Meditation and impermanence
Today when I was doing Anapanasati at the Buddhist Center, my teacher asked us to question whether anything inside us is permanent. Straight away I thought about how the only lasting truth is change (Octavia Butler). I closed my eyes. I thought about the breath moving inside my body. I thought of the ripple affect of movement in my body due to the breath moving down my chest and into my stomach. I thought about how my hands cannot be fully still. I then felt the blood flow inside my fingers. I then noticed my stomach and I thought about how it is digesting food right now. I thought about how the food will not be inside me for long. That the food inside me is going through many chemical processes and through many organs. In fact all my organs are doing something right now. I then felt for my organs and all the movement that is happening to sustain and change me. I thought about how could I give my organs a rest, like a good night sleep. When I go to sleep I can close my eyes and close my consciousness but i cannot give this kind of rest to my organs, because at night my organs don’t turn off unless I die.
I thought what else in my body is not moving, maybe something that is less wet, not full of water. I thought about my largest organ, my skin doesn;t feel wet but my skin is made of cells, those cells never stay still. There are 86 billion of them that are all doing something right now. But then finally I was like ah I have won, there are things on my body that don’t move because the cells are dead, my nails, my hair, there is dead skin too. Death exists all over me, all the time. I walk around everyday carrying remains on me, as part of me. But then I realised that like tree leaves shed, the dead nail is connected to life, the dead hair is connected to life, and this process is always happening. I am always creating new death on my body. and it is a cycle so even the composting of my dead skin and hair will go into the earth. I can excrete into the earth and the magnetic pull of the earth can give me new life. That means I am growing from the life of the earth, which is inside me, some of it is in my stomach right now. So of course, it makes complete sense that we are immaterial spirits and that a part of us is always dying and news parts of us are being born, just like cells are regenerating all the time and the water inside our body is constantly changing. But then the physical separation between me and the earth are also entwined because I have the air inside my lungs and I have the food inside my stomach, my dead skin in the earth and the light stored inside my skin. So I am physically human and non-human at the same time. I am mother earth and the universe.