It is in the changing of the seasons that the earth reminds us of the impermanence of things. Summer’s zephyrs turn to early hurricanes turn to fall breezes turn to howling winds and back to steady cool air moving and shifting. Leaves let go of trees gently or by force and litter the ground with piles of color. What was green becomes brown and grey.
As evening fell on Saturday, the skies darkened, the winds became fierce, a freight train of a tornado passed noisily by, somewhere in North Kingstown and beyond, stillness returned, and the last of the sunset could be seen in the sky. All in the space of 30 minutes. Sometimes impermanence is more apparent than others.
And our lives are just as changeable - just as tumultuous in one minute, calm and steady in the next. We can see this more clearly when we sit in meditation.
Just as we see the changing world outside, we can see the unending procession of feelings, emotions, sensations within. When there is a period of stillness, does there arise an impulse to hold on to it? With pain and confusion, is there a powerful desire to push it away?
But when we sit and allow these currents to come, pass through and become something else, can we begin to notice the stillness of awareness? The crazy shape-shifting of conditions inside and out, large or more subtle, and the still presence of knowing those conditions that doesn’t become that which it knows?