The Five Remembrances
Buddha urged his disciples to meditate upon the five remembrances. When I first heard them, I thought, Wow! This is harsh! But I shouldn’t have been surprised; they are straightforward reminders of the teaching of impermanence. Here is Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation.
- I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
- I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
- I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
- All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.
The first three on this list—old age, sickness, and death—are the three forms of suffering the young prince Shakyamuni saw when he first left the protection of his father’s palace before he became the Buddha, and each of these remembrances helps us to savor the life we have now and not to grasp for permanence. It is our clinging to youth, health, and life that causes suffering. This is a difficult teaching, but familiar to me. The fourth remembrance—that I will lose everything I love—was at first unexpected and unbearable for me: I’ll be ripped away from everyone I love, one way or another. My heart will be in tatters! See how I make it worse by fear and clinging? When I stay with it, when I say it gently to myself, this remembrance helps me to love right now the people who are dear to me and urges me not to hang on to them too tightly, because that will only cause more pain on both sides. I wouldn’t want to hear, “Ouch, Grandma! You’re squeezing me too tight!”
The other day, I was talking on FaceTime with my granddaughter Sally in Virginia—three thousand long miles away. These days, because of the pandemic, I can’t hug her, even gently. Sometimes I think: FaceFaceTime-ShmaceTime! My whole body aches to hug her. Time-On this call we were playing a drawing game, and we propped up our phones so that we could see each other. It was Sally’s turn to draw something for me to copy, and she was silent for a couple of minutes, concentrating. In that interlude, I could hear the scratch of her pencil. I looked at the top of her head as she bent over her paper, the shine coming off her curly hair, shifting as she changed the tilt of her head in the light from the window. I stopped clinging. I had all I wanted. That’s the joy hiding in the fourth remembrance.
