LIFE AS A BUBBLE

In his 22 April 2025 New York T-Magazine article, “I is for Impermanence,” writer Aatish Taseer observes that Japanese religion, philosophy, aesthetics, and architecture all exhibit an underlying “belief in the transience of all physical things.”

He goes on to say, “Buddhist teachings would have us live in proximity to this knowledge – that everything we love and become attached to must pass from the earth in its material form – allowing it to impart grace and humility to our lives, even as we forgo those things such as ego and hubris that advance the illusion that death will not come for us all.”

While this sense of impermanence may be prevalent in Buddhism, it is actually a fact of all life. That is, all things continuously change. Though Zen focuses more on the metaphysical rather than the physical, even scientists – the oft-positioned opponents of the spiritual – agree with the basic Buddhist teaching of impermanence: all matter is changing continually, from the small subatomic level to the vast cosmic level.

The Diamond Sutra describes all forms as a “dream, a phantasm, a bubble, and a shadow” and “a dew-drop and a flash of lightning.” Nothing – including ourselves – is impervious to impermanence.

Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths teach the following (1) there is suffering, (2) there is a cause of suffering, (3) there is an end to suffering, and (4) there is a path to end the suffering.

Suffering is caused by attachment to something that happens in the here-and-now. It is a but a moment, and the moment passes. To end suffering, do not attach; instead, let go moment by moment.

We suffer when we hold on to what has changed, what is changing, what will change. When we experience joy, we hope that feeling will last longer. Conversely, when we experience grief, we lament that the sadness will not go away.

Feelings are a part of everyone’s life. Is Zen telling us to end suffering by not having feelings at all? Far from it. Zen training involves feeling fully in that moment and then letting go. One moment follows another. Each intersection of here-and-now is a moment, but it is our minds that connect these moments into a memory of what was.

in his 2045 Dartmouth College commencement speech, tennis great, Roger Federer told the audience about how over his nearly two-decade career he won only 54 percent of the shot:

To win at tennis, then, do not dwell.

To win at life – that is, not suffer – do not dwell.