William Shakespeare – When I Consider Everything That Grows
A sonnet from the ‘Fair Youth’ series that was occupied with themes of aging, passing time and the transience of physical beauty.
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Jack Gilbert – Failing and Flying
Fearing future outcomes should not stop us from pouring ourselves fully into today. As Jack Gilbert reminds us: ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.’
The Full Awareness of Breathing
In the Anapanasati Sutta, the Buddha presents a visceral kind of practice with the breath, that illuminates the experience of joy, calm and impermanence.
Edna St. Vincent Millay – “When You, That at This Moment Are to Me”
This sonnet by American poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay is addressed to a lover and to the latent sense of impermanence and loss built in to all moments when one becomes conscious of great love or great happiness.
Erich von Hungen – The Moment
The pinpoint perspective of the present moment can feel so sharp but ultimately always impossible to fathom and out of our reach. As Erich von Hungen writes, it is simultaneously hard and soft, early and late, tiny and all-encompassing ‘like a pocket-sized Big Bang.’
Joshua David Stein – Consider the Marshmallow
Joshua David Stein on the humble and historical marshmallow, and what it teaches us about desire and impermanence.
Leonard Cohen – Roshi
Leonard Cohen on how the teachings of a Zen master can manifest in unexpected and obtuse ways.
The Ground is Always Shifting – Pema Chodron
The acceptance of the fundamental changing, impermanent nature of the world is at the heart of Buddhist philosophy and is a constant theme through Pema Chodron’s teachings. When things fall apart, when the ground is pulled out from under us, it is not a cause for panic, but rather a cause for celebration.
Arthur Sze – First Snow
Arthur Sze’s postmodern poetic style includes elements of Taoist and Zen philosophy written in a deeply observational style. Influenced by William Carlos Williams and Chinese poets like Bei Dao, Arthur Sze’s work can be a difficult but rewarding read.
Dogen’s Waka on Impermanence
Waka is a Japanese word for poem that surfaced more than a millenium ago to differentiate the Chinese kanshi poems from the work of local scribes. A waka can have a long or short form, and the short ones can often read like haikus, a poetic embodiment of transience. This short one was written by… Continue reading Dogen’s Waka on Impermanence
