On Impermanence

A concept that most of us know about but haven’t realised.

I recently went through a phase which I think any young college student of my age does- break up. I was shattered in the moment it happened. I had thoughts similar as any other person losing his/her first love. That moment got over. It had to. I decided to tackle it after 15 days of mourning, by reading about the concept of impermanence through the writings of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
It isn’t a new perspective. It is something that exists within and around us. What it means is that every thing has an end, or more literally it is susceptible to change. That means nothing is certain at all. The only thing that is certain once we enter this world is death.
Lets go one step further. All assembled things are impermanent. Everything around us is assembled. One thing cannot exist without the other. Lets take a simple example:
Your morning black coffee is an assembly of grounded coffee beans and boiled water. Once you drink it, it ends leading you to being awake. Once the coffee beans are crushed, the ‘bean’ nature of the coffee bean comes to an end. But again, it leads to the formation of fresh aromatic coffee powder. So one thing leads to another. Death results in birth, or again, it is just change.

Similarly, my relationship was an assembly of us and our love. All the situations that led to the making and breaking of the relationship too were assembled of many other things. So what caused the outburst of shock and extreme emotions? The fact that I saw permanency in our relationship. I knew it had to end sometime. I assumed it to be death, but I hadn’t accepted the fact that relationships come to an end because they too are assembled phenomena. One thing simply led to another. All that sadness was the result of getting disillusioned for my own idea of permanence, and the fact that I did not accept that it had to come to an end sometime and somehow.
This end of relationship gave rise to a new ‘me’, giving me a fresh perspective and a better understanding of myself and this ubiquitous concept of impermanence.