Impermanence I

This weekend, I attended a memorial service for a very old friend who recently died. I always knew her as a kind and generous person and one who stood up for the concerns of others. Apparently, the almost 200 people who attended the memorial service felt the same way. They recounted stories of her love of nature and animals, and an equally strong love of doing what she could to help others. Her humility, in spite all of her accomplishments, was another quality that endeared her to us all. Hers was, by all accounts, “a life well lived.”

Everything we know and care for is impermanent. Nothing in this material world will last forever, including us! We all know we are going to die… someday, right? But how many of us actually believe it? I mean believe it with the conviction that it is not a surprise when we get the “news” in a secluded doctor’s office. We all understand we will die at some point in time, everybody does, but we just don’t believe it will happen now.

In the Buddhist tradition, the awareness of our precious human life and its impermanence, is a strong motivating factor to engage in spiritual practice. And in the belief that practice should focus on loving kindness for all beings and all of the natural world. A former minister of the First Unitarian Church in Providence, the Rev. Thomas Ahlburn, used a benediction that ended: “In the evening of life, we will be judged by love.”

I believe that my friend lived by those words and exemplified the qualities of love and care that we nurture in our meditations, and in our actions outside of formal meditation practice. It may seem that there is a long time to go before we die, and I hope that is so for all of us. In the meantime, please endeavor to live your life as if “in the evening of life, you will be judged by love.” Then, there will be no regrets. Even if the “evening” were to come sooner than expected.