#impermanence

Did you know: although you may think the influences of Glasgow and London are what matter most to you, your family, your involvements in commerce, there are other more diverse influences upon what life is. There are in fact an immeasurable amount of influences to understand and admire the effects of other than those of a Glasgow or London origin. Understanding itself is impermanent. We should be mindful of this. Give caring attention to it.

That might sound terrifying, but the Buddhist tradition makes a promise that the acceptance of impermanence transforms suffering. It promises you that the sense of nihilism that seems apparent from the impermanence of all things is, itself, empty.

Most of human misery stems from our insatiable need to demand permanence from impermanent things. Sensations, experiences, people, etc. We want them to stay frozen in time, like a beautiful rose encased in glass. But this is the philosophical equivalent of trying to nail water to a wall."

When passing through the heart of suffering,

Lacan said that when a baby looks into a mirror and thinks, “Ah, that’s me,” it is actually the image society desires, not the true self. The ego exists only through the gaze of others, always lacking and incomplete. In contrast, Buddhism teaches that the reflection in the mirror is merely a shadow born from light and circumstance. There is no fixed “I” from the beginning; everything arises from conditions, and when those conditions fade, it disappears as well.

Everything is born and ends through conditions. When they vanish, what seemed real dissolves — this is impermanence. To claim “I” is meaningless, and that absence of self is non‑self. Clinging to what we do not understand creates suffering.

Everything is ephemeral.

The excerpt form the "Diary Of a Woman Sentenced To Death" sounds like a form of nihilistic relief. Not necessarily depression, but a sudden collapse of obligations that previously seemed unquestionable.

The logic goes something like this. If I am certainly going to die, if my possessions will disappear, if my achievements will eventually be forgotten, if my identity itself will vanish, then why carry so much psychological weight? Why spend every waking hour chasing status, recognition, accumulation, and endless self-improvement? There is something genuinely liberating in seeing through the inflation. Many people live as if the next promotion, the next purchase, the next accomplishment, or the next social victory will somehow exempt them from mortality. It will not.

The condemned prisoner analogy is powerful, but it has a hidden assumption. A prisoner on death row is waiting for a future event while confined from life. He cannot meaningfully participate in the world. The rest of us are also mortal, but we are not merely waiting. We are still embedded in experiences, relationships, learning, curiosity, creativity, and causality. Imagine two books. One is 50 pages long. One is 500 pages long. Both end. Does the ending make the previous pages meaningless? We have to be careful here because impermanence does not necessarily equal meaninglessness.