It is important to remember that the Buddha emphasized practical tools for change, and steered away from metaphysics and theoretical speculation. “I teach one thing.” he said, “suffering and freedom from suffering.” In addition, he recommended that we question and test received beliefs and teachings—including the ones that came from him.
In the West, however, we are not used to challenging beliefs, especially in a religious context. Despite many signs to the contrary, we have a deeply conformist tendency. Challenging authority is still associated with heresy. So teachings that are intended as practical instructions become inadvertently turned into fixed principles.
This distinction may seem subtle, but it is an important one. It is not hard to understand that everything does indeed change, and that everything is impermanent. But when you turn Impermanence into a fixed principle you limit your ability to actually assess your experience of impermanence, and you miss some important distinctions.
Impermanence might be more usefully understood as a process. Turning impermanence into a principle makes into a thing, and unquestioned abstraction removed from scrutiny or actual experience.
For example, within the cycles of history, or within the cycles of your own life-journey, some events are fleeting phenomena, while others may be relatively consistent components of repeating patterns.
Another example is in the pervasive notions that we hold, collectively or individually, about such things as race, gender, sex, class, and money. We may have certain inherited points of view, and we may have perspectives that we have become so identified with over time that we can’t imagine challenging them.
Notions are continually changing, to be sure, and in many ways. Yet it may be useful to look at how we hold onto certain attitudes, prejudices, and points of view. It is also useful to know the difference between the fleeting sort of change, and the kind that is cyclic.
There’s a relativity to this too. Everything changes, yes. But what changes for a mountain or a forest may seem very fixed from the perspective of an ant or a human-being. What seems endless to a three year old may be a momentary instant to their parents.
I was asked to write about the topic of impermanence from my perspective as a woman of transsexual experience. That is to say, I am a woman, though I was raised as a boy-child. What changed? The outward expression of my gender, certainly. Beyond that I cannot say. Some of my perceptions and inclinations are fairly constant against the time-line of my life.
People who come into contact with me may change their view of transgendered people, hopefully for the better. So there’s change going on there too. My perception of what it means to a be a man or a woman is probably more fluid than most people’s. Hopefully some of that rubs off. And if gender is more fluid than we thought, what else that we imagine to be fixed is in fact fluid as well?
I am aware that discussing this topic may be challenging to some people. Experience has shown me that in Buddhist circles people can be uncomfortable with this subject, while still holding onto the general idea of anicca, and the recognition that everything changes. But anicca is not an idea. It really is the recognition that everything really does change and, in its own fashion, not on our own terms.
It is true that at the core, beyond objective and subjective, there are no distinctions to be made—no gender, no otherness. And yet we live in a world of complex distinctions. If we are to navigate with skill, it serves us to differentiate between what changes all too fast, what lingers, what might change but does not, and what we can rely on to be fairly consistent.
As I have already mentioned, the Buddha was practical by nature. The question we can ask ourselves is:
“What can I challenge within my own model of the universe that will ultimately lead me to be more fluid, and thus become a more effective, positive influence in the world?”
Caitriona has an essay in the following book