Absalom! Absalom!

Impermanence

One of the causes of suffering, the Buddha taught, is the impermanence of all things. This includes our relationships, as was driven home to me this weekend in a way that has no place on the World Wide Web. This impermanence has caused a great deal of suffering.

While waiting in an airport last night I re-read the mustard seed parable of the Buddha. One translation can be found at http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/btg/btg85.htm . In the parable, a woman seeks medicine for her child, who has already died. The Buddha tells her to get a single mustard seed from the first home she finds that has not been impacted by death. Of course, she can not find such a home and, in the end, she finds peace in the Dharma by accepting the truth that all things are impermanent. Reading this, while at the same time listening to the Brahms Requiem second movement, was very moving. The words “Denn alles Fleisch ist wie Gras und alle Herrlichkeit des Menschen wie des Grases Blumen. Das Gras ist verdorret und die Blume abgefallen” (“For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away”) with the slow beat of the drums brings that truth home.

I found it very difficult to meditate this week. I could not focus on my breath or maintain breath counts. So I just sat with grief. “This is grief” I thought. I felt the pangs in my heart and stomach at the loss. I was just with the pain, and that seems to help. It does, however, still hurt. I wonder whether the woman who received the mustard seed teaching ever stopped feeling the pain of the loss she suffered. It is one thing to understand impermanence in your head. It is quite another to release the attachment that causes this pain. Indeed, I do not want to do so.

So now, I will do loving kindness meditations for the loss. I will reflect on the verses from 2 Samuel 18, verse 33. “The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: "O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! … O Absalom, my son, my son!"