Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductions to Buddhism.

Last time we briefly discussed attachment and affliction: greed, anger, and ignorance arise because we do not see reality clearly. What is reality? We begin with Buddhist impermanence.

Chinese speakers know the word impermanence. When misfortune or frustration occurs, we sigh:‘How impermanent!’Yet this is mainly a feeling; asked what the word actually means, many cannot explain it.

The Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike opens with famous lines:‘The bells of Gion Shōja echo the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, like a dream on a spring night; the mighty finally fall, like dust before the wind.’This is Zhou Zuoren’s version among many translations.

“‘The bells of Gion Shōja echo the impermanence of all things’In ‘The bells of Gion Shōja echo the impermanence of all things,’ Gion is where the Buddha often taught. Monastics of his age struck a wooden sounding board called a gaṇḍī, not today’s metal bell. The next line,‘the color of the twin sāla trees reveals that the prosperous must decline,’refers to the tropical trees between which the Buddha entered nirvana. Their leaves reportedly turned white like two cranes, so Chinese literature calls the site the Crane Grove.

These images do not mean simple misfortune; they say the entire world arises and ceases impermanently, including the Buddha. Yet Heike’s sorrowful tone shows that we usually understand impermanence withnegative and melancholy emotion.。

Chinese literature often does likewise. Du Fu writes:‘How short our youthful prime; already our temples are gray. Half the friends I ask after are ghosts, and shock burns within my heart.’Such laments over worldly change reveal a deep understanding of impermanence asan intense reluctance to release youth and beautiful times.。