Neecha's Blog

It’s just as bad, or even worse off than where you started: Going from a permanent, to impermanent, and back to permanent view. And it’s a common trap practitioners find themselves in.

For example, this past Wednesday, I figured that since the A’s and Giants were in their playoff games, the restaurant would not be busy. So it was an ideal opportunity for me to go out of town for a day to tend to some personal business. So, I prepped as much stuff as I could and left town before rush hour traffic.

On the first stretch of freeway, I got a call from my manager saying that the POS system had a glitch. Then, when it was too late for me to turn back, an employee called in sick for the dinner shift, siting a stomachache. Later that night, the alarm monitoring company called saying that the door was opened after hours.

I shook my head, thinking that I had picked a day I had figured for  mundane as any other, and then I was proven wrong. Three unexpected issues popped up, and I wasn’t there to deal with them.

Now, I have arrived at the fork in the road. There are very different outcomes waiting at the end of each path. And there are basically two ways I can think about this:

A) Things always seem to go wrong when I am not there to put out the fire.  If I were just there, these issues could have been avoided. I could have fixed the issue with the POS system, worked the dinner shift, and drove to the restaurant to see if a burglar had broken in. In the future, I will just spend as much time as possible at the restaurant to prevent and fix these issues.

B) Whether I stay or go, anything can happen. Each day is separate case. If I do go somewhere, the best I can do is to have my phone nearby in case my problem solving skills are needed. However, whether I am available or not, I may not be able to fix the issues, or they may even fix themselves. Further, if I were to die at any time, they would still have to carry on and solve whatever issues come up, so stop worrying!

The path of A winds up at a permanent belief that I would be making the best decision by being physically present as much as possible. It also results in my guilt-tripping myself for not being there when an issue does arise (“I knew it, if I had just left ten minutes later!”), and feeling like I wasted time being there instead of doing something else (“If only I had known it would be this uneventful!”).

The path of B winds up at the understanding that the happenings on Wednesday only serve to illustrate the impermanence in our world, and the inability for me to control any part of it.  Anything can happen, any day and anytime. If I conclude by taking each day as it comes, being prepared for the unexpected without imagining or worrying in advance, I will have successfully landed in Impermanence Territory. Whether drama happens or doesn’t  I will be well-prepared to cope.

More often than not, I hear practitioners landing at a path like A. From, “he can keep a secret,” to “I expected him to keep this secret but he didn’t,” to “he can’t be trusted anymore.” Or “if I leave at noon, I won’t hit traffic,” to “traffic at noon, that was unexpected,” to “I probably have to leave before noon next time.”

Often it sounds like we understand impermanence better after getting a dose of the unexpected. But when we take that unexpected and turn it into the new norm, that is where we fall into the trap. Instead of fixing the problem, we essentially take a detour into a new one. We overlook the fact that there are countless factors and circumstances that come into play in any situation.

So when you think you’ve solved a problem by understanding impermanence, just ask yourself, “what was my original view, and what is my new one? Is this new understanding permanent or impermanent?” If your new understanding is based on permanence, you’d better head back to the drawing board!