The Fear of Impermanence

The following is a quote from Tibetan Buddhist teacher Sogyal Rinpoche on the fear of impermanence we all carry with us. Often we can successfully keep that awareness buried and out of awareness, but when it does surface - through experiences of loss, death, and the like - we can glimpse our own impermanence and experience that fear. But Sogyal Rinpoche argues that this awareness can also be our best friend if we are willing to hold that space and gently look behind the appearance of impermanence.

Glimpse of the Day, October 14, 2011


The fear that impermanence awakens in us, that nothing is real and nothing lasts, is, we come to discover, our greatest friend because it drives us to ask: If everything dies and changes, then what is really true? Is there something behind the appearances? Is there something in fact we can depend on, that does survive what we call death?


Allowing these questions to occupy us urgently, and reflecting on them, we slowly find ourselves making a profound shift in the way we view everything. We come to uncover in ourselves “something” that we begin to realize lies behind all the changes and deaths of the world.


As this happens, we catch repeated and glowing glimpses of the vast implications behind the truth of impermanence. We come to uncover a depth of peace, joy, and confidence in ourselves that fills us with wonder, and breeds in us gradually a certainty that there is in us “something” that nothing destroys, that nothing alters, and that cannot die.

the image at the top is called "Impermanence," by Sheryl Luxenburg