What is there to rely on when just about everything is temporary?

Impermanence

Several days ago, I was thinking about the mark of impermanence, and about how it might be explained, whether to myself or for someone else. This of course would entail communicating the truth that just about everything is temporary. Although we’re all aware of this at some level, most of us are highly adept at ignoring it.

Understanding of impermanence really is, intrinsically, liberating, in part because since things are in fact impermanent, living in ignorance of this, whether willfully or involuntarily, creates problems and dissatisfaction. But when we do become more aware of impermanence, for many of us, it can feel fear- and despair-inducing rather than liberating.

What To Rely Upon?

Part of what happens, I think, when some awareness of impermanence seems to sink us rather than uplift us, is a fear that we have nothing to rely on, despair that there is anything reliable, or confusion about whether there is anything that won’t, in the end, betray us, let us down, leave us, or fall apart. Because of this we also feel, with despair, distress, or depression: What is there that I can build on? and What is the point to anything?

It’s always good to remind oneself — or be reminded by a friend — that what matters is how we live, our own actions, efforts, and intentions. Creating something permanent is really not the point of life. Yet it’s difficult to carry on without some manner of continuing support that we can trust, and can trust to be there in the future. Again, then, the question: What is there to rely on, if everything or nearly everything is at best temporary?

The best answer may be simply: the path, which is to say the Eightfold Path. But if you’d prefer something less simple, then another answer is Buddha Nature.

Buddha Nature

Buddha Nature is an idea, or a reality, that is also called Buddha Mind and Buddha Potential. Further, the word ‘Buddha’ may be replaced by the word ‘Awakened’, as that is what ‘Buddha’ means. So you may find buddha nature referred to by various names.

Buddha nature also has a variety of explanations and interpretations, although the essential idea is fairly constant. I’m going to give one explanation below, which is the explanation I’ve found to be clearest for my own understanding. It conceptualizes buddha nature as comprised of two complementary aspects: one is the heart-mind’s inherent “emptiness;” the other is its innate potential for skillful qualities.

So first, we have the mind — including all its affective, emotive, and action-impelling dimensions — being “empty of inherent existence.” What that rather technical and mysterious phrase means, is that the heart-mind isn’t intrinsically defined by this or that quality, thought, feeling, impulse, etc. It doesn’t inherently exist as or with any particular quality etc. Therefore, the heart-mind is not inherently hateful, greedy, fearful, cruel, ignorant, inclined toward actions it will regret, distracted, etc.

The mind is also therefore, in some sense, not inherently loving, equanimous, inclined to act for benefit and not to harm, compassionate, clear, joyful, wise, etc. At the same time, the heart-mind’s potential for wisdom, the heavenly abodes of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, and other skillful qualities and inclinations, cannot be destroyed.

The Four Divine Dwellings, or Heavenly Abodes- A Moderately Detailed Overview of Loving-Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity

These skillful qualities, or their potentials and a certain natural inclination to actualize them, can be considered part of the heart-mind’s “ultimate” nature because we naturally desire happiness and freedom, and those qualities bring about happiness and freedom as well as characterizing, in general, the free-and-happy heart-mind. Further, among these skillful qualities are a clear understanding of the mind’s emptiness of inherent existence.

Relying On Buddha-Nature

Considering all of this, the implication is that we can cultivate the heart-mind, rooting out the unskillful qualities that characterize and lead to dissatisfaction, while developing the skillful qualities that lead to happiness and freedom. So buddha nature, or awakened mind, is both heart-mind’s inherent freedom from permanently existing as any particular collection of qualities etc., and its ineradicable potentials for the development of skillful qualities.

This nature and potential persists throughout the temporariness of most things and experiences. It can therefore be relied on and developed. And of course, the eightfold path is the way to cultivate this.

The Eightfold Path: A Non-Technical Overview

Note: This post was conceived, composed, and shared in a philosophical and reflective spirit, and not as something doctrinaire or “religious.” It’s a short account of a partial answer to something I’ve wondered about for many years.

If you want to know more about it, this Buddha-Nature website is dedicated to material about buddha nature; it seems pretty responsible with respect to the idea’s evidence and history, and also neutral with respect to differing interpretations.

Buddha-Nature: A Tsadra Foundation Initiative: https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Discover/Mobile

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SeekerFive is collecting and developing resources to help people with philosophical practice and study at philosophicadvising.com.