Let’s talk about going with the flow today. As we all know, life is a flow. Life keeps changing all the time. It’s like a mountain stream running all the time. Its nature is to flow. Sometimes it feels as if we barely get out footing and all of a sudden the ground is shifting beneath us.
We try so hard to keep things the same. I think human beings like familiarity. We resist change. Our brain is wired for familiarity bias. We would rather accept known pain than unknown pleasure! The reason for this is that the pain of loss is usually a lot greater than the pleasure of gain. Give an example of people staying in toxic job.
Even then, life keeps changing. It changes from moment to moment.
Look outside. Look at the flowers, the trees. A hailstorm comes and all of that is gone in an instant. Example of a 100 year old tree uprooted on University Blvd.
Has anyone heard of the phrase Managed Growth? It’s a term that was in fashion 15 years ago. In reality, there is no such thing. Either you grow or you shrink. There is no other option.
Examples of IBM, Blockbuster
We always try to fix things because we don’t like the flow of life. As soon as we fix something to our liking, something else breaks though or so it seems. That is what Buddha calls impermanence.
One moment gives rise to the next moment and the moment after that and so forth. So if you think about it, there are no things per se. Because things would imply a sort of permeance and everything keeps changing moment by moment. By that thought process, everything is an event.
Someone would say, well our body is a thing. Is it really though? It keeps changing. Your body is not what it was 10 years ago for sure. Sometimes changes are so subtle that it looks like it is not changing. Well, not in my case! My weight scale tells me it is going up every day!
In Buddhism, it is called a functioning thing. As opposed to a thing that may be static.
For example, take a seedling. Its function is to create a sprout. And then it goes out of existence. There is no seed anymore.
And the sprout becomes a sapling and goes out of existence and so on.
This means everything is an event. Everything is always in the nature of change.
We have to learn to accept and go with it, adapt to it.
Why is this important? The Sooner we accept the fact that Change Is the Only Constant, the more adept we will become.
If we accept that change is part of nature, we will not try to force things, we will try and accept things as they come, this, in turn, will reduce our anxieties, and stress because we are no longer fighting against the flow.
If we fight against change in our minds and in our hearts, we are going to lose because impermanence is the reality.
Not one of us wants to be unhappy. If we all want a happy life then our only option is to go with the flow. We can call it patience, resilience, grace under fire, and whatnot. It is a way to stay peaceful, calm, and accepting no matter what life throws at us.
If good things happen, we are happy; if bad things happen, we accept them happily.
The only way to be happy is to stop being unhappy. Does that make sense?
We are unhappy because we don’t accept what is going on in our lives. We are fighting. We are trying to fix things. We are trying to build these dams in the flow of the river called life.
This is where the practice of patient acceptance is so important. It is the ability to accept wholeheartedly. We accept it as it appears without wishing it to be otherwise.
Let’s look at an example. Say you want to go for a hike. You prepare for your hike, load up the car and start driving. You drive for two hours and all of a sudden there are thunderstorms. If we get unhappy that it is raining, it would ruin our day. Instead, you accept that it is raining. We can pull out an umbrella to protect us from the rain.
And you can use this example for anything else that may be going on in our world. If we don’t like injustice in our society, bring out the umbrella, meaning act to help people and solve problems, but don’t let it disturb your inner peace.