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?

What Now? Reprise

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It’s been over a month since I posted here and over two since I wrote the first “What Now?” article. Honestly, I don’t know what to think or say about anything these days. I’m tongue-tied. That’s as it should be, counsels the Tao te Ching: “Those who know, don’t talk. Those who talk, don’t know.”

Each morning, sometimes before and sometimes just after my meditation time, I read Heather Cox Richardson’s daily newsletter, Letters from an American. I choose to follow her rather than some other news commentator because I like her framing of current events in the context of history, and she’s a Mainer from near my home. Her newsletter and listening to the occasional few minutes of NPR while driving are my meager attempts at awareness of significant events in our country and the world. Like many of my friends, I feel a responsibility to be aware but cannot cope with more intense and in-depth exposure to the news. It is too depressing, frightening, and immobilizing.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve identified and clung to specific anchors that steady me in times of turmoil like this one—help me rise and fall with the tides but keep me from drifting in rough currents. Some anchors are rituals or repetitive practices that calm and focus me. Some are objects or words that inspire or guide me. I’m always looking for symbols that help me make meaning and keep me steady. 

A few weekends ago, I visited Blue Cliff, a Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery in upstate New York. The monks and nuns who live there practice the Thich Nhat Hanh Buddhist tradition. That weekend, they were celebrating the third anniversary of his death, or “continuation” as they call it. Besides a few American Buddhists from Maine, Vermont, and elsewhere, dozens of Vietnamese Americans from the New York-New Jersey area came to meditate, chant, hear Buddhist teachings, and eat delicious Vietnamese food. I was fascinated by the rituals and chanting, curious about the customs, and delighted by the food. It wasn’t the sort of silent, secluded retreat I typically seek or enjoy, but it had a simplicity, pageantry, and wisdom that moved me deeply.

One of the most potent takeaway images from the weekend was this wooden calligraphy panel that focused the eyes immediately upon entering their exquisitely designed meditation hall.

I was awestruck the moment I saw it—so profoundly true and precisely the message I needed to receive, an anchor I could cling to. This Is It. This moment, this place, this situation, this country, this world—this is all there is. So, stop wishing for this to end, for something else to come, to be somewhere else, to be rescued from this current calamity. This is it—the only thing you have to work with, the only reality, your only opportunity. So, embrace it, celebrate it even. Open your eyes, ears, and heart, let the right action arise within you and proceed from you, and let go of the burden of the outcome. This is it. Nothing more, nothing less, nothing other.

For an hour on Sunday afternoon, their gift shop was open for guests to browse and shop. I went looking for a token of the message I had received and found this simple postcard in Thich Nhat Hanh’s calligraphy. I purchased it and brought it home to place in the window opposite my meditation seat so, as candles flicker beneath it and the sun rises behind it each morning, I can look at it and beyond it to what is outside my window.  

This Is It—the only time and place I have. I am surrounded by the only people I can respect and love. This is the only moment when I can recognize beauty, speak the truth, be kind, and do justice.

Cherished Outcomes

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If you want to accord with the Tao,

Just do your job, then let go.

—The Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell

I’m a planner, but I’m not naïve enough to think that meticulously planning something will make it turn out exactly how I want it to. Decades of experience have taught me that control is an illusion—a dear one. Still, planning is in my bones, and I might as well embrace it as part of who I am. Planning, like everything, has its shadow side and its bright side. The shadow side is about clinging—to outcomes. The bright side is about creativity, fruition, and letting go.

Giving myself fully and genuinely to a task or project without getting attached to the final product is one of my biggest challenges. How does one go all-in on something without being wedded to the result? I care; therefore, I plan. I do everything possible to ensure the desired outcome has its best chance.

I’m talking about passion—giving everything you’ve got, then offering your beloved creation to the world and letting go. Huge risk, right? Like nursing an injured baby seal that has beached itself. You painstakingly feed it, protect it, and watch it regain its strength, then set it free with absolutely no expectation that you will ever see it again or faith that it will survive beyond your sightline as it heads out into the deep. Or, like a parent raising a child, I imagine, since I have never raised one.

A friend of mine advocates “holding things lightly,” meaning, I think, that caring passionately and relinquishing control are both essential to being fully alive. It is possible to be committed to an outcome and hold it lightly, ready to let it go. Challenging but possible.

Scientists tell us we are hard-wired for planning. Research has shown that some areas of the brain, known as the default mode network, carry out this planning function. They

“become active when our attention is not occupied with a task. These systems function in the background of consciousness, envisaging futures compatible with our needs and desires and planning how those might be brought about….Human brains have evolved to do this automatically; planning for scarcity and other threats is important to ensure survival….Our background thinking is essential to operating in the world. It is sometimes the origin of our most creative images.”  Why we are hard-wired to worry, and what we can do to calm down (theconversation.com)

So, we will plan no matter what, and sometimes planning, when unhooked from worry, can be a very creative and valuable form of flow state. If I am going to plan, I want to give it my very best effort. I want the idea and the plan for its execution to be as detailed as possible, take as many contingencies as conceivable into account, and be thoroughly tested, broadly vetted, and profoundly considered. I want to be wholly absorbed, plan passionately, launch my plan confidently and enthusiastically, and then let go of the outcome!

Why? Because no matter the outcome, whatever happens—success, disaster, or somewhere in between—is an opportunity for learning, growing, transforming, and embracing reality just as it is.

Sometimes, when I meditate, my mind is pulled toward a problem that captivates me or a situation that needs resolution. I try to turn away from the flow of thoughts and return focus to my breathing once, twice, three or more times. Finally, I will sigh and let my mind have its way, go with the flow. Sometimes, the most fitting solutions emerge from giving my default mode network free reign. I’ve learned, though, not to act on these plans immediately but to let them mull and mature for a while and to be willing to let go of them, to change my mind.

During my 71 years, life has required me to let go of hundreds of cherished outcomes for multiple carefully laid plans. It’s gotten easier as I’ve begun to notice a pattern of unexpected gains amid losses, of auspicious signs amid clouds of disappointment. Gradually, I’ve become more curious about than afraid of the unknown final outcome of life—my life.

This past week, the Christian Church celebrated Ash Wednesday, the day of the year when we look death straight in the eye and remember that we all came from dust and will ultimately return to it. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” One of the ministers at the Episcopal Church in my town told me that some clergy are now reciting the words, “Remember that you are stardust, and to stardust you shall return,” when they imprint the sign of a cross in ashes on their members’ foreheads. The words point to our smallness and our greatness and are a sparkling reminder that we have always been and will always be part of the immense universe. How I cherish that outcome!