainly, there can be sadness. Certainly, there can be grief. Certainly, there can be joy and celebration by what changes and moves along in our life. But to really appreciate it, so that there’s a way, maybe, of stepping into the change, stepping with it, being with it, flowing with it, being in harmony with it. Not fighting it unnecessarily, not pushing for change faster or not holding on to things so they don’t change. These are not universal ways of being, but given how much things are always changing, there’s a way of being wise about that and not foolish. There’s a way of being in harmony with that, rather than out of harmony with how things are always changing.
In Zen Buddhism, a person who’s a novice monk, a monk in training, is referred to in Japanese as an unsui2. The word unsui is made up of two characters, two words: cloud and water. And it’s pointing to the idea that someone in training in Zen should go through the monastic life like clouds and water—fluid and flowing and moving around, not resisting anything, but somehow adjusting and reforming. A cloud is constantly reshaping itself with what’s there, and water is constantly going to the lowest point, always flowing around things and with things. And being the lowest point, being the point maybe of peace or freedom, that something inside of us is in the flow towards freedom from holding tight, freedom from being contracted, freedom from resisting, because those things are a lot of work. Those things involve a resistance.
We don’t have to accept things as they are. We don’t have to necessarily accept everything that’s changing. Part of Buddhism is to appreciate how deeply things are changing, but they’re not chaotic. And especially in our own direct experience, for ourselves, what’s moving and flowing through us and what’s growing in us—we’re not internally chaotic. Through dharma practice, we slowly learn to come into a kind of inner harmony and to shape and develop so that the river that’s flowing through us is a harmonious river, or what’s growing within us becomes beautiful and supportive and healthy.
There’s a metaphor in Buddhism, again, of the river, often used by the Buddha. One analogy is that high up in the mountains, when the river is still small, a creek or a stream, and it’s going over rapids and going over boulders, the river can be quite noisy. And when it’s a waterfall, it’s a big roar. But when the river finally gets big enough and comes down into the plains and is wide and big, the river becomes silent, and it flows harmoniously. So in our own life, as we begin dharma practice, the dharma is flowing through us more like it is high in the mountains. It’s having to deal with boulders and rapids and waterfalls and blockages and things. And sometimes it’s chaotic, and sometimes it’s waterfalls and rapids. Sometimes it’s noisy and challenging. But we stay in the river, we stay in the practice. And as we bring our kindness, we bring our clear attention, as we bring our samadhi, as we bring our goodwill, as we bring our non-attachment—all these things grow. As joy grows, as seeing things more clearly grows, as a sense of tranquility grows, equanimity grows, the sense of the dharma river we are becomes stronger, bigger, and it begins flowing silently. It still flows, but it’s a silent flow.
And so we can go through this world as a powerful, peaceful, flowing river that can meet anything that comes our way with wisdom, with compassion, with clarity. Maybe with a skill and the ability to welcome it into that peaceful river, welcoming it into the flow of love and care and friendship. We change the world through the flow of love, the flow of peace, the flow of the river of caring for each other in this world. We’re not a boulder. We’re not the rocks that are tumbling in the river, banging against each other. We become the river. We welcome everything into the river. Maybe we’re helping the ice boulders to dissolve.
So this introduction then to the theme of impermanence, I wanted to emphasize that it’s not a unique wisdom that Buddhism has. I’d like to propose that all wisdom traditions have contended with the same experience: that we live in the river, in the world of change. Things are changing all the time, and that there’s an ordinary, even everyday way that we can become wise about how things change that doesn’t require deep meditation, doesn’t require deep insight. It just requires ordinary sight, that we see clearly and we stop and reflect and contemplate all the change that we see here so that we can be in this world in a wise way.
May it be that our exploration of impermanence, anicca3, the Pali word, may it be that it’s a way of supporting this world to become more peaceful and caring. May we care for all beings without exception. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption. It is a key component of the Buddhist path, leading to tranquility and insight. ↩
Unsui: A Japanese term from Zen Buddhism literally meaning “cloud, water.” It refers to a novice monk or nun in training, who is expected to drift like a cloud and flow like water, moving freely and adapting to circumstances without resistance. ↩
Anicca: The Pali word for “impermanence” or “inconstancy.” It is one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism, along with dukkha (suffering) and anatta (no-self). The understanding of anicca is a central insight in Buddhist practice. ↩