#impermanence — Public Fediverse posts

sand castles
cannot stand against
the tides of time

#haiku
#Impermanence
#dailyhaikuprompt

sand castles
cannot stand against
the tides of time

#haiku
#Impermanence
#dailyhaikuprompt

✮ Warning Lights I Ignore ✮

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✮ Warning Lights I Ignore ✮

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Become a paid subscriber to get access to the rest of this post and other exclusive content.

morning chill—
I'm reminded to stay
in the present moment

#haiku #Impermanence
#presence #dailyhaikuprompt

morning chill—
I'm reminded to stay
in the present moment

#haiku #Impermanence
#presence #dailyhaikuprompt

#Buddha is the quality of #awareness that observes without judgement, the #compassion that arises #naturally when we let go of our self-centred views, the #wisdom that knows the #impermanence & #interdependence of all things.

#Mukyōhō #Buddhism

7/
Mono no Aware (物の哀れ): The gentle sadness, deep appreciation, and bittersweet beauty felt when witnessing something destined to fade—like cherry blossoms falling or a long-held chapter coming to a close.

Wabi-Sabi (侘寂): Finding beauty in imperfection, the passage of time, and the weathered patina of age.

#Buddhism
#Japanese
#impermanence
#物の哀れ
#侘寂

7/
Mono no Aware (物の哀れ): The gentle sadness, deep appreciation, and bittersweet beauty felt when witnessing something destined to fade—like cherry blossoms falling or a long-held chapter coming to a close.

Wabi-Sabi (侘寂): Finding beauty in imperfection, the passage of time, and the weathered patina of age.

#Buddhism
#Japanese
#impermanence
#物の哀れ
#侘寂

6/
無常

In Japanese culture and Buddhist philosophy, Mujō translates to "impermanence," "transience," or "mutability". It is the fundamental truth that nothing in the universe stays unchanged forever. Everything flows, everything shifts, and everything eventually transitions into something else.

While the concept can feel heavy at first glance, it is actually the foundational root of some of the most comforting Japanese aesthetics:

#Buddhism
#Japanese
#impermanence

6/
無常

In Japanese culture and Buddhist philosophy, Mujō translates to "impermanence," "transience," or "mutability". It is the fundamental truth that nothing in the universe stays unchanged forever. Everything flows, everything shifts, and everything eventually transitions into something else.

While the concept can feel heavy at first glance, it is actually the foundational root of some of the most comforting Japanese aesthetics:

#Buddhism
#Japanese
#impermanence

The impermanent characteristic of things ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #impermanence #Theravada

The impermanent characteristic of things ...

#Buddhism #Dhamma #impermanence #Theravada

To be unaware is to suffer. Not knowing the nature of things, not seeing reality as it truly is, binds us to a world of illusion.

#Buddhism #Mukyōhō #Reality #NonDuality #Impermanence

Builder

For Nelson (May 16, 1944-July 13, 2005)

If I would have my life to live over again,
I would find an old stone wall in disrepair
and I would spend my days seeking the tumbled
down stones hidden in the grass.

By day I would rebuild the wall. At night I
would lie in its lee. I would not be afraid
of the snakes and rodents disturbed from
their dark places in the cracks between the
stones where they sleep.

And when my life came to an end and the wall
was as yet unfinished, I would not moan. I
would lay myself down against the rocks and
let my body fade away into a place of rest in
the cracks between the stones.

March 11, 2005

(Reposted on the anniversary of my dear friend’s passing)

Builder

For Nelson (May 16, 1944-July 13, 2005)

If I would have my life to live over again,
I would find an old stone wall in disrepair
and I would spend my days seeking the tumbled
down stones hidden in the grass.

By day I would rebuild the wall. At night I
would lie in its lee. I would not be afraid
of the snakes and rodents disturbed from
their dark places in the cracks between the
stones where they sleep.

And when my life came to an end and the wall
was as yet unfinished, I would not moan. I
would lay myself down against the rocks and
let my body fade away into a place of rest in
the cracks between the stones.

March 11, 2005

(Reposted on the anniversary of my dear friend’s passing)

“Ab Tak To Jo Bhi Dost Mile, Bewafa Mile”: Why Wafa Is So Rare Among Us

Claude, comment on the line “ab tak to jo bhi dost mile, bewafa mile” from the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I4nSYHL-cQ in the movie Nikaah, the full lyrics here – https://gaana.com/lyrics/dil-ki-yeh-arzoo-thi-6 (I am not saying anyone has been bewafa towards me, and it is more likely that one or two people might actually accuse me of being bewafa towards them or towards life in general, but bewafa people are more common than one would want, so what does that say about us human beings and why we are NOT wafadaar or what prevents us from being wafadaar):

Claude:

What a line to sit with. On its face it’s pure ghazal convention — the aashiq’s résumé of wounds presented to the new beloved — but Hasan Kamal does something subtle in it. Notice that the moment the dilruba arrives, the entire past gets retroactively rewritten: ab tak to jo bhi dost mile, bewafa mile. This is psychologically very sharp. New love doesn’t just illuminate the present; it recolors history. Friends who were perhaps only ordinarily limited, ordinarily busy, ordinarily human, are now reclassified as bewafa because the singer has finally tasted (or anticipates) something that makes everything prior look like counterfeit currency. So part of the answer to your question is hiding in the line itself: bewafai is often a verdict rendered by disappointed expectation rather than a description of betrayal. The accuser’s hopes, not the accused’s promises, are frequently the real contract — and it was a contract only one party signed.

But your deeper question stands: granting that genuine faithlessness is common, why? I’d offer three layers.

The first is almost mechanical: wafa is a promise made by one configuration of desire that attempts to bind all future configurations. But we are not continuous; we are, as you’d put it, a flux of nāma-rūpa wearing a proper name. The man who swore friendship at thirty is only nominally the man at fifty whose circumstances, needs, and attention have all migrated elsewhere. Bewafai is less often malice than impermanence — anitya operating through personality. We promise as if we were permanent, and then anicca collects its tax. The bewafa person rarely experiences himself as betraying anything; he experiences himself as having changed, which feels innocent from the inside and treacherous from the outside.

The second layer is that most human bonds are quietly transactional — need-shaped — and wafa is only tested when it begins to cost something. La Rochefoucauld’s acid observation that gratitude is mostly a lively expectation of future favors applies to friendship too. When the need dissolves, or the cost appears, the bond thins, and we discover that what we called dosti was proximity plus utility plus pleasant feeling. Real wafa requires loving the person rather than the gratification the person supplies — and that’s rare because it requires a degree of self-forgetting most of us can’t sustain. Ghalib, characteristically, put fidelity above even correct religion: wafādārī ba-shart-e-ustuvārī asl-e-īmāñ hai — steadfast faithfulness is the very essence of faith, bury the brahmin in the Kaaba if he died true to his idol-house. He understood that wafa is not about the object; it’s about the integrity of the one who keeps it. Which is exactly why it’s scarce: it’s a discipline of self, not a warmth of feeling.

The third layer touches what you said about yourself — that one or two people might accuse you of bewafai, toward them or toward life. This is the renunciant’s ancient predicament. Fidelity is always fidelity to something, and when a person’s deepest wafa is to truth, or to the Self, it will periodically look like bewafai to persons and to worldly life. Ramana walking out of Madurai at sixteen was, in his mother’s ledger, a spectacular act of bewafai. The world calls it desertion; the tradition calls it vairāgya. The two accounts are not reconcilable at their own level — only at the level where one sees that being wafadaar to the ephemeral at the expense of the real is the deeper betrayal. Though I’d add, honestly, that this framing can also become a convenient shelter, and the accused should occasionally audit whether his fidelity to truth was ever used as an alibi for ordinary avoidance. You’ve invited that kind of scrutiny before, so I’ll leave the question with you rather than answer it for you.

As for the song’s own emotional logic — the fear in lagta hai darr fareb-e-bewafa se kabhi kabhi is the truest moment in it. Having been burnt, the singer doesn’t stop desiring; he desires while flinching. That’s most of humanity’s condition: not bewafa by nature, but so afraid of receiving bewafai that we withhold the very steadfastness we demand, each waiting for the other to be wafadaar first. The scarcity is partly a coordination failure of frightened hearts.

#Meditation is not about forcing thoughts away. It is about seeing them as they arise & pass. A thought appears, lingers briefly, then disappears. Another replaces it. None stay. None can be held. The same is true of emotions. Anger surges, peaks, fades. Fear rises, then falls. Joy appears, then passes. This direct observation reveals #impermanence more clearly than any philosophy.

#ZenBuddhism #HadakaShizenyoku #Mukyōhō #Nude #Naked #NoClothes #ClothesFree

Nibbana/Nirvana is not a dualistic experience. Stop waiting for something beautiful or interesting to happen, in this world, and realise whatever happens here is impermanent and empty.

#buddhism #nibbana #nirvana #dualism #duality #experience #desire #beauty #samsara #impermanence #anicca

Nibbana/Nirvana is not a dualistic experience. Stop waiting for something beautiful or interesting to happen, in this world, and realise whatever happens here is impermanent and empty.

#buddhism #nibbana #nirvana #dualism #duality #experience #desire #beauty #samsara #impermanence #anicca

Whatever is sitting heavy on you today did not move in forever.

Anicca, impermanence, is the quiet truth that every feeling is weather, not climate. Let it stay the night. It checks out in the morning.
#SelfLove #Mindfulness #Buddhism #Impermanence

The Robin, the Crow, and the Release

Learning to Let Go with an Open Heart

-a lived moment of impermanence and non-attachment.

The Nesting Story

The robins had started building a nest in our breezeway earlier this spring. Their first attempt fell, and when they began a second one, I asked my husband to brace it with a piece of wood so it wouldn’t collapse again. It felt like a small but meaningful act of care — a way of participating in the life happening around our home.

Friday, when the mother robin didn’t return for hours, I called a wildlife rehab center to ask how long to wait before intervening. I was ready to bring the baby in if needed. But by evening, the mama returned. Relief washed through me. The fledgling was in the yard, and we watched her tending to it, guarding it, guiding it. It felt hopeful, like things were unfolding the way they were meant to.

The Morning Of Loss

Saturday morning, around eight, I took my dog out. As I rounded the garage, I saw the two adult robins in the yard — the mother and father — and a crow nearby. The moment the crow saw me, it flew off, and the robins chased after it. I knew instantly what had happened.

I went inside and told my husband, “Not a good start to the morning,” as the tears began to flow. Some part of me wondered if I could have prevented it — if I had gone out earlier, if I had been outside already, if something could have been different.

But when I went back out to look, there was a pile of feathers. It had already happened. There was nothing I could have done.

Carrying the Grief

And still, I was heartbroken. Even knowing the natural cycle. Even understanding that crows have babies to feed, too. Even knowing that energy moves, transforms, returns.

I carried that ache with me into my lymphatic flow class with Darshak N Gala. My body was tight, braced, holding the events of the morning. But as we moved through the rhythmic sequences — the breathing, the gentle movement, the process of relaxing into the body — something in me began to shift. I could feel the emotional charge loosening, draining, moving.

The Body Begins to Soften

By the time we reached the end, Darshak offered an affirmation/prayer that landed exactly where I needed it. It helped me integrate everything I was feeling — the grief, the tenderness, the helplessness, the truth of the natural cycle. It was as if my body finally had permission to release what my mind had been gripping.

And in that softened space, the Buddhist teaching on impermanence rose in me — not as an idea, but as a lived truth. Everything changes. Everything ends. Everything returns.

Impermanence as a Lived Truth

As the truth of impermanence settled into my body, another companion teaching rose with it, non- attachment. It’s often misunderstood as not caring, but in Buddhism, it’s actually an invitation to love without gripping to let beings moments and seasons be what they are, even when we wish we could hold them in place.

Loving Without Gripping

Non-attachment doesn’t numb the ache of loss. It simply keeps us from collapsing under it. It teaches us to loosen our grip on what we cherish, not because it matters less, but because it matters so deeply that we allow it to move the way life moves, remembering that this didn’t erase the grief of the morning, but it’s softened its edges. It gave the ache somewhere to go.

As I moved through the rest of the day, I kept returning to the memory of that small pile of feathers in the yard, not with the same sharp ache, but with a quieter tenderness. The morning had reminded me in a way I didn’t ask for that life is always shifting, always moving, always becoming something else

What the Morning Taught Me

While I can’t protect every fragile thing, I can meet these moments with softness instead of bracing, I can let myself feel the ache without gripping it. I can let the teaching settle into my body the way the breath does, slowly, naturally, in its own time, and maybe that is the real practice, learning to stay open to the world even when it breaks your heart, trusting something, and you know how to soften around what you cannot change.

The Barren Fields of Engineered Forever

https://tsvetoslavshalev.com/2026/06/28/the-barren-fields-of-engineered-forever/

The Barren Fields of Engineered Forever

https://tsvetoslavshalev.com/2026/06/28/the-barren-fields-of-engineered-forever/

This Moment – Lost

a thought of beauty strikes me
and I must express it so

but as I reach to grasp it
it flutters away,

a moth,
a feather,
a small white bird
startled by the motion
of my wanting.

my hand closes
around nothing,

void,

and I stand there
foolish with longing,
as if the air itself
had promised me a gift
then taken it back.

and I weep
for the passing moment.

it will never come again.

not in that light,
not with that breath,
not with the same small door
opened briefly
between the soul
and the world.

May 8, 1987 (age 19) (Expanded and updated June 2026)

This Moment – Lost

a thought of beauty strikes me
and I must express it so

but as I reach to grasp it
it flutters away,

a moth,
a feather,
a small white bird
startled by the motion
of my wanting.

my hand closes
around nothing,

void,

and I stand there
foolish with longing,
as if the air itself
had promised me a gift
then taken it back.

and I weep
for the passing moment.

it will never come again.

not in that light,
not with that breath,
not with the same small door
opened briefly
between the soul
and the world.

May 8, 1987 (age 19) (Expanded and updated June 2026)

#InPlace 8

Shade tree leans on hut;

old woman, sad, makes cuts

then cables tree uphill

firewood she had not needed


The tree began an imperceptibly slow but undeniable lean to the east, downhill, a path that would take it through the hut. Two feet thick and fifty feet tall, it presented a problem for the old woman. She considered whether to give up the hut, then elected to draw the tree uphill with wire rope and pulleys. Cutting the tree while it was under pressure from the cable presented its own set of difficulties, as the tree could split and crash backward into the building. By cutting most of the way through the stump and then cranking and resetting the tension many times, she eventually brought the tree within reach of a pole saw. Daylight where shade had been -- she'd foolishly counted on that shade for the hot summers.


Across the valley
I hear the sounds of trees being felled

-- Ryokan (tr. Abé and Haskel)
#impermanence

Just realized I've now walked the planet longer than any of my male ancestors: father, two uncles, two grandfathers, even my younger brother. All the work stuff they worried about, all their ambitions, all their unfinished projects, it's all in the dirt now. Must have seemed very important at the time, just as it all does to me now. #impermanence