Let's See What Happens

“I was brought up in a Spiritualist family… In my house, death was an everyday subject; it was a topic which we talked about with a great deal of enthusiasm and interest. It wasn’t morbid. And on those few occasions in my life when I really thought, “Now I’m about to die,” my next reaction has always been, “Let’s see what happens.” I think that is because as a child death was an open subject. I’m deeply grateful for this, because in our society, talk of death generally makes people feel uncomfortable. So many people are afraid of it for themselves and for others. We don’t accept that everything which comes into being lasts awhile and then goes. But that’s the cycle. Everything is impermanent. And it’s our non-acceptance of this which brings us grief. We live in our relationships, torn between our hopes and our fears because we hold on so tightly, so afraid to lose.

Everything is flowing. And this flow isn’t made up only of external things. It includes relationships, too. Some relationships last for a long time, and some don’t—that’s the way of things. Some people stay here for some time; some people leave very quickly. It’s the way of things. Every year millions and millions of people are born and die. In the West, our lack of acceptance is quite amazing. We deny that anyone we love could ever be lost to us. So often we are unable to say to someone who is dying, “We’re so happy to have had you with us. But now, please have a very happy and safe journey onwards.” It’s this denial which brings us grief.

Impermanence is not just of philosophical interest. It’s very personal. Until we accept and deeply understand in our very being that things change from moment to moment, and never stop even for one instant, only then can we let go. And when we really let go inside, the relief is enormous. Ironically this gives release to a whole new dimension of love. People think that if someone is unattached, they are cold. But this isn’t true. Anyone who has met very great spiritual masters who are really unattached is immediately struck by their warmth to all beings, not just to the ones they happen to like or are related to. Non-attachment releases something very profound inside us, because it releases that level of fear. We all have so much fear: fear of losing, fear of change, an inability to just accept.

So this question of impermanence is not just academic. We really have to learn how to see it in our everyday lives. In the Buddhist practice of mindfulness, of being present in the moment, one of the things which first strikes one is how things are constantly flowing, constantly appearing and disappearing. It’s like a dance. And we have to give each being space to dance their dance. Everything is dancing; even the molecules inside the cells are dancing. But we make our lives so heavy. We have these incredibly heavy burdens we carry with us like rocks in a big rucksack. We think that carrying this big heavy rucksack is our security; we think it grounds us. We don’t realize the freedom, the lightness of just dropping it off, letting it go. That doesn’t mean giving up relationships; it doesn’t mean giving up one’s profession, or one’s family, or one’s home. It has nothing to do with that; it’s not an external change. It’s an internal change. It’s a change from holding on tightly to holding very lightly.

Just recently, I was in Adelaide, Australia, and somebody handed me a cartoon strip which showed how to hold things. The first cartoon was about holding things gently, like a newborn chick; the second cartoon addressed different ways of holding things skillfully, with honor and respect, but not tightly. And then the last cartoon said, “After that, we have to let go. But that’s a whole other thing—we’ll deal with that later!”

Yes, we have to know how to hold things lightly, and with joy. This enables us to be open to the flow of life. When we solidify, we lose so much. Engaged in a relationship with our partner, our children, and with others in this world, we may solidify them by casting them in certain roles. That’s how we see them. And after a while, we no longer experience the real person in the moment. We just see our projection of that person. Even though they are completely unique, and even though they may actually be transforming and changing within, we don’t see that any more, because all we see is our pattern. And then people get bored with each other, or at least they get kind of locked into a relationship which has lost its early vitality. As I said, that’s because we don’t experience the actual moment; we just experience our version of events.

When we look at something, we see it for a moment but then immediately our judgments, our opinions, our comparisons step right in. They become filters between us and the person or object we are looking at, and these filters take us further and further away from what is. We’re left with our own impressions and ideas, but the thing in itself is gone. This is especially true when our subject is other people. We all know that when people are relating an event, it’s almost as though each person is telling a different story.

We’ve all had the experience of listening to someone tell of an event that was shared in common, and thought something like, “It didn’t happen like that!” “They didn’t say that,” or, “It wasn’t like that at all; you completely missed the point!” In other words, everything becomes incredibly subjective. We don’t see the thing in itself; we just see our version. And nowhere is this reflected more clearly than in our resistance to the fact that we are all changing moment to moment. It’s as though the carpet is continually being pulled from under our feet, and we can’t bear that. “That carpet is going to stay just where I want that carpet to stay. That same carpet, under the same feet.” And because that can’t ever happen, because we can never, however much we delude ourselves, have things exactly the same, we have this pain.

It’s so important to understand that our happiness and peace of mind do not come from seeking security in permanence and stability. Our happiness comes rather from finding security in the ever-changing nature of things. If we feel happy and thus able to be buoyant in the current, nothing can ever upset us. But if we build something so rigid that we don’t want it ever to change—a relationship, our job, anything—then when we lose it, we’re completely thrown off balance. Normally, people think that the constant change of things is something frightening. But once we really understand that it’s actually the very nature of things to flow, to change, then we become completely balanced and open and accepting. It’s when we try to dam up the stream that the water becomes very stagnant. We have to let things flow. Then, the water is always fresh and clear.

When I went to India for the first time I found work as a volunteer at the Young Lamas Home School teaching young tulkus, or incarnate lamas. After that, I went to live with my lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche. I was ordained and then I worked with him for six years as a nun and as his secretary. Although I didn’t have any money, he always gave me room and of course, food. I was taken care of. Then the community moved to their present site of Tashi Jong. At that time the land was a tea estate; nothing yet had been built on it, and everyone in the community was living in tents. Khamtrul Rinpoche said to me, “During the next year, it would be a good idea if you didn’t come to Tashi Jong yet as there’s nowhere for you to stay. So you go off and do your own thing for a year and then come back after we’ve got some buildings.”

The whole community went to Tashi Jong, and I was left behind, in a hill station called Dalhousie. I remember standing on a hill looking out over the plains on one side and the mountains on the other, and for a moment feeling totally desolate. My lama had gone. The community had gone. I had no family there; I had no friends there. I had no money, and nowhere to stay. I didn’t know what to do. I thought, “Oh dear—.” And then I thought, “My whole life is given to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Gampopa said that anyone who practices the Dharma, anybody on a genuine spiritual path, will never starve.” So I told myself, “All right. I’ve handed over my whole life to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, so let them take care of it.” And I felt this tremendous sense of reassurance that it was perfectly all right to be insecure. In that moment, I really got an insight into the fact that real security lies not in clinging to security but in feeling secure within that insecurity.”

~ Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, Into the Heart of Life
"Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo was born Diane Perry in Woolmers Park, Hertfordshire, on June 30, 1943. She realized at the age of 18 that she was a Buddhist when she read a library book on the subject. She moved to India at 20, where she taught English at the Young Lamas Home School for a few months before meeting her root lama, the 8th Khamtrul Rinpoche. In 1964 she became only the second Western woman to be ordained in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, receiving the name Drubgyu Tenzin Palmo, or 'Glorious Lady who Upholds the Doctrine of the Practice Succession'.

On 16 February 2008, Tenzin Palmo was conferred as Jetsunma (reverend lady) in recognition of her spiritual achievements as a nun and her efforts in promoting the status of female practitioners in Tibetan Buddhism by the head of the Drukpa Lineage, the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa /Gyalwang Drukpa the XIIth - Gyalwang Drukpa."