Hello Sangha members. I hope you all are well, happy and at peace. Autumn is the time of year when we begin to notice seasonal changes all around us. Have you ever noticed that during the summer months we don’t really notice the change in daylight length? The days seem to be long but not changing very much in length. It’s because the duration of daylight doesn’t change very much around the solstices- perhaps a minute or so change every day. But from September through November the day lengths change by up to four minutes per day. We notice this seasonal change externally and internally, don’t we? We see the change from blossoms to fruits, from flowers to seeds and from predominant green to predominant brown in our environment. Animals change behavior, birds arrive and leave the area, the sun gives way to more clouds, thunder disappears and rain gives way to snow- water to ice-warmth to cold.
We often tend to see this impermanence as something external to us. It’s something outside as we shut our windows, remove screens, don our sweaters, fleece, coats, boots and gloves and try to recreate the same warmth that we took for granted all summer. Especially during this time of seasonal change we can use our fathom long body with its perception and mind to learn by our own direct experience nature’s primal teaching on impermanence. We can slow down for a minute or two each day and let our perception and mind notice this continual change all around us. Nothing stays the same!
So as the weather turns cooler, and we move into the autumn, let us notice this impermanence that is all around us and notice also that we truly have never been separate from this impermanence and also never been separate from our own true nature.
True knowledge is not attained by thinking
It is what you are;
It is what you become.
Sri Aurobindo
May you all be well, happy and peaceful.
Floyd
Times They are A-changing .
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’… Times They are A-changing. Bob Dylan
