At the heart of the Buddha’s teaching is that all things in an ongoing way experience change and transformation. Like a river that flows incessantly, time and all circumstances flow on, and given its fluid nature, time does not stop or fix upon anything. Due to the way events stream, all in perpetual motion, there is no cessation. Unstoppable. All too often people perceive emptiness to be a lack, a void or naught. Emptiness as lack arises because people see things compared to completeness. One of the strengths of the Buddha’s teaching is that things do not complete. Like space there is no beginning or end. The desire for completeness and resolution is a phantom of the mind. In the same way, a river flows and in its flowing is neither partial of complete.
On Learning to Love Loss
We have now come to a turning point in what feels to be a long long fade — a kind of toboggan slide downward— as my mom continues to lose her bearings and now, according to the staff around her, needs to be placed in another facility with full time nursing care around her. I can recall my mom standing on one leg in the kitchen years ago drinking bancha tea.
