Touching the Reality of Impermanence to Allow Real Life to Be | Thich Nhat Hanh (EN subtitles)

In Western psychology,

they talk about fears like a...

a strong emotion.

And they said, if we're well-prepared,

we won't be squashed or carried away
by this strong emotion.

If we know it's cold outside,
and we've already prepared in advance,

when we open the door,

we won't be taken aback, and
there's a small chance we'll catch a cold.

But if we don't know it's cold outside,
we go out, and it suddenly gets cold,

we'll be taken by surprise,
we'll be very likely to catch a cold.

The difference is whether we're prepared or not.

When someone goes on a bear hunt in a forest,

they're ready to see bears.

When someone goes on a bear hunt in a forest,
they're ready to see bears.

When someone goes on a tiger hunt in a forest,
they're ready to see tigers.

And for that reason,

when these hunters see the bears
and the tigers, they're not as afraid...

as us, who may be taking leisure walks in the forest.

Taking a leisure walk in a forest,
if we happen to bump into a bear,

we'll be extremely afraid because
we haven't been prepared beforehand.

Perhaps the hunters do feel afraid a little bit.

What are they afraid of? Afraid that they'll misaim.

But relatively speaking, the fear of the hunters
isn't as great as that of the non-hunters.

Because we're not expecting a tiger.

We're not mentally prepared to see a tiger or a bear,

so if we chance to meet one, we'll be
panic-stricken, we'll be extremely afraid.

So, being mentally-prepared is very important.

Meditating on impermanence is a practice

which gets us to see that anything can happen.

Because going about our daily life,
we've always believed that

car accidents and cancers only happen to others.

They can never happen to us.
That's what we've always believed.

But when they happen to us, we say,...

"No way! Impossible!"

We can't accept reality.

But fact is,

these things can happen to anyone among us.

When we...

First off, when we train ourselves
to meditate on impermanence,

we see that those accidents and mishaps

can also happen to us.

At first, we feel that...

we are living in a world full of misfortunes.

The ones who love us today...

The ones who love us today
can stop loving us tomorrow.

The...

The job that we're doing today can be lost tomorrow.

Our good health today can become poor tomorrow.

We're afr...

At first, we feel...

We feel very insecure.

The feeling of insecurity.

But the fact is,

touching reality

brings us a lot of benefits.

We live...

We live deeply in the present moment.

First off,

the thought

of living in...

of living in misfortunes

makes us...

feel very unsettled, very uncomfortable.

When the great poet Victor Hugo

lost his first daughter

— her name is Léopoldine,

he suffered a great deal.

He retired to live in the countryside

of Villequier.

He could no longer enjoy...

he could no longer enjoy the wonders of the earth
and the sky. He just confined himself in his pain.

And in a poem he wrote in Villequier,

deep down inside, he really wanted to blame God.

He thought, "How's it possible a young girl

who's that young and flower-fresh,

that healthy, and that graceful, can die?"

And he realized...

He touched the reality of impermanence.

But he was Christian,

so he found solace in Christianity.

He said, "Dear Lord,

I come to you, Lord,

Father to be believed in;

I carry you, appeased, the pieces of this heart

full of your glory that you have broken."

"Je vous porte, apaisé,

Les morceaux de cœur plein de votre gloire

Que vous avez brisé."

I know God willed "everything that happens to me."

I confess that "you're
good, merciful, indulgent and sweet!"

But we mortals never can tell...

we never can tell

the...

the...

the acts of God,

the...

the plans of God.

So we have the feeling of walking
in "the night of a frightening mystery,"

not knowing what's really going on.

"Je viens à vous, Seigneur !

confessant que vous êtes

Bon, clément, indulgent et doux,

ô Dieu vivant !

Je conviens que vous seul savez ce que vous faites,

Et que l'homme n'est rien qu'un jonc
qui tremble au vent ."

"I agree that only God know what God is doing,

and that, man is nothing

but a reed

quivering in the wind" — completely useless.

Man is nothing but a fragile reed,

and any wind that gusts by can quiver it.

Totally helpless.

"Nous ne voyons jamais qu'un seul côté des choses ;

L'autre plonge en la nuit d'un mystère effrayant.

L'homme subit le joug sans connaître les causes.

Tout ce qu'il voit est court, inutile et fuyant."

"We humans

only ever see

one side of things;

The other plunges into the night

of a frightening mystery. Man submits
to the yoke without knowing the causes."

Man bears calamities and disasters
without knowing the reasons.

"Everything he sees

is short,

pointless

and fleeting." That's how he sees things.

It means, Victor Hugo is not a Buddhist

but he could already touch
the reality of impermanence.

And in it, there's an idea of resistance.

God knows it all, we know nothing.

We only know just a little bit the 'stem' of things

but the rest remains entirely hidden behind a shroud

— only God knows.

In the Christian attitude,

in pain and suffering, we should believe in God.

We should know that...

We should think that God plans everything
and we have to obey and endure.

We just have to believe God knows
what God is doing and why.

For some reason, God wanted our daughter dead.

We have to believe that God is merciful,

benevolent and compassionate.

But for a good reason, for our own good,
God did this.

This is faith.

But when we move on to Buddhism,
we see a different way of looking at things.

We see that Buddhism helps us
touch the reality of impermanence.

And although this characteristic of impermanence
can bring us pains, anxieties, and fears,

Buddhism teaches us to always touch reality.

We have to courageously touch reality.

That...

That AIDS infection, that cancer, that car accident,
can totally happen to us,

not just those around us.

Once we allow this reality to sink in fully,

we'll open up a brand new horizon
— we'll live in an awakened awareness.

We'll no longer take each of our days for granted.

Each day granting us twenty-four hours
becomes a precious gem.

And we vow to live those twenty-four hours deeply.

Each day is a gift of the whole universe.

And each of our footsteps
will be taken in leisureliness,

because we have no idea
if we'll be granted another day to live.

So for that reason,

touching impermanence, first of all,

deprives us

of our security.

The sense of security.

But that sense of security is a false sense of security.

We believe things are permanent,

so this sense of security
is based on that idea of permanence.

And this is ignorance.

And now,

when we see everything is impermanent,
we lose this sense of security.

But we learn something else
— we learn to live in reality,

and we know how to touch life deeply
in the present moment.

And perhaps in one day,

in just one day,

by touching impermanence
and living life deeply that single day,

we can already live much more

than living a hundred years in ignorance,
in this false sense of security.

We live in this false sense of security
until we meet with a mishap.

Our loved one suddenly dies, or
we ourselves are facing our own death.

We realize, this sense of security
has already lasted for ten or twenty years.

But we've never truly lived because it's a delusion.

We've let time pass us by so quickly, so wastefully.

We've stomped on,

we've trampled on our own life.

We've always believed life is permanent,

so twenty years have passed us by like a dream.

Now, when touching impermanence,

we lose this sense of security,

but this loss is good because
it's a false sense of security.

We've been sitting on a timing bomb
without knowing.

Now we know we're sitting on a timing bomb,
we stand up.

And we know that

the present moment is the most important.

We're gifted with a day with twenty-four hours

with the sunshine, the sky, the clouds;
with our fellow practitioners; and with our teacher.

So with this awareness of impermanence,
live deeply to deserve these twenty-four hours.

Only in this way,

only in this way of living, only with this attitude,

can we address impermanence.

Only in this way of living, can we address...

this crippling feeling of insecurity.

If someone asks,

"You follow Buddhism, practicing Buddhism.

How do you deal with, or cope with, misfortunes?"

We can respond,

"We cope with them by living truly deeply
every moment of our daily life.

If I can truly live this way,

if I can take good care of my loved ones today,

if tomorrow it happens that they die,

I'll have nothing to regret.

Otherwise, I'll regret it for the rest of my whole life.

Because I've had this false sense of permanence,
I've thought my beloveds will always be there for me.

I don't even bother to take care of them.
I thought, "Well, there's plenty of time for that."

So I've never cared for them to the best of my ability.

But if I have this awareness of impermanence,

I won't wait till tomorrow.

I'll express my love through words,
I'll do something for them,

I will think about them,
I will care for them

and I will make them happy, today. Right now."

And that's a Buddhist response

to mishaps and misfortunes,
to the feeling of insecurity.

It's not to become worried,
but to truly live well in the present.

And if I've already lived this way,

and if I've already helped you live
the same way in the present moment,

it means I've already done my very best.

I'll have nothing to regret
when that moment of impermanence comes.

That's a Buddhist insight.

Touching impermanence isn't to feel
afraid, unsettled, or insecure.

That sense of fear or insecurity
may be there in the beginning

in order to break the false senses
of permanence and of a separate self-entity.

They deprive us of real life.

Now, touching impermanence and non-self
helps us touch deeply the reality of life,

and allows real life to be.