From the Buddhist point of view, we human beings live in a very peculiar fashion. We view impermanent things as permanent, though everything is changing all around us. The process of change is constant and eternal.
Even as you read these words, your body is aging. But you pay no attention to that. The book in your hand is decaying. The print is fading, and the pages are becoming brittle. The walls around you are aging. The molecules within those walls are vibrating at an enormous rate, and everything is shifting, going to pieces, and slowly dissolving. You pay no attention to that either.
Then one day you look around you. Your skin is wrinkled and your joints ache. The book is a yellowed, faded thing and the building is falling apart. So you pine for lost youth, cry when your possessions are gone. Where does this pain come from? It comes from your own inattention. You failed to look closely at life. You failed to observe the constantly shifting flow of the world as passed by. You set up a collection of mental constructions - "me" " the book" "the building "and you assumed that they would endure forever. They never do.
But now you can tune in to the constant change. You can learn to perceive your life as an ever- flowing movement. You can learn to see the continuous flow of all conditioned things. You can. It is just a matter of time & training.
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