The impermanence of things

Posted December 9th, 2009 by rathin31 (#24209)

I bought a new printer scarcely three months ago. Alas, it has bitten the dust. It still sits beside my desk, my NEW new printer sitting atop of it. I probably should have thrown it out (the old new one, that is.) Instead, it sits, still and lifeless, reminding me...

...of the impermanence of things.

A well-known veteran Australian cricketer visited our cafe enterprise, My Rainbow-Dreams, the other day (I never recognise the famous people that occasionally visit enterprises I am working in, even if I ought to. Fortunately there is always someone else to take care of the recognising.) I once got a home computer this cricketer was endorsing, a quarter of a century ago: the Sharp MZ-700. After a while, I discovered that it was not the electronic marvel of the age. Despite trying to appreciate its good qualities, in my heart of hearts I wished that I had have got the much more popular Commodore 64, or even the TRS-80.

But all of these devices have disappeared into the great dustbin of history. Perhaps you might find one at a garage sale for $5, including games. Even then you wouldn't buy it. This too reminds me...

...of the impermanence of things!

"Transfer your life

>From your desire-impermanence-train

To your aspiration-transcendence-train."

-Sri Chinmoy

Re: The impermanence of things
Posted December 9th, 2009 by jaitra.gillespie (#24213)

Rathin, although itself impermanent and fleeting in nature, I am highly enjoying this post of yours on the topic of impermanence.

I once also highly coveted a 1980s box of plastic and silicon, several of them in fact, and even spent a year and a half cleaning burnt jam and melted butter from trays and muffin tins, an hour a day after school spent in a bakery, earning only $40 dollars a week — my first ever job — to pay for a then start of the art, "16-bit, millions of colours" Commodore Amiga 500, and a television set with which to connect it to.

If you do the math, you'll have some idea of what I paid for both, and also just how much I so strived.

My own lesson in impermanence came a few years later when, graduated from high school as well as cleaning crumbs from underneath industrial sized ovens, I declared myself too "mature" to play computer games and, now a university student, too poor and hungry to prefer a no longer used piece of electronic wizardry over simply having food in the cupboard. Convinced of my own illumination at this realistion, I sold the former acme of my desire for just $400, the inflation and waning desirability adjusted value of a year and a half of cake shop cleaning.

Which isn't to exactly say that I had learned a major lesson in attachment and desire — not just yet at least — rather that my desires had multiplied, and acquired new, more sophisticated forms:

"In the ordinary human life, we feel that if we can multiply our earthly riches, then we can have satisfaction. But when we multiply our possessions, we see that multiplication is not the answer. Then we try to achieve satisfaction with addition. We try to add a few things to our lives. We feel that this is the way we will be able to achieve satisfaction, which is peace, fulfilling peace. Then, when addition fails, we try to see what division can do. We divide our realities here, there and elsewhere. When division fails to give us satisfaction, which is abiding peace, then we try subtraction. But there also we fail."
—Sri Chinmoy
http://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/books/0881/1/2

I could also relate to meeting a veteran Australian cricketer — I've met a few myself — and probably would even have known his name, as I once had posters and signatures of 1980s cricketing icons on my bedroom walls, and broke a jaw and gained a life-long propensity for shin-splints in my quest to emulate them.

But that would be a story of aspiration and desire for another time...

Jaitra
New Zealand