Impermanence

A key concept of Buddhism, in which we are admonished to be able to treat our present moment as our last, to be ready to go without regret. It has, of course, parallels in all spiritual/religious teachings. a Buddhist teacher of earlier decade suggested that this aspect of life was crucial to liveliness, that change was essential to life. An even earlier teacher warned that one's passage from impermance was as if (we when pass) we are hurtled into outer space without our baggage, our ego, body or past; we are suddenly orphans of the cosmos, with nothing to rely upon.

Another version of this to me represents a twisted scenario of anthropomorphism, since its story assumes that we want to hold on to this lifetime, our present ego, learning and acomplishments, etc. tenaciously expending our consciousness trying to hold on to the "unholdable." Isn't this just the reverse side of a coin? Indeed much of religious/spiritual thought and writing seems to be an indulgence with this legacy of anthropomorphism.

Another version in Zen Buddhism is that of "transitoryness," c h a n g e is the constant that can be relied upon, "Here today, gone tomorrow." When I was a child there was a saying about "Not taking it with you." But the deeper matter is that when you go you cannot take you with you, in the sense that ego pictures possession and identity. Back in the 1940s a novel by Aldous Huxley called "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" about William Randolph Hearst drammatized this dilemma.