Impermanence

I apologize for these very lengthy blog entries. I do know that people don't have infinite time to sit around and read a huge entry, but... I seem to keep doing it anyway. Onward:

I got back from the Festival last night. I can't help but notice this particular Truth, the truth of impermanence, writ large on much of the experience. This time I spend with my favorite women friends in the iridescent bubble of an incredible and improbable community we all create there seems to slip by faster and faster. I know this is a cliche, and that as we age, we begin to understand this more, but most of my friends agreed, that this year went by fast. Faster than ever before. The joy that we experience at Festival is so fleeting.
These feelings of joy were punctuated by some painful events as well. Let me preface this by saying that these things are not really comparable, other than the fact that they are all evidence of impermanence. Which is kind of like comparing three very different items that exist on earth, and saying that what they have in common is that they are subject to the law of gravity. I would not want this to come off as minimizing anyone's suffering, just because I am mentioning them in the same thread. These things just happened to be painful--some more, some less-- and I noticed that remembering impermanence did reduce the suffering of that somewhat.

On Tuesday August 5th, one of the shuttles, a full van bound for the Festival from the Grand Rapids Airport, blew out a tire, crashed and rolled, killing one woman and injuring many others, some quite severely. We heard the news of this on Wednesday, mainly because one of our friends was not on that shuttle, due only to her random decision to delay her trip one more day.
There is a thread on the Festival Forum discussing this tragedy here, and someone was kind enough to find and share the woman's obituary. Her name was Lynn J. Marshall. Here is her obituary:

Lynn J. MARSHALL - Lake Tapps, WA Lynn J. Marshall beloved wife, mother and amateur Rambler mechanic died August 5, 2008 in a traffic accident on US 31 near Muskegon Michigan. She is survived by her husband Francis, her son Chet, her daughter Comedy Jane and her two sisters Kristen Mauritson, and Susan Martin. Lynn graduated from Kimball High School in Royal Oak MI. She served in the USAF between 1973-1978 at Clark AB in the Philippines as well as stateside at Cambria radar station in CA and Homestead AFB FL. She was the first woman to graduate from the USAF school of diesel mechanics and power production. She was currently employed by the Boeing Company in Seattle WA. She graduated from Seattle Central Community College's architectural photography program and enjoyed photography her entire life. Her unique love and special interest was always her old Ramblers. She was a member of both the Cascade and Rainer Rambler automobile clubs. She was also a member of the Nash car club of America. Her favorite car "Camille" will now be maintained without the love and special care Lynn provided to all who shared her life. We will all miss her zestful pursuit of life; the moon hole will be shut and the wall crank turned off. A Memorial Service will be held at 1:00 p.m., Sunday, August 17, 2008 at the Saltwater Unitarian Universalist Church, 25701 14th Place South, Des Moines, WA. 98198, (253) 839-5200.

We send our love and wishes for peace to her friends and family. We had just spoken to Lynn's sister, who is a member of the Shuttle Crew, the day before this happened. It was just a bland and friendly everyday conversation. It is shocking to see how fast life can change. Our hearts go out to Lynn, Susan, and to all of their loved ones.
Additionally, on the return trip from Festival, Amy P. got word from her partner Dusty that their home had been broken into and burglarized on Monday the 4th. Nobody was home, their cat, Maps, was fine, and nobody was hurt. This had happened early in the week, and Dusty had wisely and compassionately declined to let Amy know until after the Festival. There was nothing she could have done. He had handled everything, though understandably continues to experience the loss of a sense of security in their home. Her brand new and powerful little laptop computer was stolen. She conducted all of her business on this little computer. Thousands of dollars' worth of Dusty's recording equipment was also taken. She will return home in a day or two to take inventory of any other losses, and to find out just how recently her information had been backed up.
Oddly, Amy had shared with me on Wednesday morning, a dream she had the night before about her computer being stolen.

She found out about the break-in early in our 6-hour car ride from Festival to her mom's house in Cleveland. In observing her process through a trauma like that, for her, the physical losses were less upsetting than the sense of violation. Also living with not-knowing. Not knowing what the thief's intentions are with her computer -- to quickly erase it and sell it? To find and profit from any personal information? The mind fills in the blanks with great frightening detail.

We were grateful to have made the drive safely to Cleveland to Amy's mom's house, which has been re-named the "Festival Transitional Center." Though Amy had a much more fitful and difficult night, the other three travelers fell into welcome sleep on actual beds and couches, hot food in our bellies.
Then, yesterday morning, having been awake for about a half an hour, in a quiet house full of sleeping friends, I took the opportunity to review all my photographs from the Festival, deleting any obviously blurry or unflattering shots. I used two memory cards this year, 2GB each (I had about 350 pictures on each) and switched them about midway through the week, just to make sure not to lose any great shots due to a full memory card, and "just in case" something happened to one of the cards. This is kind of silly, because I probably had room for about 300 more shots on each card. I was looking through the features of my camera to find out if and how it could tell me much memory I had left on a card. I found the feature, and it also said something about "formatting." Not thinking very clearly, I chose "OK" instead of "Cancel" and watched helplessly as the camera began to reformat, and erased the entirety of the memory card in about three seconds.

All of my photos from about Friday afternoon until Sunday evening -- gone. I had also taken some video of some of the performances, the hundred or so photos of the parade that my friends spent hours preparing their outfits for, the topical photos I taken since we had gotten our assigned "themes" for our annual Michfest Calendar, the shots of our campsite on the last morning... gone. After a litany of swearing, and pacing around quietly groaning while holding my belly, and the repeated internal echo of this statement from one of our friends we camp near:

"I'm not really taking any pictures this year, because I know I'm getting the giant CD of pictures from Laura..."

After that flood of thoughts through my mind, I was able to also touch into the knowing that it really was okay. I mean, it was just pictures, for God's sake! And another lesson in impermanence.

I recalled an e-mail I sent to Ryushin, one of the monks at the Monastery, noticing a weeklong workshop I had been looking forward to was no longer on the Monastery calendar. Ryushin, described why it had been canceled, and then closed by saying, "Yeah, sometimes that impermanence is a stinker!" Though I have to admit, that the word "stinker" was not the word in my mind.
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, in his book, What Makes You NOT a Buddhist? describes one of the four "seals" or truths of Buddhism: All compounded things are impermanent.

By "compounded," he means something that has been assembled out of other things. He describes that after a long period of contemplation, the Buddha realized that

"all form, including our flesh and bones, and all our emotions and perceptions, are assembled--they are the product of two or more things coming together. When any two components or more come together, a new phenomenon emerges -- nails and wood become a table; water and leaves become tea; fear, devotion and a savior become God. This end product doesn't have an existence independent of its parts. Believing it truly exists independently is the greatest deception. Meanwhile the parts have undergone a change. Just by meeting, their character has changed, and together, they have become something else -- they are "compounded."
He realized that this applies not only to the human experience, but to all matter, the entire world, the universe -- because everything is interdependent, everything is subject to change. Not one component in all creation exists in an autonomous, permanent, pure state. Not the book you are holding (or the computer you are looking at), not atoms, not even the gods. So long as something exists within reach of our mind, even in our imagination, such as a man with four arms, then it depends on the existence of something else. Thus, the Buddha discovered that impermanence does not mean death, as we usually think, it means change. Anything that changes in relation to another thing: even the slightest shift, is subject to the laws of impermanence.
Through these realizations, the Buddha found a way around the suffering of mortality after all. He accepted that change is inevitable and that death is just a part of this cycle. Furthermore, he realized that there was no almighty power who could reverse the path to death; therefore there was also no hope to trap him. If there is no blind hope, there is also no disappointment. If one knows that everything is impermanent, one does not grasp, and if one does not grasp, one will not think in terms of having or lacking, and therefore one lives fully."

And that, after this long-winded post, is the discovery with impermanence, again and again. It is the appreciation of this temporary visit to this life, each day, each moment. Remembering how fragile and how complex and how miraculous it all is, we can't help but live more fully and more kindly. Many of the women on the Festival Bulletin Boards were remarking about how this sad event increased their appreciation of one another this year. The break-in really underlined the power of one person's actions. One person can make so much difference in another person's life -- to harm or to heal, and we can appreciate all the loving, healing acts that happen to us all the time every day. All the digital photographs in the whole world will someday be all gone. It is simply a matter of time. Was I actually experiencing the moment I took them? The joy of being with my young and healthy friends will recede into something else.

From the entries in her guestbook, it seemed to me that Lynn Marshall appreciated this life, and lived it quite fully.

I need so much reminding! So I keep the Five Remembrances on my bathroom mirror:

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.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.