transience: The philisophic concept of embracing impermanence.permanence: A construct that exists externally and superiorly to all things that does not change through time.
After four days or so of pondering on the philosophical constructs of transience and permanence I discovered a wall. Not one one that separates but a porous one that binds. On one side is permanence, given all its assumptions and subjective bindings. On the other is transience, flowing and ebbing without course or definition or assumptions or restrictions.
Then I threw it away.
That is the Zen thing to do. Throw away the constructs and bindings and walls.
From the Tao Te Ching:
There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water,
and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing
that can take precedence of it;--for there is nothing (so effectual)
for which it can be changed.
What is more transient that water? What is more powerful than water?
Rising down I95 on my daily commute, cagers and wind and varying road conditions attempt to assail my senses. They fail. Why? I embrace transience. Why are most riders avid about their riding? Perhaps they all embrace transience yet cannot make sense of it in today's world. The motorcycle gives context to that embrace.
There is the paradox. On my bucket list are entries that include things like "own my own land," and "build a house of stone." How can one embrace transience yet desire to build something as permanent as a stone house? It seems a dicotomy.
Transience; something a short term as a turning signal blinker or unexpected gust of wind is judged by human standards. What of the transience of the bearings in a motorcycle engine? Every revolutiuon changes them. A bike may travel hundreds of thousands of miles before a bearing wears out, but that is no permanence. Even the most permanent stone home over time gives way to the primal elements.
To embrace transience is to understand permanence; what it is and what it isn't.
Ride safe on those roads of transient existance, all.
3 comments:
such timing... as i grow and contemplate moments in time and how each and every thing is relative, as i add more and more distance and miles to the experiences shared between my bike and i, its amazing how something will happen waking me to the fact that no two things are same.
that wall, i enjoyed thinking of it in this manner. could it be we create the wall?!?...
Hi mq!
Yes, I think we create that wall. Maybe it is a basis of context between permanence and transience. Honestly, IMHO, the only objective permanence is transience. When us humans start throwing subjective restrictions onto a transient existence we create the appearance of permanence. Maybe that is the wall.
IMHO, that's not a bad thing.
Thanks for your thoughts, my friend.
i hope you dont mind i continued on the thought and context of walls...
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