Not Everything is Impermanent

[Dharmavidya]

In the Udana, which is a collections of Buddha's most important utterances, there is the core passage that says "There is an unborn, uncreated... the deathless... nirvana... If there were not... then there would be no liberation." According to the text it was this passage that made his disciples really excited "until the hair on the backs of their necks stood on end."

Buddhism as presented in the West, however, commonly de-emphasizes this central aspect of the teaching. Buddhist apologists like to present the idea that Buddhism teaches that "everything is impermanent" when the fact is that Buddhism teaches liberation from the worldly domain where all is impermanent. There is no classical Buddhist school that teaches otherwise. Different schools have different methodologies and different styles of presentation, but they do not differ on this fundamental point. There is a danger, therefore, that, perhaps in an effort to square Buddhism with reductionist, secular, atheistic scientism, Western apologists of Buddhism will distort the whole Dharmic message to such adegree that it really is not Buddhism any more.

When the Buddha says that sarva samskara anitya ["all samskaras are impermanent"] he is making a contrast with sarva dharma anatma ["all dharma is not self"]. To enter the unborn one must leave the self - one must abandon self-power. To be at one with what the buddhas are at one with one must abandon identification with the transient conceits [samskaras] of one's own fancy and put one's faith in something more reliable. Buddhism offers all manner of different methods to help a person understand this point intellectually, experientially, symbolically, literally, metaphorically, analogically, progressively, suddenly, etc. etc. but unless it is acted upon the whle thing is merely academic.

A formulation that all schools use to typify this act of getting out of the self-power prison and into the orbit of nirvana's liberating influence is the one called Taking Refuge. In Pureland, taking refuge in "what all the Buddhas teach" is expressed as nembutsu. Uttering the nembutsu is affirmation that not everything is impermanent.

[Dharmavidya]

Thank you Richard. Nirvana is love. Love dissolves all. Calculating, we seek to solve our lives. Loving we dissolve them. That is nirvana. Buddhas are those who can enter nirvana at will. They do so by each act of loving. Whether one is dying or being born, one is held by their love. Nirvana is all around. If it were not so there would be no liberation. But as it is so, liberation is always close at hand - one only has to entrust to it. Namo Amida Bu

[richard meyers]

The question inevitably arises, what is Nirvana? I can see 'dancing to the tune of eternity', rather than some other transient inherently unsatisfying tune. When I read the scriptures relating to Kuan Yin (for example) when in extremis we are invited to consider the virtues of the Bodhisattva and immediately she comes to our rescue. My (limited) understanding of this is that it is in the opening oneself to the concept of Kuan Yin that frees us, rather than her literally arriving at my door. I do have an abiding sense of Compassion being at the heart of the Universe, but this is a different thing. My hope is that as we die we experiance this compassion, whether or not we survive in some way beyond Amida's arms is something none of us can now for sure. It can all get a bit too subtle for my straightforward (simple) mind to fathom!

For me it is the beauty of Buddhism that attracts me, the humanity and groundedness, not whether there is a place where I will go when I die. Of course, when I arrive at the point of my own dying I will be looking at things in a different way, as when I lose people that I love dearly, my wish is that they know peace of heart and that we someday meet again.

Namo Amida Bu

[Dharmavidya]

Nirvana is deathless. There cannot be a self that is also permanent that is separate in some way, so Buddhism does not have the idea of a 'divine spark' in the person (notwithstanding what some people say about buddha nature). Buddhism is, therefore, a teaching of abandoning reliance upon the (transient) self and placing reliance upon the (non-transient) Dharma. We go on changing in a zillion ways, but we can do so under the influence of the Dharma or under the influence of other transient things. It is as though we are the dancers and there is a choice of tunes. All the different Buddhist methods are ways of easing us into dancing to the tune of eternity. Namo Amida Bu.

[Tara]

Dear Dharmavidya,
Thank you for sharing this, I am quite excited about this teaching. Does this mean that the nirvanic, deathless realm is in fact permanent? This understanding imparts to me a different flavour to the buddhist universe! A sense of continuity rather than transience at the very core of all things - at the deepest level. Have I understood this correctly?
Connected to this, I am also really interested to hear your teaching on whether there is a permanent part of us? Do we have an aspect, or spark, or essence, that acutally continues to exist in the same form - a divine part if you like? Or is it that we dissolve away into a stream of impermamence as I have previously understood buddhist thought on this?
Namo Amida Bu