Change and Loss

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“All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape separation from them.”

The Fourth Remembrance would appear, at first glance, to contradict a core Buddhist principle, the concept of interbeing: the interconnectedness and interdependence of all things. The notion that we inter-are with everything seems difficult to reconcile with this remembrance’s stark prediction that we will inevitably be separated from the things and people we hold dear. 

While the Fourth Remembrance purports to be about the core Buddhist principle of impermanence, or constant change, it speaks to me of the fundamental paradox at the heart of the human experience—love and loss. We remain essentially unbreakably interconnected and interdependent despite change and separation.

The paradox becomes more accessible when viewed through the lens of letting go. The first four remembrances are all about letting go. The first three, letting go of youth, health, and life itself. The fourth, letting go of everything we hold dear and often cling to: people, relationships, situations, possessions, habits, and ideas.

So, why must we let go? Why must we suffer separation? Because everything changes, including me. For instance, relationships change. The person I met and fell in love with last year is different this year, and I don’t love him as much or at all. Or I’m different, and he doesn’t love me.

Possessions deteriorate. The house I bought six months ago has been invaded by carpenter ants and is disintegrating, the lawn has weeds now, and the basement is damp when it rains. Time to consider selling?

Circumstances evolve or devolve. The job I thought was a perfect fit for my talents has turned into a nightmare since the new supervisor arrived.

Habits intensify and may become unhealthy. The glass of wine each evening to relax has become two, then three, then four, and it is no longer helping me to relax; now I can’t sleep.

Beliefs and ideas harden and narrow our perspective. My creative idea for solving a problem in my community has become an obsession, and I can’t see the situation from any other perspective. My mind is closed. I’ve become part of the problem instead of the solution.

Letting go is difficult, often painful. Feelings of sadness and loss linger, sometimes forever. Letting go can cause or contribute to a wound that may stubbornly resist healing. Holding on, though, can also cause suffering. The choice can seem like a no-win proposition. We can feel trapped between the pain of holding on and the sadness of letting go.

If, indeed, loss is unavoidable, how do we live with that reality? Are we meant to love at all? If so, how do we love when everything we love is constantly changing? By accepting that loss is inherent in love?

The  Tao Te Ching offers some profound but practical advice.

If you open yourself to loss,

you are at one with loss,

and you can accept it completely.

(Verse 23, Stephen Mitchell translation)

To open to loss, one must open to risk—the risk of loving, valuing, or holding dear. One must be open to caring, vulnerability, and desire. These emotions are big risks. They carry the potential for getting hurt. You cannot let go of something you are not holding on to. You cannot lose something you have not gained, or at the very least desired. Holding something dear—even lightly or slightly—must inevitably lead to letting go. If it doesn’t, it will lead to suffering. The Fourth Remembrance does not recommend loving less; rather, it recommends accepting change and loss. The Tao speaks of loss as something worth opening to, worth accepting, becoming one with.

Why might that be so? Like the other remembrances, the Fourth is not a belief, but an observable or experienced truth. Change, and therefore separation or loss, happens to everyone. We know this from personal experience. Accepting it unites us with reality and with all other sentient beings. Therefore, loss is one way our interbeing, our connection to others, is revealed.

Losing or letting go also creates an opening for something new. As terrifying as this opening may appear, as sad as it may feel, it is the way forward, the only way. While letting go might provide an opportunity for something better, more importantly, it allows us to remain responsive to reality. The Fourth Remembrance does not ask us to stop loving, but to love without expecting permanence, to let what we hold dear rest in open hands, to receive what comes, accept the loss of what goes, and be fully present to what is here now.

Questions for reflection: Is the price of love loss? Can we love deeply without clinging? Does knowing something is temporary make it more or less precious? Am I being asked to let go of something or someone?

There is no escape

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The Five Remembrances (Plum Village Version, Thich Nhat Hanh)

  • I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
  • I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
  • I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
  • All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
  • My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

For the past five or six years, every January, I have chosen—or been chosen by—a single word as a linchpin for the year ahead.  It’s called the One-Word practice.  The chosen word becomes the subject of intense reflection, aspiration, and intention.  My One-Words have included: slowly, rest, flow, love, write, and Wu Wei (non-forcing).

My word for 2026 is Death.

“Why do you want to focus so intensely on death?” a friend asked.  I responded that in Buddhist practice, meditation on death is recommended to foster the fullest possible experience of life.  Maranasati, or “mindfulness of death,” reminds us that life is transient and precious and we must live with intention and purpose.

My time is limited, I explained, and I want to live as fully and consciously as possible. My friend and I both admire Mary Oliver, and, particularly, her poem “When Death Comes.”

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Like Mary Oliver, I don’t want to just pass through life as a visitor.  I want to embrace and inhabit it with amazement.

One way I am practicing mindfulness of death this year is by meditating daily on The Five Remembrances, Buddhist contemplations that acknowledge the inevitability of aging, illness, and death, the reality of impermanence, and the consequences of every action (karma).

I’ve been doing so since the beginning of January: reciting the words of each remembrance, looking deeply into their meaning, reflecting on my experience of each, and writing those reflections in my journal.  The following series of brief articles is based on those journal entries. These posts are not a scholarly exploration of Buddhist philosophy. They are personal and experiential.  I offer them in the hope that they will resonate with others—especially those who are no longer young and are approaching “The Big Let Go,” Death.

Open or Shut

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In the last post, I wrote about practicing for the ultimate let go at death by letting go regularly in daily life. The notion is that we get better at letting go the more we do it. Before further exploring the wisdom of letting go, I want to explore a phenomenon that often accompanies it—the experience of shutting or closing down.

Letting go implies some degree of attachment or clinging. Releasing our hold on something is frequently a viscerally painful experience. Relinquishing our illusion of control can seem almost impossible. We think we’ve done it, but our controlling behavior insidiously creeps back in. Letting go of cherished hopes and expectations brings feelings of loss, disappointment, and grief. Setting free those we love can feel like ripping our hearts out. Letting go can provoke anxiety and fear—a sense of lostness, vulnerability, and meaninglessness. All of these feelings, I suspect, are also common as we approach death. The supreme challenge in letting go is to stay open, receptive, and hopeful instead of closing or shutting down and donning the protective armor of fantasy, cynicism, or denial.  

Let’s bring it closer to home with an example. You offer an idea to a group of your peers. It’s an idea born of years of experience and hours of careful thought about the problem you’re all trying to solve. Your group has struggled with this problem for a long time and made no progress. Your idea seems bold and a little far-fetched, perhaps intuitive rather than logical, but you can think of no other way. Not only does the group reject your suggestion without seriously considering it, but they ridicule you for offering such a risky proposal. They are sure you’re mistaken.

Okay, you think, just let it go. This suggestion is the best I have to offer; now, I must let go and let whatever happens happen. You relinquish control and wait, but not with a feeling of open anticipation and hopefulness. Instead, you shut down, you can’t stay open to the ideas of others, and you can’t entertain any new ones of your own. You may feel rejected and withdraw physically or emotionally. You close down—put on a defensive armor that blocks your participation in life’s miraculous, ever-changing flow.

Authentically staying open after genuinely letting go is one of the most elusive of human responses. Three orientations may promote this precious openness. They were suggested to me by the poet and philosopher David Whyte, the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, and the Christian saint Julian of Norwich. I can’t decide if these attitudes have a hierarchy of value, so I will offer them alphabetically by first name.

David Whyte. Recently, a friend told me about his book Consolations, first published in 2015 but which I had not encountered before a couple of weeks ago. It is a series of reflections on the meaning of various words. Oddly enough, his reflection on silence is the one that gives me a clue about how to stay open after letting go.

“Reality met on its own terms demands absolute presence, and absolute giving away…a rested giving in and giving up; another identity braver, more generous and more here than the one looking hungrily for the easy, unearned answer.” [Page 116]

“…braver, more generous, and more here.” The ability to remain bravely and generously present in the reality of each moment brings about the stance of openness. It is much easier, perhaps only ever possible, to welcome what is happening here and now.

Julian of Norwich. An anchoress in the Middle Ages, Julian famously wrote in her Revelations of Divine Love, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” The phrase expresses a generalized hope that everything will ultimately turn out not only okay but well and beautifully. Specific hope for a particular outcome may be doomed to disappointment, but general hope in the goodness of life and death enables one to stay open after letting go.

Pema Chödrön. One of Chödrön’s prevailing themes across all her writing is learning to be comfortable with the natural human condition of groundlessness—accepting and familiarizing oneself with uncertainty and feeling safe amid constant change. Buddhists call it impermanence, one of the Three Universal Truths of Buddhist philosophy—safety without control.

So, as I write and we think together about letting go without shutting down or closing up, can we draw on the wisdom of these three guides and remain open in the here and now, with a sense of cosmic hope and ultimate safety? Let our imagination peel back the layers of our chests and gently open our hearts to the miraculous mystery that letting go will reveal.