It's funny. We've all heard this phrase. We all know what it means, or implies, usually something along the lines of:
Don't worry. This terrible thing you're going through—these unbearable feelings—will pass. Time heals everything.
And then when I was in search of a quote once, I stumbled across a website written by a Buddhist nun, where she talked about how nice things, such as ice-creams are there, and then they're gone, and I sat there in stunned silence, as the realisation dawned:
Almost on cue, one of my favourite bowls—carefully curated something like 25 years ago, when it was really important to a Giles Ego Construct 📦 to have a beautiful set of crockery—got smashed.
These things happen. Things were said.
And almost immediately I saw the duality of “This too shall pass”, and how easy it would be for a mind to attach to either of them!
- The ‘bad’: This gut-wrenching sorrow; this need to blame… this too shall pass
- The ‘good’: I love this bowl. We have such history together; so many amazing curries eaten/to be eaten out of it… this too shall pass.
They're obviously both intimately entwined: our attachment to impermanent items (including people & pets) and the sorrow that naturally stems from their loss.
None of it's wrong, none of it's bad – it's just the human condition. Embrace it!
I'm guessing it's why the outside-in illusion is so persistent: so that we get to experience the extreme highs and extreme lows (you can't have one without the other) of our time here on earth, in the world of form, as we intermittently attach to objects.
Richard Carlson wrote a lovely little chapter in his 3Ps-cunningly-disguised book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, that I rediscovered after this incident.
Entitled ‘See the Glass as Already Broken (and Everything Else Too)’, he says:
“Everything has a beginning and everything has an end. Every tree begins with a seed and will eventually transform back into earth. Every rock is formed and every rock will vanish … Our bodies are born and they will die. A glass is created and will eventually break.”
Or a favourite bowl, amirite?!
And as always, it's the mere awareness of these things that does all the heavy lifting for us. There's nothing to apply here, just a deeper understanding of the way things are.
“There is peace to found in this teaching. When you expect something to break, you're not surprised or disappointed when it does. Instead of being immobilized when something is destroyed, you feel grateful for the time you had.”
😍
For me, reading this immediately brought to mind the changing shape of my grief for the loss of my mother, some 6 years ago, where great sadness and a feeling of ‘immobilisation’ were replaced by deep feelings of gratitude, that have persisted to this day.
“Obviously no one wants their favourite drinking glass, or anything else to be broken. This is not a prescription for becoming passive or apathetic, but for making peace with the way things are [and] allows you to maintain perspective. Rather than thinking ‘Oh my God!’ you'll find yourself thinking, ‘Ah, there it goes.’”
I'm no expert and am human too—some things the Giles Ego Construct 📦 is more attached to than others—but the awareness of the all-encompassing nature of “This too shall pass” really helps, whenever my mind is faced with disappointment or loss.
I hope it helps you too.
💝
Giles
p.s. You may have come across the Japanese art form of Kintsugi, or ‘Golden joinery’ where such breakages are highlighted with golden lacquer, to keep this helpful fact front and centre, and celebrate the crockery's history. I like to think that in writing about it today, I have done the same.
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Giles P Croft
The difference between objects and processes. Deeply comforting knowledge!